Creating Creativity

Adam Grant, a professor of management and psychology in the Wharton School at my Alma Mater, the University of Pennsylvania, has an interesting column in the Times on raising creative kids. It’s a bit simplistic but that’s okay. How deep can you go when the paper won’t give you the 35,000 words you need?

Grant’s point is pretty straightforward. Most creative people come from homes where the structure was loose, the focus was on moral codes and the intense pressure to perform seen in many families was largely absent. In short, Tiger Moming may produce kids who are excellent musicians or superbly skilled at design and drafting but it doesn’t necessarily get you composers or break-through architects.

He also cited a survey comparing scientists who won Nobels with other scientists and the general public. The Nobelists were over twenty times more likely to have performed on stage, over ten times more likely to write poetry, plays or novels and twice as likely to play an instrument or compose music.

The foundations of creativity are complex and studied with well, creativity. A wander around Google Scholar will give anyone interested a feel for the more recent work.

All this got me into a bout of self-reflection. I think I’m creative. My research was kinda ‘breakthroughish’ in a modest way. I introduced a novel concept in cognitive psychology and saw it become the foundation of a series of insights in a variety of domains. It took some time for my empirical findings to be acknowledged and even longer for my theoretical model to be accepted which, in retrospect, isn’t surprising. I thought in ways compellingly different from my colleagues — so much so that they often had trouble getting their heads around what I was saying. It was frustrating but, in the end, satisfying.

I also had an endearing affection for “soft underbelly” of life — gambling, poker, horse racing, sports betting. I ended up penning three books on gambling and poker and writing several hundred columns for various gambling outlets, websites and magazines. Since retiring I’ve become the classic struggling writer who has managed to publish a novel and hopes to find the motivation to finish a second.

So I kinda fit Grant’s notions of a creative person — though still waiting for the Nobel Committee’s phone call… ; - ).

What intrigued me about Grant’s little essay was how closely his recommendations for nurturing creativity matched my upbringing and how my career was so off the standard road most of us middle-class kids were trained to walk. Yetta, my first-generation, Brooklyn-born, atheistic Jewish mother, was an artist.

She herself was raised in an orphanage when the family broke up, couldn’t afford the rent and ended up living for a time on the streets with her mother and two sisters. Remarkably, she loved the orphanage. She said it opened her to new people and ideas. When she was old enough she was sent out to be a house-keeper nanny to a wealthy family. While others might see this as something akin to indentured servitude, she saw it as another opportunity — to live in a new neighborhood, take their kids to museums, parks, eat new foods.

She became a reasonably recognized artist in and around Philadelphia with, at one point, two of her painting hanging in the Philadelphia Art Museum. Here are two photos of her taken in the early 1930’s.

But she was something well off the charts as a mother. Powerful, occasionally dominating, eccentric; with flaming red hair she would swoop through homes and galleries with her favorite purple cape overwhelming the unwary — not out of ego or insensitivity, it was enthusiasm for life bubbling over.

The home was just nuts. Nothing got done in anything like a routine way. She was a horrible cook — once buying a whole filet as a “special” meal for us and then roasting it for three hours because that’s how her mother cooked beef back in Russia. Her personal recipe for chicken soup began, “first open a can.”

My sibs and I sat down one day, cracked open a bottle of wine and asked the question: “Okay, how did you survive Mom?”

My sister laughed, “I just slammed down the gate to keep her out. It drove her nuts but it saved me.” She’s an accomplished cellist.

My brother nodded sagely, “Well, I saw this quiet, withdrawn chap over there (Dad) and realized he’d figured something out. Just let her do her thing. Nothing you do to control it will work.” He’s a recently retired psychiatrist who, last year, published a major book on autism and is, himself, embarking on a life as a short story writer (his stuff is pretty good).

Me? Hah. I was the oldest and my “solution” to Yetta was battle her at every turn, fight every move she made, carve out my own way of doing things and thumb my nose at her. We had some of the juiciest donnybrooks imaginable over art, music, politics, sex, marriage, relationships, money, religion. You mention it, we fought over it. We actually agreed on almost any topic but agreement was not part of our bargain. It just wasn’t any fun.

BTW, my father, an ophthalmologist and eye surgeon, was a quiet, unassuming and anxiety-ridden man — remarkably accomplished but unsure of himself, a constant worrier who saw monsters under every bed and demons in every closet. I loved him but much preferred the good ol’ knock-down dragged-out fights.

