da Vinci Project

Presented at Platform

Sunday, November 24, 2013

Ethical Culture Society of Essex County

516 Prospect Street

Maplewood, NJ 07040

Excerpted From the November 2013 Newsletter

of the

Ethical Culture Society of Essex County

Nov. 24 Hilding Gus Lindquist, “The Transformative Power of Art: Freeing the Art Spirit in each of us”

The essential existential characteristic of a human being is our mind, the brain-body continuum of acquired memory capable of applying that memory in new ways. And that, my friends, is art.

Self-directed mental and physical activity is our reason for existence, sublimely said in French, our raison d’être.

The joy brought by awakening a passion for whatever it is that engages us from within is our reward, and the motivation for pursuing our passion.

The “gift of the art spirit” is the freedom to self-direct our mental and physical activity in the creation of whatever motivates us. It pulls us into learning how to do it better. It awakens the inventiveness that has created the world we know as ours and will create the new worlds to come.

It is why “freedom” is the fundamental principle of human society, and working out how to maximize our own freedom while minimizing its impact on the freedom of others is the fundamental purpose of our “political arrangements.”

Email: hilding.lindquist@gmail.com

ethical.nj@gmail.com

Published by 3^rd Saturday Arts

an imprint of the

Ethical Culture Society of Essex County

516 Prospect Street

Maplewood, NJ 07040-1126

First Edition

Printed in the United States of America

Author's Note: In a rewrite I would also emphasize the role language plays in creating the human mind. "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." [John 1:1, KJV] -HL

The Transformative Power of Art

By Hilding Lindquist

Good morning, thank you for coming. This is the holiday season and the demands on our time are many and conflicting, so I am pleased that you chose to come here.

I am Hilding Lindquist, a member of this Ethical Culture Society. I am best known by my nickname, Gus. Up until this morning I coordinated Ethical’s 3rd Saturday Arts night and curated our art shows. Due to medical reasons, Tina Kelley was my last hurrah at November’s 3^rd Saturday Arts and Serge Sinitsyn is my last artist in the current “term of office.” I could not ask for better “acts” to end with. I might just add this, if you are a collector of abstract impressionism, you might want to consider purchasing one of Serge’s works. While too new to the United States to have caught on, he will. He has sold extensively in Eastern Europe. If I stand about four feet from the painting on the left wall, it sings to my mind when I let my eyes wander over the surface as I drain my mind of verbal thought.

Let us begin. The Transformative Power of Art.

First let me say clearly, this is not a lecture in the sense that I am trying to teach you something. Most, if not all, of what am about to present this morning, you already know.

I am here to try to explain what I have learned in the course of what is now some 75 years as a human being on our tiny planet in this vast universe, a human being who began life imprisoned in the mental straightjacket of religious dogma.

Simply put, my liberation came through the passionate pursuit of self-directed activity that[i]:

1.) tweeked my curiosity through the exploration of the world around me;

and in that exploration I discovered something that

2.) aroused my imagination because it interested me and was rich enough in complexity that it

3.) engaged my mind in self-directed mental and physical activities.

Let me note here that I define mind as the brain-body continuum or integrated network of neurons, which are, of course, “the core components of the nervous system, which includes the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral ganglia.”[ii]

Again, 3.) engaged my mind in self-directed mental and physical activities that

4.) motivated me to “learn” more about it through study and practice and thereby expanding my world and

5.) rewarded me with a very real sense of well-being, sense of perfect, satisfying pleasure, and thereby I became passionate in its pursuit.

In the movie “Ryan’s Daughter”

[quoting Wikipedia, and to mention briefly in support of using Wikipedia, its level of reference is suitable for my presentation and its entries have references to the original sources and generally provide concise documentation in a way that is generally more thorough than I could hope to do.]

“a 1970 film directed by David Lean.^[4]^[5] The film, set in 1916, tells the story of a married Irish woman who has an affair with a British officer during World War I, despite opposition from her nationalist neighbors.”

The wife, Rosy Ryan played by Sarah Miles who was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her role in the movie, is confronted by the local priest, Father Hugh Collins played by Trevor Howard, with the question, “Why did you do it?” (or have the affair with the British Officer, Major Randolph Doryan played by Christopher Jones.) The wife answers, “Because there must be more, Father.”[iii]^,[iv]

At the time that statement resonated in my mind like an explosion with its following shock wave that lasted for the next 30 plus years ending in my recognition of myself as artist, putting a title on what I had become in the process of liberating myself from that straitjacket of religious dogma.

