Self-Renewal: The individual and the innovative society John W. Gardner
(Q, xvii) The great virtue of a free people is to be that fertile seedbed, not - as some have supposed - to be always right or enlightened but to be the soil from which enlightenment can spring.
(R, xx) “Excellence” by Gardner
(Q, xx) A society that has reached heights of excellence may already be caught in the rigidities that will bring it down.
(Q, xxi) The renewal of societies and organizations can go forward only if someone cares. Apathy and lowered motivation are the most widely noted characteristics of a civilization in decline.
(N) Learning is a tricky thing; by narrowing down the actions you'll take and the information you'll receive, you allow yourself to focus, master, and get stuff done.
(N, 6) We have a name for change and growth gone wild. We call it cancer.
(R, 130) Fiske and Maddi, “Functions of varied experience”
(N, 131) Jerome Bruner, “The Process of Education”
(Q, 11-12) [self-directed learning] The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursuing his own education. This will not be a widely shared pursuit until we get over our odd conviction that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else.
(Q, 21) All too often we give our young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants. We are stuffing their heads with the products of earlier innovation rather than teaching them how to innovate. We think of the mind as a structure to be filled when we should be thinking of it as an instrument to be used.
(Q, 23) All learning is specialization in the sense that it involves reinforcement of some responses rather than others.
(P, 23-26) Being a generalist allows you to specialize in what is needed at that moment. Educating people as generalists gives them the opportunity to be generalists no matter what they choose to specialize in later. You could say that being a generalist allows you to move between different specialties.
(P, 28-29) Sometimes the hard part is not innovating but in convincing others to accept an innovation.
(P, 31) Many large innovations are the sum of many small improvements, but we persist in dramatizing the lone inventor.
(I) Innovation and creativity are not the same… but what do the two words mean?
(N, 33) Innovators will be controversial; they need protection. Innovators are not necessarily “smart” in the sense of having a high IQ. Innovators master their craft, but they go beyond mastery.
(N) Innovators may be more than masters of their craft, but they need to master it nonetheless; you can't make a breakthrough painting without some technical skills.
(I) What is the relationship between creativity, revolutions, and self-renewal?
(P, 35-39) Creative people are open. They have a high degree of self-awareness and are open to things out of the ordinary - and consequently not to some ordinary things, which makes them appear eccentric. Creative people are independent, not exhibitionist; they don't waste time being nonconformist about trifles. They are free from social pressures but not adrift or isolated from society. Creative people are flexible; they are playful, meta, and tolerant of ambiguity. They have the capacity to find order in ambiguity and to create order from chaos. That is why they are comfortable in chaos where others are not.
(Q, 39) The truly creative person is not an outlaw but a lawmaker.
(P, 38-39) In contrast to creative people, revolutionaries must be rigid to get their points home.
(Q, 39) Thus arises the familiar problem of what to do with the revolutionaires when the revolution is over.
(R, 133) C. Northcote Parkinson, “Parkinson's Law”
(P, 44-45) Unwritten rules are a bigger problem than written rules; you don't know what they are and you often can't talk about them.
(P, 47) Death through optimization: Optimization improves things, but concern with optimization over getting the task done is deadly.
(R, 134) John Stewart Mill, “On Liberty”
(Q, 57) [size] Mass society searches for common denominators.
(P, 55-57) Tyrrany without a tyrant: There is no “villain” that makes individuals unable to do things, but society's structure is set up so they do not.
(N, 57) [size] Are humans just overreaching the scales of communities we have evolved to deal with?
(Q, 58) The individual conforms because it seems like the sensible way to keep the organization running smoothly… The Image Managers encourage the individual to fashion himself into a smooth coin, negotiable in any market.
(N, 58) Two opposing dangers: standardization and specialization. At worst you can end up being a particular standard cog in a big machine.
(P, 59-60) Modern life is abstracted; our causes and effects go in and out of a black box. We don't know what our actions do, or to whom.
(Q, 60) A well-known government official offered a poignant vignette of modern organizational life when he said: 'What we sign we haven't written, and what we have written somebody else signs.'
(N, 61) Gardner talks about the DIY movement as an impulse against a prefabricated world.
(R, 134) Charles Frankel, “The Democratic Prospect”
(IQ, 67) …freedom is the existence of alternatives or choices.
(Q, 68) The ever-renewing organism (or society) is not one which is convinced that it enjoys eternal youth. It knows that it is forever growing old and must do something about it.
(P, 69) Need a place for “loyal opposition” - people who agree with the mission but disagree with the current actions being undertaken to fulfill it.
(P, 70) Belonging to many groups [church, company, profession, hobby, etc] means that no one organization dominates your life.
(R, 71) Robert's Rules of Order
(R, 134) David Riesman, “Individualism Reconsidered”
(N, 73) It is possible to be conformist to a nonconformist (or nonmajority) position.
(R, 135) Peter Drucker, “Managing in Turbulent Times”
(R, 135) Alfred North Whitehead, “Science and the Modern World”
(R, 135) Daniel Lerner, “The Passing of Traditional Society”
(IR) Is there a book on being an university president somewhere?
(R, 135) Paul Tillich, “The Courage to Be”
(N, 95) The relationship between the group and the individual is odd. One cannot contribute to a group without a sense of self, yet one forms a selfe from belonging to groups.
(P, 102) Humans seek ways to order the universe that show them where they fit in the grand scheme of things.
(R) Thoreau, “Walden”
(R) Gordon Allport, “Becoming”
(N, 103-104) We don't all need to be uber-people. [This is what Anthony Roldan, Olin '08, reminded me of in an Apr 2007 email after I sent him my Uberstudents blog post.]
(Q, 104) A good many of the most valuable people in any society will never burn with zeal for anything except the integrity and health and well-being of their own families - and if they achieve those goals, we need ask little more of them. There are other valuable members of a society who will never generate conviction about anything beyond the productive output of their hands or minds - and a sensible society will be grateful for their contributions. Nor will it be too quick to define some callings as noble and some as ordinary. One may not quite accept Oliver Wendell Holmes' dictum - “Every calling is great when greatly pursued” - but the grain of truth is there.
(Q, 104, source=“Oliver Wendell Holmes, 'The Law,' speech given at the Suffolk Bar Association Dinner, Feb. 5 1885, /Speeches,/ (Little, Brown, and Co., 1913)”) Every calling is great when greatly pursued.
(P, 107) To get people to make changes they have to believe change is possible and that they can make it.
(R, 138) J. Bronowski essay “Science and Human Values”
(R, 138) Joseph Campbell, “The Hero with A thousand faces”
(P, 116-118) Consensus of values must take place in the middle depth; not externalities and not deep personal motivations. In the case of the USA, these values are things like freedom, justice, and brotherhood.
(Q, 124-125) Each generation is presented with victories that it did not win for itself. A generation that has fought for freedom may pass that freedom on to the next generation. But it cannot pass on the intense personal knowledge of what it takes in courage and endurance to win freedom.
(Q, 127) Men and women who understand this truth [that society is a living, changing thing] and accept its implications will be well fitted to renew… their society as well. They will understand that the tasks of renewal are endless. They will understand that their society is not like a machine that is created at some point in time and then maintained with a minimum of effort; a society is being continuously re-created, for good or for ill, by its members. This will strike some as a burdensome responsibility, but it will summon others to greatness.