my mind on books

Creative Explorations: New Approaches to Identities and Audiences by David Gauntlett is based on a project in which people used Lego pieces to create metaphorical models of their identity (sounds something like “sand tray therapy“).

The author has posted an extract from the conclusion; here is part:

“I was struck by ‘the will to coherence’ – the desire to assemble a solid and unified view of self-identity. It was also possible to see participants asserting their own distinctiveness within the context of an increasingly globalised and mainstream fashion-led culture. The role of the media emerged as the provider of stories – ethical resources which people use to orient themselves towards aspirations. We saw that the sense of a journey was common, with each person as the hero of their own story, often moving away from historical ties towards greater stability, fulfilment, and engagement with the world. … these goals were not about possessions gained, but about social connections, inner happiness, and a life well lived.”

More on the project at the ArtLab website… and the author’s website….

This week’s Science Weekly podcast from the Guardian includes interviews by Susan Blackmore with Daniel Dennett, V.S. Ramachandran, and Francis Crick, from her book Conversations on Consciousness: What the Best Minds Think about the Brain, Free Will, and What It Means to Be Human.

To achieve holism we must try to connect up all the fragments of our different thoughts and draw them into a living whole, and in so doing we enrich the meaning of each individual element. ‘We are aware of a huge crowd of things; the soul can grasp extraordinarily diverse links between these things. Souls that have the inner strength to open up the world begin to organize these links, so as to think more easily; and they begin to take pleasure in putting two and two together and establishing connections between diverse elements of their world.’ (p. 307)

The above passage from Love, Life, Goethe: Lessons of the Imagination from the Great German Poet resonated unexpectedly with ‘Everything Is Miscellaneous.’

One I missed earlier: Why Think? The Evolution of the Rational Mind by Ronald de Sousa (Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2007)