In retrospect I credit the whirlwind that spun around Mom for much of my creativity. I also “credit” her with the ragged path I took. I was a terrible student. I was suspended in high school, flunked out of Penn in my sophomore year, barely graduated with a 2.3 GPI after they, reluctantly, let me back in, and was only accepted into a single graduate program and that only because I worked with a famous psychologist who was a Brown graduate himself.

I was such a pain in the ass as a young professor that I was initially denied tenure despite having out-published all the members of the tenure committee combined and winning teacher of the year award. It took a year and a series of appeals to get that decision overturned. Amusingly, I was later elected head of the department, ran the doctoral program, the university named me to an endowed chair and the ASP, AAAS and the Fulbright Foundation all elected me Fellow.

But, you know, I’m still mildly ticked at a lack of recognition for some of my other little outbursts of creativity. I’ve published a novel theory of consciousness that has gone unacknowledged despite the fact that it makes provocative and nuanced arguments about evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology and the philosophy of mind.

I also put forward a novel theory of gambling that redefines the term, restructures the enterprise and has important implications for legal, legislative and ethical approaches to gambling. It too has received few if any citations.

But I’m used to this. Being creative is cool but it’s not always easy — especially in a field like mine. In physics or mathematics the equations are there, the numbers stack up. In psychology it’s more complex and change is often resisted. It took years for my work on the cognitive unconscious to be noticed too.

Here’s hoping I live long enough for the folks working in fields like the origins of consciousness and the theory of gambling to stumble across my stuff.

If not…Well, life’s like that and I can hear my mother’s voice: “It’s no skin off my nose. I’ve got a wood carving I’m really excited about and barely enough time.”

Things to Fear: Engineered Ignorance

There’s a lot to be worried about these days. One’s specific concerns differ, not surprisingly, depending on factors such as race, gender, age, residence, education and income.

The anxieties and fears that have resonated with middle-aged and elderly, relatively uneducated working- and middle-class whites are those with xenophobic, sexist and racist overtones. These trepidations have been stoked by the right wing.

Others are exhibited by younger, better educated, multi-ethnic and racially mixed groups and include concerns with income inequality, gender identity, poverty and the country’s failing infrastructure. These anxieties have been pulled into the spotlight by the left wing.

Both groups, of course, also worry about each other and are anxious about what they perceive the future could be should “they” end up in power.

My deepest concerns are more focused. What I fear is the growing, systematic assault on science and critical thinking. It is a movement that starts with religion, dresses itself up as some ersatz science and, using a variety of rhetorical devices and linguistic tricks, ends up inserting theological principles based on Biblical literalism into science education.

A few straight-forward things to keep in mind as I lay my concerns out:

a. Evolution is a fact. It is not a theory. Darwin’s model of Natural Selection is the best theory of this fact and the one that has provided the best insights into the general principles of speciation. There is much that is not known and recent advances in epigenetics are both surprising and striking. But none of these new insights undercuts the fact of evolution.

b. The universe is 13.8 billion years old. Its emergence was the result of a rather extraordinary event known as the Big Bang. So far the theory of this event has proven to have considerable explanatory power. There’s a good deal that still remains to be learned. We don’t know where all the dark matter is. We are unclear about how quantum theory blends with the rest of physics. But that’s okay. That’s how science works and none of these remaining conundrums is a challenge to the Big Bang model.

c. The climate is changing. There are reasons why climates change but it is incontrovertible that the recent shifts in weather, species migrations and ocean currents are the result of human activity. We still don’t quite understand the role of ocean temperatures or the impact of a melting tundra. There are also issues with some of the models of warming but these are part of normal science. None call into question the reality of climate change.

In fact, all three principles are unquestioned in science. Evolution is the guiding principle behind all the life sciences. All of biology, physiology, medicine, genetics, psychology and the other social sciences rides on the scientific foundation of evolution. To deny this reality takes a staggering amount of theological hubris and/or a willful ignorance.

The age of the universe is known for a certainty. Its emergence is explained effectively by the mathematics of the Big Bang. All of astrophysics, astronomy, planetary science and cosmology is based on this theory. It requires a childlike closing of eyes and ears to not grasp this.

The changes in the planet’s climate over the past half-century have been so compelling that there is no coherent explanation for it other than it is the result of the build-up of greenhouse gases caused by human activity.

