Discussions/Essays – Page 25

Default Settings

Drawings of the brain and skull by Leonardo da Vinci.

Understanding defaults is important. Anyone who works with technology knows that the computer’s default setting is zero, where all things are flat and neutral. But when it comes to life and understanding ourselves, we tend to forget about our own natural default setting which is, unfortunately, not neutral. Here’s the terrible truth: the default setting of our mind is selfishness, pure and utter self-centeredness. This is not hard to test; pick anything — money, wife/husband, house, child, career and it becomes YOUR money, YOUR wife/husband, YOUR house, YOUR child, YOUR career. Since the brain’s job and nature is to think, it will always default to thinking about the “me” and the “mine.” It’s also particularly obsessed with time and the urge to satisfy emotional needs; it doesn’t like to incorporate things like deep-time thinking. Security-oriented thinking might be suitable in the biological habitat of a jungle or open ocean but when it comes to human happiness it becomes problematic.

“Occupation with one’s self brings about shrinkage in the brain.” — J. Krishnamurti, Philosopher

Anyone who has spent enough time to learn about himself knows that when he is mostly concerned about his own being it becomes near impossible to experience and understand the truly great things in life such as love, creativity and truth. We could expand the list to include the virtues of genuineness, sincerity, generosity, compassion, and humility. All these elements, which are both immeasurable and unmeasurable, fall outside of the confines of the egoic mind.

Now, thinking itself isn’t always or necessarily bad, for it is tremendously useful for the practical acquisition of knowledge and necessary skills for basic everyday living. All of science or any mechanical activity in fact depend heavily on logical observation, dissection as well as specialization. The categorization of things and theories give rise to technological innovation which lead to greater comfort and convenience. Even learning to be a good artist requires a significant amount of time devoted to deep analytical study, accumulation of technique and sustained practice. These all belong under the realm of intellectual activity. Unfortunately, while the intellectual and calculating mind succeeds in the physical world, it fails in the psychological world. As cliché as it sounds, the truth is that the mind is an excellent servant but a terrible master.

“Knowledge is useful until it gets in the way.” — David Bohm, Physicist

I’ve always been a big fan of science, and I still spend some time reading up on the latest neuro-scientific discoveries or matters of quantum or theoretical physics. After all, I might have continued my studies in science at university had I felt more capable at math, for math is the language of science. But as great as science is, it’s limited because our ability to see and know the universe is and always will be limited. That’s because science deals only with the measurable — that is its fundamental condition and paradigm — yet there is so much more to this universe than that which can be measured. Art proves to be a good example. In fact, I would contend that science helps us to see, record and understand the truths of the world while art helps us to experience and ultimately realize it. For without realization, most understanding is merely intellectual understanding, and not true comprehension. A man can study and analyze swimming all he likes but until he actually swims in the water he really doesn’t know what swimming is like at all.

The practice of art has always served to bridge that gap between the truths that can be known and those that can only be felt. Hence, creativity is such a novel thing; the very act of creation implies dealing with the unknown and discovering the new. This is why creativity is a not an act of repetition or copying, and it’s most certainly not stealing or exploitation. The creative act, like love and all other unmeasurable experiences, is a fresh activity, one always grounded in the present, alive in the now. It cannot rely on past knowledge, memory, or formulas even if it may use them when needed as springboards for inspiration and exploration. To create implies taking a risk which can never be accurately pre-calculated.

Gertrude Stein, by Pablo Picasso is one of my favorite portraits in all of art. It’s creative adventure lay the groundwork for cubism and abstract art.

“If you knew it all it would not be creation but dictation.” — Gertrude Stein, Writer

Hence the danger of the default setting of our brains. It wants to think about the self, about its memories of the past and its need for security against the future, which is the unknown. It hates risk. The mind wants to think and to think about protecting, advancing and expanding the self. That’s its nature. To use a knives as an analogy, the nature of a knife is to cut. Knives are very useful for cutting but they’re impractical for other tasks. Furthermore, when they aren’t sharp or are handled carelessly or without skill they are dangerous and even deadly. Likewise, when thinking is used outside its parameters, it gets in the way. This is very evident with athletes, musicians or stage actors who have too much on their mind during a live performance. And since the default state of our brains is to think, it’s hard to stop it from doing so. As almost all our activities, both verbal and physical, spring from our thoughts it’s all too easy to suffer psychological conflict. Hence, when we bad thoughts, we easily behave poorly; the selfish mind almost always triggering a reactive (and often negative/violent) response.

