Think Tanks and Children's Stories

Like every parent, I'm concerned that my children are too involved in video games. They don't get enough physical activity, they don't socialize enough...you know the litany. One area I'm worried about is creativity.
I remember reading about a family from the 1800's. They had no television, no radio, no video games. For recreation at night, they would play piano, tell stories, and act out plays. This seems to have had a good effect, for one of the daughters became an author, and wrote the story I read.
I wanted to do something with my children that would inspire their creativity. The thing I hit upon was having them write stories. I didn't want it to be a burden, since this would make them hate it and would hinder creativity instead of fostering it.
So I came up with the idea of giving them the beginning of a story, and letting them write the ending. I explained that I didn't necessarily want a lot of words; to me the important thing was to be creative. I told them that there were no right or wrong endings, and that they could imagine whatever ending they wanted.
This got me thinking about how creative writing is done in school. Usually there is an assignment to write about something, and then it is critiqued and graded. While this has its purpose, it seems to me that it doesn't really promote creativity as much as it might. The student tends to be more worried about form than original thinking, and more about satisfying the teacher than himself. These aren't bad things, but I don't think it leads to maximum creativity.
Think tanks are designed to be creative. Experts in different areas are put into a room and given a problem to solve. Generally the problem can only be addressed by considering it from many different angles, which is the reason for the various experts involved.
The mechanism that makes think tanks work is that one person will say something that will trigger a response from another, which in turn makes someone else think of something, and so on, until the group comes up with ideas that no one member of the group could have thinking alone.
The single most important rule when participating in one of these think tanks is that there is no negativity allowed. No saying, "That will never work", or "What a dumb idea!" Worry about negative comments causes the members of the group to be self conscious, and they may then withhold ideas that would have been useful. Even if an idea seems silly, it may trigger a good idea from someone else. How are good ideas ultimately separated from the bad ones? The group will naturally pick up on the good ideas and tend to let the other ideas go.
So I decided that no matter what my children write, I won't ever criticize. I don't want to inhibit their creativity by having to worry about what I might think. Instead, I'll look for the positive, and hopefully this will encourage them to move in the right direction.
So far, I've been working with my two youngest boys, ages 12 and 10. I've tried to invent story beginnings that would appeal to their imagination, that were open ended so there would be lots of possibilities, and that would require some imagination.
OK, now for the fun part. I'm going to give you a few examples of what I'm talking about. Before reading the endings my boys wrote, you might think about how you would end the story.
Story Seed 1-The Forgetful Knight: A young knight has gone off to kill a troublesome dragon. He reaches the dragon's lair and has confronted the dragon. Just as he is about to slay the dragon, he realizes that he forgot his sword. What happens?
Jeff (10): But he did bring his shield. And he also won first place in aiming. So he threw his shield as hard as he could and it chopped the dragon's head off. And then he left.
Andrew(12): Once he arrives at the dungeon cave the big heavy gate behind him closes. Once he's in he draws his sword but he feels nothing there as he thinks of an idea. Once he's done thinking he yells as loud as he can to get the dragon's attention. After a few seconds he sees everything start shaking. He tries with all his might to get it [the gate] open. After trying to open it he sneaks out. Then he goes out and lifts up the gate. The dragon sticks his neck out and he lets the gate go and it shuts on his head.
Story seed 2-The Sewer People: You are walking along and fall into a sewer. To your surprise, you don't fall into a sewer system, but an underground land inhabited by beings (it's up to you to describe them). They have a problem that can be solved easily by something that people have on the surface. Do you help them?
Jeff: They are living pencils. They were out of sharpeners. When I heard the problem I ran to the surface. Then I got to my house. I got all the sharpeners in my house. I got back to the sewers. I gave all the sharpeners I had to them. After that we all had a celebration.
Andrew: They are giant slime monsters. They asked me for an absorbing towel that soaks up water things. I went to Walgreens and got one. We all had a party at the end because they were happy.
Story seed 3-The Magic Caterpillar: You are walking alone in the woods during the beginning of summer and you see a caterpillar. He begins to talk, and tells you he is a magical caterpillar, and can grant you one wish. There's a catch. At the end of the summer, he'll turn into a butterfly, and then he'll ask you for something. The thing he asks for will depend on what your wish was.
Jeff: I wished for eternal life. When I wished for this it was a great summer. I did stuff that would kill me if I hadn't wished for eternal life. But at the end of summer a butterfly came to me and said you must defend me for another summer. The next summer came and I defended the butterfly for the summer.
I've been considering extending this exercise to my daughter, who will shortly turn 16. I think I'll need a different type of story to get her involved. She'd probably like stories that are more realistic and based on human relationships, but I could be wrong.
Does anyone have any ideas for further story seeds? If you do, I'd love to see them, especially any for my daughter.
I'll try to post another set of stories later on.

