Conceptual Skills Quotes

If, as a white person, I conceptualize racism as a binary and I place myself on the “not racist” side, what further action is required of me? No action is required, because I am not a racist. Therefore, racism is not my problem; it doesn’t concern me and there is nothing further I need to do. This worldview guarantees that I will not build my skills in thinking critically about racism or use my position to challenge racial inequality.

Like chess masters and firefighters, premodern villagers relied on things being the same tomorrow as they were yesterday. They were extremely well prepared for what they had experienced before, and extremely poorly equipped for everything else. Their very thinking was highly specialized in a manner that the modern world has been telling us is increasingly obsolete. They were perfectly capable of learning from experience, but failed at learning without experience. And that is what a rapidly changing, wicked world demands—conceptual reasoning skills that can connect new ideas and work across contexts. Faced with any problem they had not directly experienced before, the remote villagers were completely lost. That is not an option for us. The more constrained and repetitive a challenge, the more likely it will be automated, while great rewards will accrue to those who can take conceptual knowledge from one problem or domain and apply it in an entirely new one.

If, as a white person, I conceptualize racism as a binary and I see myself on the "not racist" side, what further action is required of me? No action is required at all, because I am not a racist. Therefore racism is not my problem; it doesn't concern me and there is nothing further I need to do. This guarantees that, as a member of the dominant group, I will not build my skills in thinking critically about racism or use my position to challenge racial inequality.

Conceptual art isn't art, but it is Jewish. It signals the culmination of the Jewish takeover of modern art. Conceptual art requires no artistic ability, talent or skill. That's why Jews gravitate toward it and promote it. It's an example of Jews defining art as what they do rather than defining art in its relationship to Logos.

Mastery in any field, from cooking to chess to brain surgery, is a gradual accretion of knowledge, conceptual understanding, judgment, and skill. These are the fruits of variety in the practice of new skills, and of striving, reflection, and mental rehearsal.

A family meeting is a procedure, and it requires no less skill than performing an operation.” One basic mistake is conceptual. To most doctors, the primary purpose of a discussion about terminal illness is to determine what people want—whether they want chemo or not, whether they want to be resuscitated or not, whether they want hospice or not. We focus on laying out the facts and the options. But that’s a mistake, Block said. “A large part of the task is helping people negotiate the overwhelming anxiety—anxiety about death, anxiety about suffering, anxiety about loved ones, anxiety about finances,” she explained. “There are many worries and real terrors.” No

Inequality is neither economic nor technological; it is ideological and political. This is no doubt the most striking conclusion to emerge from the historical approach I take in this book. In other words, the market and competition, profits and wages, capital and debt, skilled and unskilled workers, natives and aliens, tax havens and competitiveness—none of these things exist as such. All are social and historical constructs, which depend entirely on the legal, fiscal, educational, and political systems that people choose to adopt and the conceptual definitions they choose to work with.

The purpose of a relationship is to decide what part of yourself you'd like to see "show up", not what part of another you can capture and hold. There can be only one purpose for relationships - and for all of life: to be and to decide Who You Really Are. [...] The test of your relationships has had to do with how well the other lived up to your ideas, and how well you saw yourselves living up to his or hers. Yet the only true test has to do with how well you live up to yours. Relationships are sacred because they provide life's grandest opportunity - indeed, its only opportunity - to create and produce the experience of your highest conceptualization of Self.

The problem with this game of special characteristics is that non-humans can never win. When we determine that parrots have the conceptual ability to understand and manipulate single-digit numbers, we demand that they be able to understand and manipulate double-digit numbers in order to be sufficiently like us. When a chimpanzee indicates beyond doubt that she has an extensive vocabulary, we demand that she exhibit certain levels of syntactical skill in order to demonstrate that her mind is like ours. The irony, of course, is that whatever characteristic we are talking about will be possessed by some nonhumans to a greater degree than some humans, but we would never think it appropriate to exploit those humans in the ways that we do nonhumans.

I am a firm believer that digital imaging has already rivaled the chemical process in its ability to make fine prints. An exceptional digital print, on a fine quality paper, can take on all the delicacy of a masterful photogravure. Each is, after all, ink on paper. The unfortunate thing is that skillful digital fine art photography is being created by so few, and today’s artworld is brimming with hastily made, conceptually oriented, digital bric-a-brac.

A definition is a dictionary's explanation of the meaning of an English word using other English words, intended to be read by a whole person, applying the entirety of his or her intelligence and language skills. A semantic representation is a person's knowledge of the meaning of an English word in a conceptual structure (the language of thought), processed by a system of the brain that manipulates chunks of conceptual structure and relates them to the senses. Definitions can afford to be incomplete because they can leave a lot to the imagination of a speaker of the language. Semantic representations have to be more explicit because they are the imagination of the speaker of the language.