“The soul is dyed with the colour of its thoughts.” — Marcus Aurelius, Roman Emperor

And then, there’s another dilemma: just as our brains don’t like dealing with unknowns (even when danger isn’t necessarily apparent) it also knows and feels that deep inside — deeper than what the mind can logically comprehend — is a voice that says we have to explore new truths. We want to learn, discover and experience what we’ve haven’t before. Even as a lot of new things such as new films/books/products are trite, distasteful or poor, we still hold out hope that the next one might be good. The unknown is exciting just as it is scary. Creation is fun. Unfortunately, we cannot “will” ourselves to be creative, nor can we acquire it, nor cultivate it. And to think we can do so is as futile as trying to do the same with love. It’s no wonder that we say we “discover” creative ideas and “fall” in love. These wonderments can only happen when the mind is empty, free from self-consciousness. The best we can do is set up conditions that might allow for them to happen. In art, we do this by raising our skills, while at the same time opening up our hearts and minds to the unfathomable, and to living humbly with courage and conviction.

But perhaps the real solution lies in strengthening our attention, which is not the same thing as concentration, for attentiveness is an inclusive act exercising the highest levels of sensitivity whereas concentration is an act of isolation and exclusion. In other words, concentration is a mechanical process that separates and closes off reality in order to narrow its focus while attention is aligning oneself with one’s target while being mindful of the complete reality. It’s why forcing ourselves (or others) to “concentrate” is an act of abject and inevitable failure, much akin for forcing oneself to sleep when one is not sleepy. Suppression is not focus. Externalized discipline is not order. True attention is the kind of focus that sees all while not being distracted by anything in the field of vision. In the writings of the great 17th century Samurai warrior Miyamoto Musashi, he talked of focusing on one’s opponent in the battlefield while being fully aware of the entire battleground. The artist, or any human who hopes to live with honor, clarity and purpose aims for such level of awareness in all that he does and is.

“The heart of a wise man is tranquil.” — Chuang-tse, Philosopher

In summary, all that can be said is what’s already known; life isn’t easy. Nor is finding love, creation or truth. And sometimes the worst thing — that which is in the way of us discovering love, creativity or truth — is ourselves; that busy little brain of ours that tells us that we are the center of the universe. Therefore, it would be wise to be mindful of what our minds are doing, to know its nature and our own individual nature. Self knowledge is the most important knowledge and over-thinking can deter us. We must be aware of the brain’s default condition, which is often non-stop self-consciousness and self-obsession. The moment that awareness happens, the light comes in and healing begins, and we can begin to see thru the filter which is our conditioning. We need to separate thinking from doing, so that there’s clarity in both. If there’s no clarity, there can be neither love nor creativity. These things, like all great and beautiful things exist only when the concern for the self is absent. When the default state is not.

Note: If you’ve not already heard this famous 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College by the late David Foster Wallace, a writer of immense talent, intelligence and compassion, I advise that you watch this colorful video below. It summarizes what is said here with a balance of humor and seriousness. And although Wallace may have lost his battle with the mind, it does not take away the meaning, power and truth of his words.

Video illustration by After School of David Foster Wallace’s magnanimous essay “This is Water.”

Foundations

“Wax on, wax off” says Mr. Miyagi as he sneakily teaches one of the most fundamental blocks used not just in Karate, but in many other martial arts like Kung Fu and Tae Kwan Do. Image from **The Karate Kid**, starring Pat Morita and Ralph Macchio.

foundation (definition of):

the lowest load-bearing part of a building, typically below ground level.
an underlying basis or principle.

As they say, the foundations are everything. The core fundamentals of any craft start with the foundational bedrock of principles and skills that everything else is built upon. Unfortunately, most people, in almost every craft, want to skip over the long hours and dedicated hard work to truly be strong at the base.

Today, I’ll explain why this happens. Beyond just our ordinary rejection of doing extra work and our obsessive rush to get to the next step, the failure is so predominant because the general mindset about growth and learning is flawed. Most of us, and especially those who live in western cultures, tend to believe in the axiom “the more the better.” In other words, if we accumulate as much information, data or knowledge as possible, we’ll inevitably succeed. We see this in martial artists who “collect” multiple fighting styles, spiritual seekers who follow one guru to another, and even animators who hop from school to school, mentor to mentor. As noted in this blog before, knowledge alone is useless without understanding and actual prolonged application. Let’s look at the following diagrams:

The regular (idealized) set up. Each set of new skills (represented by a darker colored box) added to the current set of skills.

In this first diagram, we can see how most people (including large swaths of schools and educators) think and approach learning. As we learn the first levels of principles and techniques, we subsequently add on more principles and techniques. This is done gradually, but none the less step by step. This seemingly logical and practical approach makes the assumption that once we’ve received the lesson and have gone through its basic exercises that we’ve learned all we need to know and done all there’s to do at such stage. And so, we proceed towards more difficult tasks almost immediately like an assembly line, with one new challenge followed by another. Looking like a high-rise building, we think we’re making great progress, building one level after another constantly adding and “learning” new skills. Without any questioning, a general assumption is accepted as truth — that we’ve “passed” those levels and will never forgot or lose those acquired skills (or that we’ll somehow naturally improve on them as we go.) The animator, for example, does one walk cycle, thinks it’s ok (and it often gets “okayed” by the respected authorities) and believes he knows walk cycles. He goes on in this manner from two-legged ball characters to human walks, then towards fully fledged characters doing all kinds of physical actions and then eventually onwards to acting shots, multiple characters and moving cameras/multiple shot sequences. It seems both ideal and efficient.

