AN AFTERNOON WITH E.O. WILSON

Before the world made ubiquitous connections through a web of packet-switched data, books mattered. Carried innocuously in backpacks and bare hands, books served as collections of big ideas and gateways to adventures. In 1990, there were clues all around that the world was on the edge of an epic transformation, from the recent end of Soviet-era geopolitics, to a hard-to-predict explosion in data processing and transmission. It was as if a massive tidal wave of ideas was suddenly swelling on the horizon, and the expectant world was about to receive the deluge.

In 1990 I was selected to give the commencement address at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. I had recently written a short book for my honors thesis in biomedical ethics, and anticipated that I might develop a career in related fields. As the commencement speaker that year, I had the opportunity to spend the afternoon with college VIPs and honorees, one of whom would be the great biologist E.O. Wilson, selected to receive an honorary degree from the school.

Wilson is not only one of the great scientific minds of his time, but of any time. Formally an expert on myrmecology—the study of ants, of all things—he may be most scientifically influential in the development of his theory of sociobiology, which proposes that culture and social behavior is direct product of biological evolution. He’s the author of many books, including a stunning, shimmering novel (Anthill), and has largely restructured the collective conversation on environmental advocacy, sustainable ecology, and more. He’s got a bright sense of humor, a warm aura of easy engagement, and despite his endless awards, accolades, adulations, and adventures at august institutions like Harvard, he’s as approachable as your favorite avuncular uncle.

In my home growing up, he had been a bit of a hero, too. My father had dug deeply into Wilson’s 1975 landmark book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, and it had become the taproot for endless probing, exciting conversations. The concept of ants maintaining complex societies and behaviors-- rather extraordinary declarations at the time-- fueled endless metaphoric comparisons to the state of modern human cultural trends, political disputes, and evolutionary trajectory. That Wilson could also write about his complex ideas like a master wordsmith on top of being a world-class scientist solidified his merit. In my home the ability to have a sophisticated insight into just about any subject didn’t matter much if it could not be communicated clearly and rationally, with bonus points for a dash of poetry. Wilson could do all of the above.

Graduation day came, and I found myself sitting in comfortable chairs next to the great man sharing tea and cookies. At twenty-one, I couldn’t help but feel a little out of time and place, dressed in jacket and tie, a big day speaking to thousands, discussing the potentials of my own future and listening to many of my betters enjoying the day with the seasoned perspectives that are only possible by greater years. Wilson and I found ourselves in an easy conversation about everything and nothing at all. I confided that his book had been an intellectual revelation for me, with resonant effects on my family. Whether it was just polite southern gentility (Wilson hails from Alabama) or genuine interest, I recall how he earnestly asked me about my honors thesis and enjoyed the thought that I might head into a field that he regarded as vital and stimulating.

But what I recall even more is how we shared stories about growing up. We talked about walks in the woods for him outside of Birmingham that introduced him to the power and beauty of the natural world, and he asked me questions and then listened intently to my own teenage forest adventures—comparatively more recent than Wilson’s, to be sure!

It’s ironic as I look back on that day now in the digitally wired future that his famous research into ant culture demonstrated a collective intelligence to those lowly bugs that transcended individual abilities and ambitions. The colony was greater any one person; communication among the colony members was an elegant, surprisingly sophisticated system of data exchange and transmission. Wilson had described a biological expression of modern networking, a metaphor I think about almost every day that I interact with bits of data in the interconnected space of modern life.

After my graduation address, Wilson came over to me and shook my hand, made some very personal, specific comments about my speech—something that mattered immensely to me because it told me he genuinely listened. Perhaps more than anything else that day, I recall most of all how he sought me out after the ceremony. For all his remarkable achievements and reputation, Wilson presented himself as a genuine person, a down-to-Earth man who listened closely, observed intensely, and didn’t miss anything.

Life fleets by so fast. For a twenty-one year old about to set out to find his way in the world, the afternoon spent with him reaffirmed the values I still regard as most important: don’t take life for granted; don’t miss a minute, and above all, work hard to find value in the relationships you make with others, because the colony is stronger the more individuals re-invest themselves in shared experience.

--MS

PS: You know you can follow us for more info, right? Try these cool links, and share them with your friends:

Twitter         @michaelstarobin

Facebook      http://www.facebook.com/1auglobalmedia

LinkedIn       http://www.linkedin.com/in/mstarobin

BIG SCREENS IN SUMMERTIME

Yes, it's a blog about creativity, but the summer movie season jumped out early this year and we're thinking of calling off work until September.

Let me be clear: movie theaters are how movies should be seen. Yes, we have televisions and computers. Yes, we watch movies there, too. But if you really care about movies, a big screen with razor sharp focus and excellent sound can't be beat.

