All posts by Greg I. Hamilton

A New Ambivalence

Obey This: Intelligent Disobedience

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Blog 7 of 12 in tribute to a century of scouting worldwide.

After four months of fairly obvious virtues found within the 12 points of the Scout Law (“A scout is helpful, friendly, courteous, kind …”), we’re back to one that has that oppressively dogmatic ring of “law.” Ah, obedience. What, no love for freethinking creativity? No room for conscientious objectors here? We can’t be disobedient even if we’re civil about it? Is obedience really a virtue in today’s society? Read on and I will give you clear guidance that you must obey.

Intelligent disobedience is a trained virtue in seeing-eye dogs. Picture a blind woman trying to cross a street. A hybrid car approaches, too quiet for her to hear. She moves to cross the street. Her dog sees the car and disobeys his master’s command. And that’s a good thing.

To be fair, I know that this is actually the exception in dog training. As the owner of a puppy-school dropout, I know that most of the time it’s in a dog’s own interest to obey its master. Not all humans are dogs, though, and the concept of intelligent disobedience can actually be quite valuable for anyone with a shred of virtue. It’s akin to civil disobedience when thoughtful people decide society has gone astray. Or creative thinking, when everyone else seems stuck in a rut.

But anarchy only works as a minority approach. If we all disobeyed everything, there would be nothing left of substance. Without substance— well, what then are the anarchists supposed to tear down? You can only stomp on rubble so long before it starts to look merely like a teenage tantrum. So perhaps for every demolitionist, the world needs nine engineers building things back up?

Questioning, challenging, even tearing things down is important, but it’s also the easiest part of the equation because it’s reactionary. It’s always simpler to react to things than to create them in the first place. Frankly, I’m more interested in the act of creation. In my opinion, it’s a fascinating mix of obedience and disobedience. We obey proven principles to carry us to the limits of our current understanding of things. We obey right up to the edge of our comfort zone. Then we disobey certain assumed limits in order to achieve something new. That’s creativity.

I’m currently directing a film that’s all about that sort of balance. One of the personalities we’re profiling, for instance, is Mike May. He obeys certain principles that help him get around, in fact he has created a GPS system that provides a reliable resource allowing people with impaired vision to navigate like never before. Then, at certain opportune moments, Mike disobeys limitations that might seem imposed on him. The writer Robert Kurson named his book on Mike after these moments: Crashing Through.

While those dramatic leaps of faith are the stuff of great stories, even Mike acknowledges that much of life is preparation for those moments. While we were filming, he told me his speed skiing coach, the great Franz Weber, always said: “people say I’m crazy for going a hundred and thirty miles an hour. You’re only crazy if you don’t train for it.” That training, from the former World Champion, provided Mike with his own speed skiing world record: 65 miles an hour, completely blind (a record that still stands).

Preparation like that sounds a little like obedience, and is that really so bad? Obey what propels you forward; disobey what holds you back (unless a hybrid car is coming).

Thanks for reading. Cheers,

Greg

Photo by walknboston

Levity

Multicrastination: Putting the “Pro” in Procrastination

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I woke up with that usual seesaw of to-do lists bouncing between my ears. My whining puppy finally rousted me from bed: I grabbed my clipboard and coffee to begin another hard day’s procrastination.

Your typical multitaskers, they might be checking voicemail and email while doling out directions to several coworkers on a morning like this. I was there earlier in my marketing life: we used to compare who had the most voicemail messages in a single day. I was pretty proud to break fifty, but I was among bona fide multitask mavens who had broken a hundred.

