Joe Velikovsky's Blog, page 20

my little Geometry Symmetry Joke (the GSJ)

...my little Geometry-Symmetry Joke (the GSJ)...

(now, IN-COLOR !!! :)



And hey - you know, where i (well, kinda, prolly) got the idea...?

from: watching lots & lots of Stanley Kubrick movies.
Over and over and over and over and over again
(i get more out of them, every time... like a fine-whinge I mean a fine-wine - they get better with age)

Great Art is: good like that.
Very-densely-compressed-information, but also: ambiguous.

ie YOU decide, what it means
YOU interpret it - however u want...

free will is good like that (see Dan Dennett for more)

Depends also, what age you are too - and, whats going on in your life, etc!

eg Always Ask, the Whole Time, as you watch a Kubrick Movie:
...How does this, apply to me?
(omg so awesome. interactive cinema!)



see also: my `Categories of Canon' diagram - in:

`The Structure of the Meme, the Unit of Culture' (Velikovsky 2017)

also - kinda got the idea from, bertrand russell - and, Set Theory - and whatnot

...gotta love: diagrams

especially, symmettrical ones
(thats not a typo)


hey - & if you like that sort of thing, maybe see, also:

Creative Practice Theory

or: not..??


~jtv phd
the storyAlity guy
https://storyality.wordpress.com/

----------------------------------------------------------------
.
P.S.
On a serious note
I used to love bell-curves
But... - it's only half the story.
Why don't we show `the full picture'?
...I just want the LIES, TO END...
for i am da Light anna Troof
anna-aWy, anna-Truth
will Set [theory]
u free
...
,,
,


ie - this is bullshit, man...
(where's the other HALF goddammit? this things got a big hole in it)


But actually the video itself is awesome, see it, here. now.

hey - randomly - you know what is a great book?

Brian Boyd's On The Origin of Stories (2009).

check it out...


hey also - this is uber-good:



the clues are all there.
hidden in the symbols
you'll hav 2 figure the rest out yaself

see ya there ;)

(read Joe Campbell or something. or The Da Vinci Code. or see the hidden symbols in Nabokov's stuff. etc)

or read one of my novels:

eg: A Meaningless Sequence of Arbitrary Symbols (not by: me)

down the rabbithole

turtles all the way

...
..
,

Stuff I Have Liked (Books, Movies, Songs etc)

STUFF I HAVE LIKED
And may still be likingpossibly even, liking more than ever before(or, not)
aka:
A Few of my Fave Things at certain windows of timesome of the windows are still open
by JT Velikovsky
Not that it will probably matter, in the greater scheme of stuff, like maybe in a few decades or centuries or millennia, (unless for some reason, it actually does) - then here for this record, are some things I have liked and probably even still like - well - unless I have gone off them, since I wrote this.

FAVE MOVIES

Fight Club - Love all the philosophy in this! Also, the anger in it. Lots of energy!

Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 - funny as hell, and much better than the original!

American Psycho - love the dark humour in this. And Bale's deadpan performance!

Inherent Vice - Love the absurdity in this - and the laid back feel. And Phoenix's deadpan performance!

Ex Machina - love stuff about artificial intelligence. Love Oscar Isaac's acting!

Starship Troopers - great biting satire; very darkly funny.

Adaptation - love the satire! Funny. Biting. Ironic.

Valhalla Rising - love the feel of this. (See also Bergman's The Seventh Seal.)

Evil Dead 2 - funny! And dark! And funny! And kinetic. Love all the crazy shots (all the wild camera moves).

The Thin Red Line - love the philosophical tone... and beautiful shots of nature, war, etc.

Drive - love the look and feel and vibe and music and performances. What's not to like, (Dig The Goz's understated deadpan acting - and Oscar Isaac in a great role)

Pulp Fiction - what's not to like, here? 

The Sound of Music - I dunno, I just like it. (Hmm. - Is that a bit gay?)

The Rocky Horror Picture Show - ditto.

MacGruber - funny as hell

Galaxy Quest - funny as hell

Three Kings - pretty funny, also, intense!

Gattaca - a great noir vision of the genetic future, (for its time).

Deliverance - haunting!

Tenebrae - great giallo film!

Tokyo Story - makes me cry every time. Sad!

Xtro - great cheesy low-budget British sci-fi horror.

Vertigo - Hitch's masterpiece.

The Godfather - intense!

Dredd (2012) - mind-blowing! Love the colours.

Manhattan - funny and sad (Woody Allen)

Bubba Ho-Tep - offbeat and hilarious

Withnail & I - hilarious

Gladiator - epic.

There Will Be Blood

The Princess Bride

No Country For Old Men

Being There

Inside Llewyn Davis

Apocalypse Now Redux

Citizen Kane

Bicycle Thieves

Monty Python's Life of Brian

Blade Runner

The Exorcist

The Conformist

Persona

Donnie Darko

The Hitcher (the original, with Rutger Hauer)

Barton Fink

Re-Animator

The Big Lebowski

And obviously - I like the top 20 RoI movies, not just because they are good. I wrote a PhD about them. My fave out of them is probably, Primer.
The Top 20 Return-on-Investment movies
But - far above and beyond all of these already listed, I also love everything Kubrick ever did - well; apart from Spartacus - which even he also admits was "a bit silly" (way too much studio interference!)


I rave on about Kubrick, here.

And I have an article about Kubrick that I wrote in The Journal of Genius and Eminence (2018).

In general, I really love Mindbender stories (including: movies, novels, short stories, jokes, etc).
They are a level above regular stories, as they have multiple layers, deliberate ambiguity, and more than one story packed into the one story. They are also the hardest to pull off, but when they work, POW!



NOVELS

The Third Policeman by Flann O'Brien


But in fact - in terms of your very first encounter with it, I highly recommend hearing the audiobook (read by Jim Norton), over reading the novel... Once you've heard the audiobook, then read the novel! Also - better if you don't know anything about this book at all, going in. Like many stories, it is better `unspoiled'.


Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K Dick.
I read this in high school before Blade Runner came out. Loved it. Love almost everything by P K Dick. Love those mindbendery twists!

Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
Funny and absurd as hell. War is hell.

White Noise - Don de Lillo
Great satire of academia. And of American life in general.

A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
Funny, dark and brilliant. Amazing characters. Hilarious.
Also a good example of Rotten Rejections .

Moby-Dick - Herman Melville
The writing style reminds me of The Third Policeman. Or vice-versa given when both were written.

The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
Sad sells. So well written!

Labyrinths - Borges
Great philosophical mindbenders. Ok, not a novel - but, whatever.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert M Pirsig
Lotsa great stuff on thinking and science and Philosophy.

Gotta say - I also loved the Doug Kenney special issue of National Lampoon mag, back in 1985.


NON-FICTION BOOKY-WOOKS

The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins
Read this at uni, and it set me off on a 20-year quest, to discover: the structure of the meme, the unit of culture. (I think I nailed it.)

Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life - Daniel C Dennett
Love anything this guy writes.

On the Origin of Species - Charles Darwin (see also my article in the  Journal of Genius and Eminence )
Love anything this guy wrote, too.

The Descent of Man - Charles Darwin

Lifetide - Lyall Watson

Sapiens - Yuval Noah Harari

Homo Deus - Yuval Noah Harari

The Act of Creation - Arthur Koestler

Ghost in the  Machine - Arthur Koestler

Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge - E O Wilson

Creativity - Csikszentmihalyi (1996)

Evolution, Literature & Film: A Reader - Boyd, Carroll & Gottschall (eds)

On the Origin of Stories - Brian Boyd

The Beginning of Infinity - David Deutsch 

Life 3.0 - Max Tegmark

And - some of my other faves are listed, here.


ALBUMENS
Over time, just some of the albums I have loved that spring to mind:

Un-Led-Ed - Dread Zeppelin

Joe's Garage - Frank Zappa

Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned - The Prodigy

Aja - Steely Dan

Unit - Regurgitator

Purple Rain - Prince

The Wall - Pink Floyd

Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd

Dub Side of the Moon - Easystar All-Stars

8 - Madhouse

16 - Madhouse

Greatest Hits - Queen

The Best of Hugo Montenegro

Greatest Hits - Jimi Hendrix

Greatest Hits - Prince

Nevermind - Nirvana

The Rising & Tunnel of Love - Bruce Springsteen

Steel Wheels - The Rolling Stones

The White Album - The Beatles

Sleep Well Beast - The National

Some fave bands, over time, would include: Frank Zappa. Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Queen, The Police, Steely Dan, Dread Zeppelin, Regurgitator, The Prodigy, Frank Bennett, the EasyStar All-Stars (reggae coverband) - and many, many more...


SONGS
Some of my favourite songs, over the years: (these change a LOT, as & when new music happens)

Behind My Camel - The Police

Body Language - Queen

Bring on the Night / When the world is running down (live in Paris) - Sting

Bulls on Parade - Rage Against the Machine

Chandelier - Sia

The Rake's Song - The Decemberists

Give It Up - KC and the Sunshine Band

Jesse - Carly Simon

Mama said knock you out - LL Cool J

This is what you want... this is what you get - Public Image Ltd

Beautiful World - Devo

Hey Hey Helen - ABBA

Gun Street Girl - Tom Waits

Mindfields - The Prodigy

Sabotage - Beastie Boys

Fight The Power - Public Enemy

Grease (the whole movie musical soundtrack)

Infected Mushroom (lots of stuff by these guys)

Brickblocks - Alt-J

Hey and here's what's missing from your life - Dee Dee King (of The Ramones) doing Funky Man from 1987.




