the drive of progress in man
DESCRIPTION
e Drive of Progress in Man is an adventure into that which is actually made free in a free market economy; the free market mind. Once transplanted into the imagination, this compact plot of diverse thought-forms will continue to grow in your brain, well after the pages are laid to rest. e rare individuals who are extraordinary host to e Drive of Progress characterize humanity as the most powerful species of life yet to arise on Earth. e insights gained by this exploration apply directly to a systematic weak-point in our education system; that is the forced memorization, and intellectual conformity which bias the learning process against the most creative and independent thinkers; people with an exceptional drive to advance the status quo. ADHD and Dyslexia are two major forces in the development of such minds, they force e Drive of Progress from its slumber by necessity.TRANSCRIPT
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www.thedriveofprogress.com
�e Drive of Progress in Man
By Josh Valdes
�e Drive of Progress in Man is an adventure into that which is actually made free in a free market economy; the free market mind. Once transplanted into the imagination, this compact plot of diverse thought-forms will continue to grow in your brain, well after the pages are laid to rest. �e rare individuals who are extraordinary host to �e Drive of Progress characterize humanity as the most powerful species of life yet to arise on Earth. �e insights gained by this exploration apply directly to a systematic weak-point in our education system; that is the forced memorization, and intellectual conformity which bias the learning process against the most creative and independent thinkers; people with an exceptional drive to advance the status quo. ADHD and Dyslexia are two major forces in the development of such minds, they force �e Drive of Progress from its slumber by necessity.
The Drive of Progress in Man
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Josh Valdes---------------
The Drive of Progress in Man -
ADHD and Dyslexia in Context
www.thedriveofprogress.com
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Copyright 2008 Josh Valdes
Layout and Cover by: Eric Gang
ISBN: 1-4196-9428-6
www.thedriveofprogress.com
The Drive of Progress in Man
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Dedication
This book is dedicated to my ancestors; whose wisdom both conscious and unconscious, drove this life form through time, by its daring successes, to live today as the most powerful species ever to enjoy Earth. And to all those alive today who appreciate the genius of our ancestors, to become not fish or mouse or tree or even dog, but MAN yet growing. If any human today feels inferior to any other that lives or has lived, it is only the drive of progress lying down in them; our standing power is no lucky accident.
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The Drive of Progress in Man
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Dedication
Warning
Capitalism Merely Allows Progress
Blindspot
The Fruit Tree
Let Me Give You a Hand
The Beast in Question
Bag It and Tag It
The Eagle Spirit
Sources by Age:
3
9
15
19
27
31
45
67
89
95
Places To Rest
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The Drive of Progress in Man
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0
Warning
This book is a lean Bull, and thus may be fully
comprehended only when the imagination of the reader
moves like the thin end of a whip on which the eyes
are handle. But fear not, the flow is that of an ancient
river on sandstone below the cliff-side layers of history.
Instant understanding of every sentence is not necessary
to remain out of prison; trust that all will become clear
as you read further.
Just as the writer found a necessity to question
the current education system, the resultant thought
process of this book raises uncertainties along its
twisting flow into your mind. It must be clear that this
story is to be rafted down for its natural beauty, and that
its level of honesty is a result of prolific erosion.
Off the most concrete section of river-bed on our
journey falls a sprinkle of how to actually improve the
development process we are all subject to as modern
The Drive of Progress in Man
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young humans. This process itself is very young to
humanity, and so very susceptible to advancement.
Advancement however must be undertaken with
greatness of care, in proportion to the importance of
education to human happiness and social structure.
Economic virility is dependent on the development of
young minds capable of making it happen.
Because educational process is so essential, its
mutation rate and evolution are naturally slow. The
primary danger of this slow change stems from the fact
that the economic environment has been accelerating
its own rate of change. This does not call for reckless
attempts to modify teaching and testing methods, but
rather careful examination of the actual symptoms of the
expanding fissure between desired result and the effects
of methods used.
The importance of educational practice
elevates its resistance to change. This resistance to
change naturally increases the mass of conflicting
results needed to throw doubt on the theory behind
the practice. When doubt of any theory becomes
substantial enough, only then will progress happen. To
more accurately fit how something is understood to the
observable details of its operation confers progress. We
are talking about when the earth changes, from flat with
edges to be sailed off, to round; suddenly satellites can
be given orbit.
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Warning
A heavy theory tends to force the outside world
to its structure, whereas progress happens when theory
is lifted to expose the worms and pill-bugs crawling
underneath it. The picture painted across these pages
is directly inspired by twenty years experience climbing
rigid cliffs along a crack in educational systematics; I
am an ant under the rock. Follow this, my chemical
trail, to a great source of food so that our colony may
grow more wondrous and powerful. The spread of
human knowledge has grown far and wide to wrap its
thick Internet-tentacles around the globe. We may eat
from this vast food source to contentment, and it in turn
subsists on our thoughts strung together by sunlight and
lightning.
The practice of medicating smart students to
improve grades is an adjustment of reality to fit theory.
This book presents an adjustment to be applied to
theory, so for practice to more effectively fit educational
reality. Case in point; ‘I can’t pay attention in class, but
can easily read an interesting non-fiction book all day’.
But before a solution can be presented, the
problem itself must be made clear; that is the first
helping of this meal. Reader, and remember this
is a high distinction, as you paddle down this river
make sure to notice the scenery of your own memory,
imagination, and feelings as they come to view and
pass. These are the real content of the text, and any
The Drive of Progress in Man
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understanding we share is built of our humanity in
common. Quotation of highly regarded others is used
here to root story growth in the cave-paintings of human
historical experience. The pace of flow is swift so to not
waste reader time; understanding that appreciation of
the most sublime features can be got by pulling off onto
a river bank to rest and contemplate.
This river of thought is a prototype of how to
dive directly into the source of a problem in search of
solid ground for improvement. Down here we find
improvement of academic scores to be too infirm a basis
on which to improve education process itself; this water
is too cloudy.This problem of students whose attention
cannot be sufficiently held to academic study cannot be
solved by observing behavior, we must actually crawl in
and see through their eyes and be tied to their whipping
post. Allow yourself to be safely swept through the dark
underbelly of human progress to feel the heat that drives
it.
This must be clear, that human progress is
driven by the suffering and empathy of individuals; as a
response to make life easier. On this base let me stand
naked and proclaim ‘this story is a direct response to
the specific suffering of my experience in a full course of
educational treatment’. The primary goal of this effort is
thus to relive the suffering of others tied to my post, and
there are millions in the United States alone. This is to
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Warning
show those like me why they are being whipped, while
making clear to everyone else that it hurts and more
fruitful ways are possible. The most flowering growth
of this process extends understanding of overall human
nature.
External observation has hereto produced only
symptomatic treatments, and as these become more
effective they will further obscure the underlying cause.
The symptoms include boredom, resistance to authority,
inattention, daydreaming, hyperactivity, sleeping in
class, misbehavior in class, unfinished assignments,
poor test scores, and the anxiety and despair these
can cause in young people. The underlying cause is a
fundamental property of human nature and the subject
of this study.
This style of poetic non-fiction directly
demonstrates the nature of mind also described in its
content; the subject of study reflected upon itself. That
is to draw a box of crayons using those crayons being
drawn. Not only to show what crayons look like, but also
how they draw; a broadband channel.
So go on fearless reader, allow me to penetrate
you and plant seeds.
The Drive of Progress in Man
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1
Capitalism Merely Allows Progress
“Shallow understanding from people of goodwill
is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from
people of ill will” -MLK Jr.
This is a story about a world which thrives largely
unseen around us. Neither microscopic nor overtly
hidden, rather veiled by a peripheral blindspot of the
majority mind. From this mysterious well springs
gushes of fresh brain pattern. I come to your attention
to represent a powerful and oppressed minority
population which exudes a profound influence on
the accelerating development of human civilization.
Influenced in thought and action more or less by
inner and outer forces are the individual humans.
The innermost of them is our flavor of discourse this
evening.
The Drive of Progress in Man
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We have this problem of young students bored
of studies, desk locked and paper faced, who must
be entertained with brain stimulants. Educational
methods in practice K-16 are geared to churn greatest
achievement from those most predisposed to think act
and dress in drove fashion, and inverse to the degree
which they are compelled to explore and experiment.
Raise your right hand if you feel science and math
are primarily systematic endeavors. Herein lies an
important distinction because, hand waving or not, the
conception which is currently co-activated with the
motor region just a little forward and to the left of center
top of your head is what we are working on here. Please
allow us to conjecture that learning styles vary across
several or more dimensions, but the objective result
among all is same on the level of creating, destroying,
and modifying the reactive properties of neuron to
neuron connections; the adaptive development of
information handling structures.
Synaptogenesis is the medium with which the
teacher and learner practice their art. Cocurrent to
this solvent fact is the floating question of ‘what do we
fill our minds with, and why?’. As the cerebral cortex
continues enfold all realms of human affair, our varieties
of response to the aforementioned question cry out for
sincere attention.
Factor interest is primary to depth of
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Capitalism Merely Allows Progress
understanding for given subject, while degree of
this relationship is variable across the spectrum of
individual propensity to conform to the drove. How
physically able are you to direct your thought and
action by overt extrinsic command? There is a tinge of
discomfort associated with this; let us make it relevant
by asking ‘what effect does this feeling have on thought
and behavior?’. It has a slight effect of arousal in flavor
of either fight or flight. In case of flight it expresses as
a hit of shy withdraw, whereas in fight tastes more like
enthusiasm, possibly flanked by a supportive thought
to justify the abnormal behavior. This enthusiasm
and stray thought is the learned coping behavior of
hyperactivity we see in a minority segment of the
population. I would also like to propose that the
function that ensures fight side of the response tree is
also intimately involved with the ability to conjure a
state of hyperfocus.
Out of line behaviors serve to supply the much
needed arousal in those strange few who chill above
the arctic circle of classroom experience; we learn to
keep warm. This serves the flip side role of developing
the hyperfocus skill. The advanced development of this
skill is essential in those who exhibit propensity to it, as
hyperfocus is a significant benefit feature in the trade-off
package endowed to a minority population of minds.
Comprehension of the dynamics of minority
The Drive of Progress in Man
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features is important to those who exhibit such
features, as well as to those who do not and thus require
abstracted framework on which to appreciate behavior
they operate no subjective experience of. For those who
for example hyperfocus, understanding is important
for cultivation and defense. For those in the dark,
structured explanation can ease intellectual prejudice
and their experience with discordant elements as they
can be integrated into less disruptive channels.
Regular brain stimulant administration of the
sort that temporarily inhibits dopamine reuptake in the
prefrontal cortex, such as Ritalin and Adderall, suppress
the development of hyperfocus. This distinction is
contrasted to caffeine which actually assists in the
cultivation of this important skill, in part by reducing
inhibition of the dopamine release system while forcing
little or no direct effect on dopamine reuptake. This is in
major part why ‘hard’ stimulants are prescribed instead
of our fuzzy cuddle buddy caffeine. Caffeine won’t
normalize a minority like amphetamines so effectively
tend to.
