Intuition + knowledge = direction

Kennemer Dunes, today. Walk it [ talk it ]

Min/max temperature: 6°C/12°C; humidity: 83%; precipitation: 0 mm, sea level pressure: 1015 hPa; wind WNW 15.9 km/h; visibility: 10.0 kilometres; Clouds few 670 m.

"I believe that the processes of autoregulation are as stable and as capable of providing the same importance in any formation as heredity itself. [ As ] a rule, autoregulation in the organism limits itself to preserving a certain state of equilibrium and, in the case of deviation or of new formation, to bringing it back to its initial state; whereas, on the contrary, autoregulation in the realm of behaviours constantly pushes the organism -- or the subject, if a cognitive behaviour is involved -- towards new extensions. The physiological organism has no reason to change; […] there is no "necessity" in evolutionary changes. Conservation is the supreme rule for physiological equilibrium. Whereas [ in ] the field of behaviour [ …] two goals are pursued: [ 1 ] the extension of the environment, […] the surpassing of that environment which now encompasses the organism, trough explorations and research in new environments; [ 2 ] the reinforcement of the organism's power over that environment. An autoregulation that is capable of preserving the past as well as constantly surpassing itself trough the double end of extending the environment and reinforcing the organism's power […] when we are dealing with behaviours and cognitive processes, [ are ] a much more fundamental mechanism than heredity itself."

Jean Piaget in 'Language and Learning; The Debate between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky', page 61, edited by Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini, first published in 1979 in France. English translation by Harvard University Press, USA

"[…] Hawthorne […] once remarked, "We certainly do need a new revelation -- a new system -- for there seems to be no life in the old one." […] Whatever the complaint sound or the vision proffered, [ the artist is ] revolting against the prevailing official culture, and the revolt usually consists in an escape from a place they don't like to someplace elsewhere. […] In most instances […] the artist's journey at least crosses trough some kind of wilderness, and that also takes many forms. […] Emerson gives us the first clue when he says in Nature that to know nature is to know yourself, […] what is found in nature [ corresponds with ] what is found in the mind, the point of transcendence being to liberate yourself from the constrictions imposed by habit, routine, dogma, education […] by society, so […] the true self […] can emerge. […] In Death in the afternoon [ Ernest ] Hemmingway moves himself as self to centre stage, he enunciates his famous credo: moral is what makes you feel good afterward and immoral is what makes you feel bad afterwards. In the same section Hemmingway identifies the three most difficult problems of writing as "knowing truly what you really felt, rather than what you where supposed to feel, and had been taught to feel"; putting "down what really happened in action," "what the actual things were which produced the emotion that you experienced"; and then finding "the real thing, the sequence of motion and fact which made the emotion." [ When ] people "have learned to appreciate values trough experience what they seek is honesty and true, not tricked, emotion and always classicism and the purity of execution." Near the beginning of The Wild Bunch there is a seemingly innocuous line, spoken by an anonymous character, which goes, "it's not what you meant to do, it's what you did I don't like" -- a line that is, in many ways, a paraphrase of Hemmingway's credo."

Paul Seydor in 'Peckinpah, the Western Films, A Reconsideration', page 314, 315, 316, first published in 1980 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, USA

"To count in advance on success, […] to calculate or foresee communication with the spectator, seems to me infinitely more risky than fidelity to oneself."

Andrei Tarkovski, 'Andrei Rublev', page xii, introduction to the original Kino roman by Philip Strick, first published in 1991 by Faber Faber Limited, London

"The Importance of Being Important"

Bloemendaal aan zee, today. Dream [ reality ]

Min/max temperature: 7°C/7°C; humidity: 97%; precipitation: 1 mm; sea level pressure: 1012 hPa; wind WNW 43.0 km/h; visibility: 10.0 kilometres; Clouds: Few 548 m., Mostly Cloudy 731 m., Overcast 1066 m