Movies aren't big television shows. The don't work the same way narratively or visually. Are they related? Sure. But the sense of immersion you get in a darkened room, singularly focused on stories writ onto gigantic screens transforms the sense of vitality and power and, in best cases, art.

Okay, okay, and the big explosions are much cooler on a big screen, too. (Boom!)

Iron Man 3 recouped its entire production budget BEFORE it opened in the United States. It's a smash hit only three days into its domestic run. Other big name pix are on deck, too. In the superhero department, the Zack Snyder Superman reboot has us geeked, and there's a lot of purely escapist potential in the mega-magic shenanigans of Now you See Me. There are also the smaller films that harken to a time only two decades ago when real-life dramas were huge box office draws, too. Big screens are not just for giant budgeted stories. The Kings of Summer is gaining big notices and introducing a fresh, welcome voice to the noisy, action-packed trend of recent years.

Based on a single movie almost ten years ago called Primer, Shane Carruth is back with a new movie, and it has completely captured my imagination. Made reportedly for less than $100,000, this is modern, bravura storytelling simply because it throws all caution to the wind and tries to say something with whatever resources it can muster, damn the torpedoes or rules of the game. The movie is called Upstream Color. It demands the respect of being seen on a big screen. I'm declaring this one a summer movie, even if it's actually a Spring release. It gets an asterisk simply for being made in the era of huge commercial vehicles, and I'm pulling for it to find a big audience, just on principle.

Clearly I'm not going to see all the summer movies I want to see at a theater. To quote a line from one the greatest of all summer movies, The Matrix, "Time is always against us". Yeah, yeah, who's got the time to spend three or four days a week at the movies! (Sigh…) Some are simply going to show on television screens, come what may. But whatever you do, remember that even the biggest, most intensely calculated corporate junk that makes it to the multiplex is the product of hundreds of creative people laboring for thousands of hours to make something that didn't exist before they put their hands on it. It's an amazing thing, that creative process. Even for all of the many potential outcomes, the work always demands human lives to bring things into being.

Ah, the movies: I could riff on movies all day long. Maybe in the 23rd century, lifetimes will be longer. Hey, there's something to think about before the lights go down. I absolutely have to see the new Star Trek film called Into Darkness in a big theater, dreaming of worlds beyond.

--MS

PS: You know you can follow us for more info, right? Try these cool links, and share them with your friends:

Twitter         @michaelstarobin

Facebook      http://www.facebook.com/1auglobalmedia

LinkedIn       http://www.linkedin.com/in/mstarobin

THE GARDEN

I have no need for my computer in the garden. I'm told there are endless apps and programs, tools and widgets to help me manage my agricultural adventures in the backyard. They hold almost no interest for me. I'm not averse to using the web for research; information is different in my mind then concrete application. But the garden is a place for my hands get dirty in a good way. The day slows down. The sweat on my neck comes from honest effort rather than onerous deadline. Every day in the garden is a moment of invention, and because that invention is a direct result of what kind of attention I put into the Earth, that invention helps me keep my keel on course.

Here in northern latitudes it's still relatively early for the big stuff to go in. Nonetheless, plenty of cool weather crops do just fine, and I've taken good advantage of the small patch of reclaimed dirt behind my home. Carrots, radishes, scallions, lettuce, peas, beans: in neat furrows I've planted tiny time capsules.

The filmmaker in me regards this first stage of my garden like a screenplay. Every year I approach the soil with a plan in hand, tools and my pail, and a willingness--a deep desire, even--to try and make something out of very little. Every year the seeds go in with great care and in no time at all a radical transformation begins. When those tiny sprouts come up, after about seven days, it's hard to tell the plants apart unless I've marked the rows properly, but the implication is vast and profound.

In late spring when the bigger plants go in, the tomatoes and peppers and cucumbers and more, vegetable music is already playing. I tend to plant the later crops from pre-sprouted seedlings rather than specifically from seeds. Once in the ground, I take great pleasure in watching the transformation of all the players in the garden grow and change each day. But I must confess, the best part is often in those first few weeks when the almost infinitesimally small seeds declare themselves against all odds and break through the topsoil into the open air.

I think I like to plant gardens for the same reason I like to create videos and movies and books and poems and more. There are always unexpected moments, even though the best laid plans present certain expectations about what's going to happen. Even with infinite variety and variation, a garden enables me to make plans with out feeling a need to be in total control. It opens the door to opportunity even as it facilitates surprise.