Also here's the Top 100 most viewed Youtube Music Vids - as of March 2017.



And here's the top 10 Youtube vids with over a billion views. (Not necessarily: songs)





STAND UP COMEDIANS
Some of my faves/standout standups

Louis CK
Bill Hicks
Eugene Merman
Marc Maron
(Early) Steve Martin
Jack Handey
The Jerky Boys albums (not really standup - but, whatever)
Sara Silverman

I also did a brief thing about "The Ten-Year Rule" in standup comedy, here.

Also here's 10 of the best comedy specials of all time, probably.




VIDEOGAMES
(these are mostly all old-school... but I really liked 'em!)

Lots of the Grand Theft Auto games

God of War

Soul Reaver: Legacy of Kain

Cabela's Big Game Hunter

Age of Empires II: Age of Kings

Smuggler's Run

Driver

Katamari Damarcy

Metal Gear Solid 2

Snow Bros (arcade)

Asteroid (arcade)

Journey (2012)

Virtua Fighter 2 (arcade)




POEMS

The Raven - Edgar Allen Poe

The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost

The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner - ST Coleridge

Hmm. Am not a huge poetry guy, apparently (but hey songs are usually also poems, anyway).
But anyway - here's some classic poems.


COMIX

Red Meat - by Max Cannon

Agony / Amy & Jordan - by Mark Beyer

Flaming Carrot - by Bob Burden

The Angriest Dog in the World - by David Lynch

(Randomly - as a kid, I also loved: Asterix, Snoopy, B.C., The Wizard of Id, and Crock comics. But so did a lot of people. LOL. I also loved Mad mag, and Cracked, Crazy and Sick magazines.)


SHORT YOUTUBE VIDS


Ryan Gosling's Acting Range (Funny Or Die)
(I actually really dig his acting, eg in DRIVE, but this is still funny as hell)




Bed Intruder (The Gregory Brothers)



Bushes of Love (Bad Lip Reading)


Horrifying Planet



TV
Some stuff I have really dug on television:

Rick & Morty
Dexter
Breaking Bad
Game of Thrones
Westworld
LOST
Twin Peaks
Futurama
Ren & Stimpy (back when Kricfalusi was doing it)
UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship)

And on a more serious note:
QandA (on ABC-TV)

SOME WEBSITES
That I like:

The Onion

The Oatmeal

Brainpickings



Anyway - so - that's: some stuff I have liked.

(And maybe still do, unless I've gone off it lately.)


-----------------------------
Dr. Joe T. Velikovsky, Ph.D. (Communication & Media Arts)

& High-Movie-RoI Consultant (see: The StoryAlity PhD)

-------------------

`The word communication will be used here in a very broad sense to include all of the procedures by which one mind may affect another. This, of course, involves not only written and oral speech, but also music, the pictorial arts, the theater, the ballet, and in fact all human behavior... The language of this memorandum will often appear to refer to the special, but still very broad and important, field of the communication of speech; but practically everything said applies equally well to music of any sort, and to still or moving pictures, as in television." - The Mathematical Theory of Communication, (Shannon & Weaver 1949, pp. 3-4).

& Transmedia Writer-Director-Producer: Movies, Games, TV, Theatre, Books, Comics
Transmedia Writing Blog: http://on-writering.blogspot.com.au/

& (High-RoI) Story/Screenplay/Movie Analyst - and Evolutionary Systems Theorist
See: https://storyality.wordpress.com/

& Bio-Culture (Science & the Arts) & Transmedia Researcher
Academia link: https://aftrs.academia.edu/JTVelikovsky

See, also:
Joe Velikovsky on IMDb: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/joeteevee

The structure of the meme, the unit of culture - Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology (Velikovsky 2017)

June 2017 - I have a new encyclopedia chapter out: The structure of the meme, the unit of culture, in The Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology, 4th Edition (Velikovsky 2017).

The structure of the meme, the unit of culture
in:
The Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology, 4th Edition (Velikovsky 2017)
For more information, see also this post:

StoryAlity#144 – The structure of the meme, the unit of culture (Encyc of InfoSci & Tech 2017)

And see also, a longer (2016) version of the chapter, in the book: Creative Technologies for Multidisciplinary Applications (2016):


See also: StoryAlity #132 – The holon/parton structure of the Meme, the unit of culture – and the narreme, or unit of story – book chapter,  (Velikovsky 2016)

The Abstract of the above (2016) article:

`A universal problem in the disciplines of communication, creativity, philosophy, biology, psychology, sociology, anthropology, archaeology, history, linguistics, information science, cultural studies, literature, media and other domains of knowledge in both the arts and sciences has been the definition of ‘culture’ (see Kroeber & Kluckhohn, 1952; Baldwin et al., 2006), including the specification of ‘the unit of culture’, and, mechanisms of culture. 

This chapter proposes a theory of the unit of culture, or, the ‘meme’  (Dawkins, 1976; Dennett, 1995; Blackmore, 1999), a unit which is also the narreme (Barthes, 1966), or ‘unit of story’, or ‘unit of narrative’. 

The holon/parton theory of the unit of culture (Velikovsky, 2014) is a consilient (Wilson, 1998) synthesis of (Koestler, 1964, 1967, 1978) and Feynman (1975, 2005) and also the Evolutionary Systems Theory model of creativity (Csikszentmihalyi, 1988-2014; Simonton, 1984-2014). 

This theory of the unit of culture potentially has applications across all creative cultural domains and disciplines in the sciences, arts and communication media.’ 

(Velikovsky in Marks & Connor [eds] 2016, p. 208)

And, for more news, see: NEWS .

Comments, always welcome.

-----------------------------Dr. Joe T. Velikovsky, Ph.D. (Communication & Media Arts)

`The word communication will be used here in a very broad sense to include all of the procedures by which one mind may affect another. This, of course, involves not only written and oral speech, but also music, the pictorial arts, the theater, the ballet, and in fact all human behavior... The language of this memorandum will often appear to refer to the special, but still very broad and important, field of the communication of speech; but practically everything said applies equally well to music of any sort, and to still or moving pictures, as in television." - The Mathematical Theory of Communication, (Shannon & Weaver 1949, pp. 3-4).

& Transmedia Writer-Director-Producer:
Movies, Games, TV, Theatre, Books, Comics
Transmedia Writing Blog: http://on-writering.blogspot.com.au/

& Bio-Culture (Science & the Arts) & Transmedia Researcher
Academia link: https://aftrs.academia.edu/JTVelikovsky

& (High-RoI) Story/Screenplay/Movie Analyst and Evolutionary Systems Theorist
See: https://storyality.wordpress.com/

See also:
IMDb: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/joeteevee

------------------------------------------

Horrifying Haikus

HORRIFYING HAIKUS
The art of the Haiku is a noble and ancient art form, perfected by the likes of  Bashō, Buson, Issa, Shiki, Haibun, Kuhi and Haiga - and in the West, by the likes of Blyth,  Yasuda and Henderson... 

Just three LINES: 

5 syllables (well; `morae'), then 
7 syllables, and  then 
5 again.

A deeply-respected literary poetic tradition.

So - Ignoring all that, here are some: HORRIFYING HAIKUs.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
DEATH BY FART Oops - I just farted… And - think it just killedthat guy…? Wow…?! - That was, somefart…(?!)
 ---------------
THAT GODDAMN NINJA - AGAIN
`THEM MISSING CHEESE-SLICES…’Some freeloading ninjaStole some cheese, from in my fridge!!!At least, I think so…?!
`SO… THINK ABOUT: THAT-!!!’How do you know, someFree-loading ninja, isn’tLiving, in: YOUR HOUSE-????!!!!!
`NO CLEAN UNDIES – AGAIN…’Gotta go to work;Can’t find any clean undies……Bet it’s that ninja.
`AW MAN, I AM GETTING SO SICK OF ALL THIS SH*T GOING MISSING’I bet, that ninjaHas been living in my houseFor f*cking YEARS, now-?!
`JUST… CAN’T BE, 101% CERTAIN…’I’m not paranoid…But - there’s a ninja in here.(…Never seen him, though-?)
---------------
PAYING BILLS: KINDA SUX..?Life… can be so… short.But, sure has its great points, though-?!Like: paying your bills.
THE CASE OF THE HORRIFYING BUM-GRAPESOuch - my haemorrhoids!Blood - in my undies…A-GAIN…!!!
…Someone: Please, kill me-?
SCREW YOU… EVOLUTIONThink that I’m: depressed…?Why are we just born… to: die-?…Screw you, Evolution!!!

NOTE: There's nothing horrifying (nor even `horror-comedy') about this one:(i don't know what it's even doing here)
`ON GREAT STUFF' You know what stuff's: GREAT-?Things that are, more or less, `good'.(...positivity-!!!)

----------------------
Hey - i recently created a new artificial writer computer program, y'all should check it out.
Go, here:  StoryAlity #141 – The StoryAlity-Theory `Robo-Raconteur’ artificial-writer
It looks like, THIS:The Robo-Raconteur (artificial writer)


-----------------------------Dr. Joe T. Velikovsky, Ph.D. (Communication & Media Arts)

`The word communication will be used here in a very broad sense to include all of the procedures by which one mind may affect another. This, of course, involves not only written and oral speech, but also music, the pictorial arts, the theater, the ballet, and in fact all human behavior... The language of this memorandum will often appear to refer to the special, but still very broad and important, field of the communication of speech; but practically everything said applies equally well to music of any sort, and to still or moving pictures, as in television." - The Mathematical Theory of Communication, (Shannon & Weaver 1949, pp. 3-4).

