The Rational Mindset

Last post for this term and I want to talk about something we covered in school for once.

Over all I would say that teamwork has come in to play this term more than the first one, which is a good thing because I’ve noticed we have a lot of room for improvement in that part of the professional skills. We worked with the Belbin system where you learn what defined role you serve in a team based on your personality, characteristics and talents. It was interesting to see our year divided by our personalities and how accurate it was in some cases but there is one small remark I would like to make when it comes to the Belbin system, or any system for that matter.

Even though it can be very useful to understand your own strengths and what shortcomings you have so you can learn the value of a strong and diverse team it is easy to start adopting the role and start acting it out so to say. I observed people who supposedly had strong leadership  skills try to enforce their opinion simply because they felt entitled to call the shots. I saw people lean back and leave certain tasks to others because according to Belbin that’s the way they behave…
What I’m trying to say is that to me it seems logical that as a professional you should be able to take on any of the label’s Belbin created. Be versatile, show the ability to adapt to situations instead of staying in your comfort zone.

The best way to develop yourself with the Belbin system is to fully understand the philosophy behind it and apply this to other situations you might encounter in your professional life. Don’t limit yourself because according to a test you have certain limitations, work on those to improve them. This goes for all systems really, whether it’s the exercises we do during Creativity and Lateral Thinking or any other professional skills development classes.

So today some exciting news has been released by one of the most iconic companies in the music industry, Panasonic announced that it will start to produce the Technics 1200’s again! Great news for DJ’s who preform using vinyl records and a clear sign that the old technology is rising from the grave. Vinyl sales have been up for the last few years and apparently Panasonic have been paying attention.

The turntables were first produced in 1972, multiple new models were released through the years until the product line was discontinued in the early 2000’s. New formats were introduced such as the CD and MP3 format which made life for DJ’s a lot easier since they now didn’t have to haul a crate of records to every gig.

Yet there were purists whom stuck to the old dated technology, craving the small imperfections and the warm, distinct vinyl crackles which can be heard as you drop the needle into the grooves on the vinyl slate. They bought second hand turntables and refurbished them, prices shot up as they were now a rare commodity. Technics always had a reputation for being virtually indestructible and fairly easy to repair. As the years passed and ‘vintage’ became cool, this culture started to seep into the music industry and slowly small record labels started to release and distribute music on the almost antique format. Today big name artists are also releasing their records on 12” records to cater to this ever growing loyal group of music lovers.

And this is where I stop praising this trend because Panasonic decided to price their new product around the $4000 mark, just let that sink in for a moment, 4 grand for a piece of technology which is 44 years old. It is a smack in the face of the group which supported arguably their greatest product ever when it had been abandoned by its stone faced Japanese parents. A community stood up to care for these forgotten products, nurture them back to health and restore them to their former glory.

A community which swore by their product for a decade of parental negligence has been thanked with a blatant middle finger and a fake grin.

So I had trouble thinking of what to write about and decided I would share with you how I deal with writers’ block when it comes to making music.

When you produce music you will find yourself faced with a bit of a dry spell when it comes to creative outbursts, a problem which can be very frustrating when you consider the fact that you’re trying to create something which a large chunk of society sees as an art form so here are a few techniques I implement to force myself to get into a creative mind state.

When I realize I’m not performing the way I should I start up a blank project in Ableton (the DAW I use to produce my music) and I limit myself to working with just one sample, or just one synthesizer/VST. Every part of a track I try to compose using just that one sample or piece of software. From the rhythmical parts to the melodies and more ‘musical’ elements. I achieve this by applying different effects and modulating frequencies to change the harmonics of the sound in the case of working with just one sample. When it comes to writing music with just one synth it really tests my sound design skills and even though it might not sound as polished as the end result I desire it’s still a good way to discover new production techniques which might spark my imagination.

Another technique I use is time challenges, I set a timer to 15 minutes and try to make a full ‘sketch’ of a song. The term sketch is what I call an 8 bar piece of music with all the components I want in that particular piece of music. When those parts are mixed down and arranged properly it could be classified as a song but when I produce electronic music I often find myself getting lost in the details of a certain element of the track. This in turn makes it easy to lose sight of the overall composition so to speak.

I realize this might not be useful for other creative disciplines such as drawing or writing but I hope whomever reads this gets some inspiration from the way I approach a writer’s block.

So I was thinking about what I should write about this week and since all that keeps popping up in my newsfeed on Facebook are ‘End of the Year’ lists I figured I’d hop on the bandwagon today and reflect on the year 2015.