Among the world's full adult languages, there are no simple languages, or languages simpler than others. Even rudimentary pidgin codes that serve as linguae francae turn almost immediately into creole languages of great complexity if there are any children around learning those codes as native languages. We also see that many species have vocal skills but no language, and we see that human language can come in different modalities-spoken or signed-with equal levels of grammatical comlexity. Moreover, there are very many separate human languages, not just one, and they accomplish their tasks in ways that often seem surprisingly different. Human languages change over cultural time but do not as a result acquire increased complexity. Indeed, it seems that, at any given time, languages present the same kind of diversity and have the same degree of complexity.

Imagine a skilled botanist accompanied by someone like myself who is largely ignorant of botany taking part in a field trip into the Australian bush, with the objective of collecting observable facts about the native flora. It is undoubtedly the case that the botanist will be capable of collecting facts that are far more numerous and discerning than those I am able to observe and formulate, and the reason is clear. The botanist has a more elaborate conceptual scheme to exploit than myself, and that is because he or she knows more botany than I do. A knowledge of botany is a prerequisite for the formulation of the observation statements that might constitute its factual basis. Thus, the recording of observable facts requires more than the reception of the stimuli, in the form of light rays, that impinge on the eye. It requires the knowledge of the appropriate conceptual scheme and how to apply it.

Sound waves, regardless of their frequency or intensity, can only be detected by the Mole Fly’s acute sense of smell—it is a little known fact that the Mole Fly’s auditory receptors do not, in fact, have a corresponding center in the brain designated for the purposes of processing sensory stimuli and so, these stimuli, instead of being siphoned out as noise, bypass the filters to be translated, oddly enough, by the part of the brain that processes smell. Consequently, the Mole Fly’s brain, in its inevitable confusion, understands sound as an aroma, rendering the boundary line between the auditory and olfactory sense indistinguishable. Sounds, thus, come in a variety of scents with an intensity proportional to its frequency. Sounds of shorter wavelength, for example, are particularly pungent. What results is a species of creature that cannot conceptualize the possibility that sound and smell are separate entities, despite its ability to discriminate between the exactitudes of pitch, timbre, tone, scent, and flavor to an alarming degree of precision. Yet, despite this ability to hyper-analyze, they lack the cognitive skill to laterally link successions of either sound or smell into a meaningful context, resulting in the equivalent of a data overflow. And this may be the most defining element of the Mole Fly’s behavior: a blatant disregard for the context of perception, in favor of analyzing those remote and diminutive properties that distinguish one element from another. While sensory continuity seems logical to their visual perception, as things are subject to change from moment-to-moment, such is not the case with their olfactory sense, as delays in sensing new smells are granted a degree of normality by the brain. Thus, the Mole Fly’s olfactory-auditory complex seems to be deprived of the sensory continuity otherwise afforded in the auditory senses of other species. And so, instead of sensing aromas and sounds continuously over a period of time—for example, instead of sensing them 24-30 times per second, as would be the case with their visual perception—they tend to process changes in sound and smell much more slowly, thereby preventing them from effectively plotting the variations thereof into an array or any kind of meaningful framework that would allow the information provided by their olfactory and auditory stimuli to be lasting in their usefulness. The Mole flies, themselves, being the structurally-obsessed and compulsive creatures that they are, in all their habitual collecting, organizing, and re-organizing of found objects into mammoth installations of optimal functional value, are remarkably easy to control, especially as they are given to a rather false and arbitrary sense of hierarchy, ascribing positions—that are otherwise trivial, yet necessarily mundane if only to obscure their true purpose—with an unfathomable amount of honor, to the logical extreme that the few chosen to serve in their most esteemed ranks are imbued with a kind of obligatory arrogance that begins in the pupal stages and extends indefinitely, as they are further nurtured well into adulthood by a society that infuses its heroes of middle management with an immeasurable sense of importance—a kind of celebrity status recognized by the masses as a living embodiment of their ideals. And yet, despite this culture of celebrity worship and vicarious living, all whims and impulses fall subservient, dropping humbly to the knees—yes, Mole Flies do, in fact, have knees!—before the grace of the merciful Queen, who is, in actuality, just a puppet dictator installed by the Melic papacy, using an old recycled Damsel fly-fishing lure. The dummy is crude, but convincing, as the Mole flies treat it as they would their true-born queen.