& Transmedia Writer-Director-Producer:
Movies, Games, TV, Theatre, Books, Comics
Transmedia Writing Blog: http://on-writering.blogspot.com.au/

& Bio-Culture (Science & the Arts) & Transmedia Researcher
Academia link: https://aftrs.academia.edu/JTVelikovsky

& (High-RoI) Story/Screenplay/Movie Analyst and Evolutionary Systems Theorist
See: https://storyality.wordpress.com/

See also:
IMDb: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/joeteevee

------------------------------------------

NIGHT COWS - a new experience in bovine terror

That's it. It's over. You can relax now. Everything is going to be okay.*



* Well; unless it's not.

But - either way, the ` NIGHT COWS' experience is definitely: over.

Okay... so, to explain:

I just wanted to demonstrate a point about Communication**, with this non-movie-poster, above.

** `The word communication will be used here in a very broad sense to include all of the procedures by which one mind may affect another. This, of course, involves not only written and oral speech, but also music, the pictorial arts, the theater, the ballet, and in fact all human behavior... The language of this memorandum will often appear to refer to the special, but still very broad and important, field of the communication of speech; but practically everything said applies equally well to music of any sort, and to still or moving pictures, as in television." - The Mathematical Theory of Communication, (Shannon & Weaver 1949, pp. 3-4).

And this raises the same point I made, here: StoryAlity #59 – Examining the Loglines of the Top 20 RoI Films 
Namely that: storytelling with movies, is transmedia storytelling .


First, we may well become aware of a movie title, that we have not heard of, before, (e.g. `NIGHT COWS', or, say, `Star Wars', or, whatever). Then, later on, we may well see the movie-poster, and we then absorb all of that information... Maybe next, we also see a movie trailer... Then, we maybe go see the movie, and we absorb all that information. But - it's all the one story...

- Those are at least three separate channels of information (1. Speech, 2. Poster (including the Tagline, e.g. "It's night. And there's cows."), and 3. The Movie) - but, all of them, storytelling the same `unit of culture'.



e.g.: As far as the initial `speech' (word-of-mouth) part, goes: with the movie Title alone, consider the following:

------------------------
Two random Humanimals stand within earshot of each other, both holding alcoholic beverages. They seem to be having a conversation, taking drugs (ingesting alcohol), and generally having a great time. As we get closer, we can now overhear their dialogue:

Humanimal #1: [shrugs] ...I mean... seriously - is that all there is-?

Humanimal #2: Yeah - that's what she said-!!!

(They laugh together. Nobody in the audience knows what the heck that was all about. But, anyway.)

Humanimal #1: "Hey - so, you seen `NIGHT COWS' yet-?"

[Now, let's look closely at `what just happened', there. A unit of information, namely a meme, namely also a unit of culture was just transmitted - from a Sender [Humanimal #1], to, a Receiver [#2]]

Humanimal #2: "No-?! [chuckles, puzzled] ...What the hell is `NIGHT COWS'-?"

[Note: A unit of information, also known as a meme has clearly been transmitted to, namely replicated in, another humanimal brain. The unit, in this case, is the Title: `NIGHT COWS'.]

Humanimal #1: [chuckles to self] "Oh, it's just a poster that looks like it's from a movie, but there is no movie. - There never was a movie. It's just: the poster itself. That's: NIGHT COWS."
Humanimal #2: (unsure, still trying to process and make sense of all this new information, i.e.  this unit of culture) "...Riiiight...?"
Humanimal #1: "I'll send you the link."

Humanimal #2: (still unsure, but now with lots of assumptions and expectations, and also some FOMO, i.e. Fear Of Missing Out) "...Okay?" 

Curtain Falls. The End.

-------------------------
Or - sometimes, we may even read, what seems like a play, written to convey a message.

Like, you just did then.

But - Now, what if I told you...

This whole blog-post, was just an excuse to get you to read, this other blog-post:

StoryAlity #59 – Examining the Loglines of the Top 20 RoI Films

A bit like, this, really:

1001% Pure Clickbait.
Follow the white rabbit... down the rabbithole...*


(* Or, just read my PhD online, or, whatever.)

-----------------------------Dr. Joe T. Velikovsky, Ph.D. (Communication & Media Arts)

`The word communication will be used here in a very broad sense to include all of the procedures by which one mind may affect another. This, of course, involves not only written and oral speech, but also music, the pictorial arts, the theater, the ballet, and in fact all human behavior... The language of this memorandum will often appear to refer to the special, but still very broad and important, field of the communication of speech; but practically everything said applies equally well to music of any sort, and to still or moving pictures, as in television." - The Mathematical Theory of Communication, (Shannon & Weaver 1949, pp. 3-4).

& Transmedia Writer-Director-Producer:
Movies, Games, TV, Theatre, Books, Comics
Transmedia Writing Blog: http://on-writering.blogspot.com.au/

& Bio-Culture (Science & the Arts) & Transmedia Researcher
Academia link: https://aftrs.academia.edu/JTVelikovsky

& (High-RoI) Story/Screenplay/Movie Analyst and Evolutionary Systems Theorist
See: https://storyality.wordpress.com/

See also:
IMDb: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/joeteevee

------------------------------------------

Know This (by John Brockman, 2017)

Here's a great book:


Know This: Today's Most Interesting and Important Scientific Ideas, Discoveries, and Developments (Ed: John Brockman, 2017)

From Amazon :

`Today's most visionary thinkers reveal the cutting-edge scientific ideas and breakthroughs you must understand. 

Scientific developments radically change and enlighten our understanding of the world -- whether it's advances in technology and medical research or the latest revelations of neuroscience, psychology, physics, economics, anthropology, climatology, or genetics. And yet amid the flood of information today, it's often difficult to recognize the truly revolutionary ideas that will have lasting impact. 

In the spirit of identifying the most significant new theories and discoveries, John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org ("The world's smartest website" -- The Guardian), asked 198 of the finest minds:  

What do you consider the most interesting recent scientific news? What makes it important? 

Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond on the best way to understand complex problems * author of Seven Brief Lessons on Physics Carlo Rovelli on the mystery of black holes * Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker on the quantification of human progress * TED Talks curator Chris J. Anderson on the growth of the global brain * Harvard cosmologist Lisa Randall on the true measure of breakthrough discoveries * Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek on why the twenty-first century will be shaped by our mastery of the laws of matter * philosopher Rebecca Newberger Goldstein on the underestimation of female genius * music legend Peter Gabriel on tearing down the barriers between imagination and reality * Princeton physicist Freeman Dyson on the surprising ability of small (and cheap) upstarts to compete with billion-dollar projects. 

Plus Nobel laureate John C. Mather, Sun Microsystems cofounder Bill Joy, Wired founding editor Kevin Kelly, psychologist Alison Gopnik, Genome author Matt Ridley, Harvard geneticist George Church, Why Does the World Exist? author Jim Holt, anthropologist Helen Fisher, and more.'

Source: Amazon (2017) .  
I also cite Professor Jared Diamond a lot, in my PhD thesis (2016). (I'm a huge fan of his book Guns, Germs and Steel (1999) .)

Here's what Diamond says, in the above book: (excerpted from the Edge website)

Jared Diamond 

Professor of Geography, University of California Los Angeles; Author, The World Until Yesterday 

`The Most Important X...Y...Z...
  In many fields one hears questions in the format, 

“What is the most important X…Y…Z…, etc.?”  

For instance, what is the most important factor accounting for artistic creativity? or competitive biological success? or a happy marriage? or military success? or scientific creativity? or successful child-rearing? or a sustainable economy? or world peace? 

In our complicated, multi-factorial world, the correct answer to such a question is almost always in the format: 

“The most important consideration is: not to search for the most important consideration.”  

Instead, there are normally many considerations, none of which can be ignored. 

For instance, marital therapists have identified about 19 independent factors essential to a happy marriage: compatibility about sex, money, religion, politics, in-laws, child-rearing, styles of arguing, and 12 other factors.  

If a couple agrees about 18 of those factors but can’t resolve a disagreement just about sex (or just about money, or just religion, or…etc.), they are in deep trouble.  

Hence, if you hear a newly-married couple ask you in all seriousness, “What is the single most important requirement for a happy marriage?” you can bet that that marriage will end in divorce.' 

(Diamond, in Edge.org, 2017, bold emphasis mine)
This is also known as The Anna Karenina Principle...

It applies to: how you create a successful movie, or novel, or song, or - lots of things...

In Guns, Germs and Steel, Diamond (1997) writes:

`We tend to seek easy, single-factor explanations of success. For most important things, though, success actually requires avoiding many separate possible causes of failure.' 

(Diamond, 1997, p. 157).

See my PhD (free, online) for more on that!

- I'm also a huge fan of Edge.org's annual question, as asked by John Brockman... I always feel smarter having read the book that results each year!

Another one of my favourite books in this ongoing Edge.org series edited by Brockman is, this one:


This Will Change Everything: Ideas That Will Shape the Future  (Edge Question Series, ed: Brockman 2009)

Here are some of my favourite quotes from that book:

             Artificial Self-Replicating Meme Machines - Susan Blackmore
`Susan Blackmore is a psychologist and the author of Consciousness: An Introduction.
`I like to think of our planet as one in a million, or one in a trillion, of possible planets where evolution begins. This requires something (a replicator) that can be copied with variation, and selection. As Darwin realized, if more copies are made than can survive, then the survivors will pass on to the next generation of copying whatever helped them get through. This is how all design in the universe comes about.’ 