I here risk that the axis of human freedom turns
on point very near the eye of the storm this story rides in.
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2
Blindspot
There is a blindspot in the majority of educated
minds that would quickly brush off the notion of
Albert Einstein that “the only thing that interferes
with my learning is my education.” It does not soak
in when applied to them because for a majority of
minds education has been reasonably effective. Al was
clearly out of bounds for much of the game. It must
be clear that he was no Lance Armstrong who simply
can ride harder than the average bear. While other
kids were following the leader around the chalkboard,
little Albert was climbing the tree out the window. Not
more, rather different as he said in apparent humility
“but my intellectual development was retarded, as a
result of which I began to wonder about space and time
only when I had already grown up. Naturally, I could
go deeper into the problem than a child with normal
abilities.”
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Clearly Albert Einstein was not retarded in the
popular culture sense... so what is this statement?
I wonder if we can retard our thought process for
long enough to slip deeper into him. The affect of
wonder here draws blood for the great mind. Dyslexic
billionaire Richard Branson once commented on his
poor academic performance “if I’m not interested in
something I can’t grasp it.” This interest of wonder is no
artifact insignificant, for the great mind is dependent on
flood from this wellspring for its movement. Leonardo
Da Vinci wrote “He who can go to the fountain does not
go to the water jar.” The virtue of interest is prime mover
of the powerful mind whereas commonly thought is
best yoked to the neck of animal which can be driven
straight.
Charles Darwin shows sign of intrinsic direction
as a letter from his sister concerns “I have message from
papa to give you, which I am afraid you won’t like: he
desires me to say that he thinks your plan of picking
and choosing what lectures you like to attend not at all
a good one;... as you cannot have enough information
to know what may be of use to you, it is quite necessary
for you to bear with a good deal of stupid and dry
work... if you do not discontinue your present indulgent
way, your course of study will be utterly useless.” This
at Cambridge of all places. What we are to capture
here is no temporary myopia of a period but a general
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Blindspot
aversion of the eye as result from intelligent majority
misunderstanding of a minority phenomenon. No
majority of Cambridge grads could say as Darwin “I
consider that all I have learnt of any value has been self
taught.”
Was the statement of Rainer Maria Rilke “The
future enters into us in order to transform itself long
before it happens” mere poetic appeal to fantastic
sentiment? Not so in the case of Mr. Darwin, and I
propose commonly across intrinsically motivated free
spirits the world over. This void of misunderstanding
publicly expressed in Darwin and later Einstein
anxiously waits for illumination even today as the dire
for truly unique perspective grows lush.
At glance Emerson blinked “to be different is
to be misunderstood”, and snatched a fundamental
property of human social process between his lashes.
The lashes of misunderstanding are ever present and
undue burden to the chocolate chips in our half baked
society; undue in greatest savagery to the young. Albert
Einstein was fortunate enough to be disposed of the
sentiment “I live in that solitude which is painful
in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity.” As
their peers cook from doughy childhood to form a
comparably homogeneous crust burnt in some places,
our little chocolate chips only become more fluid and
delicious.
The Drive of Progress in Man
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Our bittersweet older brother Niccolo
Machiavelli ventured to extrapolate that “owing to the
envy inherent in man’s nature it has always been no
less dangerous to discover new ways and methods than
to set off in search of new seas and unknown lands
because the generality of mankind are much more ready
to belittle than to praise another’s actions.” Niccolo saw
the lashes of misunderstanding given him through the
monocle of envy. Envy is not the only base outgrowth
to shade eyes from strange new fruit which has yet to
be blended into common sensibilities. Any sentiment
that directs attention away from the fruit itself will do,
and these are heavily represented by the ‘antisocial’
emotional reactions. What is antisocial in this sense
can be expressed by a group who share a common
facet of worldview, in reaction to another. This is the
case we are playing with here of commonly ignorance
to uncommonly independent minds. Uncommon
significantly as result of the strong social forces which
ally against its continued expression.
The mental barriers to independent thought
which must be overcome by great individual effort
tend to exclude all but those few who are unable to act
otherwise. In part this is why traits such as ADHD and
dyslexia encourage dissatisfaction with and divergence
from thought and behavior considered within the range
of normal in the society which they operate. That which
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Blindspot
Chuck Darwin experienced as ‘stupid and dry work’ at
Cambridge was accurately tasted by his hungry growing
mind as devoid of the nutriment necessary for optimal
growth. This is no minor inconvenience to be brushed
off as we wade over our heads into the information age.
As sophisticated taste in food opposes the
obesity of empty calories, so too for feeding the mind.
The housecat raised on tender canned food will
often refuse to eat if downgraded to dry. The odd few
minds which cannot be sustained on mass produced
dry chunk information and milked for standardized
responses standing corralled in factory farms are the
uranium of the information age. Occasionally a few
collect themselves enough, against the social forces that
blindly dilute them, to achieve a critical mass. Carl Jung
noticed that “Resistance to the organized mass can be
effected only by the man who is as well organized in
his individuality as the mass itself.” Few circumstances
accidentally favor, while most species of exotic fruit
bearer are left out to dry and rot.
We may forgive the original Luddites shortage of
hindsight in opposing technological development, but
today the unstopability of human mental and material
progress imposes itself like spring. In the midst of April
showers, Albert Einstein spit out the hard-shelled pit
of his own fruit: “the problems that exist in the world
today cannot be solved at the level of thinking that
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created them.” Al didn’t spit this seed into the trash as
a despaired gesture of its inedibility, he rather spread it
across the world as printed word so that it may chance
upon fertile soils, or even alert gardeners. I pose no
dispute that the man spoke from extensive personal
experience with the distinction ‘level of thinking’, and
furthermore acclimated to the heights of scientific rigor
to sharply state ‘cannot be solved’.
Einstein’s hard shelled pit is a confident gesture
of guidance. It must be clear that Einstein’s ‘level of
thinking’ is no formalized philosophical concept to be
debated as layers of increasing abstraction stacked into
great pyramids aligned to distant points of light. It arose
from the experience of social intercourse with widely
variant levels of superficial worldview he encountered
in the wild; the pettiness of that which a mind may
be concerned with. This of course is all relative and a
taste to be developed by exposure, but go find the local
racist to refresh your drink. Albert, blessed with a high
contrast view of the effects of different levels of thought
in his social environment, took a sharp point to the
persistent blindspot we herein work to augment.
Listen, the symptoms suppressed by sit still and
listen drugs are the action of a highly sophisticated
biological system whose activity is as mysterious and
essential to the survival of our species as REM sleep. The
window of time to stall is constricting; fight and we have
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Blindspot
a good chance, flight and death or worse is the fate of the
human brain experiment. To be clear, flight is the soon
to arise pharmacopoeia of sophisticated suppressants.
To fight is to advance the art of mind cultivation from
the current level of slash and burn monoculture to forest
husbandry; this generation.
The Drive of Progress in Man
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3
The Fruit Tree
Raise your hand if you know how to make an
apple. Your mind is too simple, go make friends with
an apple tree instead. How many years from sapling to
fruit? Alright, now plant a seed nature unknown; what is
it? Here I give you a handful... some bear signs familiar,
others more exotic. First we must learn the signs of the
young fruit tree before it bears.
You will find the behavior of the fruit tree
to be more complex than that of the vegetable;
less predictable and significantly more resistant to
behavioral habit. Closely related is a supernormal
resistance to the imposition of rules. This trait is
a reaction to be discovered by the organism and
expression at least slightly delayed. This is an important
factor to the production of nutritious fruit, and a fully
developed specimen cannot be commanded.
Grocery store tomatoes are poor souls, have you
tasted my grandfather’s garden in august? He has good
soil, and they impeccable timing; the old man dare not
The Drive of Progress in Man
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tell them what to do or when.
Another sight to be held is imitation. Does the
seedling in question behave as the grains and other
annuals? The fruit tree does not grow fast and straight
as the corn stalk, and the crooked broadside growth
of its branches will make for sweeter climbing in
maturity. The need for distance from others will only be
comprehended as this space begins to fill, and our tree
is closer to more by virtue of circumference. To restrain
lateral branching in hope of forcing upward growth
is a common mistake of those inexperienced with
the deciduous varieties of neuroculture; this will only
cripple full development.
You cannot expect your fruit trees to grow at the
same rate as the annual crops, and to expect them to
do so will only frustrate the process. Be assured that
their strength later in development will far exceed that
of the more frantic varieties which trade off density for
immediate height. After they cease to bear fruit in old
age they will be exceptionally gratifying to sit under.
To be clear, those who display abnormal
disregard for common fashion, rule, and behavior do
so because they must. This is no mere side effect of
the unique mind, rather an integral component of its
development, and continued operation which is itself
development. The less imitative among us can be
identified by their strange behavior.
The immensely limited activity of one brain is
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The Fruit Tree
divided between the miraculous skill of imitation and
the generation of novelties. Those sufficiently bent to
novelties too quickly discover the spring to pursue the
often stale bottle. Ahhhh to develop a taste for the fresh
undiluted, this is the drive of greatness as sexual desire
and its ecstatic satisfaction is the drive to baby making.
Virgins who subsist on pornography are sure to savor
by flavor and tradition, while the fellow creator seeks
nutriment and drinks deeper.
From this carnal drive to novelty an abnormal
depth of processing can develop. The profoundly thirsty
spirit learns to dig more holes and deeper, an elephant
among dogs lapping at shallow pools. Physics Nobel
laureate Robert Laughlin recalls that two time Nobel
acceptor John Bardeen “was notorious for speaking
slowly even when answering the simplest of questions
- presumably because he was thinking deeply about
the possible answers to ‘how are you?’ and all their
implications.” Practical Frank reacts through his pocket-
phone ‘good’ to this standard greeting in polite fashion,
ambivalent to the details of its function.
The inventor of the transistor parched enough
to suck juice from a simple greeting; how weird.
This odd divergence only superficially resembles
psychopathology. The common sentiment of a fine line
between genius and insanity is base and spawn of fear
to the unknown. Genius and insanity relate only in that
they are abnormal and thus misunderstood, the likeness
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ends there and is confined to those accustomed to drink
with label and high fructose corn syrup.
Benoit Mandelbrot, drunk at the fountain with
visions of fractal geometry taunts “at first blush, such
misbehavior looks most bizarre and even terrifying,
but a careful reexamination shows it to be quite
acceptable..., as long as one is willing to use new
methods of thought.”
Alright class, everyone write on a scrap piece
of paper a unique response to the everyday question
‘how are you’. Teacher, teacher, ooh, ooh, ooh... What
is it this time Disruptive Daydreamer?... We did this in
creativity class with Dr. Obscure-Source last semester,
can I give a better question to question?... Just do the
assignment D.D.; one small step for a teacher - one giant
lesson for Disruptive Daydreamer. It will likely take D.D.
many years to gather enough of these pieces to get the
picture, and many more to form a firm confidence that
it is no lone fantasy, but rather fundamental to human
nature. The firm ten-fingered grasp of this picture is part
of the delicious aftertaste of solitude Einstein found in
maturity.
