I took the tube (and my cam) to go to the theater…
Month: January 2019
Decisions Traps
This is probably dishonest to open a book and to read the summary only. Back on the shelves. Summaries are sometimes enough to seed your brain!
Just did it with a book about decisions – seen as a multi-trap territory. Interesting, right?
TRAPS, what are they?
- Too good to be wrong trap : a great story seems in front of you
- Imitation trap : it worked there, it’ll work here
- Intuition trap : I feel it’ll work then it will
- Too much trust trap : Just do it and it’ll be OK
- Inertia trap : when we think we control everything
- We know the risks trap : nope
- Time horizons : it’ll happens “soon”, or “in a long time”
- The group trap : everybody does this thus I’ll do it
- Conflict of interests : bad diagnostics and bias (often money)
Do you take decisions? Where would you use that? therefore what?
Have a nice day!
Lecture or Aphorism?
Like some children have an imaginary friend, I have an imaginary reader, built like a golem from all of you, my followers : helloooo!
This person is smart and fast, and curious. She (let’s call this person a she) would be able to ask questions like : “From the books you read in the last year, who brought you this feeling of being too much, offering you like a feast of ideas – and what structure do you find there?”.
I thanked her for this question, and answered quickly : Valéry’s notebooks and Bourdieu’s lectures about Manet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Val%C3%A9ry
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Bourdieu
- Valéry’s notebooks are arranged by themes : humans, poetry, dreams… His paragraphs are very short, a few lines at the most. He’s the best thinker I’ve ever read. The result is, like with Nietzsche sometimes, like a huge tank of crystals, crystals of thoughts. Therefore it’s very slow to read these notebooks : each line almost stops you for a day…
- Bourdieu was a French sociologist, at the end of his life, he gave a bunch of lectures in the Collège de France about Edouard Manet, the painter. It became a big book, which is exhausting (in the good way) to read : it’s like hearing him constantly exploding with thoughts, ideas, patterns, about art, society, painting, psychology, history, etc.
With one you get a piece of complex, smart, fascinating jewelry. With the other you get a river.
Thus, I wanted to write this article with a rotation. You, who wants to share something, what do you do? You blog or you write a book? Do you concentrate or do you flow? To you build a little thinking toy model, or do you offer a one hour firework? How is the quality presented, displayed? A weaving of string arrows which envelops you like a blanket of ideas, or a ring of twelve words, changing you forever?
What is the most effective for an audience? Lecture or Aphorism?
How do you blog? Do you think about your audience, about their time, their mood? Are you too short, too long? What is an article of yours? A box? A current? Jewelry or map?
Thanks for reading!
instagram : _bodylanguage_
Some illustrators I found on Pinterest
Little Snow in Lille, France
Little Snow in Lille, France. January 2019.
Little Snow in Lille, France
Little Snow in Lille, France, January 22
Lille, France, winter evening
Lille, France, winter evening, January 22 :
Little snow in Lille, France
A Fortnite/Gurushots pattern
A Fortnite/Gurushots pattern
ONE
I don’t play games anymore (though I spent hours online with Myth in the nineties) but I like to read about this world from time to time.
I often fall on this hated pattern : “You have to pay to play, then you have to pay to increase your powers in order to win”.
The feeling to be a cash cow is pretty unpleasant for people…
TWO
Fortnite is this big success online game who has more than 200 millions users. It’s probably a great game, but I’m sure the main reason is because
- it’s free to play, anywhere, on a PC, a Mac, a phone
- the things you can buy online (because every company needs money, right?) are only cosmetic (clothes, dances, etc), and they don’t affect at all the way you win or not.
It appears that when people don’t feel they’re cash cows, when then don’t feel the pushing hand in their back (“buy, buy, buy, or you won’t win”)… they buy. They pay. They give money. Fortnite wins hundreds of millions every month.
THREE
I just saw a similar pattern with GuruShots, which is a photographers social media, based on challenges and competitions. You post your best pictures, then you expect to be “liked” by the community : it’s very fun, fast and crowded, and it pushes you to be creative.
There, you get more views (and likes) when you just posted a picture, or when you use littles tools (boosts to be more viewed, swapping less viewed pictures, etc).
You get some of these tools at the end of challenges, and you can buy them.