In those days I multitasked with the best of them. Now it’s up to me, and only me, to fulfill my immense capacity for trauma management and multi-task madness. For that, I rely primarily on multicrastination. Take today: I have one huge project to complete. All the other chickenscratches on my clipboard are the things I would love to do once the bulk of this assignment is off my shoulders. And here I am, multi-caffeinating:

multicaffeination – the multicrastinator’s friend: combine coffee, Mountain Dew, and chocolate for a 100 percent reliable mid-day sleep aid

All the while I’m adding more things to my to-do list and ultimately blaming my failure to start today’s big project on you, dear blog reader. Actually, I’ll take my defense in the words Harlan Ellison has taped to his typewriter (yes, typewriter— he keeps a supply of discontinued ribbons in the refrigerator):

Sat ci sat bene.
“It is done quickly enough if it is done well.”
— from Dreams with Sharp Teeth, the fascinating documentary on speculative fiction’s feistiest penman

Any writer can procrastinate, but for the really big projects that you need to put off a while longer, try swimming in an endless sea of things you really ought to be doing instead. As writing tutors we learned this was called “pre-writing,” that period before sitting down to the keyboard, when the best ideas foment (or ferment) in the backs of our otherwise utterly distracted minds.

For creative types, it’s sometimes hard to justify our long hours spent staring blankly out windows. If you find yourself in this position, nothing fools yourself or others better than long lists of things you appear to be coordinating. If that sounds like your bag, join the multicrastinators: we postpone more by noon than most people do all day.

Thanks for reading. Cheers,

Greg

Photo by AirplaneMouse

Authentic Experience

O the Joy of Fat-free Bran Muffins [Sarcasm]

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My original Beer vs. Bread entry received this comment: “Just give me a big homemade cinnamon roll!!” It was from my mom and I see her point. To use notation you haven’t seen since you took the SAT, I believe she was saying:

bread : beer :: bran muffin : cinnamon roll

If the lingo of standardized tests never was your thing, that translates as “bread is to beer as that dry, crummy rock of a muffin is to a hot gooey cinnamon roll fresh out of the oven.” Mom’s cinnamon roll would be the equivalent of my beer: its sugar and fat providing the decadent departure that parallels the bubbly buzz of barley. On the other end of the spectrum lies the healthy but uninspiring fat-free bran muffin. Mmm, mmm.

If you ever did have a delicious bran muffin, it was probably not fat free. It was loaded with real butter, tons of sugar, and other rich indulgences. But at the Yin-Yang Cafe that is life, there are some mandatory side dishes that aren’t much fun. Tom Robbins, in the book Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates, called such daily nuisances “maintenance.” Toothbrushing, flossing, seeing the dentist (just about anything to do with your teeth) are good examples. Tending to your innards and the latter parts of your body’s consumption of fuel are also good examples of maintenance. Robbins’ globetrotting idealist, Switters, only barely tolerates these dull necessities. Ultimately he despises them.

So, just to carry the point right through to your lower intestine without delay, let’s make our hypothetical yin muffin a vegan, nondairy, gluten-free, wheat-free, naturally unsweetened, whole spelt muffin loaded with psyllium husk. Now as joyless as this hockey puck of a baked good may sound, for some folks with acute intestinal grumpiness, this may actually be their key to regular daily comfort. Or else they could swirl Metamucil in tepid water and gulp it down like a full eight ounces of slug slime twice a day. My prescription should you find yourself so afflicted? Skip the mucilaginous drink. Take two muffins, drop the kids off at the pool, and do the paperwork in the morning. [Editor’s note: Ah, toilet humor. Never lose your inner teenage boy.]

So, was there a point here or did we swirl into mucilaginy? [Ed.: not sure if I’m coining a phrase, but the world just seemed to need an official term for “a state of slug sliminess”] Ah yes, the importance of sustenance and simple survival-minded maintenance in our daily lives. Did you know that was where I was going? Bravo: that makes one of us.

Absolutely I’m a fan of homemade cinnamon rolls, Winchell’s doughnuts (the maple French cruller is brilliant), beer, and life’s other decadences. But they are decadences. Remember my mechanic’s warning that if you don’t work like a farmer, don’t eat like one? That doesn’t stop me from eating Little Debbie snack cakes, sugary cereals, and more than my share of high-fructose corn syrup— I interpret his advice as incentive to go out and spend those extra calories and preservatives on something exhausting and frivolous. There’s a reason a sugar high makes you want to bounce off the walls: you’ve got fuel to burn. So go ahead and bounce. And then get back to your maintenance.

Thanks for reading. Cheers,
Greg

Photo by izik