(Blackmore in Brockman 2010, p.135)
And this quote: 
`The End of Analytic Science – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi.
The idea that will change the game of knowledge is that it is more important to understand events, objects and processes in their relationship with one another than in their singular structure. Western science has achieved wonders with its analytic focus, but it is now time to take synthesis seriously… How shall this breakthrough occur? Current systems theories are necessary but not sufficient, as they tend not to take values into account. Perhaps after this realization sets in, we shall have to rewrite science from the ground up.’ 

(Csikszentmihalyi in Brockman 2010, pp. 348-9)
And this one:
`Evolution Changes Everything – Scott Sampson.
Scott Sampson is adjunct professor of geology and geophysics at the university of Utah and the host of Dinosaur Planet.
Evolution is the scientific idea that will change everything within the next several decades. 
I realize that this statement may seem improbable. If evolution is defined as simply change over time, the above statement borders on meaningless. If it is regarded in the narrower, Darwinian sense as descent with modification, any claim for evolution’s starring role also appears questionable – particularly given that 2009 is the hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the publication of On The Origin Of Species. Surely what Daniel Dennett has called Darwin’s “dangerous idea”, however conceived, has made its mark by now. Nevertheless I base my claim on evolution’s probable effect in two spheres: human consciousness, and science and technology. 
Today the commonly accepted concept of evolution is extremely narrow, confined largely to the realm of biology and a longstanding emphasis on mutation and natural selection. 
In recent decades, this limited perspective has become further entrenched by the dominance of molecular biology and its “promise” of human-engineered cells and lifeforms. Emphasis has been placed almost entirely on generating diversity, a process referred to as `complexification’, reflecting the reductionist worldview that has driven science for four centuries. 
Yet science has also begun to explore another key element of evolution: unification, which transcends the biological to encompass the evolution of physical matter. The numerous and dramatic increases in complexity, it turns out, have been achieved largely through a process of integration, with smaller wholes becoming parts of larger wholes. 
Again and again, we see the progressive development of multipart individuals from simpler forms. 
Thus, for example, atoms become integrated into molecules, molecules into cells, and cells into organisms. 
At each higher, emergent stage, older forms are enveloped and incorporated into newer forms, with the end result being a nested, multilevel hierarchy. 
At first glance, the process of unification appears to contravene the second law of thermodynamics, by increasing order over entropy. 
Again and again during the past fourteen billion years, concentrations of energy have emerged and self-organized as islands of order amid a sea of chaos, taking the guise of stars, galaxies, bacteria, gray whales and (on at least one planet) a biosphere. 
Although the process of emergence remains somewhat of a mystery, we can now state with confidence that the epic of evolution has been guided by counterbalancing trends of complexification and unification. 
This journey has not been an inevitable, deterministic march, but a quixotic, creative unfolding in which the future could not be predicted.’ 

(Sampson in Brockman 2010, pp. 1-2)
More on all that (unification and complexification) here, if of interest:

StoryAlity #132 – The holon/parton structure of the Meme, the unit of culture – and the narreme, or unit of story – book chapter (Velikovsky 2016)

And - here is a diagram, of what Sampson (above) refers to as "a nested, multilevel hierarchy": (aka a holon/parton).





For more, see:

StoryAlity #132 – The holon/parton structure of the Meme, the unit of culture – and the narreme, or unit of story – book chapter (Velikovsky 2016)

--------------------------
I also love - The 1999 Edge.org Question: 


WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT INVENTION IN THE PAST 2,000 YEARS?
Here is one of my favourite answers, from that year:

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Psychologist; Director, Quality of Life Research Center, Claremont Graduate University; Author, Flow
Professor of psychology and education at the University of Chicago 

`I always liked Lynn White's story about how the stirrup revolutionized warfare and made feudal society and culture possible. Or Lefebre des Noettes' argument about how the invention of the rudder made extensive sailing and the consequent expansion of Europe and its colonization of the world possible. But it's sobering to realize that it took us over one thousand years to realize the impact of these artifacts. 

So I am not at all sure we have at this time a good grip on what the most important inventions of the past millennia have been. 

Certainly the contraceptive pill is a good candidate, and so is the scientific method. 

I am also intrigued by the effects of such inventions as the flag — a symbol of belonging that millions will follow to ruin or victory independently of biological connectedness; or the social security card that signifies that we are not alone and our welfare is a joint problem for the community; or the invention of civil rights which however abused and misused is pointing us towards a notion of universal human dignity that might yet eclipse in importance all the technological marvels of the millennium.' 

(Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Edge.org, 1999, online, bold emphasis mine)

...In my opinion, the scientific method is it! (Best invention of the past 2,000 years). 
Why?

...It solves problems! (Yay!)
Then again - since all life (anything, that is: alive) is: doing science (see: All Life is Problem Solving, Popper 1999) -- as I understand it, science was actually invented by: the first lifeform... anything that is alive is constantly (1) having theories, (2) testing the current theory, and (3) correcting errors.

(i.e., Theory, Trial and Error, and [if need be] Error-correction.) 
But - humans became conscious of it (that method of discovering and testing knowledge), only in: the last 2,000 years. (Starting in: Ancient Greece.)
...Anyway, so - what about you-? 

What do you feel is the greatest invention of the past 2,000 years...?

And: why so?

-----------------------------Dr. Joe T. Velikovsky, Ph.D (Communication)

`The word communication will be used here in a very broad sense to include all of the procedures by which one mind may affect another. This, of course, involves not only written and oral speech, but also music, the pictorial arts, the theater, the ballet, and in fact all human behavior... The language of this memorandum will often appear to refer to the special, but still very broad and important, field of the communication of speech; but practically everything said applies equally well to music of any sort, and to still or moving pictures, as in television." - The Mathematical Theory of Communication, (Shannon & Weaver 1949, pp. 3-4).

& Transmedia Writer-Director-Producer:
Movies, Games, TV, Theatre, Books, Comics
Transmedia Writing Blog: http://on-writering.blogspot.com.au/

& Bio-Culture (Science & the Arts) & Transmedia Researcher
Academia link: https://aftrs.academia.edu/JTVelikovsky

& (High-RoI) Story/Screenplay/Movie Analyst and Evolutionary Systems Theorist
See: https://storyality.wordpress.com/

See also:
IMDb: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/joeteevee

------------------------------------------

Predicting the Success of Movies & TV

Predicting the Success of Movies & TV

One of my areas of research interest is: Examining why certain units of culture (e.g. movies, books, TV series, words, jokes, transmedia, or indeed - any unit of culture) spread faster, and further than others.

Along these lines, Starling Hunter and colleagues are doing excellent work in Empirical Approaches to predicting TV and movie success:

TV Development from Kindea Labs on Vimeo.

Some very-impressive recent papers on the above topic, include:

Hunter, S. D., & Breen, Y. P. (2017). Predicting the Success of New Cable Series from Their Pilot Episode Scripts: An Empirical Approach. Business and Management Studies, 3(3), 1-9.

Abstract: `In this study we develop an empirical model to explain failure rates of new television series. Specifically, we test the ability of three factors to predict the success of new dramatic series appearing on 31 cable networks over the last 10 years. Those factors are the originality of the story, the track record of its creator(s), and the cognitive complexity of its pilot episode script—all of which are known well in advance of a network’s decision to greenlight a new series. As predicted, we find that all three variables—both individually and in combination—strongly predict the success rate of new dramatic series in their first two seasons.'

(This paper explained for me, among many other things, why for example LOST had 26 eps per season, while Game of Thrones had 10 eps per season!)

And another paper:

Hunter, S. D., & Breen, Y. P. (2017). W(h)ither the Full Season: An Empirical Model for Predicting the Duration of New Television Series’ First Season. Advances in Journalism and Communication, 5, 83-97. doi: https://doi.org/10.4236/ajc.2017.52005

Abstract: `Television seasons have gotten shorter and shorter over the past few decades. This has been especially true for new dramatic television series where the norm has dropped to thirteen episodes from almost double that figure twenty years ago. Somewhat surprisingly, there is a dearth of empirical research on this question. In this study, we build on recent research in the field of cultural economics to test the effect of three factors on the duration of new television series’ first season—the originality of the series’ premise, the track record of its creators, and the cognitive complexity of the pilot episode script. As expected, we find that in a sample of 165 new dramatic series debuting in the nine most recently completed seasons, these three factors—both individually and in combination—positively impact both the number of episodes of a new series and the likelihood that new series gets a “full” first season.'

And

Hunter, S. D., Smith, S., & Singh, S. (2016). Predicting box office from the screenplay: A text analytical approach. Journal of Screenwriting, 7(2), 135-154. doi: 10.1386/josc.7.2.135_1

Abstract: `Empirical studies of the determinants of box office revenues have mostly focused on post-production factors – that is, ones known after the film has been completed and/or released. Relatively few studies have considered pre-production factors – that is, ones known before a decision has been made to green-light a film project. The current study directly addresses this gap in the literature. Specifically, we develop and test a relatively parsimonious, pre-production model to predict the opening weekend box office of 170 US-produced, English-language feature films released in the years 2010 and 2011. Chief among the pre-production factors we consider are those derived from the textual and content analysis of the screenplays of these films. The most important of these is determined through the application of network text analysis (NTA) – a method for rendering a text as a map or network of interconnected concepts. As predicted, we find that the size of the main component of a screenplay’s text network strongly predicts the completed film’s opening weekend box office.'