Paradigms: How do you think about your friends?

It seems to me that understanding paradigms is one of the fundamental concepts you need in your mental toolkit if you want to unlock the apparent mysteries of the human mind. A paradigm is just a fancy name for a model. In our sense, a model is a representation for something else. Models come in all shapes and sizes; they can be physical or abstract, simple or complex, logical or intuitive.
When I was young, I used to make models of battleships, aircraft carriers, airplanes and cars. These models were a physical representation of the real thing. You could tell a lot about the real thing by examining its model. You could get an idea what it looked like and it's proportions. If it was a model of a battleship, you could count the number and type of guns, and see how many life boats it had.
However, these models fall short. I tried putting them in water, and they would flip over on their side. They weren't functional models. This illustrates one of the main ideas of models, or paradigms. In their representations, some areas are of concern while other areas are ignored. In the case of my models, it was important to capture the look, but just about nothing else.
Think about crash test dummies. They are models of the human body. They are designed to model the kines

Movie Vampires, the Mundane and the Sacred

I happened to be watching a recently made vampire movie the other night. As usually happens during a vampire movie, the "ground rules" were explained. There comes a point in the movie when some novice notices that things aren't quite normal. When they ask for an explaination, the expert explains how to spot, ward off and kill vampires. What gave me pause the other night is how these ground rules have changed.
In the oldest vampire movies I can remember, the ones they played late on Friday night Creature Features, vampires were a new commodity, at least for movie-goers. The movie made no assumptions that the audience new anything about vampires, and so the basic ground rules were explained: vampires don't cast a reflection, you can repel them with crosses and garlic, hurt them with holy water, and kill them with the reliable stake through the heart. They can't come out during the day, and have to drink blood...well, you know the rules.
As vampire movies became more common, and the audience more vampire-savy, the movie often assumed that the audience already new the ground rules. Only subtle nuances were explained: what happens when a vampire doesn't get a timely drink of blood, can you kill it by cutting off it's head? How does the vampire clan work? Often these subtlies are what made the movie interesting.
I was watching "Blade: House of Cthlon", a Blade spinoff. A non-believer finally sees Blade fighting vampires, and there is no denying them. She joins forces, and he explains how to kill vampires-the "ground rules".
The interesting bit comes when she asks Blade, "Holy water and crosses?" She, like the audience, is wondering if these work in her world. Are they part of the ground rules for the movie? Oddly, the answer was "no, of course not."
Now, I haven't done a scientific study, but it seems to me that religious totems have been on the decline in vampire movies. Crosses have become less powerful. It used to be Dracula would cower and flee from a cross, but now even in movies where crosses do work, a powerful vampire can overcome one through sheer will power.
So the question I can't help but ask is "Why?" I can think of several answers. The vampire has come a long way in the movies, from a lone, tragic figure to a highly organized society. Perhaps movies needed a change in the ground rules to keep vampires fresh and interesting. I think there is something deeper going on.
I remember an episode of Night Stalker (I think it was), where the hero pulls a cross on a vampire, and it has no affect. The vampire hunter looks surprised, and the vampire explains, "You have to believe for it to work." I think this explains the trend in movies I've been talking about. The audience, as a whole, simply doesn't believe in the power of crosses and holy water. If they worked, the believablity of the vampire movie would be harmed. Sounds like a paradox, the idea of religion making vampire movies seem less real.
What a drastic change this represents. It used to be the vampire was seen as evil incarnate. The vampire's existence usually owed to some ancient curse or evil deed so autrocious that it somehow supernaturally caused the vampire to come into being. The vampire violates God's will, and his symbols can be used to fight the vampire in what becomes an epic struggle of good and evil.
Today's vampire is often the result of some kind of virus, or another branch on the evolutionary tree. Normal scientific processes are involved, without any need to invoke the supernatural. Syrums are developed to counteract the affects, and high tech gadgets like UV ray guns and essense of garlic are used to combat them. Of course, in this world, religious icons have no place.
This changes is not specific to vampire movies. Even ghosts have gone from spirits of the deceased to manifestations of paranormal forces. Could it be that the change in vampire movies is a reflection in the way society looks at the supernatural, the paranormal, the mythical? What a drastic change in less than a lifetime.
Primive man saw everything in the world as sacred, as participating in the divine. As man become ever more modern, more and more of the world was viewed as mundane. The sacred was reserved for small plots of land holding churches and graveyards, and for places beyond our own existence: the Blessed Isles, Valhalla and Heaven. Are we witnessing the final chapter in this process, where even our most horrible monsters, and our protection against them, has fallen into the world of the mundane?
Certainly this tendancy is not universal. There are many people who look for a meaning beyond science and the material world. This reaction is both intellectual and emotional, and finds expression in a wide range of beliefs and practices, from fundamental Christianity to Wicken. Many are not willing to give up their version of the sacred. Nonetheless, It seems to me that most people already have.

