Thought for the Day (Sept 2)

Subject: Thought for the Day (Sept 2)
From: Peter T.
Date: 02 Sep 99 - 08:44 AM

Sept 1 - Having to be a student again by taking lessons from Rick Fielding and spending time practicing the guitar has brought me at least one insight: physical skillwork brings out into the open not just your personal flaws, but also shows why it also a method for dealing with microfrustration, to coin an ugly word. It is clear, for instance, that not only do today's young students at schools and universities have no intellectual skills training because of the "self-esteem" movement, they also have almost no physical skills -- except for those in sports, or those lucky enough to have a strong committment to some art form in spite of lack of encouragement. So they have little training in dealing with frustration.

Skillwork is learning how to overcome (or adapt to) your physical limitations, laziness, vagueness, and the fascinating resistance of materials. It flushes these obstacles and their accompanying frustrations out where you can see them and maybe work with them. Our macrofrustrations - anxieties, emotional clouds, existential concerns -- cannot be handled easily (if at all). Brain work tends to make this worse, not better, in part because it is hard to pin down concrete progress and achievement in this sphere, unless you are already a trained intellectual skillsworker such as a serious writer or scholar. And even then they go through cloudy hells of their own.

Physical skillwork may not resolve all those global frustrations, but it can bring some of them to workable ground, like a transformer taking the high voltage transmission line down to the point where it will operate your toaster. It is a bitter irony that the old school curriculum I scorned growing up -- Shop, Music, Home Ec -- for intellectual pursuits -- Latin, Greek, Math -- now makes perfect sense to me, and is being cut to ribbons by governments and school boards everywhere. Meanwhile, young people everywhere are turned off by school, obsessed with sports, and spend endless hours at that most recent of all repetitive incremental improvement skills based exercise machines, the video game.

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day (Sept 2)
From: MMario
Date: 02 Sep 99 - 08:52 AM

amen. amen. amen.

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day (Sept 2)
From: Allan C.
Date: 02 Sep 99 - 09:11 AM

Actually, I am quite pleased to see so many people taking up such challenges as rock climbing, backpacking, etc.. There is a lot of frustration to deal with in such things. But, as I work in a college environment, I am well aware of the lack of initiative on the part of many students in the area of intellectual challenges. It is unfortunate that so many seek the lowest common denominator in selecting their course work. So few really seek out the courses which require concentration, thought, and WORK!

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day (Sept 2)
From: Neil Lowe
Date: 02 Sep 99 - 09:37 AM

...insightful, Peter. And by the by, those 'personal flaws' you mentioned, that physical skillwork brings out....In a less judgmental universe, those little imperfect nuances are called style, to wit: Andre Segovia and Lightnin' Hopkins both play sixteenth notes in their music. Segovia's notes are precise and his phrasing is perfect, while Lightnin's notes are choppy and, to the musical elite, "sloppy." But to me, Lightnin' is infinitely more interesting to listen to because of his imperfections(style). Zappa's observation that "round things are boring" seems to fit well here.

Regards, Neil

Subject: RE: Thought for the Day (Sept 2)
From: Allan C.
Date: 02 Sep 99 - 02:11 PM

The "concentration, thought, and WORK!" I spoke of in my previous post is not meant to be directed purely at the world of academia. It seems to me that far too many people would rather seek employment that requires only a minimum of these things. Even in recreation, it would seem that a lot of folks will simply shuck out a mess of money to have someone else plan all of the details - or else they avoid such adventures entirely because they refuse to attempt to do any planning themselves. I am not necessarily talking about travel planning. Travel agents are sometimes simply priceless. I mean things like taking a four-day boat trip somewhere and planning meals, equipment needs, logistics, etc.. Often the overall policy appears to be: if it requires "concentration, thought, and WORK" either forget about it or try to get someone else to do all that stuff.

Granted, there are times when I, too, want to be pampered a bit. But I have also learned the rewarding feeling when the value of something is increased by the effort that went into making it. (I now relinquish my soap box.)