NORTHERN PLANNER

As a former philosophy (with politics) student this Telegraph article about Plato caught my attention.

It argues that what’s missing in modern life is Platonism – the idea of an absolute, perfect truth to everything – even science, morality and art. You may disagree (personally I like the thought of all things being relative to the person – a ‘stein’ thing , something grounded in Einstein’s world, as well as Wittgenstein) but there’s something to be said for craft, the sense of ‘getting something right’, working towards perfection- even if it doesn’t exist. He’s talking about education, but doesn’t this ring true for the planners role in the creative process? :

"Say you are painting a picture. The picture exists in the perfect realm….Yor job is to depict it as best as you can…orginality doesn’t come into it, the picture existed before you did". The planners help the team uncover what the perfect picture should be, the creatives depict it.

Plato can also shed some light on the  ‘who has the right to have an idea’ chestnut. The only just Platonic society is one where people do whatever they are best suited for – and they’re equally valued for it. Do what you’re good at, avoid what what your not in other words.

…David Armano’s fascinating, ego free blog. He’s a creative director, but not as we know it (if the usual stuff in Campaign Private View is anything to go by).  here’s a great post on Russell’s debate about boring creative directors. More please.

Finally finished Steve Johnson’s ‘Everything bad is good for you’ (thanks to a habit of reading about 3 books at a time it takes a while). I’ll get to his arguments in a sec, but first of all he writes like a dream. Instead of the didactic "I know more than you" style of so many books like this, he persaudes, he invites you to argue, he pulls you in. In short, it’s an entertaining read. That’s  good since the more people who are persuaded to read this the better.

You’re probably familiar with the book’s main premise by now – far from dumbing down, pop culture is making us smarter.The first, and meatiest  bit of this is the argument that the multi faceted complexity of modern TV, video games and even the internet demands quite different skillsets to what has gone before. Instead of the linear style of Pacman or Starsky and Hutch, video games like Grand Theft Auto teach us to make difficult decisions in complex environemts while Lost asks us to make sense of dense, interwoven plots, instead of spoonfeeding us.

It’s difficult to argue with this, first bit. Pop culture is more complex and more demanding than ever before, and it’s teaching people to embrace complexity. The implications for anyone in advertising are worth dwelling on for a second. If people are embracing non – linear complex entertainment, shouldn’t the communications we produce have a similar structure? If we insists on giving them simple, straight stories, won’t they reject them every bit as much as ‘I Love Lucy’? This is the main bit of learning I took from this book, since I’m not as convinced by the following argument that it makes us smarter, espescially as he openly contradicts this himself.

He argues that IQ’s have gone up, but admits that the causality is difficult to prove. Common sense suggest that it will help develop certain decisons making skills and probing and learning, but is that all that it takes to be smart?

He agrees that the beauty of books for example is the way they demand people to add their own imagination to make it real, which not only helps us to think in the abstract, but also enables us to follow long, complex narratives and arguments at a much deeper level. Books show us how real life unfolds. This enables us to question, and think for ourselves. Can pop culture ever replace this? Johnson admits not, and argues for balanced diet of traditional and modern entertainment.

So for me, this book is an argument for not dismissing modern culture out of hand, since it’s more rewarding than we previously thought. But it cannot make us smarter on it’s own, in other words, it’s an argument for moderation.

But my problem is this. Has this really made our culture any better? True, pop culture is better than we thought, but has it made people smarter about anything other than pop culture?  Continous Partial Attention shows how short attention spans are, how unwilling people are to grapple with longform information. To live with a longer, deeper argument for a while.

For sure, use of the internet means people are accessing more news and views than ever before, but do they examine in depth? I doubt they have the patience. For me culture will be going in the right direction when people are more willing to look at things in more depth, to question more and make up their own minds, to probe why things are instead of a dizzying array of things that just ‘are’.

How many people really understand what’s going on in Lebanon and the long history behind it? How many people have considered that the wars of the last century were about the re-organisation of empires, and this is ominously similar to what’s happening now with the rise of China? Has it become too easy for people to embrace the soundbites of David Cameron instead of examining the lack of real policy? At the moment, popular culture is teaching us to think about a lot of things at the same time, but not in any depth of real value.

With guest star Olive Oil:

"Imported from Italy" only has to have been bottled there, usually using olives from Greece, Spain or Turkey.

"100 pure olive oil" is the lowest grade available.

"Made from refined olive oils" means taste and acidity were chemically produced.

"From hand-picked olives" suggests that it’s been done with care – tree shaking machines actually do a better job.

There’s a growing trend in the London and New York for art scene. Art collectors are making calculated gambles on buying the entire collections of young artists, hoping that one of them will be a big success and make them a tidy profit. Some think the effect on the quality of art is terrible, as too many young artists are being blinded by early success and losing the skill for self criticism. Not only is there a glut of average work, we may be missing out on something truly exceptional.

Reminds me an old boss who never promoted people unless they were virtually doing the next job up already. Or they way my Dad never let me win at tennis (he was such a bad loser he stopped playing when I began to beat him).

There was a fascinating discussion Radio 4 about how intellectually gifted children in the UK may get a raw deal. Apparently far more money and time is spent on the not so gifted. Schools in the Uk have classes of mixed abilities where they can’t move on until everyone gets the hang of what you’re doing now. The debate over segregating kids has been going far a long time, but is it really fair to force kids of different mental abilities together in classes when only the good footballers get into the school team? Or the best looking girls get the pick of the boys?

There’s a lot of attention paid to how kids get bullied for being too fat or too thin, but little about how they’re singled out for liking learning. I’m not talking about the stereotypical nerd, but kids who are afraid to put their hands up and admit they know the answer. Why has it got so bad? How did we get to a culture that ridicules people that like to think? 

Open to Everyone has posted Friday’s cover of the Independent.