Those years were an intermittent string of “ah hah” moments, that in turn became a passion for this 5-step process, a cycle that engaged my mind in what Robert Henri describes as the art spirit, quoting in length from the first page of that book:

"ART when really understood is the province
of every human being.

"It is simply a question of doing things, anything,
well. It is not an outside, extra thing.
When the artist is alive in any person, whatever
his kind of work may be, he becomes an inventive,
searching, daring, self-expressing creature. He becomes
interesting to other people. He disturbs,
upsets, enlightens, and he opens ways for a better
understanding. Where those who are not artists are
trying to close the book, he opens it, shows there
are still more pages possible.

"The world would stagnate without him, and the
world would be beautiful with him; for he is interesting
to himself and he is interesting to others. He
does not have to be a painter or sculptor to be an
artist. He can work in any medium. He simply has
to find the gain in the work itself, not outside it.

"Museums of art will not make a country an art
country. But where there is the art spirit there will
be precious works to fill museums. Better still, there
will be the happiness that is in the making. Art
tends towards balance, order, judgment of relative
values, the laws of growth, the economy of living--very
good things for anyone to be interested in."[v]

For me Art is the process of self-actualization, which—quoting from Wikipedia—is a term that

“[…] was originally introduced by the organismic theorist Kurt Goldstein for the motive to realize one's full potential. Expressing one's creativity, quest for spiritual enlightenment, pursuit of knowledge, and the desire to give to society are examples of self-actualization. In Goldstein's view, it is the organism's master motive, the only real motive: ‘the tendency to actualize itself as fully as possible is the basic drive... the drive of self-actualization.’ Carl Rogers similarly wrote of ‘the curative force in psychotherapy - man's tendency to actualize himself, to become his potentialities... to express and activate all the capacities of the organism.’”[vi]

We are human because we are artists, with the capacity to be aware of being artists, consciously participating in creating art while consciously observing our own activity in creating art, in the cycle I described.

This capacity to be artists culminates in the very real experience of being—to use Michael Jordan’s now famous phrase—“in the zone” … quoting the online Urban Dictionary, “in the zone” is an “[e]xpression used to describe a state of consciousness where actual skills match the perceived performance requirements perfectly. Being in the zone implies increased focus and attention which allow for higher levels of performance. Athletes, musicians, and anybody that totally owns a challenge of physical and mental performance can be in the zone.”[vii]

It is also called “flow.” Quoting again from Wikipedia:

“Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person performing an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by complete absorption in what one does. Proposed by [MEE-hy CHEEK-sent-mə-HY-ee] Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, this positive psychology concept has been widely referenced across a variety of fields.”

What is more, “flow” or being “in the zone” is a fully conscious state, recognizing that:

“Consciousness is only a part of mental activity linked with innumerable threads to the unconscious.”[viii]^,
[ix]

From Rational Therapy by Otto Lerch, 1919.

Think of it this way, our conscious awareness, or the relatively high state of arousal that we normally associate with conscious awareness that includes “conscious states that have specific content, seeing, hearing, remembering, planning or fantasizing about something,”[x] rests like a sophisticated ship on the top of an ocean of unconscious neurological activity. The ship is linked to numerous data transmitting devices that both send and receive information in an ongoing, simultaneous exchange. Whatever the ship experiences gets sent below into the depths to interact with what is already there and with what will come later. The ocean sends back streams of data that become part of what the ship experiences, but the ocean mostly exchanges information within itself that the ship never gets. Like the ocean, there is a lot going on far below the “surface” of consciousness.

There are limits to any metaphor and that is about it for this one. However, I find it useful in thinking about the mind, the brain-body continuum, for which conscious awareness is but a fraction of the neural activity[xi] for the individual human being.

None of this is disputed to any great degree currently no matter the debate over the existence of a soul. And I would suggest that the very concept of a “soul” is the acknowledgement of the unconscious, but that could take us far afield this morning, and I only mention it so you will know my orientation toward the concepts of God and soul: they are words used to describe the otherwise, or heretofore, unfathomable unconscious nature of the human being.