--MS

P.S. Want more? Like thoughts a little shorter while you wait for next Monday's blog? I tweet! You can follow me @michaelstarobin If you're really motivated (and we'll be geeked if you are) drop us a line. All of our contact info is here on the website.

AUTONOMOUS CONTROL VS MANUAL OVERRIDE

Get over yourself. You're just a slave to your own brain.

In a fascinating recent study, researches found evidence for yet another example where millions of years of evolution seem to have played the ultimate trick on those who believe they're in charge of their own destinies.

Apparently your brain contains programmatic information about different stride frequencies and lengths to fit a multitude of circumstances. Even before you can figure out how you want to travel, your body has already loaded the software and launched it.

"Captain! Switching to manual override."

Yeah, just try it.

In fact, do. Try it.

Consciously recognizing our autonomous decision making routines and then actively stretching ourselves to try something new can never be underestimated in terms of a value proposition. Yes, there's a value to having a playbook of tried-and-true techniques. Saving time in wheel-reinvention certainly tops the list; when we turn to techniques we know intimately, lots of work can get done in a hurry. More vitally, I believe, a playbook of the familiar also facilitates mastery. Turning to a finite set of tools enables a journey heading toward perfection, even if ultimate arrival never comes. By focusing on what we know works, we get better at doing whatever that may be.

To some extent, everyone develops a set of go-to solutions for everything. This is why we can recognize Mozart's filigrees and Pete Townsend's fretwork in just a few musical moments; they sound like themselves. You probably dry the dishes in a certain way, organize the clutter in your most used closet just so, find matches for your wayward socks by a means that only makes sense to you. Everyone turns to past experience to guide his or her actions of the present, and change usually demands a conscious effort to overcome inertia of what's come before.

But that's the real issue. When the autopilot gets switched off and you grab the manual controls, opportunities open for travel to undiscovered shores.

This will challenge you. This may throw you off your game. Experimentation with tools and techniques that don't fit comfortably are like counting to ten in binary code for the first time. Until you get the hang of how to even think about the problem, the solution will simply not fit into your familiar frame of reference.

This extends way beyond science and engineering, too. The phenomenon includes social justice, civil rights, political initiatives, and financial planning. Our muscles ache when we task our physical bodies with change; our minds ache when we task them with intellectual terrain not yet travelled before. But just like getting off the couch and getting your tired carcass into the gym, the pain you feel at first is the only way to get somewhere new down the road. Unless people have the courage to consider lives and values beyond their own experiences and preconceptions, society stalls. Values ossify. Creativity turns dull and gray and predictable.

If there's so much value in trying new ideas, what's the risk? The risk is to expect that all manual overrides of what's come before are worth endless grinding effort. For example, if I decide I'm going to become a great basketball player or carpenter or opera singer, it won't matter how long I practice: it simply ain't gonna happen! We can waste a great deal of time trying new things to the point of no longer mastering anything. There's a fine balance between turning off our autopilots for a while and flying ragged, seat-of-the-pants missions forever. Those barnstorming whoop-de-dos may be exhilarating, white knuckle rides of discovery, but they rarely provoke new passengers to get on board. If you have a movie to produce, you probably shouldn't consider switching from video back to film the day before you open you lens. The risk is too high. But in the formative stages of your movie, you might force yourself to learn something about the format, figure out what's valuable and why, and see if you can shake off that digital ease of use for a new way of thinking.

The secret is to force yourself into uncharted waters now and again, and discover new things from what you already know. You must balance hard earned expertise with an openness to discovery and a willingness to start learning new skills from the beginning. Manual override is the ultimate map. Only then can you travel to uncharted places and discover new sources of beauty. This isn't about traveling safe; it's about traveling at all. Otherwise, you're just standing still even if you think you're moving.

--MS

PS -- Like this? Like what it does for your day? Do you ever mention ideas you encounter in this blog to someone else in your life? If so, share the link! Sure, it sounds like a ploy for free, crowd-sourced advertising, and guess what: it is! If you do spread the word, we'll simply appreciate. We might even bake you a batch of your favorite cookies. (Just ask!)

TURKEY SANDWICH

Ordinary things can still surprise us. One small change from ordinary expectations can push back the boundaries of reality, of possibility, of dreams.

In the Dick Tracy comic strips of the 1940's, the hero wore a culture-altering talisman portending the future: a wrist radio. Reinvented twenty years later in Star Trek's communicators, the Enterprise crew (Picard era, for those who care) called the ship or each other by saying the name of the intended receiver into their handset.

Siri, anyone?

Extraordinary becomes ordinary, fast.

