The Saunterer

Elliot Eisner on how to enrich your experience

    As John Dewey knew and Elliot Eisner knows, experience is made fuller and richer when we slow down our perception of experience:

    It is true that we have certain words to designate high levels of intelligence; we describe somebody as “swift,” or “bright,” or “sharp,” or “fast on the pickup.” Speed in its swift state is a descriptor for those we call “smart.” Such folks are “a quick read.” Yet, I would argue that one of the qualities we ought to be promoting in our schools is a slowing down of perception, the ability to take one’s time, to smell the flowers, to really perceive in the Deweyan sense, and not merely to recognize what one looks at.
    Recognition by contrast, Dewey pointed out, is about attaching a label to an object or event; this is an automobile, that is a wagon, this is an elm tree, that’s a pine. The task of recognition has to do with a classification and assignment of a label that stands for the event. Much of early reading instruction is of this type.
    What perception entails is not so much classification or categorization, but a savoring, a qualitative exploration of a variety of qualities, qualities that constitute the qualitative wholeness of the object or event being perceived. Dewey argued, and I endorse his argument, that learning how to slow down perception is one of the primary ways in which one can enrich one’s experience. For slowed down perception to become a habitual attitude will require a cultural change in America. I do not know whether we are ready for such a change; I do know that much of human experience is dissipated or weak because of the absence of time that needs to be taken in order to see, to really see.   

    (Quoted from “What Education Can Learn from the Arts,” by Elliot Eisner. Pages 6 to 9 in Art Education / March 2009.)
    Elliot Eisner says that the best source he knows of that distinguishes between recognition and perception is in John Dewey’s book, Art as Experience.
    For a brief biography of Elliot Eisner, click here. For images of or relating to Elliot Eisner, click here.

Charles Darwin on the superiority of woman

    In his book, The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin put woman first for her nurturing and altruism:

    Woman seems to differ from man in mental disposition, chiefly in her greater tenderness and less selfishness. . . Man . . . delights in competition, and this leads to ambition which passes too easily into selfishness.

    (Quoted from page 326 of The Descent of Man, and selection in relation to sex, Vol II, by Charles Darwin. London: John Murray,1871.)
    For a brief biography of Charles Darwin, click here. For images of or relating to Charles Darwin, click here.

Bertrand Russell on asking yourself to help the world

    In eight words, Bertrand Russell tells the complete story:

    When if not now? Whom if not I?

    (Quoted from page 274 of Brand Spirit: How cause related marketing builds brands, by Hamish Pringle and Marjorie Thompson. John Wiley & Sons, 1999.)
    For a brief biography of Bertrand Russell, click here. For images of or relating to Bertrand Russell, click here.
    For biographical information about Hamish Pringle, click here. For the same about Marjorie Thompson, click here.

Woody Guthrie’s credo

    Here it is, extracted from his handwritten notes prepared for his niece, just born, notes he labeled “A Few Kind Words, prepared for Miss Mary Ann Guthrie, by her uncle, Woody Guthrie, 2-5-37,” and closed with “With love always, W. Guthrie-–the soul doctor.”

     Love principles, not people. Love equal and impartial. Love for love’s sake. For God is love. Hate nobody. Harm no living thing. Live to help and to serve always.
    Think. Do your own of this. If somebody else were supposed to do it for you-–another head would be on your shoulders. Your head is your own for a reason. Think upon it till you find it, then use it thus.
    Develop talent. Express that universe moving in your soul. Meditate and become inspired to supersede. Be not ordinary. Be not normal. Live supernormally. Tell the world what is in your heart.
   
    Quoted from pages 54-62 of Woody’s Road: Woody Guthrie’s Letters Home, Drawings, Photos, and Other Unburied Treasures, by Mary Jo Guthrie Edgmon and Guy Logsdon. Paradigm Publishers, 2012. We can’t say enough good things about this book, published on the one hundred-year anniversary of his birth. For Woody’s spirit coming out of the pages, this is the one.
    For Woody Guthrie singing “This Land is Your Land,” click here.
    Woody Guthrie loved dogs and cats, a condition that makes it into the lyrics of his song "Howdi Do," which appear here.
    For a brief biography of Woody Guthrie, click here. For images of or relating to Woody Guthrie, click here.
    To learn about Mary Jo Guthrie Edgmon, click here. For images of or relating to Mary Jo Guthrie Edgmon, click here.
    For a brief biography of Guy Logsdon, click here. For images of or relating to Guy Logsdon, click here.

Rita Rudner on how having pets beats having children

    As Rita Rudner puts it,

    My husband and I are either going to buy a dog or have a child. We can’t decide whether to ruin the carpet or ruin our lives.

    (Quoted from page 3  of Why Have Kids?: A new mom explores the truth about parenting and happiness, by Jessica Valenti. New Harvest, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2012.)
    For a brief biography of Rita Rudner, click here. For images of or relating to Rita Rudner, click here.
    For Jessica Valenti’s website, click here. For images of or relating to Jessica Valenti, click here.