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4
Let Me Give You a Hand
Let us first establish that the subjects here on
our table are strongly moved by the invisible hand of
interest. Ahhh, and who ever could fail to suspect a left
hand to compliment the right Adam Smith so fruitfully
blessed. How many arms have been twisted, by teachers
holding the blank slate, to use the common hand?
In kindergarten I was told something along the
lines of ‘no, we write with our other hand’. This is all it
took for a young chalkboard to do the right thing; under
a minute oversize pencil in grip.
This once common practice of enforced right
hand preference has subsided to a more subtle form.
Just as the invisible right hand tends to brutalize the
natural environment due to disregard of effects not
immediately relevant in favor of more proximal gain, so
too for the developing mind. The garden untended by
consistent habits trends to reduced production, whereas
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the great rainforest of Amazon has learned to sustain its
soil and rainfall, to degenerate under habits necessary to
the garden. The significance of our task is to encourage
complex rainforest-like minds to develop where they
may and to train various gardeners of the rest.
Let us be direct that the habits most conducive to
productive citizenry in all but the least imitative persons
are detrimental to our more complex subjects. Efforts to
adhere to the herd amount to a somewhat limp dragging
wherein the mouth collects bullshit. A ferocious
sensitivity to bullshit is a sign of the well developed
creator, and is a sophisticated tool hard won in the
softening sea of confidently ignorant actors. Humans
value cohesion for its own sake, and an astute sense for
bullshit is in opposition to some of its promoting factors.
It’s important to remember that wide variation across
this spectrum is essential and natural to human social
structure; the auto-defrost freezer.
The human condition is such that the cooling
system knows its job, but gets scared when the
defroster kicks on. The current western-developed
reaction is such that chill pills are given the defroster
under a limited view that they too must help with the
cooling process. Now that progress is prime directive,
defroster becomes uranium fission rods and the rest
is water to channel the heat for production. Prevent
meltdown, but don’t stop the reaction altogether people.
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Let Me Give You a Hand
Albert Einstein felt this strongly enough to write “for
everything that is really great and inspiring is created
by the individual who can labor in freedom, restriction
is justified only in so far as it may be needed for the
security of existence.”
The necessity of maximal freedom to the great
and inspiring mind is in no danger of overstatement;
this fact is hard for the common mind to appreciate.
Martin Luther King Junior established that “we know
through painful experience that freedom is never
voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded
by the oppressed.” This oppression is more subtle than
outward forms based on religion or skin color.
Henry Poincaré sensed that “discipline imposes
silence upon a too sensitive self-esteem.” Self esteem is
very sensitive in those divergent spirits human progress
depends on, at least in wait of hard social justification
for their aberrant behavior such as money and fame.
Fruits come into the picture, and true confidence may
arise when others make wine of them. On fruit Einstein
stressed that “without such freedom there would
have been no Shakespeare, no Goethe, no Newton,
no Faraday, no Pasteur, and no Lister. There would be
no comfortable houses for the mass of the people, no
railway, no wireless, no protection against epidemics,
no cheap books, no culture, and no enjoyment of art
for all... It is only men who are free, who create the
The Drive of Progress in Man
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inventions and intellectual works which to us moderns
make life worth while.”
The discipline which is effective in developing
the normal majority tends to ‘impose silence’ on our
minority of strange creatives, most harshly for the young.
The economic invisible hand pushes for the immediate
returns of imitation in neglect of the left hand of interest.
Interest brings greater return in the life of free spirits. At
issue here is the gap in mind between the known and
the seen; conventional discipline imposes silence in this
gap. Look at something familiar, then hold on for long
enough to get the feeling that you don’t know everything
about it. This will open a crack which may fill with
unanticipated observations, both external as sensory
details and internally as unanticipated thoughts. These
unanticipated novelties, which arise in the fissure or
canyon between the concrete observed and the concrete
known, stimulate interest.
Less motivated by external reward and
punishment, our divergent trickles can be brought to
torrent by the more internal punishment and reward
of boredom and interest. The system of reward and
punishment most strongly driving the individual
nervous system is primary factor to the educational
methods which will prove effective.
Let us sweep this through the light of intellectual
history to see a flash of each exposed face. “Nothing
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Let Me Give You a Hand
is more certain than that all improvement in human
affairs is without exception the work of discontented
characters”, John Stuart Mill. “I was discovering that
most high-powered minds do not daily generate new
ideas. Their brains mostly lie idle until the input of one
or more new facts stimulates their neurons to resolve
the conundrums that stump them”, James Watson.
“One gains the most if one can sufficiently heighten
the yield of pleasure from the sources of psychical and
intellectual work. When that is so, fate can do little
against one”, Sigmund Freud. These three statements,
however generalized in writing, are based on the
personal experience of individuals heavily biased by the
internal dynamic of interest and boredom.
The terms invisible right and left hands are not
meant to be extrapolated into the popular concept of
left and right brain ‘dominant’ people or any specific
anatomical notions. Rather this is a guiding principal
reflected parallel and inside out of the outward guiding
force of economic manpower direction. It must be clear
that though everyone is affected by both hands, they
operate in sharp opposition. Physics Nobel laureate
Robert Laughlin stressed “the truth is that sometimes
the imperative to focus fails, and there is absolutely
nothing anybody can do about it. The impulse to live
in creative freedom is powerful within all of us, and a
handful of people wind up succumbing to it despite the
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warnings.” Despite the fearful warnings of right handed
conformity, only vaguely aware of the fruits. Focus
does not fail, but rather fails to be directed by monetary
concerns. Though Laughlin describes this as the “brainy
cousin of drug abuse or teenage suicide”, he salivates for
its jelly.
In like spirit to Einstein, Laughlin swoons
“what is certain is that it is the true source of art,
scientific discovery that counts, and the powerful drive
to innovate characteristic of modern civilization.”
Powerful as these claims may seem, disregard for the
minority they most tightly apply to is a great cause of
real inefficiency and suffering. My dog caught between
a bowl of food and a rabbit first will chase the rabbit,
to return only after the prey escapes. The prey escapes
because my dog is secured to bulk food and predatory
skill development has been retarded.
It must be distilled water; no, world war, obesity,
poverty, substance abuse, weapon of mass destruction
clear that the development of human minds of
disproportionate potential to improve the conditions
of human existence are currently being actively
retarded. And further that this long standing condition
is supported by pervasive ignorance. In 1947 C.S. Lewis
must have whispered “we continue to clamor for those
very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can
hardly open a periodical without coming across the
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Let Me Give You a Hand
statement that what our civilization needs is more ‘drive’,
or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or creativity.” Look for it
in the magazine rack of your nearest bookstore, I get it in
the mail every month.
This problem can not be solved by imitation; as
if a life size model airstrip will magically bring supplies
from a developed nation, or even that enough food for
everyone will solve hunger. Have you heard the World
Health Organization report that in 2006 there were one
billion overweight humans and only eight hundred
million starving? H.G. Wells was sloppy to write “human
history becomes more and more a race between
education and catastrophe.” Not speed, rather form is
the important factor here.
C.S. Lewis reminds that “the task of the modern
educator is not to cut down jungles but to irrigate
deserts.” The farm field too will benefit from irrigation,
but to the rainforest this is absurd; it need only
protection from farmers and lumberjacks. The right and
left hands engage in a tug-of-war inside the individual
throughout life. This is healthy exercise, but much more
often than not the left hand is told to loose on command
and throw the fight. I am confident to speculate that
this force is a major cause for the swelling epidemic of
depression, which is no illusion of increased reporting.
The pull contest between interest and money,
curiosity and security, sways across hours, weeks,
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decades, and lives. The pull of interest tends to take
longer to establish dominance than that of money. This
is in part due to the primal and contemporary social
forces aligned against it. External demand of discipline
and industry are often mere impediments to powerful
thought. This is why Laughlin wrote “good theoretical
physics is actually more like art than engineering and
is similarly difficult to summon up on demand.” E.O.
Wilson expands that “the best of science doesn’t consist
of mathematical models and experiments, as textbooks
make it seem. Those come later. It springs fresh from a
more primitive mode of thought, wherein the hunter’s
mind weaves ideas from old facts and fresh metaphors
and the scrambled crazy images of things recently seen.
To move forward is to concoct new patterns of thought.”
Ahhh, yes the hunter, now we’re on to something, and
‘difficult to summon up on demand’.
On to summon, Laughlin proceeds “the physical
idea precedes the mathematics, and the act of writing
it down as a simple equation is like capturing a song or
a poem.” Since the higher process can’t be forced, but
rather must be fed, education focuses on something that
can be forced, imitation.
Let it be evident that a test which can be cheated
on is an assessment of imitation. Imitation is surely no
devil, but the resort to it as a reasonable demand is why
Laughlin emphasized “like many great scientists, Galileo
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Let Me Give You a Hand
was a rebellious individual. He had left university
without a degree in order to pursue his own intellectual
agenda.” I suspect many to assume Galileo as dropout
to be contextual to the scientifically primitive time of
his life. This is misconception, the blindspot persists
and cannot simply be expected to resolve on its own like
slavery and smallpox.
Imitation is no devil, but he who forces it does
his work; raise your hand if you believe in the virtue of
repressive government. The effort required to repress
an intellectual interest is greater than the force of that
interest. Being one body, the right and left hands not
only tug for position, they also share a power source.
As interest gains power money loses it, as the brain has
only so much energy at its disposal.
The trend of education is to condition the
student to the direction of the invisible right hand.
Not only the advanced development of imitation, but
also the repression of individual interest and resultant
retardation of creativity serve this end. Adults do not
have to become less creative with age, its development
is actively retarded by the overemphasis of imitative
behavior inherent to human social tendencies. As a
leading follower of interest, Alan Greenspan cheers
“I was seventy-three, true, but I saw no diminution of
my creativity, or of my ability to handle mathematical
relationships, or of my apatite for work - changes
The Drive of Progress in Man
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that would have made me hang up my spurs.” It is
common knowledge that creativity cannot be forced in
everyone, and so it is not essential to academic success.
Unfortunately the fact that imitation cannot be forced in
everyone is neglected, to the acute detriment of many
intelligent people and so society as a whole.
The less imitative one tends to be, the more
painfully imitation is experienced as a waste of precious
developmental effort, poorly compensated by transient
grades and money. For the people of the right hand,
physical security and material goods are an end in
themselves, for the left handers mere means with which
to continue their work here on earth.
Evolutionary biologist Richard Alexander
“suggested that culture is kept ‘on track’ by the interests
of individuals, and not by the interests of populations
or species except in the case that the interests of the
individuals comprising them are shared.” The interests
of individuals keep culture on track whereas the
motivating factor of money more often than not directs
activity away from the interest of the individual being
paid; traveling for business or pleasure sir, are you
reading that book for a class? The customer is always
right, did I mention popular vote? Who wants to buy
mine?