There was nothing pretty or elegant about their robot. Compared to the gleaming machines other teams had constructed, Stinky was a study in simplicity. The PVC, the balloon, the tape measure—in each case they had chosen the most straightforward solution to a problem. It was an approach that grew naturally out of watching family members fix cars, manufacture mattresses, and lay irrigation piping. To a large swath of the population, driveway mechanics, box-frame builders, and gardeners did not represent the cutting edge of engineering know-how. They were low-skilled laborers who didn’t have access to real technology. Stinky represented this low-tech approach to engineering. But that was exactly what had impressed the judges. Lisa Spence, the NASA judge, believed that there was no reason to come up with a complex solution when an elementary one would suffice. She felt that Carl Hayden’s robot was “conceptually similar” to the machines she encountered at NASA. The guys were in shock. They marched back up to the stage and looked out at the audience with dazed smiles. Lorenzo felt a rush of emotion. The judges’ Special Prize wasn’t a consolation award. These people were giving them real recognition.

Like Italian or Portuguese or Catalan, Spanish is a wordy language, bountiful and flamboyant, with a formidable emotional range. But for these same reasons, it is conceptually inexact. The work of our greatest prose writers, beginning with Cervantes, is like a splendid display of fireworks in which every idea marches past, preceded and surrounded by a sumptuous court of servants, suitors, and pages, whose function is purely decorative. In our prose, color, temperature, and music are as important as ideas and, in some cases-Lezama Lima or Valle Inclan, for example-more so. There is nothing objectionable about these typically Spanish rhetorical excesses. They express the profound nature of a people, a way of being in which the emotional and the concrete prevail over the intellectual and the abstract. This is why Valle Inclan, Alfonso Reyes, Alejo Carpentier, and Camilo Jose Cela, to cite four magnificent prose writers, are so verbose in their writing. This does not make their prose either less skillful or more superficial than that of Valery or T.S. Eliot. They are simply quite different, just as Latin Americans are different from the English and the French. To us, ideas are formulated and captured more effectively when fleshed out with emotion and sensation or in some way incorporated into concrete reality, into life-far more than they are in logical discourse. That perhaps is why we have such a rich literature and such a dearth of philosophers.

Principles That Great Teachers Follow Great teachers know that each brain is unique and uniquely organized. Great teachers know that all brains are not equally good at everything. Great teachers know that the brain is a complex, dynamic system and is changed daily by experiences. Great teachers know that learning is a constructivist process, and that the ability to learn continues through developmental stages as an individual matures. Great teachers know that the search for meaning is innate in human nature. Great teachers know that brains have a high degree of plasticity and develop throughout the lifespan. Great teachers know that MBE science principles apply to all ages. Great teachers know that learning is based in part on the brain’s ability to self-correct. Great teachers know that the search for meaning occurs through pattern recognition. Great teachers know that brains seek novelty. Great teachers know that emotions are critical to detecting patterns, to decision-making, and to learning. Great teachers know that learning is enhanced by challenge and inhibited by threat. Great teachers know that human learning involves both focused attention and peripheral perception. Great teachers know that the brain conceptually processes parts and wholes simultaneously. Great teachers know that the brain depends on interactions with other people to make sense of social situations. Great teachers know that feedback is important to learning. Great teachers know that learning relies on memory and attention. Great teachers know that memory systems differ in input and recall. Great teachers know that the brain remembers best when facts and skills are embedded in natural contexts. Great teachers know that learning involves conscious and unconscious processes. Great teachers know that learning engages the entire physiology (the body influences the brain, and the brain controls the body).

Today, when our just-right targets are more conceptual, teachers need to employ thinking skills to unravel information that the student has organized and retained. Further, informal self-assessment and observation techniques add to the body of evidence necessary for the teacher to truly know a student’s level of performance and for the student to know his or her own level of performance in order to put forth the effort to improve.

