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Third Saturday Seminar 2011-2012
Return of the Elders, Unleash your Wisdom

Session 08

“Creativity”

Unleashing Your Wisdom in the Brave New World of Tomorrow may be a Challenge.

Curt Gibby

Saturday, 19 May, 2012
 
9:30AM til 12:00 noon

This meeting is the last meeting of the Third Saturday Seminar until we start again in September 2012 .

Room B-102, Lone Star College – Montgomery
3200 College Park Drive – Conroe, TX – 77384 – 936.273.7000

Who can predict what will start to happen on the day after Tuesday, November 6, 2012?  Will we have a two term president or a brand new one?

Alert! The  Early Voting for the primaries has started and will continue until the 25th.
The Primary Election is Tuesday, 29 May, the day after Memorial Day is celebrated

How long does it take to pay off a $15 trillion debt?  Does someone have a secret business plan on a spreadsheet that has it all figured out?

Will the world economy miraculously multiply itself by 10?

Will the sequestration monster be allowed to kick in, end the Bush Tax cuts, enforce austerity on all departments of government? (Sequestration: In U.S. law, a procedure by which an automatic spending cut is triggered, introduced to the federal budget in 1985 by the Gramm–Rudman–Hollings Balanced Budget Act, most recently implemented in the Budget Control Act of 2011)

What options will the people have?  What could lighten the load of a debt brought on by 12 or more years fiscal and political irresponsibility on the part of  our political and economic leadership and consumers alike?

Will the dynamic of  “top down” pipe dream leadership be continuing?  That is, all those entities who have real control of the  minds of our elected politicians, continue to flood us with their ideologies and ideologically driven ideas which they will continue to force on to the people whether its more bailouts paid for by the victims for banks and corporations or an “affordable” health care plan, that is not affordable to a large chunk of the population and preserves all the prerogatives of the medical industry, insurance companies and pharmaceuticals, that are driving the cost of health care through the roof.?

Will our savings accounts and money market ever start to pay us interest?

Approximately 1 in 4 Americans are wage earners. 310 million people living here and only 77,500,000 are actually earning a wage or have a reportable income! You and I who are working are paying all the bills, taxes, national debt, or any and all expenses incurred by the Government and or any other entity spending money, including our own needs!!!

We The People of the United States may need to start seriously and cooperatively looking for creative solutions to some Very Complex Problems, because we will not see any  promise from those who have been promising us grandiose schemes of  world power and leadership for as long as we can remember, yet they  cannot or will not figure out how to  pay our bills, nor will they rein in those who see the American worker as a beast of burden …

Being realistic, none of us has serious delusions of starting a revolution.  On the other hand, I don’t believe Rosa Parks was planning a revolution either, but when destiny called, she responded.  She was ready.  I wonder if she was surprised when she realized just how many other people were as hungry (or hungrier) as she was for it to happen.  Did she consciously give herself permission? (Or, like other American heros, just took the appropriate action …)

In 1965, L.B.J. told M.L.K., “Make me do it.”

An anecdote from a former member of the LBJ administration.

ROGER WILKINS, April 28, 2008:

   “Now, let me just make two observations about presidents and getting things done. There is an old story that maybe some of you have heard. Sidney Hillman was a big labor leader. He had helped Roosevelt when Roosevelt was the governor and he helped him in the ’32 campaign.
So he went to the White House and he was welcomed as he should have been.
He said, “Here is what you have to do Mr. President, da, da, da, da, da, da.”
And the story goes that President Roosevelt said, “Sidney I agree with everything in your proposal, it is all exactly right, now you just go home and make me do it.”

    And the same thing happened with Lyndon Johnson and the Voting Rights Act. He wanted to do it, he had used up a lot of chits on the Civil Rights Act and he just engaged in a very long romancing of Martin Luther King, Jr., to make sure that King put his people on the streets and kept the people’s feet to the fire and move along and move along and he essentially said to King – – make me do it.

    And King put the people on the street, and then there was pressure from inside the government on the president, with which I was associated – – and it happened.”

– Roger Wilkins

Read more

Here’s the assignment:

Back on May 14th,  about the same time I became aware of the work of Jonathan Haidt that informed our session last month, I happened to catch an Episode of NPR’s, Terry Gross’ Fresh Air where Dave Davies interviewed a prolific young man named Jonah Lehrer who has completed his third book, “Imagine: How Creativity Works”.  Jonah is 31 years old and looks younger.  He his writing has the clarity of youth.  (Compare Lehrers observations with those of Tim Harford, God Complex vs. Trail and Error).

Are they at odds?  I don’t think so.