The world economies are trending toward
diversification and globalization as a result of increasing
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Let Me Give You a Hand
efficiencies conferred by advancement of technological
capability. This accelerating trend of reduced
dependence on easily systemized human mental and
physical labor will only continue, as it constitutes
relief of human sufferings. This is important because
money tends to be compensation for suffering, whereas
personal interest tends to the reduction of suffering,
when present, which is essentially always.
Who is so lucky to make a living by doing
what they enjoy, is a fortunate being indeed. Erwin
Schrödinger winced “the machine must take over
the toil for which man is too good.” The reduction
of suffering is the prime directive of ideal human
progress, we have reproduction down pat and licked;
humans? How many do you want sir? I’ll get right on
it. Friedrich Nietzsche felt “creating - that is the great
salvation from suffering, and life’s alleviation. But for
the creator to appear, suffering itself is needed and
much transformation.” We have plenty of suffering, the
limiting reagent in the synthesis of relief is tolerance
for transformation. Word on the street is that more
people kill themselves than die from HIV in the world.
SSRI antidepressants are thought to elicit their effect by
increasing development of new neurological structures,
novelty also does this.
Nietzsche is among those unserved by education
and laments “what is the task of all higher education?
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- To turn a man into a machine. - By what means? - He
has to learn how to feel bored. - How is that achieved?
- Through the concept of duty.” Einstein gives highlight
to this by reflecting “education is that which remains, if
one has forgotten everything he learned in school.” The
economic value of duty is sinking as the demand for
creativity balloons, if something reverses this trend it is
most surely unwanted calamity. Academic learning is
forced by measure, but creativity is outside the force-
measure dynamic, especially in its earlier stages of
development. This is largely why adoption remains
stagnant, it requires terrifying new patterns of thought.
Has the shortfall of education as we know it been
made clear yet? Laughlin smacks his medal “even this
room is teeming with things we do not understand.
Only people whose common sense has been impaired
by too much education cannot see it. The idea that
the struggle to understand the natural world has come
to an end is not only wrong, it is ludicrously wrong.”
To walk around the structure, known for competing
with the public funded Human Genome Project, Craig
Venter recounts “after facing death in Vietnam, I was not
afraid to take risks, that’s not typical of scientists. It’s a
group that follows much more than it leads.” Scientists
follow more than they lead because the education
process which conditions their growth is as intense as
schooling gets, and places excruciating demands on
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Let Me Give You a Hand
the development of imitation. This allows less residual
effort that might have gone to creative development, and
filters out intelligent but highly creative individuals.
Let it be clear that some people express a more
vigorous creative drive than they are able to continually
suppress, and that in grades K-16, creativity is a
handicap. This has to change, and when it does a great
release of human energies will be made available which
were before lost to friction. Well, that’s a beautiful idea,
but what can we do about it? First we will explore the
nature of the beast.
The Drive of Progress in Man
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5
The Beast in Question
My fellow humans, we have fully tamed our
food source, everything you need to remain physically
healthy can be grown with reasonable certainty.
Any issues you may have are to be forwarded to the
department of logistics. The department of food has
effectively eliminated its need for hunters and gatherers,
and has enabled us to graze at leisure. Unfortunately
the department of teaching now operates under the
idea that what works for our bodies, should work for our
minds.
I have in my hand a report from the department
of advancement, signed by the director of logistics
and several other departments, that the agricultural
paradigm of education is grossly less effective than it
needs to be. Though a good number of easily herded
minds are necessary to their represented organizations,
these like food are available in excess.
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The report states that: ‘every single department
which reports to the department of advancement
represents one or more organizations in need of more
hunters and gatherers; people able to find, stalk,
retrieve, and make efficient use of things they don’t
already know about. They also report that though the
hunters pose no real threat to the grazers, the heard
tends to chase our hunters away in fear.
The department of advancement hereby requests
that the department of teaching foster the development
of as many hunters and gatherers as possible.
Furthermore, it is requested that the hunters learn to be
sensitive to the deep rooted fears lurking within grazers,
while making the grazers as familiar as possible with the
hunter for the objective of quelling this fear.
This committee has gone out on an adventure
and returns with the collection below to assist your
efforts: First and foremost, the practice of drugging your
subjects naturally disinclined to graze, so to keep them
in the field, is in opposition the needs of our civilization
and the principals held by this committee. The reason
being, their predatory instincts, which we herein aim to
develop, must be encouraged. For this to happen, the
field must be a place for them to exhibit and distribute
what they have brought back from their adventures.
The grazers will gain greatly from this
supplementation; both in strength, and appreciation for
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The Beast In Question
the adventurers, who are currently tolerated at best. The
developing mind cannot continually feed on the same
kinds of knowledge and continue to grow as can the
body of food. New knowledge must always be hunted
and gathered for our advancement, simple planting of
old seeds is not enough. Learning to eat the catch of
the adventurers is not sufficient to develop the actual
hunting and gathering skills, though it can wet the
mouth.
When the hunter-gatherer is bored, their time
and development potential is being wasted; no matter
how sweet the grass today they want flesh and fruit. You
may see them inside the fence, playing with their feed
as if it were animate; just as important as what they eat
is how they get it. Those accustomed to the field tend
to say things like ‘go get us a bag of rabbits’, with little
understanding of the wild beyond the fence. Sometimes
older grazers will even demand a specific catch like
rabbit. This is inefficient, and may prevent the retrieval
of other substance such as deer or fruit. To pass up
the chance to bring back to the field something truly
amazing, because mundane lettuce was asked for, is
stressful to the explorer and weakens their enthusiasm
in ways the grazer cannot understand. Much of this
misunderstanding comes from the grazer’s common
experience of low diversity, high yield eating, wherein
one grazer can reasonably be asked to gather a large
The Drive of Progress in Man
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bag of grass. Nothing in the field poses the risk of being
more valuable to the group than the already known
material.
The hunter and gatherer of ‘new ways and means’
values mind, whereas the grazer if given choice will
take the barn and tractor. This can be crudely distilled
to a preference for that which sustains the individual.
Neither subspecies is any more or less noble, each
elevates the halo of importance over their own life. We
tend to see the value in other ways of life as we become
aware of the limits in our own. This contributes to the
suffering which young hunters and gatherers are given
to bear as a natural minority.
Of course hunters and gatherers learn by
imitation, but the dynamic is significantly different
from that of the grazer. The growing hunter-gatherer
gains little beyond distaste from beef stew and fruit
pie; they need bones to tear from muscle and peel and
seed to pull from fruit. For them, form is as important
as function, chase as a part of catch. To learn is not
sufficient, they need to touch the primary source. Great
knowledge is of little service to them blended, flavored,
and re-solidified for grazing.
They must learn from elder and historical hunter-
gatherers good form in hunting, even that it’s alright to
leave the field. This message can only be passed down
directly, and is lost in the process of chopping and
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The Beast In Question
cooking preferred by grazers. The conditioning of wild
catch serves as its very purpose to denature, so that the
substance may be molded by the intention of the cook.
Let it settle as a feather on the moon that
common textbook and teacher too often spoonfeed
puree of Bald Eagle breast, saturated with corn syrup
and synthetic spice, because the label says ‘knowledge is
power’. Sure there is protein, but the strength gained will
no more help the student find an Eagle than cow’s milk
or fried field-mouse.
Those minds gifted and burdened so, to absorb
unknown fluids from beyond the corral of social affair,
must discover and explore the currents which tickle
their spirit. Charles Darwin felt it to write “this gave me
intense pleasure, so that my backbone would sometimes
shiver.” Darwin speaks of the wild pleasure aroused by
discovery from beyond the socio-pastoral bounds of
contemporary understanding. The being convulses
with pleasure from solitary creation in a way only to be
seduced.
The creator in mankind is too powerful to be
drugged and raped as the will and womb too often
are for the purposes of dominant others. This is not to
speculate that the creative activity of a human brain
acts in some objective virtue, though it is off-balanced
toward the good of the species; for otherwise mankind
would be long grass. It must arise for the individual’s
The Drive of Progress in Man
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interest however this may lead and to what horizon.
Tell the HR department that they cannot buy creativity,
only bread and materials for creative people, and that
the supply is limited by nature and furthermore by
allowance of cultivation.
Here we discuss the hunter and gatherer of
creative spirit. Man is to the creative spirit domestic
canine in want of table scraps, and more liberal is the
gentle humorous child. What are music and comedy but
lord and savior?
It must be crystal that painting and theater
classes are no more conducive to creative development
than politics or science, except as a change of clothes
and rearrangement of furniture. Fortunately the issue is
more bloody and structural than these topical ointments
soothe. Everyone get in your places, we’re going
through Silent Night one more time. Ok, for our next
assignment I would like everyone to paint a still life. In
fourteen ninety three Columbus stopped to pee.
The genius thinks something different because
genius thinks different; worldview. Worldview is not
something you can change by joining Oprah’s book
club, it’s why you joined the club in the first place. This
distinction is important because grazing and wanting
to graze forms a significantly different worldview than
hunting and gathering and wanting to. The book club
might open you up to new things, but that’s why you
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The Beast In Question
joined it.
Our education is based on and aims to refine the
grazer worldview, and rightly so, the classroom is in a
barn. Outside the field there is no regularly scheduled
programming except the sunrise and sunset; not even
the heartbeat is steady. In the lunchroom we eliminate
ants, on the hunt they may be informant, lemony treat,
or even sitcom. In the field we are king, and all is subject
to the demands of a goal such as corn harvest. As king
of the field we know that the more control we have over
the field, water, pests, nutrients, the higher our yield.
Outside the enforced simplicity of our field lurk qualities
not produced under sterile conditions. The hunter and
gatherer go off into the raw complexity to bring back
something of value not in the field. There is more out
there than we could ever dream of, let alone bring back.
Since we have the fields well under control, this
committee hereby declares that all who show a taste for
complexity be exposed to the thought and catches of
successful hunter-gatherers and encouraged to explore
by their own sense of interest so that it may grow strong
and sharp. An acute tearing grove will develop on the
interest from adventure outside the field; this will make
it easy to separate the frivolous from the essential.
Note that the farmer makes an outline and fills
it in, whereas the gatherer and hunter prepare and set
off on a tack with the wind. Whereas the barn-builder’s
The Drive of Progress in Man
- 52 -
worldview is based on a 3-dimensional topology
which may also concern the breakdown of materials
as a function of time, adventurer Benoit Mandelbrot
squeezed his fractals and wrote “effective dimension
concerns the relation between mathematical sets
and natural objects [...] a novelty of this essay is that it
allows the value of effective dimension to be a fraction.”
Though builder’s lumber is straight enough to build a
barn, most of us know that molecules aren’t straight,
atoms aren’t round, and neither is anything else. Barn
builder may not care, but paint chemist may.