Yet, for reasons that escape a simple analysis, all three of these incontrovertible, foundational principles of modern science have been in the cross-hairs of conservative politicians and fundamentalist Christians.[1] Despite the fact that they are universally accepted by science and, despite their seeming independence from each other, they have been clumped together into an awkward assemblage of “things that must be stopped.” How this happened is an intriguing and depressing tale.

It began with attacks on evolution. While there’s a long history here (back to Scopes in the 1920’s), it’s the recent moves from Fundamentalists that are worrisome. According to the National Center for Science Education, over 65 bills have been offered in over twenty states to compel the teaching of one or another version of creationism as somehow scientifically equivalent to evolution.

A recent article in Science by evolutionary biologist Nicholas Matzke outlines these efforts. Amusingly, he uses a standard model of evolution to show how each these efforts can be seen as the intellectual progeny of earlier efforts beginning with ones based on Biblical literalism. As Matzke notes, these earlier incarnations couldn’t withstand 1st Amendment scrutiny because they blatantly violated the Establishment Clause.

He charts the efforts to slip under the Constitutionalist’s radar. The first was the effort to disguise the theological components by rebranding “Creationism” as “Creation Science.” When that failed judicial muster, they tried re-clothing it as “Intelligent Design” and inserted it into bills offered under the rubric “Academic Freedom Acts” (AFA).

These had some impact on state legislatures and school boards but ultimately were unmasked. The theological, Christian roots were just too obvious to be overlooked by judges with more respect for the Constitution than the Bible. The AFA’s were too transparently stealth creationism to survive.

The serious problems, the ones that now worry me, emerged with a very clever wording of an obscure piece of legislation introduced in the Ouachita Parish in Louisiana in 2008. The bill was called a “Science Education Act” (SEA). It used language borrowed from earlier AFAs that focused on alternative models of speciation (i.e., Creationism dressed up as Intelligent Design) but rather than limiting its scope to biological theory, it included the creation of the universe, its age, size and make-up, climate change and the issue of global warming and directed that all shall be part of a “critical” school curriculum.

Do not, for one second, think that this bill was designed to teach critical thinking in these areas. It was a cleverly written piece of legislation that provided a new umbrella under which to teach Biblical literalism, deny the standard model of the universe and undercut understanding of the science and empirical data base for climate change.

The Ouachita bill was pounced on by Christian conservatives and anti-science legislators and is now the basis for all new bills. Legislators in Montana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, South Carolina, Louisiana, Mississippi, Kentucky and Missouri have all introduced bills based on the Ouachita’s SEA.

Will these pass muster? Will the theological fingerprints alert courts to declare them unconstitutional? Will their anti-science bias be sufficient for them to lose support? I don’t know but this movement is gaining ground and scares the hell outta me.

I’m not naive. I’m concerned about terrorism. I worry about immigration issues. I’m disturbed by the power of money, the unscrupulous banksters, the 1%’ers, the Trumps and Cruzes posing as serious candidates for the presidency. But none of these troubles me as much as the concerted effort to degrade the educational system, to teach transparently theological beliefs as though they belonged on the same page as established scientific models, to dumb-down our students, to push them into acceptance of out-moded tradition and scripture, to turn them into mere vessels into which bankrupt ideas and beliefs can be poured and will be accepted because the real goals of science, critical thinking and rational analysis, have been stripped from the curriculum.

We survived Bush/Cheney (barely). We might survive a Trump or a Cruz presidency. But we will not survive ignorance, especially an engineered ignorance driven by theology and fostered by a major political party. The folks pushing this agenda are all Republicans. No state with a Democratic majority has introduced an SEA. The GOP has become a party of fools.

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[1] It’s worth noting that this assault on science is peculiarly American. Educated Europeans, Asians, Canadians and the rest of the developed world look at us in bewilderment. If you’re anywhere but in the US you have to look far and wide to find a Biblical literalist or climate change denialist. Alas, among the dozen or so Republicans running for the presidential nomination all are campaigning on a platform of ignorance — with the possible exception of Kasich.

The Sanders/Trump Common Core

Sanders and Trump both have wildly enthusiastic supporters and, I submit, for the same reason: they are backed by people who feel that their party didn’t come close to fulfilling the promises made or the visions dangled before their pleading eyes.

The GOP promised to undo a woman’s right to choose, to get Christianity back into the schools, to roll back gender equality, force gays back in the closet, defend “family values,” shrink government, reduce welfare and food stamps, defend the middle class, create jobs …. And they have done little to none of it. No sooner do they in office but they go back to being Republicans — supporters of the bankers, the upper echelon, the country-club set — and clearly don’t give a rat’s ass about anyone else.

