Month: January 2011

The Imagined Tiger

/ Elizabeth Gaucher / 3 Comments

Sometimes I simply wonder, does everything have to mean something?

The shootings in Arizona scream out for commentary, and there is plenty of it already.  I think David Gergen’s piece, “No Time for Finger Pointing,” does an excellent job of acknowledging some possible contributing factors to the horrible event, but also of asking for a time-out on blame casting and causality theories.

When bad things happen, we need to find cause and fix blame.  It must comfort us in some way to think that hindsight will surely demonstrate some kind of rational explanation that will stop the violence.

I’ve reached a point in my life where I no longer go through this process, because the process has failed me too many times.  There will always be random and unforeseen destructive impulses that lurch forth, striking down members of the human family who never saw it coming.

I liked what a local journalist in West Virginia had to say on Twitter: @RyRivard What is almost no one talking about re: shooting? Mental health services in U.S. Why? Probably not sexy enough/too complicated.

Everything there makes sense to me.  Sarah Palin and people of her rhetorical technique aren’t helping anything, but I hardly think it’s rational to suggest they are responsible for what a deranged individual did.  It would be comforting to think if we were all just nicer and more civil to one another in public discourse, unhinged and unstable young men wouldn’t pick up firearms and take out their rage at the world in bloody displays of false courage.  Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work like that.

How does it work?  Obviously, no one knows.  My small contribution to the conversation is this: Sometimes, as hard as it is to swallow, there is no answer.  This has happened before in human history, and it will keep happening, no matter what we do or don’t do.  None of us are so powerful as to legislate or meditate a 180 degree change in human nature across the board.

Get serious about mental health services and yes, gun control laws especially where mental health is at issue.  Don’t get sucked into phony debates about whether the right or the left is to blame for this sad and terrible event.  Be a little less likely to rant and rave, but be willing to disagree and to talk.  And realize, perhaps, that sometimes there is no deep meaning to or clear cause of tragedy.  Someone’s death may be senseless, but that does not mean his or her life was.  Focusing on life is my biggest comfort right now.

As my friend Rick summed up so well in his post Causes and Reasons, we are wired to keep trying to find the patterns, and perhaps that is not such a terrible thing after all.

Often we’re wrong in attributing agency to things that just happen, but in evolutionary terms the consequences of a false positive are not as bad as that of a false negative. Being mistaken in trying to escape an imagined tiger isn’t as costly as not trying to escape from a real one.

Image credit: CNT Photo Illustrations

Taking a Risk on Terrible Lizards

/ Elizabeth Gaucher / 5 Comments

From “When Was the First Dinosaur Discovered?”

Way back in 1676, Robert Plot, the curator of an English museum, described and drew a thigh bone that he believed belonged to a giant man. Although that fossil disappeared without a trace, the surviving illustration suggests that it may well have been part of a “Megalosaurus.”  Later, in 1822, large teeth discovered in England by Mary Ann Mantell and her husband, Gideon, were thought to be the remains of a huge and extinct iguana. It wasn’t until 1841 that British scientist Richard Owen came to realize that such fossils were distinct from the teeth or bones of any living creature. The ancient animals were so different, in fact, that they deserved their own name. So Owen dubbed the group “Dinosauria,”which means “terrible lizards.”

My friend Sara hooked me up with this TED video that explores issues of schools and creativity – more specifically, does our educational system and prevailing philosophy create such a fear of failure that children are dis-incentivized to take the very risks of failure that lead to break through discoveries?  It’s a really good watch and listen, but my favorite part was this simple concept:

If you are afraid to make a mistake, you will never create anything original.

My child is deeply in love with dinosaurs right now.  As we were playing the other day and I explained the first dinosaur discoveries, how they were made, what people first thought, etc.,  I was overcome with how absolutely insane the first people to publicize theories about their paleontology must have appeared.  Talk about risk!

OK, we found these bones.  They are really big.  No, bigger.  A bit bigger.  Right.  That’s what I said, yes.  No, more like reptiles.  Not really sure yet.  Uh huh.  No, pretty sure they were in the air and water too.  Looks like just about all over the world.  How long ago?  OK………are you sitting down?

Creativity is not just about art.  Creativity is, as Sir Ken Robinson explains in the video, at its core about the willingness to be wrong; maybe more than a little bit wrong.  It’s that risk that leads to new discovery, to shifts in our understanding of what is real and possible that have the potential to change everything we think we can do.

This year, let’s support more students in their willingness to take risk, and to be wrong.  We may say that’s not what we expected, is it?   Way to go trying to figure it out on your own.

I’m proud of you for taking that risk.

Image credit: Land Use History of the Colorado Plateau