Appreciation for the fruits of exploration will
increase in those who explore most, as they begin to
understand the unique heroic nature of discovery; to see
that it is not a given but rather gift. Do not be confused,
creation is a process of discovery. To really discover,
one’s mind must be able to free itself from authority.
The known tends to be a slab by which new ways and
ideas must first crack or find cracks in, through which
they may come to light.
The divergent spirit, the hunter-gatherer learns
to defy authority inwardly and outwardly to the point
of reflex. On the adventure one develops a worldview
where everything is seen to have cracks that open so
wide the known becomes but tags. This worldview
tends to overcome hierarchical forces altogether. These
cracks are the basis of science and democracy, as well as
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The Beast In Question
traditional arts; open for progress. In democracy, power
is restricted and overthrow is built into the system. In
science every theory, law, and bit of evidence has an
assumed degree of certainty of less than one hundred
percent.
The founding fathers of the United States of
America understood the importance of freedom to
progress. Thomas Jefferson suspected “there must
doubtless be an unhappy influence on the manners of
our people produced by the existence of slavery among
us. [...] Our children see this, and learn to imitate it; for
man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of
all education in him.” Obedience and dominance are
easily imitated, and necessary to heard life, but their
limits must be clear. The master-slave, farmer-field,
teacher-student dynamic inhibits the fundamental
development of creativity and stalls progress. On the
power of compensation Jefferson, “with money we will
get men, said Cesar, and with men we will get money.”
Is it clear that the draw of money tends to
produce more of the same, whereas personal interest
tends to produce novelties? Innovation in consumables
on the free market is driven by customer preference for
the new and improved. This improvement is no mere
opulence, rather it trends to increased efficiency for
consumers who call it convenience.
Adam Smith in the 1700’s remarked that
The Drive of Progress in Man
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“abundance of food, of which, in consequence of the
improvement of land, many people have the disposal
beyond what they themselves can consume, is the great
cause of the demand both for the precious stones, as
well as for every other convenience and ornament of
dress, lodging, household furniture, and equipage, food
not only constitutes the principal part of the riches
of the world, but it is the abundance of food which
gives the principal part of their value to many other
sorts of riches.” This committee has been reminded
by the demands of our adventure beyond the field, of
the distinction between convenience and ornament,
precious stones and equipage; to re-edge the tearing
groove on our sense of interest. We have found this
discernment to be the best guide of what to bring on our
adventures and more importantly of what to seek and
bring back to the field. This discernment is too specific
to be instructed and tested, it must be developed and
exercised by the demands of wilderness.
The urge often manifest as ‘why’ is suppressed
by the heavy hand of authority, money, tests, etc. It is
not to say that these are necessary, this is obvious; the
boundaries of their effectiveness and utility must be
clear to us who are in want or need of progress.
Drop this book right now and thank your heretic
science teacher if lab ever allowed more creativity
than baking a pumpkin pie by the recipe on the side
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The Beast In Question
of the can. There is no time or patience in chemistry
lab for cracks. Alright let’s go, I need blue crystals from
everyone by 10:45, just follow the directions and ask
for help if you don’t understand a step. Don’t forget
to record the weight, volume, and absorbance of
everything on your worksheet. Eleven o’clock, alright
now I want everyone to make as many pins as they can
in the next forty five minutes and then stick one of them
in your left eye, this assignment is worth 100 points.
The value of the Internet is in part a function
of its bits of data transmitted per dollar minus the bits
per dollar of other forms of communication, this is an
enormous quantity. There is a more qualitative value in
the Internet, the phenotype of superconductivity. The
cost to send a picture from Ann Arbor to Washington
DC is the same as to Berlin or even a hundred places at
once. Of course this high temperature superconductor
has heating costs but this is a demand of the material
based on how much of it you want to keep warm and
how refined it is.
The significance of ever increasing capacity
for frictionless flow of information, for students and
the specific future demands of their economy, is less
straightforward and clear than ever in human history.
Adam Smith recalls that “before the art of printing, a
scholar and a beggar seem to have been terms very
nearly synonymous.” As the known becomes the easily
The Drive of Progress in Man
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accessed by all at any time, the toil of memorization
loses value. The handheld filter pump is much lighter
than potable water.
Discernment on the fly becomes more
advantageous as muddy information is everywhere,
no need to carry what can be filtered on demand. The
water retention of modern education is still essential for
many just as strong muscle is not and will not become
obsolete, but just as physical labor its value will continue
to decrease. If you have a good filter pump, some bottles
are necessary to the mission, but likely not the jugs
of antiquity, and antiquity here means the twentieth
century.
Adam Smith is clear on this “the man who
works upon brass and iron, works with instruments
and upon materials of which the temper is always
the same, or very nearly the same. But the man who
ploughs the ground with a team of horses or oxen,
works with instruments of which the health, strength,
and temper, are very different upon different occasions.
The condition of the materials which he works upon,
too, is as variable as that of the instruments which
he works with, and both require to be managed with
much judgment and discretion.” Important here is the
development of judgment and discretion stimulated
by working in uncertainty. Smith adds “his voice and
language are more uncouth and more difficult to be
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The Beast In Question
understood by those who are not used to them.” This
could be interpreted as a simple lack of sophistication,
except that Smith continues “his understanding,
however, being accustomed to consider a greater variety
of objects, is generally much superior to that of the
other, whose whole attention from morning till night
is commonly occupied in performing one or two very
simple operations.”
The sense of discernment is retarded by
the educational emphasis of memory because the
effort spent in the process of specific store and recall
diminishes diversity of exposure; this causes boredom
in many. This boredom is often apprehended as a lack
of sophistication which ideally will be trained out of the
students. This boredom is a signal that clearly pinpoints
a fault in the educational system, not the student who
suffers from it.
Kurt Vonnegut on “how to tell a good picture
from a bad one”, quotes Syd Solomon “Look at a
million pictures, and you can never be mistaken.” For
all of human history the limiting factor was cost of
distribution, as in ‘we can only buy so many books’.
This restriction has only in the third millennium CE
been lifted by indoor plumbing. It is only now possible
to stand on hind legs and apply the front two in fine
manipulation. Erwin Schrödinger professed “next
to want, boredom has become the worst scourge in
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our lives. Instead of letting the ingenious machinery
we have invented produce an increasing amount of
superfluous luxury, we must plan to develop it so that it
takes off human beings all the unintelligent, mechanical,
‘machine-like’ handling.” This applies to ‘machine-like’
thinking as much as physical labor. With the advent of
spellchecking word processors and search engines, the
spelling bee is as useful as a beauty pageant for hogs.
Sophisticated writing develops by exposure
to a diversity of sophisticated writers, and conversely
cannot arise from mastery of distilled grammar rules.
The rules are too general to be useful in development of
skill, and typically impair interest. Point is, the demand
for and resources to cultivate creativity, in those minds
conducive to it, are now ubiquitous. To eat the fruit
of the tree of knowledge will confer discernment, but
only in those who themselves have a taste for it, and in
proportion to how much they eat.
Free Markets and Free Minds
The human nervous system is a highly adaptive
control system for the body, and the economy is a highly
adaptive control system for the body of human material
resources; both actively tuned to their ecosystem. It
should be little surprise they are two peas in a pod like
electricity and water. The resemblance of function gives
way to reveal a resemblance in form. Around the sphere
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The Beast In Question
we have an assortment of varied economies mostly
divided by national boundary and industry, and highly
integrated by communication and logistics. Inside our
domes we have an assortment of varied information
handling structures mostly divided by region and
function, and highly integrated by nerve tracts,
hormonal signals, and blood flow.
Alan Greenspan remembers “What they were
running into was the problem of central planning in a
market economy - the market will always undermine
any attempt at control.” This is the problem we are
running into with education, the most creative minds
operate in most resemblance of the most creative
economies; free market. Greenspan paraphrases Joseph
Schumpeter “A market economy will increasingly
revitalize itself from within by scrapping old and failing
businesses and then reallocating resources to newer,
more productive ones.” This is also true of the brain
economy, based on how heavily invested it is in each
neurological structure.
To build a new structure is more work for the
brain than to use one that already exists. The human
brain sucks energy like a server farm, but its design is
heavily constrained by food scarcity. Regional blood
flow is actively managed, there is only so much to go
around.
Synaptogenesis, the construction of new brain
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structures is very specific, stimulated by activity, and
lack of activity can allow processes to dissolve. HD
Thoreau knew that “we need to be provoked, -goaded
like oxen, as we are into a trot.”
Memorization is heavy investment in a few
pieces of infrastructure deemed to be important enough
to warrant the cost. Due to the rapid expansion of
energy consumption and even greater ballooning of new
communication, production, and transport efficiencies,
the economy becomes less controllable, less predictable,
more wild, but also more powerful and more adaptive.
The less controllable, less predictable mind too can
become more adaptable and more powerful. Those
activities which can be outsourced and automated free
up local resources, which can be then applied to less
systematic endeavor which tends to be of higher value;
skilled labor is more valuable than unskilled. The more
dynamic economy demands more dynamic minds.
The dynamic adaptability of minds varies across
the spectrum of individuals; this is a born-in tendency
which is affected by the environment. Those more
imitative minds tend to be less dynamic in part because
more outside control is developed into the system.
One outward form this can take is the hesitation to act
or think in a way ‘I have not already seen in someone
else’. Any new behavior tends to draw attention,
whether adaptive or maladaptive. Variation across this
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The Beast In Question
dimension tends to be a result of willingness to take
risks, which is increased by factors such as the intensity
of need for novelty and tolerance for failure.
The basis of free-market efficiency is the drive
of each individual and company to maximize their
own profits. Any economic agent that finds room for
improvement uncovers an opportunity to profit. This
is also true for the development of ideas. All ideas
can and eventually will be improved in some way.
This improvement is made possible when someone
identifies a weakness. Once a weakness or ignorance in
an idea is identified, an opportunity for improvement
then opens. The one who ‘sees’ a weakness then
has solid ground for improvement, whether the
weakness is an economic inefficiency or a deficient
idea. Identification of a weakness makes improvement
possible. For example: if a bridge collapses, the
weak-point that allowed this to happen is the place
to start understanding the underlying problem. The
development and improvement of business follows
the pattern of the development and improvement of
ideas. Where improvement in business is motivated
primarily by profit, the development of ideas is primarily
motivated by the relief of suffering. Since money can
act as compensation for suffering, many ideas aimed at
reliving it are profit opportunities themselves. People
are paid to suffer, and are willing to pay to reduce their
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suffering.
Short of catastrophic failure such as bridge
collapse, the identification of weakness in ideas can
be very subtle, and thus ignored by most people. Most
people aren’t looking for the weaknesses in ideas when
they seem to work ‘well enough’. Progress happens as
a response to dissatisfaction. To be dissatisfied with
a bridge or idea that is not about to collapse is a risk,
‘common’ sense says ‘don’t fix what’s not broken’.