Initially I wanted to do something different, I wanted to write a fake interview between me and somebody who was born in the year 2015 who would be wondering what it was like to live in the year he or she was born. But I soon realized that I wouldn’t be able to work around the toughest question you would face when writing a ‘Year in Review’ list… Where do you start? I mean I could just make a list beginning in January but first of all; this isn’t fucking Wikipedia and second of all; that would be way to straight forward seeing as I’m already riding a very crowded bandwagon.

2015 was a crazy year, let’s be honest. You might look back at this year and think about the time our freedom of speech was attacked by extremists, or the time that our actual freedom was attacked in quite a similar manner last November. You might have been scared for a few days when walking through crowded places, paranoid about an attack in the city you love. You might look at how the entire world wasn’t responding to the cries for help which could be heard on the shores of the Mediterranean sea until a dead little boy popped up in our newsfeed, one picture which kick started society into action. You might try to burry your face in the palm of your hand when you think about how ‘classy’ Dutch locals reacted to the announcement of refugee shelters in their town.  Seriously people from Purmerend, you complain about how people from Amsterdam look down on you and call you dumb hillbillies, then you go off to fucking riot in protest of a refugee shelter kind of like a dumb hillbilly would do. The stereotypical behavior is cringe worthy  to say the least.

Remember how close we came to WWIII? How suddenly the US started to flex their muscles to intimidate Russia? And how Putin responded by doing pretty much the same thing! Well we dodged the bullet this year but I’m sure there will be more shells flying past our ears next year as the world doesn’t seem to attempt to deescalate this global tension between religious groups, social groups and last but not least these weird political issues which seem to captivate the media.
It would be great if Obama and Putin squashed their beef like Drake and Meek Mill did, oh I almost forgot. R.I.P Meek Mill, may his soul find the rest it deserves after Drake opened that musical can of ass-whooping upon him.

I’ve gone way past my 15 minute limitation on this one so let me leave you with this final paragraph. For me personally it was a year of ups and downs, for many people around me as well. But I look towards this year with confidence and motivation. I’ve learned  a lot this year but most importantly I learned to cherish and appreciate life. All aspects of life, because whether you like it or not, life is short. So just relax and embrace the moment, we live in a time where yesterdays’ male Olympic-medalist is tomorrows woman of the year. A time where a famous businessman can morph into a racist presidential candidate while Yale-students point out every ‘micro aggression’ which leaves your lips. Where in the name of political correctness a new word was born to declare you are comfortable in the body you were born in. Oh man I could go on and on but really, let’s just close the book on 2015 and welcome 2016.

Whomever may be reading this, I wish you a happy and healthy 2016.

Let’s all raise our glass to this insane world and the crazy future.

So here it is, my final blogpost for the PSD1 thinking and reasoning module. Time went by quicker than Ten Walls killed his DJ career this summer and I had a lot of fun writing about the way I apply subjects covered in class in my day to day life.

I think the world would generally be a better place if these kind of lessons were part of a mandatory curriculum in earlier stages of the educational system, I’m not saying that we should harass 8^th graders with deep philosophical questions but you could stimulate this type of reasoning in high school instead of for instance the mandatory year of theology I had to take.

I feel like there are a lot of flaws in our current educational system, from an early age we are taught to behave and think in a certain way, the “coloring within the lines” metaphor is the most common used example to explain this up until it becomes a cliché to say so. But the way our creativity and curiosity are being killed goes way beyond arts and crafts. Every assignment you get in the Dutch educational system up until your finals in high school is limited by a very clear set of boundaries. There is no room for personal exploration of interests and students are being dismissed on their ability to forcefully take an interest in things like math and geography. Some might say that this is because the educational system is designed to fit the needs of today’s society and I can tell you from personal experience that this isn’t the case at all. In the time I’ve spent in classrooms learning languages and chemistry among others the world has given birth to entirely new industries which require a vast amount of skills involving computers and software.

You spend your days going to class and having to raise your hand to announce you need to go to the toilet and ask for permission, then all of the sudden you’re mature enough to make one of the biggest decisions in life which will result in a long period of financial debt. You begin to orientate on what your interests are because up until this point most of your days have been spent figuring out how to determine molarity, how to chart the biodiversity of a region and finally where your place in society is. Then you visit different universities and all of the sudden you find out that you are expected to have experience in working with things like Photoshop and InDesign or even basic coding competence.