Of course, I suggest reading the entire article, but two points from the great Journal of Screenwriting (2016) article above that stood out (for me) were:

`...the romance and thriller genres were positively associated with performance and we found that the drama genre was negatively and significantly associated with performance. Taken together, both studies affirm the long-standing finding that genre matters for box office.' (Hunter, Smith & Singh, 2016, p. 147)

and the point that -

`Taken together, both studies broadly support another long-standing finding – that
is, content matters for box office performance.' (Hunter, Smith & Singh, 2016, p. 147) 

My own 2016 PhD research study also arrived at similar findings to the above, in examining differences in the top 20 and bottom 20 RoI movies. The bottom 20 RoI movies are dominated by the drama genre; while the genres of horror, sci-fi, comedy and rom-com are among the dominant genres of the top 20 RoI movies... (The great book Great Flicks: Scientific Studies of Cinematic Creativity (Simonton 2011) also summarized similar prior study findings, in the area of movie genre. All very fascinating, for writers!)

----------------
Also - as Fight Club (1999) (along with many Stanley Kubrick movies) is among my personal favourite films, I also very much enjoyed the article:

Hunter, S. D., & Singh, S. (2015). A Network Text Analysis of Fight Club. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 5(4), 737-749. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.17507/tpls.0504.09

Abstract: `Network Text Analysis (NTA) involves the creation of networks of words and/or concepts from linguistic data. Its key insight is that the position of words and concepts in a text network provides vital clues to the central and underlying themes of the text as a whole. Recent research has used an inductive or bottom-up approach to the question of theme extraction. In this paper we take a top-down or deductive approach in that we first establish prior expectations as to the key themes to be found in the text. We then compare and contrast the results of our network analysis with the results of literary and cultural analyses of the film Fight Club as reported in over four dozen other peer-reviewed publications. While our results are remarkably consistent with and complementary to results in those studies, our analysis permits something the others do not—an analytical framework for relating those underlying and central themes to one another.'

So, I highly recommend that great article, as well...

Great to see these previously-neglected areas of research being examined, for the benefit of creatives and producers alike!

Some other links, that may also be of interest:

StoryAlity #127 – The Science of Cinema articles – at WIRED.com

StoryAlity #136 – Pop Culture in Asia and Oceania (2016)

StoryAlity #6 – What is Creativity and How Does It Work?

StoryAlity #144 – The structure of the meme, the unit of culture (in: The Encyclopedia of Information Science & Technology, 2017)

And, along simialr lines to Starling Hunter's papers above, the book:

Kaufman, J. C., & Simonton, D. K. (Eds.). (2014). The Social Science of Cinema . New York: Oxford University Press.

Comments, always welcome.

-----------------------------Dr. Joe T. Velikovsky, Ph.D. (Communication & Media Arts)

`The word communication will be used here in a very broad sense to include all of the procedures by which one mind may affect another. This, of course, involves not only written and oral speech, but also music, the pictorial arts, the theater, the ballet, and in fact all human behavior... The language of this memorandum will often appear to refer to the special, but still very broad and important, field of the communication of speech; but practically everything said applies equally well to music of any sort, and to still or moving pictures, as in television." - The Mathematical Theory of Communication, (Shannon & Weaver 1949, pp. 3-4).

& Transmedia Writer-Director-Producer:
Movies, Games, TV, Theatre, Books, Comics
Transmedia Writing Blog: http://on-writering.blogspot.com.au/

& Bio-Culture (Science & the Arts) & Transmedia Researcher
Academia link: https://aftrs.academia.edu/JTVelikovsky

& (High-RoI) Story/Screenplay/Movie Analyst and Evolutionary Systems Theorist
See: https://storyality.wordpress.com/

See also:
IMDb: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/joeteevee

------------------------------------------

FLIGBY, The Leadership Game - and Flow Theory

FLIGBY®  (FLOW is Good Business™) - The Leadership Game

I was recently fortunate enough to be invited to play FLIGBY - The Leadership Game .


FLIGBY®  ( FLOW is Good Business™ ) - The Leadership Game (ALEAS Simulations) 
Quite simply: FLIGBY is one of the best sims I've experienced. In my view, every company manager should play it.

...An employee who is in Flow is: a happy employee.

A whole company in flow is: a successful company.

And, one of the biggest problems, for anyone in business?

...Finding - and keeping - good people-!

i.e. How to ensure that your business is not only profitable, but: humane, ethical, and sustainable-?

(In business: How to gain profits - without losing your soul...?)

==========================
Also - Some Backstory from me, about Flow: 

As a successful professional creative (a Transmedia writer: movies, TV, videogames, theatre, songs, comics, etc, for over two decades), I've been a longtime advocate of Professor Mihály Csíkszentmihályi's FLOW theory - ever since I did a Videogame Design course at the AFTRS in 1995...

[Flow diagram]*
(Side Note: Flow is crucial in effective game design... When players enjoy playing any game, it's because they're in Flow when they play it. It is the Game Designer's main job to design the game so that the player can enter - and ideally, stay in - the Flow state)! 

Or: "Time flies when you're having fun-!"

So, using Flow Theory as a core design principle underpinning my work, I've Game-Designed & Written million-selling games; I also created a sim (a `serious game') as part of my PhD work, to explain Creative Practice Theory (my synthesis of Csíkszentmihályi's creativity theory, and Pierre Bourdieu's practice theory).

It was also Professor Csíkszentmihályi's work - in his landmark study of 91 eminent creative professionals in Creativity (1996) - that led me (over the next 20 years of grappling with the problem, before finally, solving it) to discover: The structure of the meme - the unit of culture (Velikovsky 2016).

So - my own intellectual debt to Csíkszentmihályi's work on creativity - and also Flow Theory - is huge. I've also published scholarly articles on Flow (2014), and, my PhD on successful movie screenwriting and filmmaking (2016) also uses Flow Theory (and - its elaboration, in Narrative Transportation Theory). (For more on my creative background, if of interest, see: my online C.V.)

But - enough Backstory..! Suffice to say: I understand FlowTheory. 

(As an aside - as a professional creative, I have also personally been fortunate, to be in the Flow State, for much of my creative career - i.e., as a professional: writer, game designer, film director, actor, artist, musician and so on).  


==========================      
So... What is FLIGBY-? 

The trailer perhaps explains it best:




Official  FLIGBY®  Trailer  (5 minutes) - ALEAS Inc.
A description of FLIGBY, from the “FLOW is Good Business™” (FLIGBY®) website:

`FLIGBY leadership simulation is Csikszentmihalyi’s official FLOW program. 

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has co-produced FLIGBY, teaching how to generate FLOW at the workplace.Designated by experts as the globe’s top business simulation game (Gold Medal Prize, International Serious Play Awards, Seattle, 2012).FLIGBY measures 29 management/leadership skills.Employs real-life business simulation, in an interactive, movie-like setting; teaching how Flow can be promoted at the workplace. Aspiring as well as experienced managers will identify with it and learn from it.FLIGBY is the “gamification” of the Flow-based leadership development process.Although FLIGBY is Flow-based, the managerial challenges and the options it presents are fully compatible with a wide range of leadership theories, enhancing them all.'

Source: https://www.fligby.com/quick-facts/ (ALEAS, 2017) 
==========================
The sim also includes tutorials on Flow Theory:

Csíkszentmihályi explains Flow Theory (still-image from a tutorial-video, in FLIGBY®) (image copyright ALEAS Simulations, 2012)
==========================

The game brilliantly incorporates concepts from 3 of Csíkszentmihályi's works:





==========================The above 3 works are all excellent - and of course, are recommended reading...

But - reading a book is one way to absorb knowledge; a simulation (such as FLIGBY ) allows the user to use the knowledge in practice, and to see how it works... Just like using flight-simulators to train pilots...  
So - in short, I can't recommend the  FLIGBY  simulation highly enough, for: anyone in business!

Also, my congratulations to the producers of FLIGBY, on creating a truly great sim. - It deserves not just one, but many awards. It features great conception and also execution – namely: the concept, the screenwriting, the casting, the acting, the directing, the sim design, the interface, the `look & feel’, and the entire user-experience! In short: Bravo. (It even immerses the user in the fascinating reality of managing a winery!)**

For more, see: https://www.fligby.com/

And, for more on Flow, see also: StoryAlity #6B – Flow Theory, Creativity and Happiness


-----------------------------
Dr. Joe T. Velikovsky, Ph.D (Communication)

Transmedia Writer-Director-Producer:
Movies, Games, TV, Theatre, Books, Comics
Transmedia Writing Blog: http://on-writering.blogspot.com.au/

& Bio-Culture (Science & the Arts) & Transmedia Researcher
Academia link: https://aftrs.academia.edu/JTVelikovsky

& (High-RoI) Story/Screenplay/Movie Analyst and Evolutionary Systems Theorist
See: https://storyality.wordpress.com/

See also:
IMDb: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/joeteevee

------------------------------------------

NOTES

* [Flow diagram]* image above, adapted from the Wikipedia article (2017) on Flow.

** For even more on wine history, see: First Vintage (McIntyre 2013).

Joseph Campbell's bliss as Flow Theory

So, Joseph Campbell is probably the most famous academic scholar in the domain of comparative mythology:


In 1949 he published The Hero With A Thousand Faces (Campbell, 1949) in which he identified the same seventeen (17) narrative steps (and, Jungian character archetypes) within thousands of popular `hero’ myths including religious narratives - a story algorithm also known as the `monomyth’.*

(None of this is Breaking News... it was 1949, and also we were all given Joe Campbell to read, 20 years ago at Film School...)