Take a look at the following list of numbers: 4, 8, 5, 3, 9, 7, 6. Read them out loud. Now look away and spend twenty seconds memorizing that sequence before saying them out loud again. If you speak English, you have about a 50 percent chance of remembering that sequence perfectly. If you're Chinese, though, you're almost certain to get it right every time. Why is that? Because as human beings we store digits in a memory loop that runs for about two seconds. We most easily memorize whatever we can say or read within that two-second span. And Chinese speakers get that list of numbers—4, 8, 5, 3, 9, 7, 6—right almost every time because, unlike English, their language allows them to fit all those seven numbers into two seconds. That example comes from Stanislas Dehaene's book The Number Sense. As Dehaene explains: Chinese number words are remarkably brief. Most of them can be uttered in less than one-quarter of a second (for instance, 4 is "si" and 7 "qi"). Their English equivalents—"four," "seven"—are longer: pronouncing them takes about one-third of a second. The memory gap between English and Chinese apparently is entirely due to this difference in length. In languages as diverse as Welsh, Arabic, Chinese, English and Hebrew, there is a reproducible correlation between the time required to pronounce numbers in a given language and the memory span of its speakers. In this domain, the prize for efficacy goes to the Cantonese dialect of Chinese, whose brevity grants residents of Hong Kong a rocketing memory span of about 10 digits. It turns out that there is also a big difference in how number-naming systems in Western and Asian languages are constructed. In English, we say fourteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, and nineteen, so one might expect that we would also say oneteen, twoteen, threeteen, and five- teen. But we don't. We use a different form: eleven, twelve, thirteen, and fifteen. Similarly, we have forty and sixty, which sound like the words they are related to (four and six). But we also say fifty and thirty and twenty, which sort of sound like five and three and two, but not really. And, for that matter, for numbers above twenty, we put the "decade" first and the unit number second (twentyone, twenty-two), whereas for the teens, we do it the other way around (fourteen, seventeen, eighteen). The number system in English is highly irregular. Not so in China, Japan, and Korea. They have a logical counting system. Eleven is ten-one. Twelve is ten-two. Twenty-four is two- tens-four and so on. That difference means that Asian children learn to count much faster than American children. Four-year-old Chinese children can count, on average, to forty. American children at that age can count only to fifteen, and most don't reach forty until they're five. By the age of five, in other words, American children are already a year behind their Asian counterparts in the most fundamental of math skills. The regularity of their number system also means that Asian children can perform basic functions, such as addition, far more easily. Ask an English-speaking seven-yearold to add thirty-seven plus twenty-two in her head, and she has to convert the words to numbers (37+22). Only then can she do the math: 2 plus 7 is 9 and 30 and 20 is 50, which makes 59. Ask an Asian child to add three-tensseven and two-tens-two, and then the necessary equation is right there, embedded in the sentence. No number translation is necessary: It's five-tens-nine. "The Asian system is transparent," says Karen Fuson, a Northwestern University psychologist who has closely studied Asian-Western differences. "I think that it makes the whole attitude toward math different. Instead of being a rote learning thing, there's a pattern I can figure out. There is an expectation that I can do this. There is an expectation that it's sensible. For fractions, we say three-fifths. The Chinese is literally 'out of five parts, take three.' That's telling you conceptually

Theories—whether neural, mental, or conceptual—talk about intervening steps in these relationships. But instead of prompting us to search for and explore relevant variables, they frequently have quite the opposite effect. When we attribute behavior to a neural or mental event, real or conceptual, we are likely to forget that we still have the task of accounting for the neural or mental event. ...Research designed with respect to theory is also likely to be wasteful. That a theory generates research does not prove its value unless the research is valuable. Much useless experimentation results from theories, and much energy and skill is absorbed by them. Most theories are eventually overthrown, and the greater part of the associated research is discarded.

Lamm's system—dubbed the Baron Lamm Technique—worked well. From 1919 to 1930 it brought Lamm hundreds of thousands of dollars from banks around the country; after his death it was taught to John Dillinger, among others.* Lamm's system, still employed today succeeded not only because of its conceptual strength but also because Lamm was able to communicate his ideas and translate them into the seamless performance of an immensely difficult task. He was an innovator who taught with discipline and exactitude. He inspired through information. In short, Baron Lamm was a master coach.

These are the “problem children” who are periodically put through the torture of the teachers’ complaints to their parents, and through the helpless despair of seeing their parents side with the torturers. Some of these children are violently rebellious; others seem outwardly timid and passive, but are outside the reach of any pressure or influence. Whatever their particular forms of bearing the unbearable, what they all have in common is the inability to fit in, i.e., to accept the intellectual authority of the pack. (Not all “misfits” belong to this category; there are children who reject the pack for entirely different reasons, such as frustrated powerlust.) The nonconformists are heroic little martyrs who are given no credit by anyone—not even by themselves, since they cannot identify the nature of their battle. They do not have the conceptual knowledge or the introspective skill to grasp that they are unable and unwilling to accept anything without understanding it, and that they are holding to the sovereignty of their own judgment against the terrifying pressure of everyone around them.