Hugo Munsterberg on bias in the mass media

    When freedom of speech is exercised in mass communication, much of it is made up, biased, lies. Democracy, it follows, is less elevated above totalitarianism than it appears in concept. A hundred years ago Hugo Munsterberg wrote of part of the cause:

    Those who have gone through the high school of reporterdom have acquired a new instinct by which they see and hear only that which can create a sensation, and accordingly their report becomes not only a careless one, but hopelessly distorted.

    (Quoted from page 112 Trust Me I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator, by Ryan Holiday. Portfolio / Penguin. 2012.)
    For a brief biography of Hugo Munsterberg, click here. For images of or relating to Hugo Munsterberg, click here.
    For a brief biography of Ryan Holiday, click here. For images of or relating to Ryan Holiday, click here.
    We leave you with Ryan Holiday’s method of deceptively padding essays, in an article he called "How to Write Any Essay: The Spartan System," which you can read by clicking here.

Deborah Feldman on breaking free of a straightjacket culture

    Society’s not-to-be-questioned oughts can be imprisoning. Think of: “Baby making is the proper place of young ladies.”
    Parental expectations can be imprisoning. “We sacrificed everything for you to attend college, and you are refusing to go?”
    Religion can be imprisoning. “Make your life as your pious elders tell you.” Deborah Feldman tells of her struggle with herself while growing up to break free of her Hasidic roots:

    For a while I thought I could un-Jew myself. Then I realized that being Jewish is not in the ritual or the action. It is in one’s history. I am proud of being Jewish, because I think that’s where my indomitable spirit comes from, passed down from ancestors who burned in fires of persecution because of their blood, their faith. I am Jewish; I am invincible. I feel this more than I ever did, like I have come home into myself, and God is no longer a prescription for paradise but an ally in my heart.
    Here in this city so far from my home, I realize that the day has come. It is this morning, drinking sweet chicory coffee on a balcony overlooking the lonely efforts of street cleaners hosing down the debris of the previous night’s revelries. Was it not for this that I left? This freedom, to be so completely released from ties that I could go anywhere, be anyone, do anything? Finally, it comes, the certainty I have been waiting for. It knocks at my door bearing café au lait in a silver pot, saying, “You’ve made it.” This is why I did it.
    For those of you who shove words like sinner and heretic in my face, the ones who ask, “How dare you?” let me just say, I dare because I am free. I own myself, and so I have full power to make decisions that concern me. And if you want that too, that’s okay, because that’s something we all deserve. Even if they tell you different.
     
    (Quoted from page 252 of Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots, by Deborah Feldman. Simon & Schuster, 2012.)
    For a brief biography of Deborah Feldman, click here. For images of or relating to Deborah Feldman, click here.

Aristotle on philanthropy

    Provided you have more than enough money to live on, is it easy to practice philanthropy? Aristotle doubted it:
 
    To give away money is an easy matter and in any man’s power. But to decide to whom to give it, and how large, and when, and for what purpose and how, is neither in every man’s power nor an easy matter.

    (Quoted from page 3 of Giving Well: The Ethics of Philanthropy, edited by Patricia Illingworth, Thomas Pogge, and Leif Wenar. Oxford University Press, 2011.)
    For a brief biography of Aristotle, click here. For images relating to Aristotle, click here.

Václav Havel on what to work for

    Nobody but certain businessmen or a hypocrite would deny that Václav Havel has this right:
   
    Work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed.

    (Quoted from page 227 of Taking Philanthropy Seriously: Beyond Noble Intentions to Responsible Giving, edited by William Damon and Susan Verducci. Indiana University Press, 2006.)
    For a brief biography of William Damon, click here. For images of or relating to William Damon, click here.
    For the home page of Susan Verducci, click here. For images of or relating to Susan Verducci, click here.

Pablo Picasso on creative work

    When Pablo Picasso brings the subject of chains into the urge to create, he is speaking of the very best creators:

    Where do I get this power of creating and forming? I don’t know. I have only one thought: work. I paint just as I breathe. When I work, I relax; not doing anything or entertaining visitors makes me tired. It’s still often 3:00 a.m. when I switch off my light . . . There’s never a moment when you can say, “I’ve worked well and to-morrow is Sunday.” As soon as you stop, it’s because you’ve started again. You can put a picture aside and say you won’t touch it again. But you can never write THE END . . . Freedom one must be very careful with that. In painting as in everything else. Whatever you do, you find yourself once more in chains. Freedom not to do one thing requires that you do another, imperatively. And there you have it, chains.

    (Quoted from page 78 of A Psychoanalytic Approach to Visual Artists by James W. Hamilton. Karnac, 2012.)
    For a brief biography of Pablo Picasso, click here. For images of or relating to Pablo Picasso, click here.
    For biographical information about James W. Hamilton, click here.