The monomyth underpins many popular narratives across many media (movies, novels, going waaay back to: The Epic of Gilgamesh, The Odyssey of Homer) and not least, a lot of good (and also some bad) Hollywood movies, since Chris Vogler's** great book:


At any rate, there's a Call For Papers in the Journal of Genius and Eminence, for a Special Issue of the journal, a tribute to Joseph Campbell, on the 30th anniversary of his death. - Yay!

One of the books about Campbell's work I particularly admire is - this one:


Here are some quotes from it... This first one is from the Editor's Introduction, by Diane K. Osbon,

`As we love ourselves, we move toward our own bliss, by which Joseph Campbell meant our highest enthusiasm. The word entheos means “god-filled”. Moving toward that which fills us with the godhood, that place where time is not, is all we need to do to change the world around us.’ (Osbon, 1991, pp. 8-9)

Campbell's mantra from his study of mythology became "Follow Your Bliss."

`Live from your own center. Your real dutyis to go away from the community to find your bliss.
The society is the enemyWhen it imposes its structuresOn the individual. On the dragon there are many scales.Every one of them says “Thou Shalt.”Kill the dragon “Thou Shalt.”When one has killed the dragon One has become The Child.
Breaking outIs following your bliss pattern,Quitting the old place, Starting your hero’s journey,Following your bliss.'
                                    (Campbell in Osbon, 1991, p. 21)
What's fairly obvious to scientific scholars of creativity is that the `bliss' that Campbell refers to so often, equates to flow theory.

Namely, finding activities of meaning where you enter the flow state.

For what `flow' is, see this post on Flow Theory, Creativity and Happiness.

(Also the `Theory' in "Flow Theory" is like the one in "Evolutionary Theory". It's not "just a theory". It's a working scientific model of: how stuff actually works. Gravitational Theory is not "just a theory" either. - It works.)

For those who aren't aware of (or haven't yet found) what puts them in the flow state, Campbell suggests to ask yourself:

`What did you do as a child that created timelessness, that made you forget time? 

There lies the myth to live by.’ (Campbell in Osbon, 1991, p. 181)

When we look at the 9 characteristics of the flow state, Campbell is here referring to #8, below:

(1) There are clear goals every step of the way… 

(2) There is immediate feedback to one’s actions… 

(3) There is a balance between challenges and skills… 

(4) Action and awareness are merged… 

(5) Distractions are excluded from consciousness… 

(6) There is no worry of failure… 

(7) Self-consciousness disappears… 

(8) The sense of time becomes distorted… [or: `time flies when you’re having fun’]
and(9) The activity becomes autotelic…’ , [or: worth doing for its own sake, as the process is so  enjoyable]
(Csikszentmihalyi 1996, Creativity)
[text inside square brackets are my inclusions – JTV]

This is how you should feel when you're writing. Or painting. Or dancing. Or - whatever it is, that puts you in flow. It could even be: reading a great book. If all the above things are happening, you're probably in the flow state. i.e., bliss.

This phenomena (i.e., flow) is also Why videogames are so addictive are so addictive for so many players, as, one of the first things they teach you, when you become a Videogame Designer is all about flow theory, and the flow state.

- It's the state every player (in fact, every person) longs to be in, and videogames (just as an example) are purposly designed (by: Game Designers) to maximize it. (This, for example, is why game-levels deliberately increase slightly in difficulty, as the game progresses.)

- It's also (sadly) why corporations (which are essentially: psychopaths, yikes!) aim for the gamification of well, everything.

(...Game theory is originally derived from Evolutionary Theory. The science of Creativity is also explained by: Evolutionary Theory. Geology, Biology, Psychology, Sociology, Anthropology and Culturology is also explained by Evolutionary Theory... Go figure.)

For more on all that, maybe see:

StoryAlity #100 – The Holon-Parton Structure of the Meme – the Unit of Culture (Velikovsky 2013, 2014, 2016)and
StoryAlity #100A – The 3 Universal Laws of Holon/Partons (Velikovsky 2015)At any rate, Campbell's (1949, mein gott, that's a long time ago) main message is that: most people don't think for themselves, and, just do what society tells them to do, and so they're unhappy, and feel their life has no deep meaning, or purpose, and so...

They live, what he calls "inauthentic" lives. And he (Campbell) calls that: "the waste land"...

In essence, they're not following their heart's desire; they're doing either what (a) they think society expects them to do, or, (b) what they've been told - or read - someplace, that they `should' do.

i.e., They follow the rules, conform, and accept, without first: questioning everything.

As an example, Campbell says:

`In the Grail legends, the land of people doing what they think they ought to do or have to do is the wasteland.  

What is the wasteland to you?

I know damned well what the wasteland would be to me: the academic approach to my material; or a marriage to someone who had no thoughts or feelings for me or my work. Living with such a person would be the wasteland.

I find working for money to be the wasteland – doing something that somebody else wants, instead of the thing that is my next step. 

I have been guided all along by a strong revulsion from any sort of action that does not correspond to the impulse of my own wish… 

The crucial thing to live for is the sense of life in what you are doing, and if that is not there, then you are living according to other peoples’ notions of how life should be lived.’ (Campbell in Osbon, 1991, pp. 72-73)

And Campbell also suggests:

`The normal way is to fake it, to feel oneself to be inadequate, to pretend to believe, to strive to believe, and to live, in the imitation of others, an inauthentic life. 

The authentic creative way on the other hand, which I would term the way of art as opposed to religion, is, rather, to reverse this authoritative order. 

As in the novels of Joyce, so in those of Mann, the key to the progression lies in the stress on what is inward… 

In the words of Joyce’s hero: “When the soul of a man is born in this country there are nets flung at it to hold it back from flight. You talk to me of nationality, language, religion. I shall try to fly by those nets.” 

For what to the soul are nets, “flung at it to hold it back from flight”, can become for the one who has found his own center the garment, freely chosen, of his further adventure...   

What kind of action and life experience would be appropriate for one who has had this fulfilling moment of the Grail experience? 

There are no rules for what you do. 

Buddha came back and taught for fifty years...  

My experience is that I can feel that I’m in the Grail Castle when I’m living with people I love, doing what I love. I get that sense of being fulfilled.' (Campbell in Osbon 1991, pp. 75-6)

Campbell also says:

`Follow your bliss.
The heroic life is living the individual adventure.'  (Campbell in Osbon 1991, p. 22) 
But he also notes - the hero's journey is not for everyone...! (And in fact, therapist Maureen Murdock wrote a whole book about it from a female perspective. She even wrote, a workbook.)

Campbell also notes:

            `The great problem is bringing life back into the wasteland,where people live inauthentically.' (Campbell in Osbon, 1991, p. 77)
And - here's one I love, that Campbell quotes from American Indian mythology:

`As you proceed through life,Following your own path,Birds will shit on you.
...Don’t bother to brush it off.’ (Campbell in Osbon 1991, p. 20) 
(I love that last one so hard... funny!***)

At any rate, most of Campbell's stuff is a fun read, although The Hero With a Thousand Faces (1949, 2008) is a bit heavy-going in places, for a general audience.

One of the memorable quotes from it, is this one (including the Hamlet quote):

`The whole sense of the ubiquitous myth of the hero's passage is that it shall serve as a general pattern for men and women, wherever they may stand along the scale. Therefore it is formulated in the broadest terms. The individual has only to discover his own position with reference to this general human formula, and let it then assist him past his restricting walls. Who and where are his ogres? Those are the reflections of the unsolved enigmas of his own humanity. What are his ideals? Those are the symptoms of his grasp of life.The crux of the curious difficulty lies in the fact that our conscious views of what life ought to be seldom correspond to what life really is. Generally we refuse to admit within ourselves, or within our friends, the fullness of that pushing, self-protective, malodorous, carnivorous, lecherous fever which is the very nature of the organic cell. Rather, we tend to perfume, whitewash, and reinterpret; meanwhile imagining that all the flies in the ointment, all the hairs in the soup, are the faults of some unpleasant someone else.
But when it suddenly dawns on us, or is forced to our attention, that everything we think or do is necessarily tainted with the odor of the flesh, then, not uncommonly, there is experienced a moment of revulsion: life, the acts of life, the organs of life, woman in particular as the great symbol of life, become intolerable to the pure, the pure, pure soul. 

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt,Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!Or that the Everlasting had notfix'dHis canon 'gainst self-slaughter! 0 God! God!So exclaims the great spokesman of this moment, Hamlet:How weary, stale, fiat, and unprofitableSeem to me all the uses of this world!Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,That grows to seed; things rank and gross in naturePossess it merely. That it should come to this! 

...The seeker of the life beyond life must press beyond her, surpass the temptations of her call, and soar to the immaculate ether beyond.' (Campbell, 2004, pp. 111-112)

He's suggesting stop thinking about the `baser' evolutionary urges (like, say: just getting laid) and get on with your own hero's journey... so, go into `the forest' - away from the wasteland - go find a boon (an Elixir), and bring it on back, to the big-ole world.

Hey - here's something I discovered, while doing my PhD... People seem to like it.

Hey, and going back aways - after writing a whole bunch of movie scripts using The Writer's Journey template (thanks Chris!) - just for fun, I also wrote a satirical comedy novel about (well, among other things) what happens to the 9-out-of-10 would-be `heroes' who accidentally have a bad Mentor - and end up accidentally getting eaten by the dragon instead of rescuing the princess... Because those guys have a story too, and, it deserves to be told.