What does this have to do with art?

I believe that art allows me to connect to my unconscious mind through various activities that are deeply satisfying in a way that I am only now beginning to know how to describe. This understanding has developed over the years beginning with my being born again at the age of ten in the Fundamentalist Baptist meaning of the term and then experiencing the Baptism of the Holy Spirit at age twelve at a Pentecostal Church youth camp.

These were real experiences, and during this time I believed in the existence in Heaven as much as I believed in the existence of New York City. I hadn’t been to either one but the adults in my life told me about them and showed me pictures as proof, although there was the caveat about Heaven that they THOUGHT that was what it looked like, as they hadn’t been there … yet. And of course God existed, though there was a bit more of dispute over how he looked … exactly.

Most of us who rebel against our own particular belief structure, our heritage, have to sort things out by ourselves. In most of the world, for most human beings, this is a process fraught with risk and real danger.

Let me just add the note that I believe we are tribal creatures as part of our DNA, speaking to the influence Robert Ardrey’s books, African Genesis (1961) and The Territorial Imperative, had on me starting in the 1960’s when during the later years of that decade, the Vietnam War raged. Ryan’s Daughter came out in 1970 when I turned 32.

Let me interject a timely commercial in light of President Kennedy’s assassination 50 years ago Friday, November 22nd. The current issue of Rolling Stone magazine has an article by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, titled “JFK vs The War Machine.” It is a must read for everyone. That’s the December 5^th, [2013] issue of Rolling Stone magazine.

Back to rebellion. Rebellion against one’s heritage is not to be taken lightly. It can’t be taken lightly. It is an uprooting, a disruption and rearrangement of almost the entire set of the mind’s social connections between the conscious, the subconscious, and the unconscious sections of our minds, a disruption that takes place with the negative, even hostile, reactions from our “tribe.”

For me it was a period of deep uncertainty, fully ending only with my near-death experience from acute kidney failure in the summer of 2002, and the subsequent open evolution into an artist and that state of bliss best described by Joseph Campbell, introduced to me through the “six-part television documentary […] broadcast on PBS in 1988 as Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, and comprised of six one-hour conversations between mythologist Joseph Campbell (1904–1987) and journalist Bill Moyers.”

Engaging the transformative power of art, if given a caption, would be titled “Follow your bliss.”

The turning point away from my absolute faith in the beliefs of my childhood was my becoming a sexually active teenager. I was in a dialogue in my mind with God. How can this be? How can Satan have so much power over me? Then I became aware of the Kinsey Reports Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), and I read The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James. I realized that influential adults in my life were misguided to say the least negative thing I could say about them. I was consciously adrift on the ocean of my mind, no longer sure which links to my thoughts stored in my unconscious mind were valid.

I struggled with this uncertainty on a decreasing slope of intensity for the next 50 plus years, from the early 1950’s to 2002 and my kidney failure.

From the early 1970’s I lived to “Leave nothing on the table." I did what got me out of bed in the morning, and still do. I stopped depending on others to tell me what to do and how to do it because I realized that I wasn’t very good at meeting others expectations, but I was very good at following my passion of computer system software design and programming.

I am 75, as I said earlier, and I have been able to follow my passions since I was in my 30’s, first as an activist, next as a software developer, and now as an artist and curator ... and system design "consultant" ... plus returning to academia for mind candy via coursera.com.

Both the practical and philosophical aspects of the transformative power of art are obvious. Guiding an individual in the discovery of his or her creative side vs. destructive side is more than a worthy goal, it is the essential principle of our commitment to ourselves: "Ethical Culture: Bringing out the best in ourselves by bringing out the best in others". And I would suggest that it is the based on the essential principle of civilization, the principle of positive reciprocity, aka the Golden Rule.

Art comes out of our sense of possibility that arose from our exploration of our world that was motivated by our curiosity. Art is our attempt to create the objective embodiment of discovered possibility, a work of art, or artwork. Our artwork becomes an extension of our self, and draws attention to our self, which when positive—our goal as social creatures is positive attention, heightening our status—does, indeed, raise our status, an objective built into our DNA.

The approach is to foster within each individual human being the exploration of our world around us based on the cycle of art that I introduced at the beginning as a 5-step process. The goal is to make this the custom of our tribe, the individual behavior we expect and approve instead of the “be on time, sit still until called upon and then do what you are told” mindset now too often the standard.