The Very Difference Between Game Design & 3D Game Development You Always Want to Know Getting into the gaming industry is a dream for many people. In addition to the fact that this area is always relevant, dynamic, alive and impenetrable for problems inherent in other areas, it will become a real paradise for those who love games. Turning your hobby into work is probably the best thing that can happen in your career. What is Game Designing? A 3D Game Designer is a creative person who dreams up the overall design of a video game. Game design is a large field, drawing from the fields of computer science/programming, creative writing, and graphic design. Game designers take the creative lead in imagining and bringing to life video game worlds. Game designers discuss the following issues: • the target audience; • genre; • main plot; • alternative scenarios; • maps; • levels; • characters; • game process; • user interface; • rules and restrictions; • the primary and secondary goals, etc Without this information, further work on the game is impossible. Once the concept has been chosen, the game designers work closely with the artists and developers to ensure that the overall picture of the game is harmonized and that the implementation is in line with the original ideas. As such, the skills of a game designer are drawn from the fields of computer science and programming, creative writing and graphic design. Game designers take the creative lead in imagining and bringing to life video game stories, characters, gameplay, rules, interfaces, dialogue and environments. A game designer's role on a game development outsourcing team differs from the specialized roles of graphic designers and programmers. Graphic designers and game programmers have specific tasks to accomplish in the division of labor that goes into creating a video game, international students can major in those specific disciplines if desired. The game designer generates ideas and concepts for games. They define the layout and overall functionality of the Game Animation Studio. In short, they are responsible for creating the vision for the game. These geniuses produce innovative ideas for games. Game designers should have a knack for extraordinary and creative vision so that their game may survive in the competitive market. The field of game design is always in need of artists of all types who may be drawn to multiple art forms, original game design and computer animation. The game designer is the artist who uses his/her talents to bring the characters and plot to life. Who is a Game Development? Games developers use their creative talent and skills to create the games that keep us glued to the screen for hours and even days or make us play them by erasing every other thought from our minds. They are responsible for turning the vision into a reality, i.e., they convert the ideas or design into the actual game. Thus, they convert all the layouts and sketches into the actual product. It may involve concept generation, design, build, test and release. While you create a game, it is important to think about the game mechanics, rewards, player engagement and level design. 3D Game development involves bringing these ideas to life. Developers take games from the conceptual phase, through *development*, and into reality. The Game Development Services side of games typically involves the programming, coding, rendering, engineering, and testing of the game (and all of its elements: sound, levels, characters, and other assets, etc.). Here are the following stages of 3D Game Development Service, and the best ways of learning game development (step by step). • High Concept • Pitch • Concept • Game Design Document • Prototype • Production • Design • Level Creation • Programming

One of the biggest insights from brain science has to do with how our memories are made. We used to think it was repetition, which many of us experienced during our education, as we were forced to write or recite things again and again. But it turns out that it is retrieval, not repetition, that makes the difference. For conceptual learning, the evidence is clear: it is the act of retrieval—having to recall something we’ve learned—that makes learning memorable.

Let us turn now to a study of a small Newfoundland fishing village. Fishing is, in England at any rate – more hazardous even than mining. Cat Harbour, a community in Newfoundland, is very complex. Its social relationships occur in terms of a densely elaborate series of interrelated conceptual universes one important consequence of which is that virtually all permanent members of the community are kin, ‘cunny kin’, or economic associates of all other of the 285 permanent members. The primary activity of the community is cod fishing. Salmon, lobster, and squid provide additional sources of revenue. Woodcutting is necessary in off-seasons. Domestic gardening, and stints in lumber camps when money is needed, are the two other profitable activities. The community's religion is reactionary. Women assume the main roles in the operation though not the government of the churches in the town. A complicated system of ‘jinking’ – curses, magic, and witchcraft – governs and modulates social relationships. Successful cod fishing in the area depends upon highly developed skills of navigation, knowledge of fish movements, and familiarity with local nautical conditions. Lore is passed down by word of mouth, and literacy among older fishermen is not universal by any means. ‘Stranger’ males cannot easily assume dominant positions in the fishing systems and may only hire on for salary or percentage. Because women in the community are not paid for their labour, there has been a pattern of female migration out of the area. Significantly, two thirds of the wives in the community are from outside the area. This has a predictable effect on the community's concept of ‘the feminine’. An elaborate anti-female symbolism is woven into the fabric of male communal life, e.g. strong boats are male and older leaky ones are female. Women ‘are regarded as polluting “on the water” and the more traditional men would not consider going out if a woman had set foot in the boat that day – they are “jinker” (i.e., a jinx), even unwittingly'. (It is not only relatively unsophisticated workers such as those fishermen who insist on sexual purity. The very skilled technicians drilling for natural gas in the North Sea affirm the same taboo: women are not permitted on their drilling platform rigs.) It would be, however, a rare Cat Harbour woman who would consider such an act, for they are aware of their structural position in the outport society and the cognition surrounding their sex….Cat Harbour is a male-dominated society….Only men can normally inherit property, or smoke or drink, and the increasingly frequent breach of this by women is the source of much gossip (and not a negligible amount of conflict and resentment). Men are seated first at meals and eat together – women and children eating afterwards. Men are given the choicest and largest portions, and sit at the same table with a ‘stranger’ or guest. Women work extremely demanding and long hours, ‘especially during the fishing season, for not only do they have to fix up to 5 to 6 meals each day for the fishermen, but do all their household chores, mind the children and help “put away fish”. They seldom have time to visit extensively, usually only a few minutes to and from the shop or Post Office….Men on the other hand, spend each evening arguing, gossiping, and “telling cuffers”, in the shop, and have numerous “blows” (i.e., breaks) during the day.’ Pre-adolescents are separated on sexual lines. Boys play exclusively male games and identify strongly with fathers or older brothers. Girls perform light women's work, though Faris indicates '. . . often openly aspire to be male and do male things. By this time they can clearly see the privileged position of the Cat Harbour male….’. Girls are advised not to marry a fisherman, and are encouraged to leave the community if they wish to avoid a hard life. Boys are told it is better to leave Cat Harbour than become fishermen....