Or not.

Thanks to evolution, we all tend to suffer from the cognitive bias known as survivorship bias. We remember the heroes - and forget the also-rans - and attribute their success to: the `classic' traits of heroism. See How The Mind Works (1997), by Steven Pinker.

But hey, maybe sometimes, the heroes also got lucky, and maybe the `also-rans' had some unluck...

The scientific research on creativity (i.e., success in artistic domains, such as: movies, novels, painting, bog-snorkelling and so on) shows there are 4 different (separate) kinds of luck.

...More on that, to follow.... soon!

(On the 4 kinds of luck, not on: bog-snorkelling)

Meantime: as you were...

Well; unless, you're different now.

...You may well have evolved or something, who knows. Hard to say.

- Hey, but you know what else's a great book?

Well, lots of them, but especially, this one.

Hey also, did you know the latest theory of how universes are created? Two other universes (or else, branes) combine, to form a new universe. See the 5-min Michio Kaku video, here. Which means the laws of Evolution operate at macro and micro scales. Funny that. Not funny ha-ha, just funny-weird. It's almost like, Evolution explains, pretty much everything. Hey wait...

And hey, guess what, if "President" Trump gets impeached soon - like all right-thinking persons hope he does, then his VeeP steps up as Prez, and: he's a Creationist. 


Now that's: funny. Here come The Dark Ages, again... Somebody really needs to read All Life Is Problem Solving by Sir Karl Popper. And maybe all these books. Science (which includes: Evolution) explains everything much less worse than Non-Science does.

Hey - while we're at it, here's another great book!


Hey - which brings us back to Geniuses, and, to Joseph Campbell.
...See what I did there.
(...Phew! And just in the nick of time, as, this blog post was just about to end. Man, that was close.)
Then again "authenticity" is also just a cheesy buzzword - and one that's so `last millennium'. But it sure sucks a lot of people in... Marketing Departments use it a lot. Like the current widespread move to rebrand `Human Resources' to `People and Culture'. (If you're a corporation, you're probably still a psychopath. destroying the environment - and destroying people - for profit.)

"...clearly notions of authenticity and identity are closely interlinked. What one is (or wants to be) cannot be ‘inauthentic’, whatever else it is. Authenticity is definitely not a property of music, musicians and their relations to an audience…Instead we should see ‘authenticity’ as a discursive trope of great persuasive power. It focuses a way of talking about music, a way of saying to outsiders and insiders alike ‘this is what is really significant about this music’, ‘this is the music that makes us different from other people’" (Stokes 1994, p. 6).

See: Stokes, M. (1994) Ethnicity, Identity and Music: The Musical Construction of Place,(Oxford: Berg Publishers).

So; yeah. Don't try to be `authentic'. Cut the `Marketing' B.S.

Just find your bliss, and follow it.

It could turn out to be a heroic adventure.

(Well; or not.)

`The goal of the hero’s journey is yourself , finding yourself .’ (Campbell in Osbon, 1991, p. 154)

-------------------------------

JT Velikovsky, PhD
Evolutionary Systems Theorist,
Narratologist, 
& Transmedia Guy

NOTES:

* It should maybe be noted just how close Campbell's monomyth is to Propp's Morphology of the Russian Folk Tale. It's real close. See also: The Feature Film Screenwriters' Workbook (Velikovsky 1995, 2011), which is a work of `comparative Screenplayology' - and is used to teach screenwriting in many universities and film schools.

** (The great Chris Vogler was one of my teachers at film school 20 years ago, and actually gave me a 100% mark for his class... so, I like the guy :)

*** Also, but don't forget: that bird might be on a hero's journey himself, and maybe his `boon' was bringing back to his community, the idea of: crapping on random people, just for shiggles. And that makes me think of The Simurgh, which Jorges Luis Borges talks about. Aw man, Borges is the best. Especially since his first name rhymes with his last name. (When you pronounce it `Hor-hay Bor-hay'. But don't try this at home. Also see what the great Dan Dennett says about Borges's Labyrinths in this book below, which is also: another utterly brilliant book. Actually, they both are. See what Dan says about `memes', i.e. units of culture, in there, too. Memes are what creative people: create!.)


Also I better finish on a Joe Campbell quote.

`“What is the meaning of life?’” Joseph was often asked, and he would respond, “There is no meaning. We bring the meaning to it.” Like Carl Jung, he saw the approach of old age, not as mere diminution of life, but as a time of blooming.’ (Osbon, 1991, p. 10)   

(So - in other words, if you're on a `spiritual' journey, you're probably wasting your time, looking for something that isn't actually there... It's like all these folks who get tricked into thinking they've found a guru. Read Candy or something by Terry Southern.... Then, go read some Dan Dennett or something!

i.e., You have to look inside, to find your bliss (or, for what puts you in flow) you schmuck - instead of looking outside, for some guru. Read lots of these books. No really! ...I mean even Joe Campbell misunderstood C P Snow and `The Two Cultures'. Sheesh!)

...Nah, just kidding. Read Joe Campbell. Because he read all these other `spiritual' books (even the Upanishads, jeez - they're really long), and then he interpreted the meaning for you, so that you don't have to go read them all. ...I mean you can, you can do what you like, what do I care. (But, shame that he also used so much Freudian Theory, which was really big back in 1949, but sadly, is now: outdated. - It was superseded by Evolutionary Psychology. Go figure. Weird how: Science keeps getting it right...?!)

(...And - hey, don't get mad at me - I don't make up the facts, I just report 'em. ;)

Maybe just re-read this quote:

`The crux of the curious difficulty lies in the fact that our conscious views of what life ought to be, seldom correspond to what life really is.' (Joseph Campbell, in Osbon 1991)

Well, for some folks, anyway.

Also - Spoiler Alert: Joe Campbell says Religion is hogwash, the closest to reality (e.g. Science) is Buddhism.

Where: you're the Buddha...!

`It seems impossible today, but people actually believed all that as recently as half a century or so ago: clergymen, philosophers, government officers and all. Today we know - and know right well – that there never was anything of the kind: no Garden of Eden anywhere on this earth, no time when the serpent could talk, no prehistoric “Fall”, no exclusion from the Garden, no universal Flood, no Noah’s Ark. The entire history on which our leading Occidental religions have been founded is an anthology of fictions. But these are fictions of a type that have had – curiously enough – a universal vogue as the founding of other religions, too. Their counterparts have turned up everywhere – and yet, there never was such a garden, serpent, tree, or deluge.’ (Campbell in Osbon, 1991, pp. 30-31)

But: Buddhism defers to Science anyway. And - Buddhism is just an intuitive stab at what is far better explained by Systems Philosophy and Systems Science. (I'm not making this up. Read Joe Campbell. It's in there.)

But meantime, yeah.

Creativity Theory: Follow your bliss. Find what puts you in the flow state, and make your life: a hero's journey.

...Or not. (Hey, it's not for everyone. Some folks actually like it out there in the wasteland. And frankly, they're welcome to it...)

And -- with that...

...Here endeth the sermon.

And, I didn't even talk about Positive Psychology. (Or, how people with lives of meaning actually do it. It's not that hard.)

But hey, there's a great chapter on how it started, and why, here:


i.e. See specifically, the chapter:

Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2014). `The Systems Model of Creativity and Its Applications'. In D. K. Simonton (Ed.), The Wiley Handbook of Genius (pp. 533-545). Chichester, West Sussex: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.  

And, here is a quote from it taken entirely at random, and which proves nothing:

`In fact, the Greeks eventually concluded that it was possible for men to achieve some sort of immortality because of their actions. A brave warrior, an illustrious statesman, or even a great poetcould aspire to have their feats remembered generation after generation, and as longas their achievements were still in the memory of their descendants, they were notreally, entirely stone dead.' (Csikszentmihalyi in Simonton 2014, p. 534)

Or wait, maybe that refers to: memes, the units of culture. Well, whatever.

...See what I deliberately and accidentally didn't do, there...

And also then there's this:

StoryAlity #73 – The Heros Journey: It’s Not What You Think




(And yes, I'm: the Buddha. And so can YOU. )

Einstein's God

Einstein's God

Here's 7 minutes of `Einstein on God' (narrated by Richard Dawkins):


I've been reading this excellent book (which was kindly loaned to me by a friend)

 Einstein’s God:
Conversations About Science and the Human Spirit (Tippett 2010)It features interviews, mostly with scientists, about spirituality. These interviews came from Tippett's radio show `Speaking of Faith'. (See also her more recent podcasts, at On Being . Brainpickings also had an interesting post on the book.)

At any rate - below are some quotes I particularly liked from the book:

`Paul Davies: Einstein was the person to establish this notion of what is sometimes called block time - that the past, present and future are just personal decompositions of time, and that the universe of past, present and future in some sense has an eternal existence. And so even though individuals may come and go, their lives, which are in the past for their descendants, nevertheless still have some existence within this block time. Nothing takes that away... Your life is still there in its entirety.' (in Tippett 2010, p. 38)

Freeman Dyson: [Einstein] had a marvellous sense of humour, and that's a very important part of life. The fact is that scientists have, on the whole, cultivated a sense of humour because so much of science is a history of failures. If you're a creative person, you know it's true in other kinds of creative life, but more so in science as so much of science ends up to be wrong, You do something, you spend weeks and months, and finally the whole thing collapses. You need to have a sense of humour, otherwise you couldn't survive. And Einstein, I think, understood that particularly well. (in Tippett 2010, pp. 26-7)

Freeman Dyson: What really happens in the universe is that nature finds all these extraordinarily complex structures which have their own rules. So, for example, the whole of biology is an example of that. (in Tippett 2010, pp. 24-5) 

Tippett also notes in the Introduction to the book:

`The religious impulse is animated at its core by questions of purpose: What does it mean to be human? Where do we come from? Where are we going? How to love? What matters in a life? What matters in a death? How to be of service to one another and to the world?' (Tippett 2010, p. 8)

So, Religion gives the sorts of answers that people like to hear, Science - on the other hand - could care less about your feelings or your beliefs, as Reality (truth) is quite happy to crush you like a steamroller.
Basically, almost all of Nature totally wants to murder you.
(Jump into a lion-cage at the zoo if you want to test this out sometime.)