The reality (which is common place). The new skills are grander and heavier than the previous skills, and place great strain on the levels below.

Here, in this second diagram, is the reality of taking on such an approach. As we can see — and it should be clear to any student who begins to massively struggle as the next levels of the craft are taught — that the expected learning rate of the original methodology has been misleading. Soon, the artist struggles not only with the new techniques but also with sustaining the proper and solid applications of the lower level techniques to his work. It turns out that his recently acquired skills are far from sufficient and that the new skills amplify the need of mastery of the lower levels. Eventually, the failures mount and the whole structure of his learning begins to topple as the top weight overwhelms the underlying foundation. No architect would ever design a building in such a manner but this construction approach is common in the arts. The reality is this: the foundations have to be stronger and more solid than everything else above it because each next step up is significantly more difficult in size, scope and depth than what has come before. A ready-level competence is necessary in order to learn and practice new techniques. When the lower skills are too weak, difficulty and frustration become too great and any learning stops completely. In major league sports like Hockey or Baseball, pro teams are careful not to rush top young talents into the pro leagues too early for fear of ruining their development when neither their bodies or minds are ready. Boxing coaches, who know that boxers often get only one shot at a title (if at all), take an even more cautious approach making sure their fighters have zero core deficiencies. The reason being is that without a very strong foundation below new techniques have no place to set. For example, the animator who’s barely passed his 2-legged ballie character walk cycle, is completely unprepared for taking on a 4-limbed fully-built rig, never mind any acting shot with all the bells and whistles like moving cameras and props. More often than not, the necessary foundational knowledge and skills, although they may have been shown to him, have not been grasped or understood with any proficiency to handle any added challenges. When an artist continues in this way, a terrible toll weighs on his psyche; the advancing difficulty and size of the challenges become so overwhelming that he loses all confidence, he stagnates and often gives up. This is why it’s so common as a teacher to witness animators — even those working in the industry — reveal remarkable flaws even when doing the most basic mechanics shots when tested. They know this instinctively and it’s one of the reasons they seek my counsel but it’s unfortunate that this happens. The truth is that at all levels of the craft, from basic mechanics to acting and camera work; each level of learning can feel daunting and exponentially difficult when the approach to learning is wrong.

The best set up. Although it takes longer to learn new skills, the continued advancement of the lower skills make for more stable and effective learning.

In this third chart, we can see the approach that I encourage for all young artists. The mindset of a true and honest learner is one that continues to build on the foundations that support his craft. As he learns and practices each new set of principles and techniques, he continues to strengthen the previous skills he’s acquired knowing full well that he HAS NOT yet mastered them. So, as time progresses, he becomes more and more skilled at the levels beneath and leverages them to meet the challenges of the next level. He knows and does this consciously, maintaining a humble mindset until his core foundations get significantly stronger, so strong in fact, that they become second nature. Approaching one’s learning in this manner not only stabilizes one’s growth in a sustainable way but also boosts confidence. In due time, the underlying foundations become so solid that it culminates into a pyramid of tremendous creative power where one can reach seemingly endless heights. It’s why genius is often stated as being 10% talent and 90% hard work. Consistency, passion and persistence are key ingredients to excellence and creativity. Top animation professionals don’t have to remember to apply weight, or achieve good arcs or spacing because they’re aware of these fundamentals constantly as part of the background of their work. When I spent many years studying fighters (due to my deep devotion to my other love, martial arts), I found the best ones were the ones with the strongest foundations. The great martial artists, regardless of style, had rock solid stances/balance and the strongest yet most supple bodies. And their minds paralleled that strength and flexibility. The same was true when I looked deeply into the work of the great animators. They could all draw well, demonstrate strong weight, present beautiful arcs and express confident camera/staging in all their work. The physical and emotional performances of their characters reflected a well thought-out vision — and all of it made possible by their deep knowledge and grasp of the fundamentals achieved thru an authentic practice.

Animation from **Sword In The Stone** by master animator Milt Kahl. Beautiful and sophisticated art like this happens only when the artist possesses an absolute mastery of the fundamentals.

Summary:

Of course, this doesn’t mean that we wait till we’ve mastered everything before we take on a new job or challenge — we can and sometimes have to learn on the job — but it’s much harder. In industry, one is judged daily on results, not promises or potential. Failures aren’t often overlooked and there’s alss a “what have you done for us lately” mindset in nearly every corporate environment. Add to it the stress of delivering under pressure, personal expectations and tight deadlines, it can overwhelm even the coolest individuals. Therefore, I suggest always to keep things simple and to maintain a humble spirit. I know, everyone’s in a hurry to get good, rich and successful. Don’t rush your learning. This suggestion may seem too much “wax on, wax off” for some but it’s truly the only way to learning something well and be truly good. And being good is the best kind of security we can possibly have.

“Get the fundamentals down and the level of everything you do will rise.”
— Michael Jordan, Basketball Player