Are Your Personal Myths Letting You Down? Personal Myths and Systematic Errors in Human Thinking

Years ago I saw a TV show that talked about systematic errors in human thinking, and I've been fascinated by this concept ever since. I believe that most people would describe their thinking as sensible and reasonable. While everyone admits to making mistakes, most people would deny that there are consistent flaws in how they reach conclusions.

The idea of systematic errors is that the brain itself is wired to give wrong results, at least under some circumstances. If this is true, why does it happen? Under what circumstances does it happen? It seems to me that if we can know the answers to these questions, we can guard against these systematic errors, and even offset them.

I find it somewhat disconcerting to realize that I'm at the mercy of how my brain is wired. I like to think of myself as logical, and that my conclusions make sense. When I make systematic errors, I reach invalid conclusions, and the scary part is that I don't even know it.

What are these systematic errors? The TV show that I saw was some time ago, and I can't remember the particulars. A quick search in google returns quite a few examples of systematic errors. One that comes to mind is the halo effect, where it is assumed that someone who has some good characteristics is assumed to have others. Studies show, for example, that good looking people are perceived as more intelligent than others who aren't as good looking. Another example is that people tend to look for data that confirms their hypothesis over data that might deny it.

What brought this to mind after all these years is something I heard the other day on the radio. According to some study, people are generally more optimistic than they should be. People think they will live longer than they do, make more money than they will, etc. This sounds to me like another type of systematic error in the way people think.

So what has this got to do with myths? To explain this, I need to explain what I think a myth is. A simple definition is that a myth is a story shared by a culture. The people in the culture act as though the story is true without any evidence. Individuals may or may not give the story much credence, but they act as though they believe it. It could turn out that the story really is true, but that is immaterial.

There's a lot I could say about this subject. One thing that comes to mind is the question: When is there enough evidence for a story that it passes from the realm of myth into history? For a long time, most historians thought the story of Troy was a myth, but it now turns out there is archeological evidence for the story, so is it still a myth?

Is science a myth? Our culture acts as though science is true. A scientific study sounds convincing, and it used to be thought that science would solve all the world's problems. Are these myths true? A better question for a myth is "Is it relevant?" Does the culture still adopt the myth, or has it been discarded? Western society is beginning to lose faith in the Christian myth. In some ways, the same is happening to the myth of science. What happens to a culture when it loses faith in its myths? Historically, interesting things. Perhaps one day I'll write about paradigm shifts.

It seems to me that myths are an example of a culture's systematic error. This is not to say that myths are not useful to the culture. Quite the contrary. Myths are vital to a culture's well being, and I don't know if a culture can survive without them. The systematic error is that conclusions are reached that aren't based on fact, but on assumptions. In the middle ages, peasants spent their entire lives working on farms because it was God's will (the myth of the divine right of kings). Of course, this wasn't the only factor.