They made one mistake : your tools-rewards are no distributed according to the level you climbed in a challenge, but a bit randomly. But well : it’s pleasant to get them, then to think about where and when you’ll use them to be effective.
It’s simple : participate, take good pictures, and get rewards.
Of course, the people who buy these tools in costly baskets are the one who win. There, you feel the pushing hand in your back (“Give us dollars and win”), and there you don’t pay, because you’d like to win “without this cheat” (but is it?).
But well, it’s a game, it funny, and it’s a kind of balance you have to play with. And that’s true : it makes you think about what is a good picture.
Now they changed the rules : you never get rewards-tools anymore at the end of a challenge, you gain them with “missions”, which are mainly to… vote for other pictures. I have to choose 60 good photos (therefore to check around 3-400 daily, in order to get one of these tools. But :
- It’s too much work for me.
- I lost the excitement to get them at the end of each challenge.
Therefore I can choose this :
- Abandon and quit the game (bye!)
- Go on playing without any support-tools (which is a “no action” mood – you lose a big part of the excitement)
- Buy tools (feeling a bigger hand pushing you in my back to do it)
I’m on 2, running towards 1 and quitting.
This is the Fortnite pattern they could follow :
One should be able to win because their pictures are good, or because they have fun using the pictures pushers tools, or because they pay. That’s fair! You should be seen, given rewards and likes (because this is all we like in a photography social media) according to the quality of your work (and not because you voted/watched hundreds of picts). This needs oils, a multiple threads forum (or ways to chat) to connect photographers, and less pressure to “spend money”, a pressure which is now ten years obsolete.
FOUR
Is this pattern usable elsewhere? What about this feeling people have to be cash cows? How to kill this feeling and make them happily give money though? What could be the science of studying where/when to pay? You pay to enter? Inside the game? To get useless but pleasant things (like in Fortnite) or power? Where to think about this science? Marketing, business, game, school, fashion, blogs, medias?
Thanks for reading!
Photography : From the Train
From the train I took pictures and I trashed all of them but these :
Intervene in Groups
In two consecutive days, I learned things about groups. This coincidence puts me on alert (of course). Here’s the result :
ONE
Currently reading Dr Yalom’s autobiography. He tells how he began to work with groups, as a therapist. To train and to learn in University, he joined a 8 days group therapy, sat in a middle of a dozen other people. The psy came in and told the group something about they won’t talk about the past but “the now only” – which is obviously stupid – then she kept her mouth closed. Silence.
Yalom, also there as a watcher of course, saw it coming, a blossom, from silence, of different bursts. Each people had their own way to react, from “Fine!” to “Come on!” to silence, to “She know what she does…” to “You’re manipulating us!”. Then the therapist had like a whole bunch of little trees in front of her, which grew up all by themselves, from a single sentence. Then works with that.
TWO
I talked yesterday with someone who’s a member of an association of “out loud readers“. Of course it’s interesting! You want to know why, and what does one learn in a such place, etc.
He told me the coach was really great, because VERY directive. One person begins to read out loud in front of the assembly, until she squarely interrupts them, give them instructions to follow – beck and call. Most of the time, instructions given are surprising, though clearly made to disturb and break patterns : one plays as an actor, one is slow, or shy, one is grey neutral. Boring.
She orders to whisper, to walk while reading, to be mean or frightening, even if you read a French XIXth Century love novel.
THREE
See me coming? Yalom writes than one of the powers of the therapist comes from… he gives his attention to the patient. I love to think it’s the one secret of all this article. The coach, in a group, pays attention to you. That is a present, and a very powerful thing, in a world where nobody really pays attention.
It’s one of these things which shocks you when you grow up, when you realize that in society, at work, in family, in many circles or conversations :
Most people let you talk waiting for their turn to talk.
They don’t really care : they want their turn.
Thus the simple knack from Dale Carnegie : LISTEN to people. Listen to them really. Then you’ll get smart questions, then listen more.
What do you think about ONE and TWO styles of group leaders? Give a small seed then listen and use what you catch, or give strong instructions which will disturb or break patterns? Can this second style be used in therapies?
Thanks for reading!
Winter in Picardie, Part 3
A Red Dress and other desires : Dispositif ou Agencement?