As human beings we strive to experience the process whereby our curiosity pursues discovery arousing our imagination that leads us to try something, the “what if” of the human mind. Blocking this is like pouring cement over a seed bed. As soon as there is a crack in the concrete, life bursts forth. The problem is that when not given the opportunity to be creative, it can and will be destructive, either internally in mental disorders or externally in what we call criminal behavior.

The result of the creative side—the painting, the music, the dance, the sculpture, and, yes, basketball—is what we typically call art. But there is also the carpentry, the auto repair, the plumbing …

Art is an act of cohesive coherence … the sticking together of diverse elements that are connected in some way … which may in fact simply be the point of view of the artist … thereby creating its possibility in reality … choosing its oughtness by creating its isness.

Let me say a little about philosophy and language. First based on William James:

[quoting from Wikipedia once again]

Reality versus symbols of reality

[William James] lectures discussed the distinction between symbolism and reality. Symbols, such as the word "steak" on a menu, do not embody the actuality of the objects they represent. The word "steak" on a menu merely points to some slab of meat in the back of the restaurant. In a similar way, James posits that all of science is fundamentally detached from reality since the tools of science are merely pointers to some actual objective realm. He criticized his audience for the scientific tendency to ignore the unseen aspects of life and the universe. As an example, he discussed the way the notion of a lemon causes salivation in the mouth of an individual; while there is no lemon, there is clearly a process occurring worthy of academic inquiry.[xii]

I get the sense that we are wrapped in the negative aspects of the Western Civilization mindset. There is so much more to the mind than conscious thought ... it's like conscious thought is the tip of the iceberg, the shore of the sea, the top of the mountain ... all metaphors that give a sense of the massive sensory substrata of our minds -- the brain-body continuum that provides conscious awareness and thought as mind candy ... thought that we then wrap in words that constrain everything else ... we are no longer the aborigine who "feels" the animals in the surrounding forests ... or the mystic who knows more about us than we know about ourselves and we learn as he or she explains from an "understanding" of the who, what, why, when, where, and how ... the totality of our humanity.

Through art we become open to flow, to being in the zone, to self-actualization that transforms us. It is the actual “being born again.” And we can provide this power of individual transformation by guiding others in becoming artists through the passionate pursuit of their own self-directed activity. I believe this is the spiritual experience that human beings described in their religions in earlier times when they had no idea of how the mind worked to produce what we experience. Then the words of their religions, the dogma, became the reality, the concrete which stifled the art … except for some who burst through and around these barriers … may I say, Thank God!

Let me leave you with four suitable quotes for our market-based society.

CREATIVITY ENABLES INNOVATION

"It is the tension between creativity and skepticism that has produced the stunning unexpected findings of science." - Carl Sagan

HALF A MIND IS A TERRIBLE THING TO WASTE

"Science and technology aspire to clean, clear answers to problems (as elusive as those answers may be). The humanities address ambiguity, doubt, and skepticism - essential underpinnings in a complex, diverse and turbulent world." - Dr. Alan Brinkley

CREATIVITY IS ECONOMICALLY VIABLE

"The game is changing. It isn't just about math and science anymore. It's about creativity imagination and, above all, innovation." - Business Week

CHINA IS PUSHING AHEAD OF THE U.S.

"Art education constitutes an important component of teaching in primary and secondary schools in China." - CERNET (the China Education and Research Network)

[i] As I commented in my presentation, putting things I outlined steps, usually lets me laugh at myself.

[ii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuron

[iii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan%27s_Daughter

[iv] Dialogue is not verbatim.

[v] The Art Spirit by Robert Henri, 1923

[vi] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-actualization

[vii] http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=in%20the%20zone

[viii] Rational Therapy by Otto Lerch, 1919

[ix] “Three Minds: Conscious vs Unconscious vs Subconscious Mind,” a YouTube video by Ivan Staroversky, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFjSHN4WJCI&feature=share&list=UUcM2zU41e7dE-YZf_N7RsKg

[x] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neural_correlates_of_consciousness

[xi] http://inside-the-brain.com/tag/neural-activity/

[xii] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Varieties_of_Religious_Experience

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The Transformative Power of Art