"Foreword. The Importance of Being Important […] During the classic time of Greece a terrible thing happened in one of the temples. One night the statue of Zeus was mysteriously smashed and desecrated. A tremendous uproar arose among the inhabitants. They feared vengeance of the gods. The town criers walked the city streets commanding the criminal to appear without delay before the Elders to receive his just punishment. The perpetrator naturally had no desire to give himself up. In fact, a week later another statue of a god was destroyed. Now the people suspected that a madman was loose. Guards were posted and at last their vigilance was rewarded; the culprit was caught. He was asked, "Do you know what awaits you?" "Yes," he answered, almost cheerfully. "Death." "Aren't you afraid to die?" "yes, I am." "Then why did you commit a crime which you knew was punishable by death?" The man swallowed hare and then answered, "I am a nobody. All my life I've been a nobody. I've never done anything to distinguish myself and I knew I never would. I wanted to do something to make people notice me… and remember me." After a moment of silence he added, "Only those people die who are forgotten. I feel death is a small price to pay for immortality!" Immortality! Yes, we all crave attention. We want to be important, immortal. We want to do things that will make people exclaim, "Isn't he wonderful?" If we can't create something useful or beautiful… we shall certainly create something else: trouble, for instance. Just think of your aunt Helen, the family gossip. (We all have one.) She causes hard feelings, suspicion, and subsequent arguments. Why does she do it? She wants to be important, of course, and if she can achieve this only by means of gossip or lying, she will not, for one moment, hesitate to gossip or lie. The urge to be outstanding is a fundamental necessity in our lives. All of us, at all times crave attention. Self-consciousness, even reclusiveness, springs from the desire to be important. If failure arouses compassion or pity, then failure might become an end in itself. […] Without exception everyone was born with creative ability. It is essential that people be given opportunity to express themselves. If Balzac, De Maupassant, O. Henry, hadn't learned to write, they might have become inveterate liars, instead of great writers. Every human being needs an outlet for his inborn creative talent. If you feel you would like to write, then write. Perhaps you are afraid that lack of a higher education might retard you from real accomplishment. Forget it. Many great writers, Shakespeare, Ibsen, George Bernard Shaw, to mention a few, never saw the inside of a college. Even if you will never be a genius, your enjoyment of life can still be great. If writing holds no lure for you, you might learn to sing, dance, or play an instrument well enough to entertain your guests. This belongs in the realm of "art" too. Yes, we want to be noticed. We want to be remembered. We want to be important! We can achieve a degree of importance by expressing ourselves in the medium which best suits our particular talents. You never know where your avocation will lead you. Even if you fail commercially, you might very well emerge from your experience an authority on the subject you learned so much about. You'll be richer in experience -- and if you have been kept out of mischief, that alone will be a great accomplishment. So the gnawing hunger to be important will be satisfied at last without harm to anyone."

Lajos Egri in 'The Art of Dramatic Writing', foreword, page x, xii, xii, first published in 1946 by Simon & Schuster, INC, USA

"The [director] concerned [ was ] rather surprised that I even asked for the [ script ] -- […] asking 'Since when do cameramen read scripts?' -- but only once have I accepted a film without seeing a script (or at least a treatment) first, and on that occasion I sorely regretted it."

Walter Lassally in 'Itinerant Cameraman', page 101, first published in 1987 by John Murray (Publishers) Ltd, London

"Images, music and voice-over move independently.[…] The visual flow is […] varied. [ The ] film interweaves crucial New Wave principles: the pictorial space is moral space; that morality is an unstable equilibrium between audacity and prudence; that morality can be non-judgemental; that morales are not rules, but serious games with calculated risks; and that personal structures only intersect with the political."

Raymond Durgnat in the introduction to Francois Truffaut's 'Jules et Jim', first published in English in 1968 by Lorrimer Publishing Inc., reissued in 1989 by Faber and Faber Limited, London

"With tea, just like wine, you are dealing with terroir. The composition of the terrain and climate are crucial for the development of certain characteristics. Handpicked, traditionally produced tea from a reliable region are at the base, always. Quality tea is affordable luxury. You can drink great tea for the same price as bad wine."

Robert Schinkel in 'Exclusief, informatie magazine Sligro, Nr 15', page 29, published by Sligro B.V.