Arbitrary deviations do not count. You can't simply bolt a jet engine onto the back of a Volkswagen and get a reliable flying car. (But you can get a very, very fast one, apparently.) Most arbitrary deviations are usually forgettable, or unpalatable, or otherwise aesthetically undesirable. In biology, they're unsuccessful mutations; in automobiles, their Edsels.

Here's the part I love most. When the limits to expectation move outward, the domain space of possibility inside is simultaneously larger than it was a moment ago--larger and ordinary. Everything that fits into a newly expanded domain of possibility rapidly loses its potency for provoking strong emotion. Here's a real world example. Imagine the amazement provoked by hearing a telephone ring in the 1880s. By comparison, what does your cell phone ring do for you now?

I know what you're wondering. What's the deal with the title to this week's blog. The answer comes in the form of a reciepe, of sorts. Here's what you do.

Take two slices of terrific bread, preferably something with texture and density and lots of flavor. Pumpernickel, rye, or a good sourdough are my first choices. Between them add the following:

freshly roasted turkey (not pre-packaged junk) leaf lettuce (iceberg does not count) thin slices of purple onion thin slices of nectarine Russian dressing

Et, voila! One fabulous turkey sandwich you've never made before, but one you're also not likely ever to forget. (Yum!)

What? Never had nectarine on a turkey sandwich before? The world expands, one small surprise at a time.

-MS

PS -- Yes, yes, here's where the good people of 1AU ask our dear readers to share what you've read with friends and colleagues. And here's the place where you think, "Oh, sure, one more imposition of my precious time." Well, we're asking. It's something we value above rubies, above gold: if you like an idea enough to give it a moment's thought, then consider giving it a measure of freedom. When you share an idea with another person, you release an idea to grow freely in the world. Like what you see? Set it free.

BE BRAVE WITH TIGERS IN BOATS

What do we want when we ask people to help us with things we can't do ourselves? Usually we're looking for precision, like the kind we may ask of a surgeon before the anesthesiologist sends us for a nap. Oftentimes we're looking for elegance, as when the architect who's designing that addition to your home comes up with a clever way to catch the morning sunlight without adding additional cost. Sometimes we're looking for stimulation, like when you listen intently to endless demo recordings trying to find that perfect band to play at your wedding without spending a fortune. But how often are we looking for something that's genuinely new?

For many people religion reinforces what's already familiar, what's safe. Art reminds us about our humanity, what moves us to create. Plenty of people will say that religion has been the inspiration for countless pieces of art, but even though history proves this to be true, I think it's an intellectual red herring. The profound power of familiarity should not be taken as a proof of reality.

Ang Lee tries to touch this in his masterful cinematic adaptation of the book Life of Pi. In the story two Japanese investigators question the protagonist about his tale of an extraordinary ordeal at sea. Lee stages this scene brilliantly, placing the main character in the center of the frame, seated upright in a hospital bed, nothing but a white wall behind him as the camera pushes in slowly. Without visual context, we're forced to listen to the story without artifice, without distraction. Free of external stimulation, the story meets our own, private preconceptions of reality head on, and we're faced with a mirror to our own view of reality.

If you haven't read the book or seen the movie, it's about an almost impossible-to-believe tale of survival, a boy and a tiger surviving for months alone in the vast Pacific Ocean. Color, sounds, high drama, and intense introspection propel a fully visceral experience. The boy telling his tale to the Japanese investigators does not present himself as an incredible witness, but his story nonetheless does not resonate truthfully. For the investigators there are no analogues, and of course, there is no evidence. Therefore it simply cannot be believed, even as the main character tells it calmly and with surprising dispassion.

The power of the scene comes from a feeling we've all had. It's tough to accept a bold idea that doesn't at least resonate with experiences and ideas we've had before. Anything genuinely fantastical is always threatening. Star Wars got crummy reviews in it's initial showing; no one had seen anything like it before. Remember that Apple commercial a decade ago, when the wizards of Cupertino started to turn the company around? “Here's to the crazy ones,” it began. We all smile knowingly because we intuitively understand: all inventors of genuinely new ideas are nuts until they're proven sane. The message to take from these examples should be a clarion call to listen, to see, to be brave. There have been adventurers who've gone beyond the horizon and by their bold actions taught us to take heart, to be not afraid, or, if we cannot fathom that kind of bravura, at least not to be daunted.

But you're thinking, "I'm a suburbanite. I do quality assurance for a kitchen remodeling business. What's brave about that?"

Don't miss this. It's not the narrative trappings of brave tales that makes them brave. When you ask someone to listen to you you're asking them to trust you. When you actively listen to someone else, you're implicitly committing yourself to be open to what he or she has to say. In that transaction the seeds of a brave existence germinate.