The amazing nature of human progress is that
some people aren’t satisfied when things simply work
well enough, they see room for improvement. This is
highly discouraged in current educational process, and
those who can’t consistently ignore their sense that
progress is possible are disadvantaged as a result. The
attitude is ‘look at all this progress we’ve made’, rather
than ‘hey, if you think you have a better idea, try it out,
your risk’. The bias is often sadly that ‘these students
don’t know enough to make any improvements’. If a
student, however immature, sees something that can
be improved, that is their ticket. Anyone who thinks
improvement is unnecessary, and discourages the
pursuit of it, does not have the key component. The
drive to understand a problem, once it is noticed that
something’s wrong, is all the guidance necessary to
explore possible means of improvement. Charles
Darwin curls his toes on the sharp edge of this boulder
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The Beast In Question
to cast “I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind
free, so as to give up any hypothesis, however much
beloved (and I cannot resist forming one on every
subject), as soon as facts are shown to be opposed to it.”
This is the most powerful reservoir of learning potential,
and lies yet massively untapped in the academic
environment.
No progress can be made by those unwilling
to take risks, and the greatest improvements are all
made by great risk takers. To think and act in new
ways is always a risk, significantly as a gamble of social
position. To exhibit standard fashion is default and
tends to require the least energy. The memorization
heavy framework of education as we know it tends to act
on this level by promoting stable, well defined thought
structures decreed from a higher authority. The solidity
and dominance of these structures is their weakness
in that a resistance to adaptation is formed. They exert
more directive force on the thought process, and more
force is necessary to avoid or change them.
The glass bottle is not made obsolete by plastic,
rather its range of uses is constricted. The most plastic
among us cannot be made rigid except by great waste
of raw material; and so in education the importance
of material science and economic demand waits to
be adequately addressed. Greenspan pointed “the
steel beverage can went the way of the telegraph key
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and money followed the innovation.” The outwardly
motivated follow money, and money follows the
inwardly motivated. Everyone follows the most creative
thinkers whether directly or indirectly, and the most
creative thinkers follow their sense of curiosity; this
determines the course of human progress.
The man to be blamed for calculus class, Isaac
Newton, is described by holder of his old position at
Cambridge, Stephen Hawking as “one of the poorest
students, with his teachers’ reports stating he was
‘inattentive’ and ‘idle’. Despite his curiosity and
demonstrable passion for learning, he was unable to
apply himself to schoolwork.” Schoolwork in this case
is analogous to government micro-management of
industry as Greenspan details “deregulation was the
Ford administration’s great unsung achievement. It’s
difficult to imagine how strait-jacketed American
business was then. Airlines, trucking, railroads,
buses, pipelines, telephones, television, stock-brokers,
financial markets, savings banks, utilities - all operated
under heavy regulation. Operations were monitored
down to the tiniest detail. [...] The Chicago economists
argued that government should intervene less, not more,
because scientific regulation was a myth.” Scientific
regulation of the learning process too is a myth.
Just as increasing efforts to regulate the under-
achieving US economy became counterproductive, so
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The Beast In Question
too for our under-achieving students. The ‘curiosity
and demonstrable passion for learning’ exhibited by
‘inattentive’ young Isaac Newton is the telltale mark
of a free market mind, and the deep resistance to
schoolwork is clear sign of misapplied regulation.
This is no issue of good teachers and bad
teachers, we’re operating a failed theory. On the
influence of theory Alan Greenspan, “one year, President
Eisenhower actually apologized to the American people
for running a $3 billion deficit.” The optimal risk-reward
ratio for the creative mind is higher than that of the
majority, but the educational program currently running
on our system has no way to effectively handle this. We
literally throw away the most powerful minds because
they defy our Newtonian model of learning, a common
aversion of the eye.
The right hand will push ‘start what you finish’,
but for the follower of interest this is wrong. For the free
market mind to follow interest is much more important
than to force completion; it’s perfectly alright to catch
and release. In learning to hunt and gather, to track the
interest is more important than to kill and drag home.
That will surely come later of its own accord as the
value of fresh catch becomes clear and necessary to the
hunter, psychologically and socioeconomically.
Alright, we have the beast in our sights, what
should we do with it?
The Drive of Progress in Man
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6
Bag It and Tag It
To capture and hold the attention, even of
students, is in crude form. Humans can sense this, but
also are trained to sit at attention and shake for a treat.
As dogs, chase them with sufficient force of character
and they will run, run from them in playful spirit and
they will chase.
The attention is live animal spirit; only the least
quick and cunning can be captured and held. In the
age of expanding waistlines and information bloat,
who dare challenge the virtue of ‘hyper’-activity and
sensitivity to boredom? Those with strong taste for fluff,
who have impotence of thought to show for it. The dam
need not be removed by the dynamite force of Alfred
Nobel, education as we know it holds a great body of
importance.
A side channel we must dig so for fish to swim up
and spawn in their ancestral waters and grow ever more
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fruitful; surely to the nourishment of all. Those whose
interest cannot be readily caught and detained ‘for their
own good’ need an ever-present way around the dam of
promise-to-repeat learn-and-test.
The extra allowance of taking on a label such as
Learning Disabled is grossly insufficient. Extra test time
and individual assistance bend over a too small nail, to
ignore the original purpose of fastener; their wood is too
hard. Those too hard headed to take finishing nails must
be allowed and even encouraged to swim up the side
channel and earn their creative freedom.
Every dam must be flanked by a side channel,
and side channels must be carefully designed by
those who themselves have hooks for the Learning
Disabled tag. Only they can fully appreciate the diverse
conditions which favor the great spawn of swimming
ideas; the polymorphic mating dance which serves to
arouse wet hot interest into reproductive friction. Henry
David Thoreau suspected that “the works of the great
poets have never yet been read by mankind, for only
great poets can read them.”
Though not everyone can excel in the imitation
game, many who can stay afloat in the river may yet
benefit from upstream swimming in the side channel;
it must be open to all. The burden of formally tested
qualification has no place here. This means that the side
channel must be constructed to be of sum benefit to
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Bag It and Tag It
students, so that to swim up it is no less developmentally
advantageous than standard instruction. To station a
park ranger with a brochure at the dam to select and
throw over those fish come to spawn further upstream
ignores the fact that the effectiveness of current
educational theory is limited.
It must be rocky glacial stream clear that the
limits, of conscious educational understanding which
can be systematically passed on across the board, are
not soon to dissipate. The park rangers will always miss
some fish, and the effect on spawning of the stress from
being so handled is poorly understood. The value of
hunting and gathering must be acknowledged so those
so inclined can be excused from grazing when the drive
stirs in them or when processed feed is unpalatable,
rather than expected to stalk wily ideas on a full stomach
after hours. Standard educational practice is to remain
default, but every student must at all times have the
option to go off alone or as a group on the hunt. This
is no excuse to simply waste time in idle, prevention of
laziness is why we test learning.
The concern that absent looming tests, laziness
will creep in from the woods and drain productivity is
very real. The boundary here is that reliance on testing
to repel blood sucking laziness also limits potential.
In the field a coating of DEET is highly effective pest
repellent, and often necessary to seated warm-bloods.
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On the hunt movements and wind currents can allow
one to avoid both insectual predation and detection by
potential large game. Here the net effect of mandatory
bug spray is negative. The brave minority who venture
outside the field quickly learn when and how to
effectively test themselves when ‘good enough’ steps
aside for amazing as it charges by, hot on the trail of
something rare and delicious.
Still for a second, everyone, a standard must be
set out to dry. A solid foundation for our free and brave
students to exhibit their find or catch and tell the story of
their explorations. If no catch was got, then the burden
of their story itself to bear fruit is so greater. To stand
before their fellow students and provide food for thought
will be their evidence of time-well-employed. Let the
structure be inscribed in front with lions and tigers and
bear the words ‘all who present here, may they be subtle
or bold, but always original and never boring’.
Beyond proof of industry, this exercise will
develop the skill of presentation, all-important to those
who will to bring ‘new ways and methods’ to their social
group, on whatever scale. This is a skill of primary
importance to divergent characters, which is certain to
ease integration into wider society.
Shyness and/or crude disregard for social
sensibilities tend to hinder the presentation skills of
personalities supernormally inclined to novelty and
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Bag It and Tag It
creativity, especially so for the young. These same
people hold a supernormal potential to develop
presentation skills. In main because when allowed to
follow their wild interest they will have things to lay on
the table that the more conventionally inclined won’t, a
more effective grasp of these things they found or caught
in situ, and more precise emotional force under them.
That which they have to feed the group is less common,
and they have uncommon command of and affection for
it.
No standardized set of testable guidelines can
effectively prepare one to present their discoveries,
creations, and stories of ‘failed’ quest to a group. The
enforced presentations common to K-16 promote a
limited generation of presentation skill. Too often
presentations are profoundly boring. If the presenter is
forced to fake interest, so too will the crowd. Of course
the hope in the academic presentation is that student
will catch interest as a virus by sufficient exposure.
Firstly exposure length and depth is rarely sufficient to
confer strong infection, and secondly exposure is more
often than not to a weakened strain or even a harmless
solution of surface proteins.
A work of personal interest will conjure more
resources than one of mandate. Think this, ‘did I dream
of study drills, money and success, or good additions
to the project last night?’, or during lunch break or class
The Drive of Progress in Man
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for that matter. Unconscious brain activity is very real,
powerful, and sometimes demands democratic rule. If
you don’t understand this yet, go out and get addicted
to cigarettes for a while, and then quit; it may take a few
tries.
At risk, in the divorce of interest from means and
result of creative labor, for eventual reward of grades or
money, is depth of processing. Mandatory assignment
offloads the weight to make a presentation amazing
for the audience. The audience is obstacle to the true
purpose of good grade from the teacher. In presenting a
new meal to their people, the returned adventurer is to
harvest the energy of audience reaction. This is to take
the response of each mind on paper recorded during
and after the meal as burps, mmmm’s, and table scraps.
A reasonable mandate to make of the diners as it will
tend to spur them out of the seat of passive receptacle.
Here too important is the maintenance of an open
channel because the hunter will grow understanding of
the listeners themselves in addition to light shed onto
the catch.
An even greater source of energy can take form
of audience question during presentation. This cannot
be reasonably mandated, but is to be allowed and
encouraged. This practice strongly discourages the
banal practice of script recital.
The recital of script is in opposition to the spirit
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Bag It and Tag It
of the hunter-gatherer and inhibits free market mind
activity. The presentation too must be a hunt wherein
the audience serves to keep the presenter alert and
wily. As hunter runs through the audience to scare up
pheasant, therein may wait blood-sucker and tooth
bearer alike. To stir myriad creature form up into
activity inside presenter and audience is our stated
objective. The bluff of scarecrow and mask become
obvious as all else leaps and ducks and blinks.
It must be cold bucket of tears clear that the
test which can be cheated on demands but a puppet
show. The highest and most rare feedback of course
will appear in the form of individual ecosystems grown
more lively and complex by such intercourse, and the
successful transfection of interesting species able to cut
out a niche in new environments. The speciation and
geographic dispersion of ideas increases their chance
of survival as outer conditions vary, and in doing so
increase the survivability of the entire system. The virtue
of finding and creating ideas, new to the psycho-local
and socio-local ecosystems, and skillfully introducing
them is nothing short of survival advantage.