Well this is a conversation subject for drunk overthinking friends, let’s go :
Deleuze says that a woman doesn’t desire a red dress, but the whole arrangement she makes of it in her mind : a date, the dress, a man, a summer evening, a dance maybe, a dinner…
A little boy desires a baseball bat, but also a system of what could be around : friends, summer afternoons, running, winning…
The French word he uses for that is “agencement“, which I find translated as “arrangement“. But there’s a problem : “arrangement” is also a French word, therefore I feel a bit disappointed here. It’s colored : un arrangement is a way things are placed, but it’s also a deal.
Our “agencement” means arrangement, but more in a layout process.
A red dress for a date/a baseball bat can dance in an arrangement, a system made of many things (dancing, eating, man’s eyes, walking in a summer night street…), maybe we can consider it’s a layout, a deal? What about a new splendid bat?
My problem is the radioactivity of words. They are like bees here…
If a French arrangement is an English arrangement…
if a French agencement is also an English arrangement…
…how do I explain agencement to you? It’s an arrangement but it’s not a deal. It’s something you find already placed (by destiny, or another person?). We say that an appartment is perfectly “agencé” : it’s not about the furniture, but about the map, the drawing. This big window is on the sunny side, waow, great!
Agencement is about space. Things oriented and placed in space.
The red dress, and the bat, they are all imagined moving in a special space… This is desire!
It’s colored : things in space, how they are placed, a layout. Passive voice, maybe.
If we want to talk about something prepared, it’s more an arrangement (under the form of a deal), we call this un dispositif.
Dang! A new word! Dispositif is often translated by Apparatus, but it’s wrong. I think an apparatus, in English, is a thing, a device, a machine. It is, in French, but it’s also “the name we could make from the verb to dispose”. A metaphorical apparatus, in a way. Effectiveness is coloring it.
It’s not a disposal (which means a destruction, an elimination), though we say une disposition, in French (I’m sure it makes sense, right?). It’s a positioning, voilà : a placement.
Here we are : Agencement means Arrangement, but also a Positioning.
Not positioning each little part of the agencement : it’s clearly about positioning the whole system. Things “linked” (how) to each other.
Agencement is more like that : a map of how things are and play together. The purpose is to say “It’s there, it’s like that, it’s what we have, what was prepared”.
Dispositif is the same, but it sounds more like something decided, wanted. The purpose is to say “This is what we placed and how, to be effective”.
Mhh where’s the red dress, here?
Thanks for following & reading!
Winter in Picardie, Part 2
Writing forestalls us
I just found this concept in a book written by a singer, Dominique A. He writes his songs, and he knows what every writer knows : L’écriture nous devance…
Writing forestalls us
What you write becomes a text. This text knows things you don’t know. It’s ahead.
How does it work? Do you have an idea?
(Because it’s true, right?)
Prescience? Does the fact of writing activate something? Does the writing process use some parts of our brain who… know things?
Did it happen to you?
Thanks for reading!
“Button monday with tuesday” and other French Daily Idioms
These are very common French idioms. Have fun!
- “Pas des masses” : not some masses (no much).
- “D’un trait (ou d’une traite)” : in a drop (in one go)
- “Rattraper le coup” : to catch the deal (patch it up)
- “C’était couru” : it was run (foregone conclusion)
- “C’est l’idée qu’on s’en fait” : it’s the idea that one makes (that’s the idea)
- “Boutonner lundi avec mardi” : to button monday with tuesday (button the wrong hole)
- “Avoir des atomes crochus” : to have hooked atoms (to have a lot in common)
- “Donner du fil à retordre à quelqu’un” : to give somebody some yarn to twist again (to give somebody a hard time)
- “Il y a anguille sous roche” : there’s eel under rock (there’s something fishy going on)
- “Faut c’qu’y faut” (pronounce “foskifo”) : must what must (we needed this). For example to warm up a coffee in a microwave you need at least one minute, faut c’qu’y faut.
- “Quand le chat n’est pas là les souris dansent” : when the cat’s away, mice… dance!
Have a nice day!
JP
Complementary Partner?
When you’re young, you like simple, you like big statements. “Life is sad”, or “I’ll find my prince”, or “I wanna be an actor”.
