This is the second part of my braindump, notes and reflections as I read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Part one is just a short link away; Zen and the struggle of blogging
And so we move on, along the journey across America, but also into the mind and madness.
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| instagram - tech for art? |
Blind alley, though. If someone’s ungrateful and you tell him he’s ungrateful, okay, you’ve called him a name. You haven’t solved anything. @ 846The theme for this part of the story is mental models. We start to dig deeper into the split between how the two men relate to technology - Motorcycle Maintenance. The resistance to technology and insights makes a twisted sense when compared to the attitude of the farmers.
When you want to (and can!) make a better life, it makes sense to understand and celebrate the technology that makes that possible.
But when it is a given for life as you know it (love it or hate it...) - then it becomes much easier to try to mentally rebel. To break free from the small things, because you are too dependent on the larger comforts to let go. Clinging on for the love of life.
Framing makes a small detail stand out.
Like the two instagram snapshots I've added here.
One is of a lamppost not ten yards from my front door. But one day I walked on the backside of it, and two pictures "jumped out" at me. The one included above and it's twin, where the bracket was loose and the nails all gone.
The other is a daytime shots of normal clouds. But taken with my sunglasses as a "natural" filter before the choices of instagram it seems magical and mystical. The ease of use of the built in filters made me think of other ways to adjust the images on the fly.
l
But it also imposes a context that isn't there in "real life"
Sometimes we have to step outside, in order to see things in another, wider context. Or simply to bring in wild ideas that trigger new usable ideas.
We also need the models and simple boxes to cope. In a episode of House MD from 2005 (summer reruns in Norway as well...) the patient was another doctor working on helping fight malaria across Africa. And House implied that the ability to "zone out" the problems across the world (or just in the next town over) was a Darwinian trait we should cherish. If we don't focus on helping kin and those close, then they aren't there for us when we need them. And then we all fail.
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| The best camera is the one you have with you |
“That’s what you don’t see in a car, I suppose.”
Framing makes a small detail stand out.
Like the two instagram snapshots I've added here.
One is of a lamppost not ten yards from my front door. But one day I walked on the backside of it, and two pictures "jumped out" at me. The one included above and it's twin, where the bracket was loose and the nails all gone.
The other is a daytime shots of normal clouds. But taken with my sunglasses as a "natural" filter before the choices of instagram it seems magical and mystical. The ease of use of the built in filters made me think of other ways to adjust the images on the fly.
l
But it also imposes a context that isn't there in "real life"
Sometimes we have to step outside, in order to see things in another, wider context. Or simply to bring in wild ideas that trigger new usable ideas.
We also need the models and simple boxes to cope. In a episode of House MD from 2005 (summer reruns in Norway as well...) the patient was another doctor working on helping fight malaria across Africa. And House implied that the ability to "zone out" the problems across the world (or just in the next town over) was a Darwinian trait we should cherish. If we don't focus on helping kin and those close, then they aren't there for us when we need them. And then we all fail.
We were both looking at the same thing, seeing the same thing, talking about the same thing, thinking about the same thing, except he was looking, seeing, talking and thinking from a completely different dimension. @ 983Again with the frames and models - now we are moving beyond just relating to tech, and into the perceptual models themselves.
I got my first solid intro to the practical applications of using varied frames of reference first year at uni. A course built around Lee Bolman and Terrence Deal's classic management book (fourth edition, original in 1984) presenting the the four frame model. The main takeaway is how things "make sense" within each frame of reference, for the people who have "the glasses on" and play by the rules they understand or believe. Internally consistent logic.
It gives us mental maps to OUR world for US. And it also helps to better understand others and their actions. At least if you take the time to step back, examine the situation or relationship from other models or viewpoints.
And the final quote of this post sets the stage for some more ideas, but just a simple number for now: 227
The split in the book also brings to mind the "thinking - feeling" dimension. The third Jungian split in Myers Briggs test. How we (think/prefer to) make decisions.
Unusual behavior tends to produce estrangement in others which tends to further the unusual behavior and thus the estrangement in self-stoking cycles until some sort of climax is reached. @1253
