At last night’s TEDxGreenville salon, a preview party for TEDxGreenville 2014: Unzipped, Harrison Brookie was introduced as the emcee for this year’s April 11th all-day conference.
Harrison may be familiar to many as the ring leader of an improv group that’s become quite popular in the last couple of years. Actually, rather than a ring leader, he’s more like a comedy super-hero. By day, Harrison Brookie is a social studies teacher at Southside International Baccalaureate High School. By night, he is the Executive Producer and Artistic Director of Alchemy Comedy Theater. In between all of that fun, he and his wife Traci have a daughter and, depending on when you read this, a new baby boy.
Harrison grew up in Greenville and returned home in 2011, after journeying to other locales to master his education and comedic skills, to found the Alchemy Comedy Theater, which produces weekly comedy shows. Those of us who’ve caught him and his cohorts in action on a Friday night at Coffee Underground might agree that, indeed, he’s a master of his art. Come cheer him on as this year’s emcee for TEDxGreenville 2014: Unzipped, Friday, April 11, at The Kroc Center in downtown Greenville. Come early. Registration begins at 8:00 am for what promises to be our most engaging TEDx event ever!
A month ago I mentioned an upcoming performance at Greenville TEDx. The show came and went and it was incredible. I can honestly say it is one of my top performance achievements. You may have to watch the other talks of the day in order to fully appreciate it. Enjoy the show!
As if improv company Alchemy Comedy performing at TEDx Greenville wasn't two worlds colliding enough, here's a TED talk about comedy that actually uses the phrase the "alchemy of laughter". Like me, what the comedian Chris Bliss wanted most in life was to influence people. But people don't like to be changed. Comedy, he found, was a way to speak truth into people's mouths while their open from laughter:
My intention wasn't for my 1000th post to be my last, but I'm it sure looked that way. I've been extra busy with some great opportunities that have come my way and I just couldn't make my way to the top of the pyramid to blog. One of the most exciting things is that Alchemy Comedy, which has just ended out first and sold out our second Improv 101 class, has been asked to close out Greenville TEDx. You know I love TED and improv, so I'm excited to put them together. On March 30th, we will be watching all the TED Talks and using them to inspire a series of improvised comedy scenes to conclude the day. So if you're in the area get your tickets soon, apparently they sold out the last few years. And if you're out of town, you're in luck, I hear they are going to stream it!
Here's another example of how humans and animals are different. Instead of focusing on our differing strengths, here's a TED talk on our weakness (like how we are bad at risk and bad at investing). The difference is at the end, but I'll spoil it for you. The difference between irrational humans and irrational animals, is that we can know it and can create structures to overcome it.
In this talk he affirms the idea that fiction is a powerful source of persuasion. He warns that stories can be overly simplified and used to mislead. Although I agree with Tyler's worry, I think stories are more than tricks for our rational brain. They're information for our emotions. If our logic and reason are conscious thought. Our emotion is unconscious thought. Both can be improved, just in different ways. Our emotional brain craves stories. This is why there is only short list of narrative possibilities. Tyler lists a few: a stranger comes to town, rags to riches, voyage and return, etc. This is shown beatifically in the ongoing video series Everything is a Remix. Part one is about music, part two is about stories:
Stories are useful ways to to condense information. Narratives are memory tools for our emotional brain. It is important to use stories as a way to learn and grow. This topic came up in my church last Sunday when the pastor talked about how of the three ways we interact with the world (reason, emotion, action), our emotion is the most underused in our understanding God. As someone who is overly in their head, I couldn't have agreed more. But as he explained the ideas in an intellectual way, I couldn't help but ask him how we could improve our feelings directly. My question led him to blog this:
I was stumped Sunday morning. Admittedly, I don’t like being stumped. There is a small part of me that wants to always have an answer for any question that someone can throw at me. But then reality hits you in the face, you get flustered and give nonsensical round about answers. I have to smile a little when this happens because really it is good to be humbled and reminded I am human. I’m nowhere as smart as I would like to be. I simply offer what I have learnt in my journey with Jesus.
I spent 45 minutes making an argument for how, as Christians, we can just focus on thinking the right things (orthodoxy) and doing the right things (orthopraxis) but that it is just as important to work on feeling the right things (orthopathos). I was trying to show my flock that God cares about our feelings, and wants to use and redeem our feelings. Then someone basically asked me in Q&A, “This church is very intellectual so how do we work on feeling the right things?" Good question. A very good question. I really should have been ready for this question because it is the question that is begging to be asked. But I didn’t have the foresight to expect it. There is something very ironic in trying to get people to work on their emotional health by giving them an intellectual case for it. Can you really “right think” people into “right feelings”? The short answer is “no.” But that is where you start when your church’s culture is to emphasize the mind. Nothing wrong with that. Some churches emphasize the mind, some emphasize actions, and some emphasize feelings. You hope that all churches seek some balance between those things at the same time.
But back to the question that stumped me. I have been thinking about this question since I was asked it. On one hand, it is a very easy question to answer. On the other hand, it is a very difficult question to answer. The easy answer is, “Emotional health is ultimately an individual’s journey that starts with a person being willing to explore their emotional life and bring it honestly to God for redemption. Where God takes that journey afterwards is different for each person.” The reason why this question is easy and difficult to answer is because the burden IS on an individual to do the work towards emotional well-being and the things that can be done on a corporate level are limited.