I see minor adjustments being made, special schools which only work with iPads and such while across the channel in Britain they are teaching code in elementary school. The Dutch government needs to reform the way we educate the coming generations to assure we can compete with emerging tech-based economies and stay ahead of the pack in this ever evolving world economy.

Class today covered fallacies and how to spot them, which is a great way to make somebody feel like an idiot during a debate. But spotting a fallacy doesn’t mean you just demolished somebody’s argument like Mike Tyson demolished that dude who killed his pigeons. Somebody can have a very valid point he or she is trying to make but by fallacious argumentation. It’s a slippery slope (oh no I didn’t) to assume that somebody is incapable of being right because their way of reasoning is shortsighted.

I do it myself all the time, I call bullshit as soon as I even smell the tiniest flaw in ones reasoning but the thing is I don’t speak it out until I’ve had a good thought about what they’re trying to say. You have to take a step back and look at the big picture to not get stuck in a vicious cycle of your own reasoning. It’s the nature of the debating game, the clock is ticking so you rattle away at your opponent explaining your point of view until the buzzer goes and it is your opponents turn to react.  And that brings me to the only thing I don’t like about debating.

Debating is often used to settle disputes or more publicly win over voters during elections. A certain timespan in which debaters have certain amount of time to open fire upon their opponent, unleash a flurry of linguistic bullets designed to win over public opinion rather than having an exchange of intellectual theories and ideologies, things society should focus on instead of why candidate number 18 is incapable of making important decisions. And how entertaining they may be, I for one can’t believe that in this day and age we expect somebody to explain how they want to change the world for the better in under two minutes only to begin a white collar bitch-fight over each other’s argumentation, past or even place of birth (seriously Donald that was some grade A crazy-talk).

It’s important to examine one’s point as much as it is to examine their way of reasoning and the way they construct their arguments and there is no shame in taking your time to do so. Next time you’re having a deep philosophical debate with a friend over a nice cold beer just take another zip before you reply to what he or she just said instead of inevitably making somebody look like a fool.

Credibility is everything if you want to be taken serious in any type of situation you might find yourself in.  Just ask a journalist what it would do to his career if he cited fake sources in his article. Or a politician if he were to knowingly withhold important information from the public. I know I’m stating the obvious right now but the thing is, we take things for granted when it comes to consuming information and media.

And that’s not a weird thing because you assume those people take their job seriously enough to put some effort in and 90%  do so. It’s the 10% that doesn’t which pisses me off. If you’re in a position where you are a voice for the masses, or a voice that aims to reach and inform the public please have the decency to get your facts straight and provide an unbiased and just image of events.

For instance the current refugee crisis which is holding Europe in its grasp… Or is it? Is it a real problem in Europe? Because if you think so why don’t you take a look at what’s happening in Lebanon or Jordan. Those countries are being flooded with refugees, over a million people have fled the war between a dictator and a group of homicidal sociopaths and taken ‘shelter’ in Lebanon, a country where now every 1 in 5 inhabitants is a refugee fleeing said war. I added quotation marks to the word shelter because they are currently living in tents and to quote Ned Stark: Winter is coming…

It is the Syria’s neighbors that have taken the hardest hits when it comes to providing safety from the sadistic lunatics I mentioned earlier and yet here we are acting as if our fictional European gate is about to come crashing down. Yet I see not nearly enough media coverage of the actual crisis Syria’s neighbors are facing. I see no politicians debating financial aid for those countries and I have yet seen a world leader that has the balls to remind Saudi Arabia and other wealthy middle eastern countries that this is also their problem. You know, since we are ALL human beings and ALL OF US share this lovely little planet orbiting the sun.

However it is best if all of us remain in our little bubble thinking we are facing a crisis since that way the media gets a surge in their ratings (you don’t want strangers living in your backyard do you??) and the politicians don’t have to bother those who have control over the oil and thus our energy supply. Oh what a wonderful world.

So this week we discussed intelligence and IQ in class and I would like to take the time to share my personal view on the topic, not what was discussed in class but just the theories and thoughts I have on what value intelligence has in life and how it is misinterpreted.

Intelligence is widely considered to be the key to success, a pole-position start on the grid or a blessing as people who don’t like metaphors would say. And how true that may be it certainly is a guarantee that successful people are intelligent (I’m talking to you George W. Bush).

People have debated and researched human intelligence for ages, there are dozens of theories which contradict each other or emphasize different nuances of the phenomenon. No definite consensus has been reached by experts although the most popular way of measuring mental capacity is the IQ-test. The basic premises is to factor various skills which strain the brains capacity and factor in age.  The problem is that it’s a test designed for the male brain and it overlooks essentials like long term memory and language barriers. Also, in my opinion your vocabulary isn’t a suitable measuring point when it comes to intelligence, it might be an indication of how much books one reads and thus a sign of their thirst for knowledge but I often find people try to hide their fallacies by using big words.