The Democrats have had their version. They promise hope and change, a rebirth of the middle class, universal health care, support for education, rebuilding the country’s infrastructure, support for the environment, redistribution of wealth, breaking up the too-big-to-fail banks, instituting a progressive tax code. And when they’ve been in the White House, it hasn’t happened.

The folks flocking to Trump and to Sanders are the ones who’ve just fucking had it with things as usual. Those packing Trump’s speeches are mostly poorly educated, frustrated, working class whites who’ve finally seen that their Republican party never cared for them, not ever, not one whit.

Those chanting and dancing in the aisles for Bernie are better educated, idealistic, even romantic. They’re seriously disappointed in Obama, see Hillary as just an extension of the Bubba-Barack moderate, Wall St friendly, pro-business axis that doesn’t really care about the things they hold dear.

So we have an amusing drama shaping up. We could very well have a presidential election with two candidates running on the same platform: “My people screwed you. I will not.”

But, of course, whoever wins will screw their people. They must because the ones on the other side of the chamber will never, ever let them fulfill their dreams. And the winners? The winners will be those that always win: the oligarchs.

Ever Bernie won’t be able to stop it and Donald won’t want to.

And that’s the downer for the day…

Bernie's Single Payer v. Hillary's ACA

There’s an interesting dust-up between Sanders and Clinton on health care. Bernie, predictably, is promoting a single-payer system akin to “Medicare for All” (MFA). Hillary is maintaining that the ACA is working and that we’re better off focusing on ways to improve it, not tossing it out and starting over. She’s also pointed out that Bernie’s plan would be virtually impossible to get through Congress.

Paul Krugman has weighed in on the debate basically backing Clinton. He acknowledges that Sander’s program is a better solution to the country’s health care woes but sides with Clinton in that trying to shift over to a MFA would be horrifically disruptive, would be resisted by those who are comfortable with their present coverage through employee benefit programs and fought tooth and nail by insurance companies.

Well, I have a solution: a gradual drift from where we are today to a full-bore MFA. Begin by lowering the age of eligibility for Medicare to 63 in 2017. Then drop it three years to 60 in 2018, lower it another five years to 55 in 2019, then ten years to 45 in 2020, etc. In a relatively short time you get MFA. During the gradual shift-over phase the ACA continues to cover those who are still below the age-threshold.

The gradual approach gives all parties time to make adjustments in medical care and insurance coverage. Since Medicare doesn’t cover everything, insurance companies could continue to provide plans on the free market for extended coverage and even supply “Cadillac” plans for those who want fuller, perhaps more “luxurious” forms of care (e.g., guaranteed single-bed hospital rooms).

So how come no one’s talking about something like this? Surely I’m not the only one who’s come up with it.

Fear, Fear and More Fear in GOP

I posted a version of this on Facebook. I’m putting it here for any web-wanderers who aren’t among my “Friends” there. It went up last night, just after the seven remaining dungeon masters finished trying to scare the shit out of Americans. If that’s too cryptic, it was the sixth debate among contenders for the right to be embarassed by Hillary or, deep breath now, Bernie come November.

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I just finished watching what felt like 16 hours of verbal rolfing by a group of right-wing, psychoceramically challenged men (Carly seems to have fallen off the end of the pier of the polls) who aspire to the presidency. A thought came through. What happened to Saint Ronnie? Where was the beatified Reagan? Where did the “shining city on a hill” go? What happened to his sunny (if slightly addlepated) optimism?

I felt crushed by endless pessimism, unending despair. The country is on the road to ruin. The economy is in a free fall. No one can find a job. ISIS is coming to get us. Terrorists are everywhere. We need more guns. Everyone has to be armed against them. America has lost all respect. Our military is weak and getting weaker. Obviously 58% of our national budget isn’t enough. We need to spend more! Evil terrorists are sneaking in as immigrants disguised as doctors and teachers.

Fear, suspicion, distrust, anger were the only emotions on display. Can we please have back our upbeat Republicans. This crew is just a seriously depressing bunch of downers — not to mention that none of them has a fucking clue what they’re talking about.

I’m going to try to be upbeat about this. I refuse to believe that the average voter is stupid enough to buy the line of bullshit that these clowns are peddling. It’s hard to imagine either Hillary or Bernie losing to one of these vortexes of pessimism.