Rising Innovation, Falling Fees.

I thrive on creativity. Creating free tertiary education would be one area  I can focus on.

Can innovation be taught and learnt?

There is something about passion, enthusiasm, and excitement that is open and reaching for more. I like that. I find it thrilling and hopeful.

First there needs to be an ability to recognize that there can be more. An ability to see that the current status quo is insufficient, or sufficient but can grow.

Then there needs to be a move from passivity into activity - a desire for change and a willingness to act on that desire.

The Fees Must Fall campaign contains a wonderful group of young people who show these first few criteria. Their enthusiasm is powerful and they have become active in their desire.

Change and growth takes something that the Fees Must Fall campaign is literally struggling with. 

It takes far more than just moral outrage and aggressive demands.  The Fees Must Fall Campaign is anchored in the antagonistic paradigm of 'us versus them', of 'people against authority'. In essence, the archetype of the rebellious adolescent against the parent. This, some would argue, is a natural stage of growth. I would argue that the adventurous adolescent does not have to rebel. That the young person, seeking to carve their independence in the world can choose to participate and co-operate in shaping their own intellect and use their social activism through collaborative apprenticed endeavour; To work together with elders to shape a world that is more hopeful and desirable.

The very words of the campaign include the word 'must'. This is representative of the archetypal authoritarian power battle. When our attitudes are steeped in a belief (conscious or not), that others have the money, the power, the means to give us what we want and are refusing to do so, then we  have set up the battle ground. They 'have' and we 'have not'. It becomes a fight, with the kind of behaviours that we see occurring around us currently. The battle can be as harmless as a quiet protest march. Those who believe that authority figures have the resources and are withholding them through spite, greed or whatever motive is imposed upon them, can choose to escalate the battle as many have done. The key difficulty with an 'us versus them' archetypal set up, is that it creates oppositionality, obstructionism and resistance on all sides.

 I have not met anyone, young or old, who would not wish for free tertiary education. I have met many who wonder how staff can be paid and buildings, computers, etc maintained without money. Nobody insists that the income needs to be obtained through fees. How can bills be paid without the income from fees?  This takes us back to how innovation takes place.

We have, for the sake of argument here, seen that enthusiasm and a willingness to be active in the pursuit of innovation are two very important attitudes and qualities of behaviour that are useful. It is clear that many of the current student protesters have these qualities in abundance. I wonder what would happen if they chose to use these desirable qualities and their intelligence collaboratively to create the systems that will form the new structure of free tertiary education? We all want it.

Who knows how to get it done?

Someone has to do the work to create these structures. The rebellious adolescent archetype does not wish to be the creator but wishes to be the passive recipient.

Will the rebellious adolescent archetypal qualities being currently displayed in the student protests, choose to shift into the adventurous adolescent archetype and contribute to the new structures and systems with their intelligence and  enthusiasm?

This would require a shift into recognising other qualities that are required for innovation previously hinted at. The first is an understanding that destruction occurs with oppositionality, and construction can occur with the choice of collaboration. Both methods can achieve change. Unfortunately, impatience and outrage often lead to destruction first, creating poverty and taking years to refill the coffers and build new structures.

It is more dramatic. Outrage and protest creates the appearance that things are happening.  It satisfies emotional impulses to act out - the worthy cause giving permission, as it were, to no longer contain our emotions in calm behaviour.  It symbolically  provides a means to express long held frustration and anger toward all whom we feel have thwarted us in the form of the current targeted  enemy - in this case the University authorities. The drama can also provide the false impression that change efforts are actually successful. After all, burning buildings and smashing windows feels temporarily powerful and emotionally satisfying and shows an immediate, concrete result.

For the adventurous adolescent archetypal qualities, collaboration is much quieter. To contribute to the process of helping innovation rise requires a steady perseverance. It seldom has a public profile.  There is no drama so it does not feed that part of the rebellious archetype that seeks the false glamour of violent mythical 'heroism'.   It requires a host of other skills - patience, persistence, determination, the ability to tolerate frustration, and most importantly the ability to continuously  retain the vision and keep working toward it over time. It requires the willingness to steadily learn and grow in knowledge, skills and attitudes. It also requires the ability to work in the abstract world of visioning, ideas and systems.

What particular skills and knowledge are useful in creating a new style of tertiary education that does not require fees being paid? I do not know. I am not an economist, accountant or politician. I suspect that these competencies could be helpful.

If I were 19 years old, would I choose to be listed in the police records of those who burnt priceless buildings and text books  or rather have my name as co-author to a document outlining innovative no fees education economic systems?

Maybe I have just always been addicted to learning and cooperation, because I find the idea of rising innovation by far the most attractive option.

Fostering Splendid Streepness

 Meryl Streep's latest movie,  Foster Florence Jenkins, dazzles and enchants.

If you have a penchant for the more classical line of music and of singing, then this will not disappoint you. Actually, it is more about the technicalities of how to prepare for a performance.  There is much fascinating rehearsal in this movie.

Our wealthy main character Foster Florence Jenkins, played by Streep,  is a woman of wealth whose love of music has led her to create a forum for musical performances prior to and during the second world war in Manhatten, USA.  She is a devotee, driven by all sorts of motives to spend her life supporting musicians and theatrical artists through creating opportunities for performances that she herself participates in.

Therein lies the dilemma. The patron herself loves the theater and particularly music, with all her heart. But is her strength of passion and devotion enough to earn her a deserved place on the stage? We watch with mixed emotions throughout this amusing and deeply poignant story as her struggle for expression and longing for acknowledgement unfolds.

Hugh Grant to my initial great dread, plays St Clair Bayfield, our heroin's apparently devoted husband. I have seen Grant in a few movies and have always found his acting flat, uninteresting and apathetic. Thankfully my fears were unfounded. He was nothing short of stellar. He transformed himself into the character to the extent that he was virtually unrecognizable - at least to me. In fact, in a character constrained by high society English notions of proper conduct, he managed to express the nuances of inner conflict, of being torn between all sorts of desires and needs, with an intensity and subtlety of which I thought he was not capable.

 We enjoy their marital relationship, as they did. We enjoy the challenges of their preparing for performances, vastly enhanced by the wondrous piano playing and evolving friendship with  Cosme McMoon (played by Simon Helberg  the Howard Wolowitz of Big Bang theory fame). You will barely recognize him here for as the pianist, he plays the opposite character type -a highly anxious nerd who virtually apologizes for existing. His social phobia is so severe that he can barely hold eye contact let alone a conversation. But he can play like a genius and much of the enjoyment of the movie is thanks to his mastery of the ivory.

This movie thrives on social awkwardness, on the force of the unspoken, on the confusions and whirlpools of hints and innuendoes. Many of these moments cause hilarity and many touch one deeply.

I have not waxed enough about Streep's performance. I honestly think she is a mage and sage combined. I will not give key information of the movie away, so suffice it to say that the complexity of Foster Florence Jenkins is captured by Streep so smoothly, that one might be misled by the character' s seemingly rather self- absorbed personality. I can only urge you to not let your concentration slip, as she reveals ever so slightly, the deeply buried emotions of her past, desperately trying to meet the challenges of the present while maintaining the required mask that polite and wealthy American society demanded.

I suspect that the audience feels as many people around Foster Florence Jenkins felt; initially charmed and periodically alarmed. We are taken on a journey leading through amusing contortions of social confusions into layers of the different aspects of love, loyalty and devotion. We are left feeling a profound sense of admiration for this strange woman and of privilege at having had the chance to share the tenderness of her life story.