Кен Робинсон - The Element

If we discover the Element in ourselves and encourage others to find theirs, the opportunities for growth are infinite. If we fail to do that, we may get by, but our lives will be duller as a result. This is not just a West Coast, California argument, even though I do live there now. I believed this in the damp, cold days of December in England, when these thoughts can be harder to come by. This is not a new view. It’s an ancient view of the need for balance and fulfillment in our lives and for synergies with the lives and aspirations other people. It’s an idea that is easily lost in our current forms of existence.

The crises in the worlds of nature and of human resources are connected. Jonas Salk was the pioneering scientist who developed the Salk polio vaccine. As somebody who contracted polio in the 1950s, I feel some affinity with his life’s passion. Later in his life, Salk made a provocative observation, one that addresses the two forms of climate crisis. “It’s interesting to reflect,” he said, “that if all the insects were to disappear from the earth, within fifty years all other forms of life would end.” He understood, as Rachel Carson did, that the insects we spend so much effort trying to eradicate are essential threads in the intricate web of life on Earth. “But,” Salk went on, “if all human beings were to disappear from the earth, within fifty years all other forms of life would flourish.”

What he meant is that we have now become the problem. Our extraordinary capacity for imagination has given rise to the most far‐reaching examples of human achievement and has taken us from caves to cities and from marshes to the moon. But there is a danger now that our imaginations may be failing us. We have seen far, but not far enough. We still think too narrowly and too closely about ourselves as individuals and as a species and too little about the consequences of our actions. To make the best of our time together on this small and crowded planet, we have to develop—consciously and rigorously—our powers of imagination and creativity within a different framework of human purpose. Michelangelo once said, “The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.” For all our futures, we need to aim high and be determined to succeed.

To do that each of us individually and all of us together need to discover the Element.

Notes

Chapter One: The Element

GILLIAN LYNNE: All material in this segment came from an original interview for this book.

MATT GROENING: All material in this segment came from an original interview for this book.

PAUL SAMUELSON: Paul Samuelson, “How I Became an Economist,” http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/articles/samuelson-2/index.html.

Chapter Two: Think Differently

MICK FLEETWOOD: All material in this segment came from an original interview for this book.

SENSES: Kathryn Linn Geurts, Culture and the Senses: Bodily Ways of Knowing in an African Community (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2003).

Andrew Cook, “Exploding the Five Senses,” http://www.hummingbird-one.co.uk/humanbeing/five.html.

BART CONNER: All material in this segment came from an original interview for this book.

IQ, SAT, AND EUGENICS: Jan Strydom and Susan du Plessis, “IQ Test: Where Does It Come From and What Does It Measure?” http://www.audiblox2000.com/dyslexia_dyslexic/dyslexia014.htm.

“Timing of IQ Test Can Be a Life or Death Matter,” Science Daily Magazine , December 6, 2003.

“The Future of the SAT,” http://chronicle.com/colloquylive/2001/10/SAT/.

Alan Stoskepf, “The Forgotten History of Eugenics,” http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/13_03/eugenic.shtml.

ALEXIS LEMAIRE: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22768356-13762,00.html.

GORDON PARKS: Andy Grundberg, “Gordon Parks, a Master of the Camera, Dies at 93,” New York Times , March 8, 2006.

Corey Kilgannon, “By Gordon Parks, A View of Himself and, Yes, Pictures,” New York Times , July 7, 2002.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/entertainment/jan-june98/gordon_1-6.html.

http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/oralhistories/transcripts/parks64.htm.

R. BUCKMINSTER FULLER: http://www.designmuseum.org/design/r-buckminster-fuller.

ALBERT EINSTEIN: Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007).

Chapter Three: Beyond Imagining

FAITH RINGGOLD: The majority of the material in this segment came from an interview conducted by the author. Additional details came from http://www.faithringgold.com/ringgold/bio.htm.

BERTRAND RUSSELL: Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, and Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1945).

PLANETARY PHOTOS: Graphics by Pompei AD, New York.

THE TRAVELING WILBURYS: Original interview with John Beug, senior executive, Warner Music Group.

http://www.travelingwilburys.com/theband.html.

http://www.headbutler.com/music/traveling_wilburys.asp.

RICHARD FEYNMAN: Richard Phillips Feynman and Christopher Sykes, No Ordinary Genius: The Illustrated Richard Feynman (New York: W. W. Norton, 1994).

RIDLEY SCOTT: All material in this segment came from an original interview for this book.

PAUL MCCARTNEY: All material in this segment came from an original interview for this book.

Chapter Four: In the Zone

EWA LAURANCE: All material in this segment came from an original interview for this book.

AARON SORKIN: All material in this segment came from an original interview for this book.

ERIC CLAPTON: http://www.moretotheblues.com/lapton_sessions.shtml.

JOCHEN RINDT: http://www.evenflow.co.uk/mental.htm.

WILBUR WRIGHT: http://www.pilotpsy.com/flights/11.html.

MONICA SELES: M. Krug, personal interview of Monica Seles, 1999.

FLOW: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (New York: HarperCollins, 1990).

BLACK ICE: Simóne Banks, “Black Ice,” Scheme , February 4, 2007.

http://www.musicremedy.com/b/Black_Ice/album/The_Death_of_Willie_Lynch-3238.html.

MIND MAPPING: http://www.imindmap.com/.

THE MYERS‐BRIGGS TYPE INDICATOR: David J. Pittenger, “Measuring the MBTI… and Coming Up Short,” Journal of Career Planning & Placement, Fall 1993.

http://www.juliand.com/psychological_type.html.

http://www.teamtechnology.co.uk/tt/t-articl/mb-simpl.htm.

HERMANN BRAIN DOMINANCE INSTRUMENT: http://www.juliand.com/thinking_style.html.

TERENCE TAO: http://blog.oup.com/2006/09/interview_with_/.

http://www.college.ucla.edu/news/05/terencetaomath.html.

Chapter Five: Finding Your Tribe

MEG RYAN: All material in this segment came from an original interview for this book.

DON LIPSKI: All material in this segment came from an original interview for this book.

HELEN PILCHER: Helen Pilcher, “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Lab,” Science , December 6, 2002.

BRIAN RAY: All material in this segment came from an original interview for this book.

DEBBIE ALLEN: All material in this segment came from an original interview for this book.

MICHAEL POLANYI: Michael Polanyi, “The Republic of Science: Its Political and Economic Theory,” in Knowing and Being (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969).

BOB DYLAN: Bob Dylan, Chronicles , Vol. 1 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004).

RANDALL COLLINS: Randall Collins, The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, 1998).