The good/bad binary certainly obscures the structural nature of racism and makes it difficult for us to see or understand. Equally problematic is the impact of such a worldview on our actions. If, as a white person, I conceptualize racism as a binary and I place myself on the “not racist” side, what further action is required of me? No action is required, because I am not a racist. Therefore, racism is not my problem; it doesn’t concern me and there is nothing further I need to do. This worldview guarantees that I will not build my skills in thinking critically about racism or use my position to challenge racial inequality.

The ability to conceptualize war plans and implement them on a grand scale is one of the most difficult skills for any officer to acquire. Most never acquire this ability, something that may explain why warfare has, over the long centuries of its practice, produced only a few truly great generals. Subotai became one of those generals.

The conceptual auto-disaster. The volunteer panels were shown fake safety propaganda movies in which implausible accidents were staged. Far from eliciting a humorous or sardonic response from the audience, marked feelings of hostility were shown towards the film and medical support staff. Subsequent films of genuine accidents exerted a notably calming effect. From this and similar work it is clear that Freud’s classic distinction between the manifest and latent content of the inner world of the psyche now has to be applied to the outer world of reality. A dominant element in this reality is technology and its instrument, the machine. In most roles the machine assumes a benign or passive posture - telephone exchanges, engineering hardware, etc. The twentieth century has also given birth to a vast range of machines - computers, pilotless planes, thermonuclear weapons - where the latent identity of the machine is ambiguous even to the skilled investigator. An understanding of this identity can be found in a study of the automobile, which dominates the vectors of speed, aggression, violence and desire. In particular the automobile crash contains a crucial image of the machine as conceptualized psychopathology. Tests on a wide range of subjects indicate that the automobile, and in particular the automobile crash, provides a focus for the conceptualizing of a wide range of impulses involving the elements of psychopathology, sexuality and self-sacrifice.

Basically, action is, and always will be, faster than reaction. Thus, the attacker is the one that dictates the fight. They are forcing the encounter with technique after technique that are designed to overcome any defensive techniques initiated by the defender. Much of this exchange, and determining which of the adversaries is victorious, is all a matter of split seconds. That is the gap between action and reaction. That attacker acts; the defender reacts. Military history is saturated with an uneven amount of victorious attackers compared to victorious defenders. It is common to observe the same phenomenon in popular sports, fighting competitions, in the corporate world of big business. The list goes on and on. So, how do we effectively defend ourselves when we can easily arrive at the conclusion that the defender statistically loses? It is by developing the mentality that once attacked that you immediately counter-attack. That counter-attack has to be ferocious and unrelenting. If someone throws a punch, or otherwise initiates battle with you, putting you, for a split second, on the wrong side of the action versus reaction gap. Your best chance of victory is to deflect, smoother, parry, or otherwise negate their attack and then immediately launch into a vicious counter-attack. Done properly, this forces your adversary into a reactive state, rather than an action one. You turn the table on them and become the aggressor. That is how to effectively conceptualizes being in a defensive situation. Utilizing this method will place you in a greater position to be victorious. Dempsey, Sun Tzu and General Patton would agree. Humans are very violent animals. As a species, we are capable of high levels of extreme violence. In fact, approaching the subject of unarmed combatives, or any form of combatives, involves the immersion into a field that is inherently violent to the extreme of those extremes. It is one thing to find yourself facing an opponent across a field, or ring, during a sporting match. Those contests still pit skill verses skill, but lack the survival aspects of an unarmed combative encounter. The average person rarely, if ever, ponders any of this and many consider various sporting contests as the apex of human competition. It is not. Finding yourself in a life-or-death struggle against an opponent that is completely intent on ending your life is the greatest of all human competitions. Understanding that and acknowledging that takes some degree of courage in today’s society.