Human history, through the lens of progressively
expanding survival power on the species level, rides
in a cart pulled by the generation and transmission of
new idea-forms. The same rockets and nuclear chain
reactions that have yet to destroy us are also the first
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means any earthling lifeform has ever produced which
may deflect great meteor impact.
The Internet is no less significant to educational
method than the introduction of mass-printed text.
A simple replacement of book with screen in the
classroom is insufficient. Terrifying as it appears at
first, the idea that any standard set of curriculum can
be sufficient to the education of twenty first century
minds is obsolete. The discreet set of essential subjects
is quickly becoming handicap. The sheer speed and
complexity of the modern world is becoming too great
for a serial top-down system to teach. The twenty first
century is when massively parallel processing becomes
both widely possible and necessary. Allowing and
encouraging those students so inclined to take on some
of the work, of what to learn and why, is an important
trim in this direction.
The fact that current curricula moves the
eardrums much more than the synapses of an
intelligent minority of students, means that to allow
them unrestricted freedom of exploration, risks much
less than it stands to reward if skillfully executed.
The human brain differs most profoundly from the
modern computer in that stored information is itself
the processor. Too many waiting programs and too
much stored data erode the performance of our digital
electronic modern computing marvels. Not so for the
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Bag It and Tag It
human brain, the more you know the more you can
learn and the more happens in your brain in response to
the environment; the more you can do.
The challenge of twenty first century education
is to cultivate powerful minds, this objective is now
more important than creating a good standardized
foundation. The foundation of each mind faces
increasingly exacting demands, determined by the
persistent properties of the individual character, be they
genetically or socioeconomically varied in expression.
No intelligence/personality test will be capable of
corralling students to their optimal career destiny unless
progress is frozen solid, in which case Homo sapiens is
guaranteed extinction. The standard foundation is not
entirely obsolete, but its universal application is.
Allow those who must and even those who can,
find and prepare food for thought more conducive
to brain growth, to develop this skill as a way to buy
their freedom from regularly scheduled programming.
Instead of falling through the cracks or being tied down
with dopamine reuptake inhibitors, they will begin to
build minds which have throughout history been the
subject of myth and legend.
A major obstacle to such relinquishment of
control by well established educational tradition will
most certainly take the form of restrictions imposed on
time frame, content, and format. Due dates and topical
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mandates are the tightest held strings of conventional
process, these must be given as much slack as can be
used in the compounding of learning interest. Low
interest return on time investment can be a sign of
too much or too little slack; just as loose loan rates
encourage wasted investment and excess spending on
disposable goods, and rates too tight prevent high risk/
reward investment in research and development. In
the modern economic environment, to take on too little
risk is itself a danger, and it must be opaque that this
is the engine of education system inadequacy today.
Failure by playing it too safe, failure by excessive micro-
management, failure by disregarding the creativity of its
members; a squandered resource of rising value.
Alan Greenspan highlights “a rarely discussed,
but important, macroeconomic determinant of
economic success is the extent of an economy’s
flexibility and hence its resilience to shocks.” Flexibility
is what these hunter-gatherer free market minds are
made of, not to be confused with tolerance for cookie
cutters. Those operating a right handed drive to some
easy way out of their assignments will find the challenge
of originality to draw more effort than to go with the
flow.
Upstream swimming will entail more labor than
simply getting with the program, and will tend to only
be chosen by those whose activity is driven, stroked,
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Bag It and Tag It
and pleasured by the invisible left hand. Carl Jung
summarized “the biographies of great artists make
it abundantly clear that the creative urge is often so
imperious that it battens on their humanity and yolks
everything to the service of the work, even at the cost of
health and ordinary human happiness.” This of course it
the most ultraviolet end of the spectrum; point being the
drive can pull hard enough to swim upstream, and the
effort necessary to do so cannot be yoked to lazy animal.
Creative activity tends to steer the course of
manpower employment and so calls for increased
developmental attention as civilization progress
accelerates; to keep us on the road even if we don’t
know where we’re going. Do not fear, those so left
handed to act ‘at the cost of health and ordinary human
happiness’ are no more monstrous than right handed
workaholics in it for the cash, or the all ‘A’ student who
sacrifices balanced social development and ‘street
smarts’. The battle for productivity has hereto been
writing off the collateral damage of incomplete theory
on its taxes.
There is nothing so sacred in what is taught
to students today, that the option of free exploration,
by those who pursue it, can justifiably be prevented
in doing so. The option must be available at student
discretion, to the degree that a sufficiently creative
student need not do anything they find uninteresting,
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just as a sufficiently imitative student already need not
do anything creative. This will serve the side-end of
giving more traditional students some interesting things
to imitate. The full-frontal advantage will be that our
little kittens will have significant experience chasing
mice and rabbit by the time they need moose and bear
to survive.
But wait a second, what if the imagination runs
too wild? We don’t want our progeny foaming at the
mouth, unable to understand that fresh kill on the
doorstep isn’t always appreciated.
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7
The Imaginary Threat
Attention is pulled at by sensory input and
thought in its many forms. Attention to thought is
attention away from looking, listening, or any other
sense; even from the outer object of thought. The more
I think about what you just said, the less I continue to
listen to you.
Hyperfocus is to build great enough interest
in a thought process or sensory stream to detach
background accessory attentions. Imagine writing
secrets in your diary in a bedroom, door shut and no
one is home. Alright now try a chair facing the TV where
anyone could sneak up from behind for a peek. Interest
here is meant as a present moment force perceptively
active in your brain, not a generalized ‘I’m interested in
sidewalk design’, which can be interrupted by a sudden
interest in going to the hospital when your breath is
short, chest hurts, then left arm starts to simulate pins
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and needles.
Interestingly enough, Alan Greenspan wrote
“the concept of irrational exuberance came to me in
the bathtub one morning as I was writing a speech.”
It feels safe to speculate, the temporary relaxation
of external demand as the force pulling thought was
allowed reorient to the drag line of interest and release
imagination from rigid expectation. The secure,
comfortable, private environment of the bathtub freed
up more attention from immediate outer sensational
vigil, to watch the released imagination. The bathtub
in this way incubated in Greenspan exuberance
enough for the hatching of ‘irrational exuberance’
from his imagination. Greenspan elaborates “to this
day, the bathtub is where I get many of my best ideas.
my assistants have gotten used to typing from drafts
scrawled on damp yellow pads - a chore that got much
easier once we found a kind of pen whose ink doesn’t
run.”
Demands from outside the individual draw
energies from the ability to focus attention on inner
processes. This takes various forms, beyond gross
distraction when the dog whines for attention, many
of which remain unconscious. The subtle effects of
context on the attentional process are typically more
manageable once they can be consciously understood,
explored, and manipulated. A major driver behind
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The Imaginary Threat
contextual draw of attentional resources comes from
the need for self protection. This need acts on a primal
level to watch for threats to bodily survival. To sit with
the back to a wall will draw less residual attention than
to leave the back exposed. When attention is directed in
chasing an internal thought process, the force of interest
in this process is in competition with the drive to watch
your back, be it conscious or not. This is part of why
the bathtub behind closed doors is such a good place to
think.
Another important factor is the stimulus
of possibly relevant novelty, because it excites the
interest. Here the bathtub outwardly appears to be
disadvantageous, what could possibly be stimulating in
a comfortably familiar warm bathtub? Inner novelty, the
demands of the outside world are temporarily lightened
while soaking naked and alone in clean warm water.
This allows the imagination itself to generate interesting
stimuli.
Another major draw comes from the demands
of social interaction. Even the possibility of someone
who cannot reasonably be ignored can be demanding
of attentional resources. That is ‘I love you, but please
leave me alone, I’m working on something’. To be alone
or in an anonymous crowd can free up scarce resources
for application to thought. This is in part due to the
necessity of blood flow management in the brain, as
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energy distribution is actively tuned to regional demand.
Reduced need for oxygen, glucose, and construction
materials in one place frees them up to another.
Obviously other factors are important here, but blood
flow is the most straightforward to imagine, and makes
the point; we’ve all witnessed swelling of muscles,
genitals, and tissue in repair.
Since humans wield immense social intelligence,
the cost of employment is high. I suspect this is partial
cause of the sensationalized ability of some autistics to
exhibit savant capabilities. The autistic social system
is crippled, but for those with healthy social abilities,
disengagement can be useful where the task itself
doesn’t require social intelligence. Ideally in a group
project, where social activity is directed at the project
itself, resources are not wasted as group members
provide each other with relevant novelties. Still here,
pressures to go with the group and in turn stick closely
to convention tend to be strong.
Just as drives like self protection and social
interaction can drain resources in the background, so
too for a pet project. A developing thought process can
itself drain attentional resources, even when it goes
unnoticed. This becomes especially pronounced when
interest in a project is stronger than the force motivating
more mundane activity, such as mandated studies of no
currently active interest or relevant novelty. Even if the
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The Imaginary Threat
subject of stronger interest doesn’t consciously seem
active, often it is and so competes with the homework
assignment or attention to the teacher. This is where
many students with less propensity or even ability to
do what they are told tend to fall off and daydream or
disturb others with hyperactive defiance.
Defiance is a natural reaction to interruption
of the ability to think effectively. Not only great cause
of distress and draw of confidence, this opposition of
psychological forces too often degrades the ability of the
student to excel in any way. Often times the pressure
to complete assignments and learn for tests effectively
motivates the student to forcefully apply their efforts
to the given task to no avail. To no avail because their
‘people’ know they have more important things to do
than what the king decrees. The more pressure applied
against their freedom, the more they protest.
The control of information so useful in keeping
citizens in a repressed state is also useful in keeping
students with the program. The information age has
brought this issue to a boil in our free democratic state.
Students today are exposed to a significant diversity
of information, and yet classroom learning is highly
dictated. This is just fine for most, but the medication
of intelligent dissidents, who teachers, parents, and
doctor’s decree are underperforming, is misguided.
I here chance that to open a channel wherein
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students are able to earn their freedom of exploration,
will increase learning performance, while decreasing
dissent and adolescent drug use both prescribed
and illegal. Illegal drug use has a vast complex of
causes, but in the case outlined here, they in part
serve the role of Alan Greenspan’s bathtub. To reduce
the pressure against the creative forces acting in
the brains of students with a strong propensity to
independent thought will reduce the force they must
erect to overcome this pressure. Greenspan proclaims
“immersed in my bath, I’m as happy as Archimedes as I
contemplate the world.”
On the prescribed side of things,
methylphenidate and amphetamine make it easier
for students to hold their ‘people’ at bay just as in a
democratic society during an emergency, to artificially
notch up the terror alert meter. These drugs, code name
Ritalin, Concerta, and Adderall, literally tell the nervous
system ‘emergency, you can go back to what you were
doing when the threat has passed’ or the drug has
cleared. How fitting that when they get used to terror
level yellow the doctor must up the dose to orange.