Try love. True and genuine love is always the high wire creative enterprise where stabilizing familiarity requires endless reinvention, discovery, and risk. Complacent expectation is the death of love, just as a lack of familiarity denies the potential for intimacy. If you replace the word love with art, you get precisely the same thing.

So? Art = love? Is that the message? Or is it love= art?

Perhaps it doesn't matter.

Maybe the important message here is that you may not be asking the right questions of yourself. When we ask ourselves what we want when we ask people to help us with things we can't do ourselves, we're allowing ourselves to think creatively. Still unsure? Remember: when we open ourselves to thoughts and experiences we cannot entirely control, we open the doors to creativity. That makes everything possible.

--MS

PS -- Yes, yes, here's where the good people of 1AU ask our dear readers to share what you've read with friends and colleagues. And here's the place where you think, "Oh, sure, one more imposition of my precious time." Well, we're asking. It's something we value above rubies, above gold: if you like an idea enough to give it a moment's thought, then consider giving it a measure of freedom. When you share an idea with another person, you release an idea to grow freely in the world. Like what you see? Set it free.

THE VAGARIES OF SUSPENDED ANIMATION

… and no, I'm not talking about cartoon characters who haven't been properly processed on the render farm.

I doubt this will be the last posting I ever make about air travel. The act of trusting your physical self to a metal shell of some sort, often surrounded by people whom you might not ordinarily even think to notice, is strong evidence to me that life only has meaning by force of will. Travel by plane particularly amplifies this phenomenon because at the beginning and end of almost every flight, you pass through the churning mass of humanity surrounded by generic, anodyne establishments shilling for unnecessary consumer goods and carbohydrates. This thing called travel has nothing to do with walking from one place to another.

Travel by car is entirely the same and entirely different. If you're driving alone in a city or town, you're isolated in a metal and glass bubble even as thousands of other bubbles pass perilously close at high speed. There's little you can do but actually operate the car. In fact, you'd better not be doing much else if you're the person behind the wheel!

Assuming you're driving with others, the experience shifts, but only a little. It's only in cars that we willingly choose to sit so close to other people in largely immobile states for extended periods of time. Even people we love don't generally tolerate suppression of their own movements when they're seated close to us. But here in the artificially imposed stillnesses of travel by modern mechanical means ideas flood in.

Artists hate restrictions, yet it's through restriction that artists often find their greatest inspirations. Some artists never travel at all. Some travel incessantly, wandering the physical world as much as they travel the world of ideas. But the very concept of travel alone fuels the creative soul, through inspiration, through exasperation, through anxiety, through epiphany. Travel is the act of willingly restricting yourself in order to move through space to a place where you may discover new freedoms. Through restriction, we find openness.

I struggle sometimes to keep a steady rudder beneath me on travel days, and the reasons are not what you may think. It's not just from getting up at odd hours, or schlepping luggage, or suffering the indignities of security queues: travel days always present a strange tension between the spontaneous generation of ideas and the nearly comical inability to do anything with those ideas while getting from one place to another. Travel days torment me with infinite lives not taken, with roads skittering off into uncharted stories that I can only glimpse through the window of my train or plane or rickshaw. The instant freedom afforded by travel bangs squarely into the rigid realities of inevitable plans already made. Spontaneity crashes into obligations; dreams meet practicalities. I experience alternatives, I invent possibilities, I dream.

Then I wake.

By definition travel requires movement over distance. In covering that physical distance, travel over many outcroppings of aesthetic terrain seem to stop. Except for an elite sliver of society, travel becomes an equalizer. Low-end material surroundings juxtaposed against endless streams of humanity place the wealthy and the weary in close proximity, and often it's impossible to tell the players apart on sight. Everyone wears comfy shoes, everyone obsessively checks the time. People may have vital things to do when they reach their destinations, but in the time in-between waypoints, there's a dislocation of creative acts. Reduced to nothing more than outward action through space, travel upends aesthetic momentum.

And all of this is to say, I relish a good trip. I marvel at the flood of new ideas that often rush in, sometimes while I'm ordering a cheap cup of coffee in an airport or in a shop on an anonymous highway exit, and sometimes days after I'm back home reflecting on what's transpired. Suspended animation yields kinetic force. By moving through the real world we learn how to create new abstractions of it, bit by bit, mile by mile.

--MS

PS -- Yes, yes, here's where the good people of 1AU ask our dear readers to share what you've read with friends and colleagues. And here's the place where you think, "Oh, sure, one more imposition of my precious time." Well, we're asking. It's something we value above rubies, above gold: if you like an idea enough to give it a moment's thought, then consider giving it a measure of freedom. When you share an idea with another person, you release an idea to grow freely in the world. Like what you see? Set it free.