Creativity
Creating for oneself
On a similar note, renowned American painter, Georgia O’Keeffe quotes how identifying the own individuality has helped to create best of her works.
“I know now that most people are so closely concerned with themselves that they are not aware of their own individuality. I can see myself, and it has helped me to say what I want to say—in paint.”
Art of Reading
Yet another way to expand experience.
Read the full interview of Elisa Gabbert by Austin kleon
Recommendations
You’ve likely noticed that since the rise of machine learning and big data, nearly all your online activities are tracked and compiled into extensive datasets. This has paved the way for countless recommendation apps tailored to your consumption habits.
Now, you receive suggestions for new movies based on your viewing history, books aligned with your past reads, clothing that matches your purchasing style, food choices reflecting your yearly orders, and travel destinations echoed in your recent trips. Ads are similarly targeted, reflecting your previous interests.
What’s intriguing is that these recommendations heavily rely on your past behaviors, ensuring that the suggestions are consistent with what you’re already comfortable with. If you have a preference for a particular genre or style, the algorithm will likely reinforce that familiarity with its suggestions.
However, one must question: How will my imagination flourish if I’m not exposed to diverse experiences? How can my perspective widen if I’m shielded from challenges to my confirmation bias?
Perfection or Permanent
Practice doesn’t make one perfect. It makes the habit permanent. We become of our habits.
Reading & Writing
Reading and writing helps to expand our experiences & perspectives.
Imagination
Stumbled upon this interesting comment on Reddit.
Can we truly envision things we’ve never personally encountered? Is our imagination simply a creative reorganization of our past experiences and memories?
Too Many Toys
Naturalist Says Christmas is becoming a Curse.
One of the most familiar practice of our modern American democratic life is the way we load our children with toys, A modern house where there several children is a perfect chaos of toys, from picture books of every description to all types and sizes of dolls in all stages of decompostion, and all manner of mechanical devices And still they come, new and ingenous contrivances to catch and’ hold the jaded attention of our offspring and make them forget for a momemnt the tedium of life. It is the crime of the age; it is a sin against our children. It corrupts their simplicity, it stimulates their destructiveness; it sates and blunts their curiosity and hastens the time of their general discontent with life. ‘We try at the outset to destroy their interest in the plain wholesome things of life by the multitude of strange and startling devices we shower upgn them. We would have them believe that the world is one great toy shop, made simply for their amusement, We create a false taste, a craving for ceaseless novelty, everything new every day, every hour. The last surprise only sharpens their appetite for a greater, till they go from blond dolls to brunette dolls, and from jumping jack to jumping jack with utter weariness and disculet.
It is like feeding a child only condiments and sweetmeats, A sane and killed.’We give them milk to drink, bread to eat. Why not provide as few and as common things for their amusement? Why sophisticate them? Why foster a craving for novelty and variety that life cannot satisfy? By and by they will cry for the moon and the stars. ‘What are we going to do then?
‘Tis a pity the whole army of toy inventors and toy makers cannot be few banished from the land. Lucky is the child that has but few tovs and those home made, Let it have such things as will help educate its senses and prepare it for life. Let the boy have his blocks and his ball and his cart, and let the girl have her home made rag doll.
Christmas is fast becoming a positive curse. What between gorging ourselves with rich foods, bestowing upon each other useless and senseless gifts and corrupting our children with
a multitude of toys,.the day Is of evil omen. It is a day of overindulgence all around, ‘The Christmas tree becomes a deadly upas if we are not careful. ‘Nothing is as salutary with children as to keep them living on a low-key and close to common things. Let them find joy and entertainment, as they surely will if you give them a chance, in the simple and near at hand, Do not seek to excite and toxicate them with the strange, the bizarre, the extraordinary, Let them alone. If their craving for novelty is stimulated, there is danger that they will find life flat, stale and unprifitable.
I doubt if I had one boughten toy when a child, I had a ball when I got old enough to go to school, But I made it myself, I made many balls out of the yarn of old stockings and covered them with leather. I had kites, but I made them myself. A boy learns many things in making a kite, I had sleds, carts, stilts, strings, pin boxes, darts, crossbows, tops, puzzle blocks, etc., but I made them all by myself. I made most of my own slate pencils by. Cutting them out of soft pieces of slate that we used to get one and a half miles from school. | earned my playthings, and they surfeited me. They each meant something. Mae As
Look into any of our wealthy homes at Christmastime where there are several children, and see the wicked extravagance in the bestowal of Toys. It is a regular toy debauch. The children become sated and lose their interest before half the presents are distributed. In a few days most of them are discarded; the boy contents himself with some simple thing like
a wagon or a cart, and the girl with something equally simple and commonplace. Let us stop this wicked corrupting of the innocents.— Jhon
Jhon Burroughs, in The Independent
Clip 1 Clip 2
A clipping from The Morning Journal-Courier
New Haven, Connecticut03 Jan 1907, Thu • Page 9
Author: John Burroughs
Original Clipping can be found here