Another common misconception is that your education is a barometer for your intelligence, let me point a view thing out. I won’t discuss the shortcomings of the educational system I’ll save that for another blog post. When I was young I always looked up to a cousin of mine, he was really creative and his IQ-test indicated he was highly gifted. We went to the same school up until 7^th grade when he transferred to a school closer to his house. There the new teacher never really got a chance to properly access him and even though his score on the infamous CITO-test was top of the line he got sent to VMBO level. Meanwhile a few years later I found myself sitting surrounded by people who were surprised to learn that a tree is a plant and a rock doesn’t have cells on the highest level of high school education.

Intelligence is a funny thing, we long for it in a partner, we seek it in need of guidance and for every person who desires it there are at least two people who pretend to possess it. The hard part to do is to tell the difference since intelligence is such a difficult thing to define. You could be deceived by their vocabulary or the level of education they might have received but these are only small parts of what determents a person’s intelligence. I’m not saying Harvard is full of retards but what I am saying is not everybody who goes to a community college has the mental capacity of a 4^th grader.

“Nothing great in the world is ever accomplished in the world without passion.”
– Hegel

Hegel makes a lot of sense in this quote, when I look at successful people I see people who have dedicated hours upon hours of their life to one small facet of this vast world we live in.
Even though the world is full of amazing new experiences and other things of interest they’ve made the conscious decision to expend all their energy perfecting their craft.

Anybody who has tried to do something new in their life knows this isn’t an easy thing to do. We are being bombarded with an near endless amount of stimuli which if you have ADHD as I do, pry your attention away from more important or responsible matters at the drop of a hat.

The harsh truth about greatness and success is that there are no shortcuts, the climb to the top is steep and dedication is a must to keep moving forward (or climbing up as the last metaphor I used involved a mountain).

To be dedicated means to persevere despite the failure you experience, to have people doubt you and your abilities up until the point you start doubting yourself. And even in those darkest moments have the inner strength to bitch-slap yourself out of the self-loathing melodramatic mind state you’re in, you have to keep your chin up. Keep working until whatever you dream of becomes a reality.

That mental resilience can only be evoked if you are truly passionate about what you do.

Without knowing so, I already discussed the topic of ‘system 1 thinking’ in last week’s blogpost when I discussed the western populations reaction to the death of Cecil the lion.

Most recently discussed in the 2011 book ‘Thinking, Fast and Slow.’ By Daniel Kahneman, the dual process theory states there are two separate cognitive systems responsible for the way we think. System 1 being the emotional reactive part, intuitive by nature and usually first to kick in. It’s basically our brains reflex to be able to react first and thus get an edge in the situation we’re in. Kind of like our physical reflexes. For instance, when somebody hurls a snowball at your head, your first instinct would be to duck. Not to analyze the trajectory of the projectile before deciding to lean left or right, unless you are Neo from the Matrix that is.

‘System 2’ on the other hand is it’s slower twin. More analytical and cautious by nature it requires reason and effort to activate.

I remember the last time I made an ‘system 1’ error, it was when I was looking for a job and suddenly found myself in a big empty office with a hand full of single use sim cards and a bold man in a suit.

Don’t worry I wasn’t a drug dealer, I was being used for my access to internet from locations my crooked boss didn’t have.

My job was to write a bit of text about small company’s putting them in an excel sheet and signing those company’s up for a YouTube account. The detail is in the last part of the sentence, turns out Google doesn’t like it when their accounts are being sold which I found out when they blocked my IP- address and I was fired within a span of 24 hours.

I knew from the moment he pulled out a box full of these prepaid sim cards something was up, somewhere in the back of my head a voice was screaming ‘This is too good to be true!’ but all I could think of was the amount of money I would be able to make. He kept going on about how he would pay me a whopping 10 euros an hour, how he might set up the same business model in Brazil while I would be ‘managing’ ‘European’ ‘operations’.

As it turned out I was a resource for him, a way to create revenue with an expiration date since YouTube will only allow about 80 accounts to be registered from a single IP-address before they decide enough is enough.

In the end it was a valuable experience since I learned to not just dive head first in business opportunities which sound too good to be true and more importantly, how to spot a backstabber from a mile away. I try to get a minimum of 24 hours of thinking done before I make any big decisions ever since.