The definition of art has continued to evolve and expand, but whether it’s sharing conceptual ideas, documenting history, or skillful decorating by means of sound, images, words, or movement, it’s often all about feeling. Art allows for interaction, and like a language, it can communicate and connect ideas.

The reason the rock-star engineer is so much more valuable than his counterparts isn’t unique to programming. The great software engineer is incredibly creative and can see conceptual patterns that others can’t. She has an adjustable perspective, so when she gets stuck in a specific way of thinking, she has ways to push, pull, or prod herself to look beyond. These are the same skills needed in any creative job. Patty McCord and I started to look at where exactly the rock-star principle might apply within Netflix. We divided jobs into operational and creative roles.

Tackling difficult problems requires holding many ideas at once, and not being rigidly attached to any of them, as we saw in Chapter 3. Some may even be mutually exclusive. When we gain distance from our local minds in meditation, this opens up perceptual space. People in flow states can consider many options. Kotler notes that this “knocks out the filters we normally apply to incoming information” and loosens up our identification with a single fixed reality. This greatly expands the range of possibilities our minds can juggle, opening up our creativity and productivity. Meditation produces a high-performance brain, able to solve wicked problems, as we’ll discover in Chapter 8. Take a deep breath, and think for a moment about your life. Imagine being 500% more able to solve knotty problems. Picture yourself being 490% better at acquiring new skills and eight times better at conceptual tasks. That’s mental superpower! What might your health, your work, your love life, and your finances look like if you had that superpower? Probably a whole lot better than they do now.

Watts-English, Fortson, Gibler, Hooper, & DeBellis, 2006). Further compounding this limited verbal and conceptual ability is the observation that children from low verbal families develop language skills even more slowly (Hart & Risley, 2003). This results in protracted immature language usage, fewer words, shorter sentences, and the consideration of fewer details than children from high verbal families (Papalia & Olds, 1979).

. Consciousness is based in language and that means that people with superior language skills are more conscious than those who struggle with language. Consciousness is also about concepts. The more conceptual you are, the better able you are to understand reality since reality is not made from empirical “matter” but from rational, analytic concepts. Hegel imagined reality’s defining concepts to be philosophical. In fact, they are mathematical concepts, the quintessence of rationalism. You expand and heighten your consciousness by attaining a far superior understanding of concepts. This requires thinking, not feeling, not sensing, and not mystical intuiting.

Freedom and responsibility themselves are at stake. One does not find freedom or enact responsibility by surrendering to another’s conceptualization of these ideas. Living out the rules of conscience laid down by someone else for the attainment of an unquestioned goal, a freedom designed and articulated by someone else, is the surrender of human imagination and intuition. In the more extreme versions of this, we end up with a collective momentum resulting in events such as Nazi extermination of millions of Jews, the Inquisition, or similar events recently in Africa and elsewhere. That comes from allocating one’s conscience to someone else, not attending to one’s own deeper intuitive sense of right and wrong.

This great church is an incomparable work of art. There is neither aridity nor confusion in the tenets it sets forth. . . . It is the zenith of a style, the work of artists who had understood and assimilated all their predecessors' successes, in complete possession of the techniques of their times, but using them without indiscreet display nor gratuitous feats of skill. It was Jean d'Orbais who undoubtedly conceived the general plan of the building, a plan which was respected, at least in its essential elements, by his successors. This is one of the reasons for the extreme coherence and unity of the edifice. —REIMS CATHEDRAL GUIDEBOOK[1] Conceptual