Another commonly exploited method of artificial
terror level increase is fasting. This is often expressed
in human religious practice. The method is to develop
sufficient tolerance to the negative symptoms of an
empty stomach. The desired result is an increased
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The Imaginary Threat
concentration of focus, presumably developed to assist
in the acquisition of food in scarcity.
Democratic government and free market
economy work so well because they support activity
and progress in taking their natural course, with the
understanding that no one group or set of theories
can effectively control them. Same goes for brain
development and activity. A press release from the
National Institute of Health released November 2007
is titled “Brain Matures a Few Years Late in ADHD, But
Follows Normal Pattern” based on a survey of 40,000
cortex sites over a sample of 223 children diagnosed
with ADHD, and 223 controls. The report notes that
“the delayed pattern of maturation observed in ADHD
is the opposite of that seen in other developmental
brain disorders like autism, in which the volume of
brain structures peak at a much earlier than normal
age.” In addition the report states both that “the motor
cortex emerged as the only area that matured faster than
normal in the youth with ADHD”, and “circuitry in the
frontal and temporal areas that integrate information
from the sensory areas with the higher order functions
peaked later.” The most powerful brains on earth, the
human brain, already matures later than any other. The
long term trend of human brain evolution has been
toward increasing capacity for higher level function. The
observations of brain development, in this sample of
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humans showing ADHD traits, is consistent with overall
progress in human brain evolution; think more plastic.
This is cause for reasonable doubt. E.O. Wilson, winner
of the National Medal of Science and two Pulitzer Prizes
for nonfiction, pointed out that “human nature is the
hereditary rules of mental development.” What other
species nurtures its young for upwards of twenty years?
None.
Something like 1 in 20 American students is
medicated for ADHD. Whatever the exact number, it’s
high enough to flood the black market with certified
clean speed. This is compounded by the fact that most
illicit buyers are fellow students who think to themselves
‘they give it to 7-year olds, it can’t be that bad’.
No human today understands higher level
mental phenomena well enough to say with a high
degree of certainty that ADHD is a defect of healthy
human development or evolution. There is a real
chance that continued neglectful treatment of people
who are strongly inclined to follow their sense of interest
and unable to reasonably do otherwise amounts to
partial lobotomy of the human spirit. The possibility
that a terrifying forfeit of long held control, made
possible only recently by information technology, could
increase the overall creative capacity of humanity is
real. The fact that increased control of the educational
process made possible by drugs has obscured the
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The Imaginary Threat
problem of advancement of understanding and method
is offensive to the pursuit of happiness. We of this
minority forgive, for you know not what you do, but
please listen to us when we say your theories of mind
are misguided by ignorance and cause us to suffer. We
demand the freedom to advance. Bullish on the Earth
life big brain experiment; have we made ourselves clear?
The Eagle against Extinction.
The Drive of Progress in Man
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8
The Eagle Spirit
Let it be ice sculpture clear that every memory
is substrate for higher thought. The abstraction and re-
application of memories is the primary process behind
powerful idea creation. Metaphor is the mechanism
of wisdom which tends to increase with age and
experience. The diversity of experience is primary
determinant of the diversity of thought each mind is
capable of.
This is the advantage of novelty seeking, it
expands brain power. Furthermore, as the mind seeks
to clarify and concretize a new idea developing within
it, relevant novelties are sought out and favored. The
more powerful mind tends to form as a result of a more
powerful drive to execute this process. Decades after
accepting his Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine,
James Watson reflected “a leader’s mind must
continually be reconfigured through exposure to new
The Drive of Progress in Man
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patterns of acting and thinking.” An education system
will always be ineffective to the degree which it opposes
this process.
The mind is driven to collect the memories
it needs to develop its own ideas. Any nation which
accounts for this developmental fact in the modern
economic environment will become more powerful as a
result.
The most significant economic shift in this
information age is the increasing share of real dollar
value held as intellectual property, in proportion to land
and material assets. Alan Greenspan reports that the
Council of Economic Advisors “estimated that a third
of market value of publicly traded U.S. corporations
in September 2005 ($15 trillion) was attributable to
intellectual property.” The significance of this is that the
value of brain real estate is and will continue to increase
faster than land real estate values. This major trend
increases the economic pressure and monetary reward
for best use of brain real estate.
Best use of land and resources is the most
significant advantage of market economics, because the
owner who profits from their own property naturally
has the greatest interest in its optimal development, use,
and upkeep. This needs to be taken advantage of in the
education process, so that students develop confidence
to conceive ideas that are profitably actionable and take
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The Eagle Spirit
risks to execute them; Reliance on their own ability to
think effectively. Some of them have a strong drive to,
and others will pick it up by example.
As we see amazing examples of what others
achieve, we too strive to excel in our own way. This
chapter is powered in part by videos of men first walking
on the moon in 1969; the Eagle has landed.
Brain real estate is different from land real estate
in that it cannot be sold or inherited. Not only that,
but everyone is born with a plot of their very own. This
is not intellectual property, but rather the means of
generating this resource.
The increasing economic share of intellectual
property increases the value of brain real estate by
increasing demand for intellectual product. Individual
brains and plots of land vary widely in how they may be
most profitably employed. Manhattan bedrock is good
for skyscrapers, and Midwest flatland is good for crops
and sprawling single-story facilities; land owners profit
by this type of knowledge. Since each individual is an
owner of brain space, it is ultimately their responsibility
how best to capitalize. Driving each student to learn
how best to capitalize on their own brain is the most
important aim of early twenty-first century education.
The gap between where education is and where
it could be, is telling students what they need to know,
compared to their being allowed to figure out how best
The Drive of Progress in Man
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to apply their own learning efforts. Point being, the
value of self knowledge and its application to learning is
on a long term rise.
The fact that everyone gets their own plot of
brain, to cultivate and develop as best they can until
death, is an equalizing force, and the basis of the
mythical American Dream. Today students are made
to think ‘if I study hard and get good grades I will be
successful’. This is simply not true in a civilization swept
up as ours is in creative destruction.
Case in point: in fifth grade, a friend and I
learned to program computers on our own for fun,
and this was before we had Windows. We used
trial and error on the list of commands in the help
file. We applied complex algebraic expressions with
many variables well before being taught algebra in
school. When the other students were learning how
to manipulate letters as placeholders for numbers, I
was struggling to translate what I already knew into
the archaic and arbitrary pencil and paper forms
being forced on us. It all seemed too pointless. While
my more submissive friend went on to become
valedictorian, I started sleeping through class and
getting Ds.
Countless cases of wasted potential fit this
pattern. To correct this specific problem in our
education system will literally increase the growth
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The Eagle Spirit
potential of our economy.
Both invisible hands rise as humanity expands.
As death glares dark and empty, wonder dives in to
fill the void with profuse new form and sighs ‘ahhhh,
space and time of my own to give shape’. Passion to
understand that the effects of our action in this short life
may live on as long as mankind; who dare ask ‘what
may this toil of my spirit do for the life of my species’ in
earnest, does so under the dark cloud of death as a bolt
of lightning.
Freedom is not an ambiguous concept, its
temporary creation is the ground under human
progress; a goddamn instinct. Look for it inside and out,
there you will be a tasty morsel of flesh under a great
hungry Eagle. May this power drive you to burrow or
inspire you to fly; the future of humanity is up for grabs.
Good night.
The Drive of Progress in Man
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- 95 -
Sources
Sources by Age:
Leonardo Da Vinci1519 - (his death) ‘The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci’
(Translated by R. C. Bell, compiled by Jean Paul Richter)
Niccolo Machiavelli
1517 – ‘The Discourses on Livy’
Adam Smith
1776 – ‘The Wealth of Nations’
Thomas Jefferson
1787 – ‘Notes on the State of Virginia’
Charles Darwin
1809-1882 - ‘The Autobiography of Charles Darwin’ edited by
Nora Barlow
1974 - Quoted in (‘Darwin on Man, A Psychological Study of
Creativity’ by Howard Gruber)
The Drive of Progress in Man
- 96 -
Henry David Thoreau
1854 – ‘Walden’
John Stuart Mill
1867 – ‘Dissertations and Discussions’
Fredrich Nietzsche
1888 – ‘The Twilight of the Idols’
1885 – ‘Thus Spake Zarathustra’
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1909 – ‘The Heart of Emerson’s Journals’ (edited by Bliss Perry)
Henry Poincare
1913 – ‘The Foundations of Science’ (translated by George Bruce
Halsted)
Herbert George Wells
1920 – ‘Outline of History’
Sigmund Freud
1930 – ‘Civilization and its Discontents’
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Sources
Rainer Maria Rilke
1934 - ‘Letters to a Young Poet’ (translated by M.D. Herter
Norton)
Erwin Schrodinger
1944 – ‘What is Life?’
Clive Staples Lewis
1947 - ‘The Abolition of Man’
Albert Einstein
1956 – ‘Out of My Later Years’
1993 – Quoted in (‘Creating Minds’ by Howard Gardner)
Martin Luther King Jr.
1964 – ‘Why We Can’t Wait’
Carl Jung
1966 – ‘The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature’
Benoit Mandelbrot
1977 – ‘The Fractal Geometry of Nature’
The Drive of Progress in Man
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Richard Alexander
1987 – ‘The Biology of Moral Systems’
Robert Laughlin
2005 – ‘A Different Universe (Reinventing Physics From the
Bottom Down)’
Kurt Vonnegut
2005 – ‘A Man Without a Country’
Stephen Hawking
2005 – ‘God Created the Integers’ Edward Owen Wilson
2006 – ‘The Creation’
James Watson
2007 – ‘Avoid Boring People, Lessons from a Life in Science’
Alan Greenspan
2007 - ‘The Age of Turbulence, Adventures in a New World’
Craig Venter
2007 – ‘Interview: Gene Pioneers’ New Scientist 20 October 2007
p.56
- 99 -
Richard Branson
2007 - ‘Richard Branson: Life at 30,000 feet’ Video Interview TED
Talks http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/18
National Institute of Health News
2007 – ‘Brain Matures a few Years Late in ADHD, but Follows
Normal Pattern’ http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/nov2007/
nimh-12.htm
The Drive of Progress in Man
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�e Drive of Progress in Man
By Josh Valdes
�e Drive of Progress in Man is an adventure into that which is actually made free in a free market economy; the free market mind. Once transplanted into the imagination, this compact plot of diverse thought-forms will continue to grow in your brain, well after the pages are laid to rest. �e rare individuals who are extraordinary host to �e Drive of Progress characterize humanity as the most powerful species of life yet to arise on Earth. �e insights gained by this exploration apply directly to a systematic weak-point in our education system; that is the forced memorization, and intellectual conformity which bias the learning process against the most creative and independent thinkers; people with an exceptional drive to advance the status quo. ADHD and Dyslexia are two major forces in the development of such minds, they force �e Drive of Progress from its slumber by necessity.
www.thedriveofprogress.com