A skeletal mount of an African lion attacking a common eland
on display at The Museum of Osteology, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Image: Sklmsta at English Wikipedia [Public domain],
via Wikimedia Commons- It's a `miracle' you're alive, but not a religious miracle; a scientific miracle, namely it's just incredibly improbable, but still quite possible.

Frankly, you, personally, are a miraculous statistic.
One of 7 billion statistics (humans currently alive).
More, if you include all the other plants and animals currently alive.
There are also over 4 thousand Gods,
(They all want to murder each other too, read all their books,)

Anyway here's another quote from this great book (Tippett's) that agrees with what I just said, above:

Moore: [Charles Darwin] was a very shrewd guy, and he'd stared more deeply into the abyss, which is his view of nature at war, than perhaps any person of his day. And he brings you up short, bang, against the world as it really is in his vision, not the world that we would like it to be...' (in Tippett 2010, p. 120)  

See, that's what's so great about Science, it doesn't care what you think. It's always right.
Well until it isn't (i.e., until a better [read: more accurate] scientific truth comes along).

Science always gets better.
(Religion always gets worse.)
The Moral: You don't have to be a scientist to be deeply spiritual, but, it sure helps.

Religion is, basically, Spirituality For Dummies. It's (religion) also horrifically sexist, racist and homophobic. And outdated.
But - other than all that, it's great.
 - If you like that sort of thing. I guess.
Anyway - thankfully Science is winning the war against Religion (and other utter Non-Science) - and that looks like it will continue. (Well unless some religious suicide-bomber gets ahold of a nuke.)

Humans are good at being wrong about things.

Mainly as we tend to use intuition rather than reason and logic and evidence. Also we're not naturally good at understanding statistics, probability, algorithms, and evolution. (See the great book: Thinking Fast & Slow , Kahneman 2011) for why, and how to fix it in yourself.
We don't like seeing ourselves as statistics.
Evolution makes us intuitively think of ourselves as `wholes - that need to survive', regardless of the cost to anything else.
Intuitions are shortcuts for thinking rationally.

Levin: ...our intutions are based on our minds, our minds are based on our neural structures, our neural structures evolved on a planet, under a sun, with very specific conditions. We reflect the physical world that we evolved from. It's not a miracle.' (in Tippett 2010, p. 157)

On the whole, we're good at surviving and reproducing (and - at taking revenge, and sometimes, at forgiving) - but that's about it.
If you want to get specific, about 1% of the whole are really creative.
The other 99% needs: the creative 1%.
e.g. The scientists curing cancer. And the brilliant writers and artists,

And, the scientists are trying to warn Donald Trump about climate change.
(But Trump is stupid.)

Einstein famously said:

`Two things are infinite: the ... the universe, and human stupidity, and I am not yet completely sure about the universe.' (Einstein)

Here's a cool exchange from the book: (it also agrees with everything I just said, i.e. this whole post. It also reflects my attitude to reality.)

Tippett: ...how does the messiness of experience, of all of us, not just what we can know but how life unfolds, how does that impinge on the ultimate reality of what we can know and achieve through logic and through science?

Levin: I would argue that we should never turn away from what nature has to show us. We should never pretend we don't see it just because it's too difficult to confront it. That's something that I don't understand about other attitudes that want to disregard certain discoveries just because they don't jell with their beliefs. 

One of the painful but beautiful things about being a scientist is being able to say "It doesn't matter what I believe. I might believe that the universe is a certain age, but if I'm wrong, I'm wrong." There's something really thrilling about being committed to that. (in Tippett 2010, p. 159)    

This is me, too:

Tippett: Does it make you react to simple things differently in your life, because you are closer to that cutting edge of knowledge right now?

Levin: Well I will often look at what people feel is very important, and not identify with what they think is very important. I have a hard time becoming obsessed with internal social norms, how you're supposed to dress or wear your tie or who's supposed to... for me, it's so absurd, because it's so small. It's this funny thing that this one species is acting out on this tiny planet in this huge, vast cosmos. So it is sometimes hard for me to participate in certain values that other people have... things totally constructed by human beings I have a hard time taking seriously. And things that seem to be natural phenomena, that happen universally, I take more seriously, as more significant... We're animals that organize in a certain way... a lot of the things we are acting out are animalistic, consequences of our instincts. They aren't... as meaningful to me as the things that will live on after our species comes and goes... I'm really pained by what's going on in the world. But my perspective is to look on it as animals acting out ruthless instincts and unable to control themselves - even though other people think that they're being very heady and intellectual... 

...stars burn and shine, and they make carbon in their cores and then they throw them out again. And that carbon collects and forms another planet and another star, and then amino acids evolve and then human beings arise. That, to me, is a really beautiful narrative. (in Tippett 2010, pp. 162-5)        

 See also, Janna Levin's novel:  A Madman Dreams of Turing Machines (Levin 2007).

McCullough: Anger in response to injustice is as reliable a human emotional response as happiness is to winning the lottery, or grief is to losing a loved one. And if you look at the brain of somebody who has just been harmed by someone - they've been ridiculed or harrassed or insulted - we can put those people into [fMRI] technology that allows us to see what their brains are doing. We can look at what your brain looks like on revenge. It looks exactly like the brain of someboy who is thirsty and is just about to get a sweet drink or is hungry and is about to get a piece of chocolate to eat.

Tippett: It's like the satisfaction of a craving?

 McCullough: It is exactly like that. It is literally a craving. What you see is high activation in the brain's reward system... The desire for revenge does not come from some sick dark part of how our minds operate. It is a craving to solve a problem and accomplish a goal. (in Tippett 2010, p. 178)  

And here's some more good stuff: (the book is full of good stuff. Read it! :)

Tippett: One of the things you seem to be talking about [in Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct, McCullough 2008] is reclaiming the normalcy of both revenge and forgiveness as part of human nature. I'd like to talk about revenge first, if we could - why revenge is in us and what purpose it has served even in evolutionary terms.

McCullough: Here's what you see all throughout the animal kingdom - and this is where I really got interested. One study that really got my attention was a study on chimpanzees, which showed that if a chimpanzee is harmed by an individual that it's living with, it has the ability to remember who that individual is and target aggression back at that individual in the ten minutes, twenty minutes, hour later. I was surprised to know that chimpanzees had those kinds of mental abilities. I had to learn more. I wanted to know where else you see this in the animal kingdom. It turns out that you see it in other kinds of primates, such as one type of monkey that I like a lot, a monkey called the Japanese macaque. Japanese macaques are very status-conscious individuals.

Japanese macaques nitpicking in a hot spring
By user:Fg2 derivative work: user:bukk
(JapaneseMacaqueM2262.jpg) [Public domain],
via Wikimedia Commons

`McCullough [cont.]: They're very intimidated by power, let's just put it that way. So if you're a high-ranking Japanese macaque and you harm a lower-ranking Japanese macaque, that low-ranking individual is not going to harm you back. It's just too intimidating. It's too anxiety-provoking. What they do instead, and this still astonishes me, is they will find a relative of that high-ranking individual and go seek that low-ranking cousin or nephew out and harm him in retaliation.

Tippett: That does sound like human behaviour, doesn't it? [JTV - It actually sounds exactly like: the mafia, LOL. Note that: movies about the mafia usually do very badly.]

McCullough: Right. And here's the kicker: when they're harming this nephew, most of the time they're doing it while the high-ranking individual is watching. They want the high-ranking individual to know that I know you're more powerful than I am. But rest assured, I know how to get at what you care about and what you value.' (in Tippett 2010, p. 176-7)           

Anyway - so the book (Tippett 2010) is excellent.

Also - if you don't like Science, you're being pretty stupid - as anyone or anything that is alive is doing science all of the time. Whether they're aware of it, or not.

i.e. Everything operates, via:

Expectation (or: `Theory'); then Trial and Error, and, (if needed) Error-correction. 

...Seriously.

Read Popper's All Life Is Problem Solving (1999). It's also: GREAT.

-----------------------

Joe T Velikovsky

Transmedia Writer-Director-Producer:
Movies, Games, TV, Theatre, Books, Comics
Transmedia Writing Blog: http://on-writering.blogspot.com.au/

& Bio-Culture (Science & the Arts) & Transmedia Researcher
Academia link: https://aftrs.academia.edu/JTVelikovsky

& (High-RoI) Story/Screenplay/Movie Analyst and Evolutionary Systems Theorist
See: https://storyality.wordpress.com/

IMDb: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/joeteevee

& Random Guy

------------------------------------------

P.S. - And, if you don't believe in Evolution, it's not your fault that Evolution made you so stupid. All you needed to do was survive and possibly even reproduce, (and maybe take revenge now and then) for Evolution to let you off the hook. - It's actually a miracle.