Empirical logic achieved a signal triumph in the Old Testament, where survivals from the early proto-logical stage are very few and far between. With it man reached a point where his best judgments about his relation to God, his fellow men and the world, were in most respects not appreciably inferior to ours. In fundamental ethical and spiritual matters we have not progressed at all beyond the empirico-logical world of the Old Testament or the unrivalled fusion of proto-logical intuition, 64 [see Coomaraswamy, Review of Religion, 1942, p. 138, paragraph 3] empirico-logical wisdom and logical deduction which we find in the New Testament. In fact a very large section of modern religion, literature and art actually represents a pronounced retrogression when compared with the Old Testament. For example, astrology, spiritism and kindred divagations, which have become religion to tens of millions of Europeans and Americans, are only the outgrowth of proto-logical interpretation of nature, fed by empirico-logical data and covered with a spurious shell of Aristotelian logic and scientific induction. Plastic and graphic art has swung violently away from logical perspective and perceptual accuracy, and has plunged into primordial depths of conceptual drawing and intuitive imagery. While it cannot be denied that this swing from classical art to conceptual and impressionistic art has yielded some valuable results, it is also true that it represents a very extreme retrogression into the proto-logical past. Much of the poetry, drama and fiction which has been written during the past half-century is also a reversion from classical and logical standards of morality and beauty into primitive savagery or pathological abnormality. Some of it has reached such paralogical levels of sophistication that it has lost all power to furnish any standards at all to a generation which has deliberately tried to abandon its entire heritage from the past. All systematic attempts to discredit inherited sexual morality, to substitute dream-states for reflection, and to replace logical writing by jargon, are retreats into the jungle from which man emerged through long and painful millennia of disillusionment. With the same brains and affective reactions as those which our ancestors possessed two thousand years ago, increasing sophistication has not been able to teach us any sounder fundamental principles of life than were known at that time. . . . Unless we can continue along the pathway of personal morality and spiritual growth which was marked out for civilized man by the founders of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, more than two thousand years ago, our superior skill in modifying and even in transforming the material world about us can lead only to repeated disasters, each more terrible than its predecessor. (Archaeology and the Religion of Israel, 5th Ed. New York: Doubleday Anchor, 31-33.)

There are many types of teachers out there from many traditions. Some are very ordinary and some seem to radiate spirituality from every pore. Some are nice, some are indifferent, and some may seem like sergeants in boot camp. Some stress reliance on one’s own efforts, others stress reliance on the grace of the guru. Some are very available and accessible, and some may live far away, grant few interviews, or have so many students vying for their time that you may rarely get a chance to talk with them. Some seem to embody the highest ideals of the perfected spiritual life in their every waking moment, while others may have many noticeable quirks, faults and failings. Some live by rigid moral codes, while others may push the boundaries of social conventions and mores. Some may be very old, and some may be very young. Some may require strict commitments and obedience, while others may hardly seem to care what we do at all. Some may advocate very specific practices, stating that their way is the only way or the best way, while others may draw from many traditions or be open to your doing so. Some may point out our successes, while others may dwell on our failures. Some may stress renunciation or even ordination into a monastic order, while others seem relentlessly engaged with “the world.” Some charge a bundle for their teachings, while others give theirs freely. Some like scholarship and the lingo of meditation, while others may never use or even openly despise these formal terms and conceptual frameworks. Some teachers may be more like friends or equals that just want to help us learn something they happened to be good at, while others may be all into the hierarchy, status and role of being a teacher. Some teachers will speak openly about attainments, and some may not. Some teachers are remarkably predictable in their manner and teaching style, while others swing wide in strange and unpredictable ways. Some may seem very tranquil and mild mannered, while others may seem outrageous or rambunctious. Some may seem extremely humble and unimposing, while others may seem particularly arrogant and presumptuous. Some are charismatic, while others may be distinctly lacking in social skills. Some may readily give us extensive advice, and some just listen and nod. Some seem the living embodiment of love, and others may piss us off on a regular basis. Some teachers may instantly click with us, while others just leave us cold. Some teachers may be willing to teach us, and some may not. So far as I can tell, none of these are related in any way to their meditation ability or the depths of their understanding. That is, don’t judge a meditation teacher by their cover. What is important is that their style and personality inspire us to practice well, to live the life we want to live, to find what it is we wish to find, to understand what we wish to understand. Some of us may wander for a long time before we find a good fit. Some of us will turn to books for guidance, reading and practicing without the advantages or hassles of teachers. Some of us may seem to click with a practice or teacher, try to follow it for years and yet get nowhere. Others seem to fly regardless. One of the most interesting things about reality is that we get to test it out. One way or another, we will get to see what works for us and what doesn’t, what happens when we do certain practices or follow the advice of certain teachers, as well as what happens when we don’t.

We are preparing a generation of robots. Kids are learning exclusively through rote. We have children who are given no conceptual framework. They do not learn to think, because their teachers are straitjacketed by tests that measure only isolated skills. As a result, they can be given no electives, nothing wonderful or fanciful or beautiful, nothing that touches the spirit or the soul.

The 'magic' of organ-regenerations, and of unconscious guidance in creativity, both owe their striking character to the sudden re-activation of (morphogenetic or psychogenetic) potentials which are normally under restraint in the adult individual. The period of incubation may be compared to the catabolic phase in organ-regeneration: the former releases pre-conceptual, intuitive modes of ideation from the censorship imposed by the conscious mind; the latter triggers off embryonic growth-processes equally inhibited by the mature organism. The contact-guidance of nerves towards their end-organs and the revival of other pre-natal skills, provide enticing parallels to the unconscious gradients and ancient 'waterways' which mediate the underground rendezvous of ideas.