We will use this interview to inform our last meeting of the 2011-2012 Third Saturday Seminar.  I hope it will give you encouragement to think about what we have worked on this Session and to entice you to start thinking ahead to the Fall when, rest assured, the “Interesting Times will again manifest themselves.”

The following link will take you to the NPR page where you can read the introduction, listen to the 32 minute audio (downloadable in audio and PDF).

If you like video, there are numerous short and long videos of Jonah Lehrer via Google and YouTube.

‘Imagine’ That: Fostering Creativity in the Workplace

An Excerpt:

“Moments of insight are a very-well studied psychological phenomenon with two defining features,” Lehrer tells Fresh Air’s Dave Davies. “The answer comes out of the blue – when we least expect it. … [And] as soon as the answer arrives we know this is the answer we’ve been looking for. … The answer comes attached with a feeling of certainty, it feels like a revelation. These are the two defining features of a moment of insight, and they do seem to play a big role in creativity.”

Scientists have determined that people in a relaxed state and a good mood are far more likely to develop innovative or creative thoughts. And companies are now taking advantage of this fact. Lehrer points to 3M, which started out making packaging tape and has now expanded into other sectors including electronics and pharmaceutical delivery.

Jonah Lehrer

Jonah Lehrer (b June 25, 1981) is an American author and journalist who writes on the topics of psychology, neuroscience, and the relationship between science and the humanities. He has published three books. Simon Ings has written, “Lehrer fancies himself – and not without reason – as a sort of one-man third culture, healing the rift between sciences and humanities by communicating and contrasting their values in a way that renders them comprehensible to partisans of either camp.”[1]

 

By way of review, last meeting we watched:

Bill Myers interview social psychologist Jonathan Haidtwho talked about the psychological underpinnings of our contentious culture, why we can’t trust our own opinions, and the demonizing of our adversaries.

Economics writer Tim Harford studies complex systems — and finds a surprising link among the successful ones: they were built through trial and error. In this sparkling talk from TED Global 2011, he asks us to embrace our randomness and start making better mistakes.

Need To Know Episode on Texas Justice.  How did an unlikely alliance between left and right lead to a revolution in how criminals are treated in one of the nation’s reddest states? Need to Know’s Maria Hinojasa explains.

Regardless of the outcome, and of the abilities of those we the voters will choose, it is We The People who are going to be living in and rebuilding the once respected American culture and economy.   While our elected leaders will try to continue to let the country be played by cultures and interests that are trying to get us to self-destruct. (You heard me quote bin Laden on that subject.)

It’s turned into a war between good and evil.  By definition one side is pure and the other side is impure.  It’s OK to fabricate the accusations to be venomously heaved at the other side, to totally disrespect them and their concerns.  Reality, common sense, intelligence are not in the equation, only the party line.

Let’s have a great conversation Saturday!

Current Events: As usual we will start out with a current events  session, 

Let’s see Syria (?),  Greece, France, “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles” (literally, “Germany, Germany above all”), the price of oil (Will we need to bail out the speculators who who are stuck with high priced oil?. JP Morgan Chase looses 2, 4, or 8 billion by  calling a bet an hedge (how did they do it.).  Crime Stoppers has offered a $200,000 reward, its largest nationally, in an effort to solve the Houston murder of Iranian activist Gelareh Bagherzadeh.

 

This May 19 2012 meeting is the last meeting of the Third Saturday Seminar until we start again in September 2012 .

Third Saturday Seminars

    To refer to an ancient Chinese saying, our world is (still) in interesting times and individual citizens are assaulted with a blinding array of propaganda from every conceivable source. The Third Saturday Seminar is about demystification of what is going on around us. Time will also be spent on current events.  No fee to members. Class meets normally on the Third Saturday of the Month, except close to holidays and Spring break.
LSC-Montgomery B102
16199 Sa and 5/18 (to be confirmed) 9:30AM-12PM Gibby

Come, join the discussion! Let’s see if there is hope!

ALL Montgomery Summer Schedule

Campus & Parking Map

Registration
How do I register for a class?
You can fill out a registration form and submit it to us: In person: LSC-Montgomery (3200 College Park Dr., Conroe, TX 77384), Continuing Education/ALL Office Building E (Room 205)

See you Saturday — Thanks for your support!

DON‘T (be) PANIC(ked)

Curt Gibby
Director, Third Saturday Seminar
P. O Box 73207
Houston, Tx 77273

http://northstarinst.org/TSS/

P.S. As usual if anything in this notice doesn’t make sense, please let me know. (You won’t be the first, I will appreciate it and say, “Thank you,” Curt)