Some people stay there, it’s why they love categories. They REALLY think they are INTJ – and if you say that sometimes you are also an INFJ, they say you don’t understand the concept. They use boxes and labels. For themselves.
Big question I had when I was in my twenties : “What’s better, to find a complementary partner or a same as you partner?”.
With easily guessed consequences :
- If you marry someone like you, it’s easier, you party together, you love the same movies and musics, and your sex life is paradise.
- If you marry someone not like you, it’s a mess : quiet vs loud, classical music and hardcore rap, reading in bed and motorbiking in the mud.
After all : BooksTeaCat, SportsBeerDog & their Social Interactions Necessities
Then you grow up and you live and the constant rain of complexities, disillusions and surprises end up to your upgrade : it’s A Matter of Levers – simplicity is senseless.
As we are moving forward in our days, we change, we plug to possibilities, we have many speeds, many joys, many powers and weaknesses, we have many intensities, and feelings.
(And it’s the same for your partner, silly!)
Whoever your partner is, the result is a mess, right? So what? That’s life! Amor Fati!
Oh snap : When you hate someone and 3 mn later you deeply love this person
- When your other is a lot like you, it’s great : my lover is a cat person, a book lover, a quiet person, and she has no car (oh this is perfect!) – we evolve in the same aquarium. And I can write or take photos as much as I want!
- When your other is a lot NOT like you, good. Why did you choose this person? How do you dance? Isn’t complementary perfect? Don’t you like to read alone when your spouse kills ducks in mudfens? Don’t you have a friend to talk to when your lover is a man of zero words? And also don’t we all need to be disturbed?
What’s the secret here? To stay yourself, of course. Not to bend too much, at the risk of losing your inner light…
Mmhhhhh…
“Opposites attract, but similarities bind”. Is that true?
The “Let’s make it a dance” tool says this : “When it’s difficult somewhere but you have to insist and you have to stay in the system, just accept and absorb the difficulties – and invent a dance. Your dance. It’s a mess, but you can dance it, smile, and climb the stairs”. And ignore the others. Nobody can understand your own dance. It’s a secret.
Sorry, this article is a mess, tant pis. I don’t even know where it went. Hence, I found a picture of my Eliette playing watergunning (or squirtpistoling) with a friend, voilà.
Bonne journée ! Thanks for reading!
Winter in Picardie, Part 1
Winter in Picardie. No filter here. My old Canon SX10. Soil and plant life are sleeping. And it’s cold… just over ice.
Three Water Towers
Three Water Towers in Picardie, France.
Empathy – and words linked to it
Empathy? I wrote an article about having too much of it : The “Too Much Empathy” Syndrome
The ability to feel (or guess) what another person is feeling, believing…
We thinkers like to examine it, but I realize there aren’t so many books about it.
My first idea is it’s because it’s a big-deep quality. It’s like being dexterous or green fingered, and being clumsy. You can’t, really, change that.
- One can not develop their empathy.
- One certainly can not make someone develop their empathy.
My second idea is that though we all have, built in our deeprofound mind, a prehistorical dose of empathy – some people only, then (education? culture?) can develop the flowers of empathy from it, some others don’t. It’s dry. That’s it.
Another word? Attention. If you have empathy, you watch people around you, your kids, your love – you have a like perpetual computing algorithm which “guesses and reports” what probably happens in others’s heads. You read them continuously.
Another word? The decentering process. To have empathy you have to decenter. The next word is selfishness, then.
Another word? Relational Intelligence. A dance between a dry empathy which we need to understand the others’ intentions and feelings, and a warm empathy which is deeper and linked to love.
Maybe one can develop the first one? A rational empathy, is it possible?
Then it leads to empathy as a tool, in management, teaching, or therapy. It becomes, then, a… lever (or a leverage, which one’s the best?).
How to we detect a lack of empathy? How does empathy rejoin the love of stories? And what about “types of conversations”? Where and how does a lack of empathy become an… asset? What about justice, or police? What about mother/baby? And father/baby? What is vicariance, and how is it used in pedagogy? What is the “pleasure to help”?
A teacher who has empathy knows how to interest his class, then he has their attention, then they learn…
Thanks for reading!
Ohh I found a book on my shelves, “A History of Empathy”. I’m on it, OK?
a french toolbox 