I have noticed that there are stories I believe about myself. These beliefs are a lot like myths, except that they are about me. You might call them fantasies. For example, when I get on the scale and see how much I weigh, I resolve to really follow that diet I've been thinking about. Visions of me eating right and exercising flash through my head, along with a vision of a new and skinnier me.

The difference between these "personal myths" and fantasies is small. The difference I would claim is that fantasying is mainly a pleasurable, harmless activity, whereas personal myths are more like a coping mechanism. I engage my myths when I'm feeling bad about myself. I enjoy playing volleyball, but sometimes I play against people that are considerably better than I am. After a resounding defeat, I imagine myself losing weight, getting in shape, practicing jumping higher, and coming back some day and thoroughly beating them. After several decades of this myth, I am beginning to realize that this will never happen. Myths are hard to give up.

Of course, it's good to have goals. It's good to try and reach beyond yourself, to do things that didn't seem possible. What's the difference between goals and myths? A goal is something that at least theoretically, I could achieve. If I actually worked out, lost weight, and started jumping higher, than I would be working towards a goal, even if I never achieved it. If I only use the myth to make myself feel better after a particularly bad loss, but never act on it, it's just a personal myth.

I believe that practically everyone has personal myths. It might be landing a good job, spending more time with the family, investing for retirement, etc. One example I've run into lately is people who are divorced imagining that sometime in the future they will reconcile with their spouse. How can you tell if you have personal myths? If you find yourself feeling bad, and then imagining some future scenario where the problem is resolved, you may have a personal myth. If you don't actually act on these imaginings, if it's been years and you haven't made any progress towards them, if you're honest with yourself and admit that this will never happen, then you are indulging in personal myths.

Are personal myths bad? Yes and no. They obviously serve some purpose, or you wouldn't have them. They make you feel better, and that's not all bad. I'm never going to be a world class volleyball player, so letting off some steam by imagining that I'm a super player doesn't hurt anything, and may help me from being frustrated.

The real problem with personal myths is that they represent a form of systematic error. By believing in them, you end up making decisions that aren't based on reality. If your myth is that you will reconcile with your estranged spouse, but it's been ten years, and there is no indication that it will happen, perhaps it's time to smell the coffee. You could be wasting your life waiting for something that will never happen, the whole time thinking that it will.

Another problem with personal myths is that they can end up taking the place of real goals. If the myth is enough to satisfy your desire to accomplish something, it may actually keep you from accomplishing it. For example, when I'm mythologizing about being fit, this may satisfy my frustration at being overweight to the extent that I never start exercising. If I remained frustrated, I might become more motivated to do something about my situation.

I like model railroading, and I've been thinking about building a layout in my basement for years. It's my dream. There's nothing really stopping me, but at any moment I always seem to have some excuse for not getting started. I spend time reading magazines about it, and imagining how my layout will be better than those in the articles I read. Is this a personal myth?

What should you do when you discover one of your own personal myths? Most importantly, be honest with yourself. Many myths are leftovers from childhood dreams and goals that didn't pan out. Is it too late? Sometimes. At some point, I realized that I would never be a major league baseball player. This dream eventually turned into a myth, but as time went on, I gave up on the myth as well. Sometimes, the best thing is to let go of the myth.

Sometimes it's not too late. Many people make drastic changes later in life. Is it too late to be an opera singer? A teacher? An artist? I knew one teacher I had who was an architect, and at 37 decided to become a priest. It may not even be that big a deal. Perhaps all you need to do is enroll in some night classes, or take time to visit your grandchildren.

You need to ask yourself how badly you want the myth. Honestly appraise the work it would take, what you would have to give up, and the return you would receive if you achieved the myth. It might be worth making the commitment to turn the myth into a goal. If so, don't wait; start right away. Until you do, it will remain a myth.

In other cases, if you're honest, the myth may be unattainable, or not worth the effort. Sometimes you can find alternatives. In other cases, you may decide to give up the myth. The most important thing is too make decisions based on reality, not on a personal myth.

I hope you'll be a gardener in your field of myths. Weed out the ones that have become obsolete, and fertilize the others so they turn into goals, and ultimately, into accomplished feats.

I have certainly not exhausted this subject. The personal myths I have discussed have all been of the variety, "I will become...". There are personal myths about the past as well. People spend a lot of time and money sorting these out with psychologists. But that's a subject for another time.