On a corporate level, we can start talking in a way that acknowledges that feelings are important. We can stop giving over-spiritual answers that imply believing in Jesus gets rid of all the ups and downs of emotions. We can model emotional well-being by seeking it in our own lives as leaders of the church. We can provide training to small group leaders that open the door for both the leaders’ and the members’ emotional well-being. Even just those four things are actually a tall order for any church. And the thing is, even when a church can do those four things well, it still comes down to an individual’s willingness to delve into, what can be for many people, the murky and scary waters of emotions.
He goes on to give five practical ways to solve the problem. Although helpful, I think the main item missing from the list is the power of stories. Every so often our church has a member give their testimony (Christian word for story). In my weekly small group we've been taking turns giving our personal biographies. In my improv team we did an exercise creating characters through personal beliefs. Whether in a religious, relational, or educational environments, stories are powerful. Non-fiction is important, but so is fiction. This is the power of art. Sure they can also be used to distort truth, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to use music, paintings, movies, or even improv as "lies to tell the truth".
Here's a new TED Talk on what it looks like when [musical] improvisers play inside an MRI machine. Not only is the experiment itself interesting, what is has to say about spontaneous creativity fits with my own experience. Here's Musician and researcher Charles Limb:
It's a bit long, so here's my favorite part:
Really consciousness is seated in the frontal lobe. But we have this combination of an area that's thought to be involved in self-monitoring, turning off, and this area that's thought to be autobiographical, or self-expressive, turning on. And we think, at least in this preliminary -- It's one study. It's probably wrong. But it's one study. We think that at least a reasonable hypothesis is that, to be creative, you have to have this weird dissociation in your frontal lobe. One area turns on, and a big area shuts off, so that you're not inhibited, so that you're willing to make mistakes, so that you're not constantly shutting down all of these new generative impulses.
In a famous experiment with pigeons, an automatic feed is set to release at regular intervals with no relation to behavior. This resulted in tricking the birds into repeating the action they did when food is first released:
One bird was conditioned to turn counter-clockwise about the cage, making two or three turns between reinforcements. Another repeatedly thrust its head into one of the upper corners of the cage. A third developed a 'tossing' response, as if placing its head beneath an invisible bar and lifting it repeatedly.
This has got me wondering not only what my superstitions are, but what first caused them. Here's a 10 year old girl that refuses to let a shark bite make her superstitious. Just as interesting, apparently luck helps when you believe it. Also related, here's a TED talk by the publisher of Skeptic Magazine on why we believe strange things.
Floating around the blogosphere recently is the RSA animation series. Here are a couple of my favorites, with short summaries of each:
Dan Pink: Drive: Humans can sometimes have counterintuitive responses to incentives. Higher incentives can sometimes leads to worse performance when complicated cognitive skills are required. You should pay people just enough to where the issue of money is taken off the table. Is this why I've learned so much blogging compared to my formal education?
Barbara Ehrenreich: Smile or Die: There is a darker side to positive thinking, for example, the sub-prime problems. Also, it's cruel to tell unhappy people it's all in their heads and that they just need an attitude change. Optimism can take away people's initiative to improve things. The speaker doesn't want pessimism, just realism. But isn't that what all pessimists say?
Philip Zimbardo: The Secret Powers of Time
There are three main ways of looking at the world. Through the past (nostalgic), through the present (enjoying the fate you've been given), and through the future (plan so you can succeed later in life or in the afterlife). The more future oriented you are, the harder you work and the wealthier you are (for individuals and nations). One thing school tries to do is teach students to become more future oriented.
Here is a blog that has the other audio talks made visual, like one on altruism and another on empathy.
A good friend of mine who lives in D.C. recently posted some first hand accounts of Tea Party protests. It was helpful in getting a better understanding of the movement. It also got me wondering just how helpful protesting is in creating political change. My gut feeling is not that successful. Unless you number in the millions or have a incredibly famous charismatic leader and very specific goals, I'm not convinced protesting has much impact. I've also mentioned that voting has little impact on political outcomes and that political involvement is more about consuming something than producing it. So what's the politically motivated to do? How do you change policy without being lost in the crowd? Politician Omar Ahmad says that the best way, is the old-fashioned way:
Here's the TED Blog to keep you updated of new talks.
A key concept to economic libertarianism is that more choice is always welfare improving. If offered a choice between three jobs, you would choose the one that best suits. If suddenly you were offered seven more jobs, that could only lead to an improvement (because if the new offers weren't better, you'd stick with the original choice). Admittedly there are costs to making choices. This is described well by Barry Schwartz's Ted talk on The Paradox of Choice. This problem mostly exists when our subconscious emotional reason misleads us. A great example of this is a study about the increasing choices we having in dating. Their conclusion is that when faced with abundant choice, people pay less attention to hard to measure qualities and more attention to obvious characteristics. Increased choice means quicker decisions on who to date. Sadly that mean attractiveness trumps character and as I'm sure you know, the two are not correlated. Now that you know, try and compensate.
Here is a list of some sites that contain some excellent videos.
1) Reason.tv: A series of video documentaries and interviews that take a hard look at the variety of threats to our liberties -- and celebrate what it really means to be free.
Here is a less academic but still interesting explanation of how Mexicans are a lot like machines.
2) TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. This annual conference brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes.
Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you've ever seen (watch the first 5 minutes)
Here are some underwater astonishments, watch until the end.
3) John Stossel regularly does what most newscasters should be doing, saying "Give Me a Break!" to shortsighted thinking.
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