Spirit of the Game

Kennemer Dunes -- path to the sea, sunset, today. Confidence [ create scope ]

Min/max temperature: -2 °C/-5 °C; min/max humidity: 64/93; precipitation: 0.0 mm, sea level pressure: 1024.22 hPa;  min/max wind speed: 13 km/h/18 km/h; visibility: 9.3 kilometers (spring in the air)

"[ question: ] Do you also believe that physical training equals mental training; trough tough physical training we train the mind? [ answer: ] Trough tough physical training we develop discipline. We develop the ability to concentrate on a task. Physical training is essential for mental training. Physical training will lead to neuro-plasticity; it will grow the brains connections; it will grow the brain matter. That is just one aspect of it. At a physical level, physical training will grow your brain. And that has been proven, science is behind that, backs it up. Physical training, when you get into more complicated things, like gymnastics or learning the olympic lifts or learning new and different things […] training [with ] constantly varied functional movements, done in a unique way, every single day, with the big four skills of mental toughness placed into that; develop things like Courage, and Honour, and Discipline; that will develop mental toughness. […] Once you get beyond that, beyond that initial layer of 'I can tough trough something' […] 'I got the physical and mental skill to drive trough a task' ; true mental toughness is […] to develop great vitality over the quality, quantity and directionality of your thinking mind and then integrate your whole mind, so that you can use all of the vast skills that you have. So you can develop [your] 20 times potential, so that you can win on the battlefield of life, kick ass, and take names, develop front sight focus; so you focus on the right targets, the right time, and you win. And you win not for the benefit of yourself, but for your team, for your community, for all -- ultimately -- humanity. […] World centric win, with front sight focus, comes from winning in the inner domain, winning in the mind; before you step into the battlefield […]"

Mark Divine responding to my question in his FSF (Front Sight Focus) live-seminar on his Youtube channel, streamed live on Januari 23, 2017 

Mental health is all: In conversation with Jeremy Corbyn

 (click to play flick)™ 

'In conversation with Jeremy Corbyn, documented by Ken Loach' is 59 minutes and 36 seconds good stuff to experience: unity of form and content. Jeremy Corbyn leads by example. Ken Loach supports the case. As his last film 'I, Daniel Blakedoes. 

From the transcript, Jeremy Corbyn: "So whilst on one level we’re talking about a series of policy issues, mental health, housing, health, education, war and peace, environment and so on, it’s also about a level of consciousness and understanding and while social media is a great way of instantly and rapidly communicating with people, it often can be superficial and cannot go into the sort of life experiences that we’re talking about here that help to form our opinions. And so I’m not quite sure how it can be done, but let’s work out ways of doing it, because I want this sort of thing to carry on, I’m sure you all, I hope you all do as well."

Autoregulation

 

Kennemer Dunes, today. Go, leave the trail [ learning ]

Min/max temperature: 8°C/12 °C; humidity: 96%; precipitation: 0.25 mm, sea level pressure: 1003.95 hPa; wind from N 26.1 km/h; visibility: 10.0 kilometres; Clouds few 731 m, scattered clouds 1493 m.

"[The] essential characteristics of behaviour is precisely to transcend itself constantly and to change autoregulation into auto-organisation leading to new structures […] In psychology, autoregulation [ "Life is essentially autoregulation" ] is not a return to a previous state determined by any genetic structure but is always a "passing beyond".

Jean Piaget in 'Language and Learning; The Debate between Jean Piaget and Noam Chomsky', page 5, 63, edited by Massimo Piatelli-Palmarini, first published in 1979 in France. English translation by Harvard University Press, USA

"Mentalistic theories of ethical self-management appeal to entities which seem to be particularly accessible to introspection. The inner forces which are said to take place of environmental variables are feelings. Men do brave things because they feel courageous or help someone because they feel compassionate. It would seem to follow that to teach students to be brave or compassionate, the teacher must teach them to feel […] In both clinic and laboratory, what is to be attenuated is usually operant behaviour (particularly avoidance) rather than the emotional responses which are felt."

B.F. Skinner 'The Technology of Teaching', page 193, 196, first published in 1968 by Prentice-Hall, Inc., USA

"Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus: Good morning, Doctor.
Psychiatrist: Good morning, Charles. You're looking splendid.
Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus: I feel splendid.
Psychiatrist: Every day, and in every way, you're feeling..
Chief Inspector Charles Dreyfus: Better and better.[…] Now, now, Doctor. Some people would consider your methods most unorthodox.
Psychiatrist: I was just making sure that you're not a better liar than I am a psychiatrist."

From 'The Pink Panther Strikes Again', the fifth film in The Pink Panther series written and directed by Blake Edwards, first released in December 1975 trough United Artists, USA