Notes - ch7imagination / doubts /

         Mid-morning. Thunderstorms kept you and the cat awaken last night. You did read the next chapter of Lehrer’s Imagination and his focus on the urban environment and how and why it is conducive to creativity. Right now, after checking the BBC and email, you think it is time for a bath and then your exercises. Later, dude. – Amorella

         Late mid-afternoon. You have been helping clean house for Kim and the boys and Mary Lou on Sunday – the upstairs is almost done. You watched DVR of “Grimm” one of your favorite personal shows (one the Carol does not share to view), and are now upstairs in your bedroom’s black chair while Carol is in bed in a deep nap and Jadah the Cat is curled in a ball by her feet.

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Comments on Lehrer’s Imagination: Chapter Seven: “Urban Friction”

“ . . . This remarkable equation is whey people move to the big cities,” West says, “Because you can take the same person, and if you just move them from a city of fifty thousand to a city of six million, then all of a sudden you are going to have three times more of everything we can measure. It doesn’t matter where the city is or which cities you are talking about. The law [statistically 15 percent more human experiences encountered/witnessed] remains the same.

            West and Bettencourt refer to this phenomenon as ‘superlinear scaling,’ which is a fancy way of describing the increased output of people living in big cities. . . . According to West, these superlinear patterns demonstrate why cities are the single most important invention in human history. . . . ‘Cities are this inexhaustible source of ideas,’.” pp. 187-188

And,

            “West illustrates the same point when talking about the Santa Fe Institute (SFI), the think tank where he and Bettencourt work. . . . ‘There are no planned meetings, just lots of unplanned conversations. It’s like a little city that way.’ . . . When I was visiting the Institute, West and I ran into the novelist Cormac McCarthy in the lobby of the building, where McCarthy does much of his writing. The physicist and the novelist ended up talking about fish without gills, the editing process, and convergent evolution for forty-five minutes. ‘It’s moments like that that make this place so great.’ It might seem like we’re just bullshitting here, wasting time. And I guess maybe we are. But that’s also where all the breakthroughs come from.

            That’s the purpose of cities: The crowded spaces force us to interact. They lead us to explore ideas that we wouldn’t explore on our own, and converse with strangers we’d otherwise ignore. The process isn’t always pleasant – there’s a reason people move to the suburbs – but it remains essential.” p. 211

From: Lehrer’s Imagination, “Chapter Seven”

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         I can relate to only one really large city, the only large city besides Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati that I ever lived in is Sao Paulo, Brazil. At the time, 1970-1972 it was larger than Chicago. We took advantage of what the city had to offer, plus we were married with no children. We made friends with colleagues at Escola Graduada de Sao Paulo [Graded] who were from scattered regions (literally) around the world. What a wonderful place it was to learn and I was supposed to be one of the teachers of English, which I was, but learned more about myself independently living overseas for two years than I had in my first twenty-eight years stateside. I learned from heartansoulanmind. Presently the first image that comes to mind is the smile from the flower lady we saw every week at the local market two blocks from our apartment building.

         There are other ‘urban-like’ areas though, not in this chapter. They are found through friends and friends of friends and through the many, many books, fiction, non-fiction, biographies and autobiographies I have read in my lifetime. Books have been my main urban areas outside of Westerville, Columbus, Cleveland and Cincinnati as well as Chicago, New York City, Boston, San Francisco, Tampa and St. Petersburg, Florida and of course Key West stateside – and London, Rome and Florence across the pond. Those are my main cities and for me, presently each holds a particular state of mind most dear in my heart and mind. The soul, mine anyway, appears rather indifferent to locations but to not the passing of individual humanity that catches my attention along the way.

         I concur, boy, though you already are having your doubts; arrogance plays a double-edged sword. One has to be careful with humility; it has a way of laying low then sitting up and hissing, ready to gobble you up. Be moderate in all things; keep that spirit in mind too. Post. - Amorella