To paraphrase, Thus sayeth the Raven, Never Bored! To encourage curiosity at every age is to keep learning in every setting, even while others are bored sitting. The curiosity of the mind should never be in harness. Live unbridled by a rigid mind and wonder as you wander always!
Thanks for the article that opens the door for fresh air! Stale is a state of mind, but to notice with imagination is exciting!
Stale is a state of mind’, that is the perfect summary. Johnstone describes how, as he grew up, the world became 'grey and dull,' and he assumed this was just aging. It was a revelation to him to discover that 'clarity is in the mind' and that we can make the world 'blaze up again' just by changing how we look at it.
I love the Raven paraphrase! It’s true, Johnstone argues that 'boredom' isn’t a natural state for children, but a reaction to being suppressed. 'Never Bored' is a wonderful motto to live by.
Oh Colin, it’s nearly year’s end and you’re tempting my book budget.
I’m just kidding, I don’t have a book budget :-)
I own two improv books, as I previously ran a public speaking class for teens, and improv was an essential part of it. Irony here is I hate improv, as I want to ponder before I speak. Improv scares one's mind forcing it to grasp at Anything to say, so as not to stand there embarrassed, wordless. No small wonder improv classes are few!
What if all of life is theatre? As you said, our lives are less akin to the eloquence in, “ As You Like It' where, “And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts” but more akin to ”unedited improvisation performed by people afraid of being foolish”. Since we live that improv every day, you’d think we might be less wary of it.
When struck me most when I first read Shakespeare at twelve years old was the rest of that soliloquy:
“ His acts being seven ages.… a soldier…“Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel....Seeking the bubble reputation”… and shifts to “ His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide, For his shrunk shank... until ends this strange eventful history,..into mere oblivion.. sans everything.”
See there "The bubble reputation"! My how Shakespeare revealed life to me, a serious quiet girl, who now understood it ends the same for all, no matter how learned one becomes. How then best to live, while one still has the moment to choose?
Just Imagine encouraging improv in fields or arenas where “the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances” lives by status games.
To some, it must feel like oblivion has come, to turn off the hard won intellectual status gain, especially when all of childhood’s erroneous teaching is that status is the purpose of adulthood; failure is not an option.
As for play, experiments and listening in education, as a private tutor, I grieve the fill in sheets sent home to complete after watching a Youtube video teaching basic science- at a high school level. When asked if their child needs more intensive tutoring to improve their grades, I rather forcefully suggest they allow their children exploratory play with scientific ideas, so they understand principles, and their interest in learning will re-spark. It’s so simple, like using multiple sized plates with a tailor’s tape implants what π means far more than memorizing a formula. Children are Not inherently bored, they are filled with curiosity, but every student I tutor says that school is so boring. Boring? This is a crime against their capable minds and imagination ! How can learning be boring, when there is exponentially new and vast knowledge unlearnable in multiple life times? Education, as in life itself, is a series of falling and rising, and so I seek to re-inspire my students’ imaginative curious drive by reminding them that while a life with failing ( first attempt at learning) can initially feel death defying, the self satisfaction of self-education is worthy of the deed.
Sadly, it is not only adults who need permission to imagine, for not only is our culture terrified of an unregulated life, it seeks more productivity, more optimization of humans, not unregulated imaginative improv.
Yes, oh yes, let’s imagine a civic culture where children are not raw material to be corrected, and that imagination is not a defect to be banished for mechanization. May we make of this recent turmoil ,this forced paradigm shift in education, an opening in the ways of improv so we may foster what humans were created to be.
Oh, I relate to that 'book budget'! But Wendy, your insight about the 'bubble reputation' is brilliant, that is exactly the tragedy of the high-status player Johnstone describes. We spend our lives protecting a bubble that is destined to pop.
A crime against their capable minds’, I couldn’t agree more. Your story about the measuring tape and the plates is the perfect example of what Johnstone meant when he said the teacher’s skill lies in presenting experiences where the student is 'bound to succeed'. I also really like your definition of education as 'falling and rising.' It reminds me of Johnstone’s note that we must 'blame the teacher' if the student fails, because it removes the fear of falling. Your students are lucky to have someone who protects their 'exploratory play' against the tyranny of the fill-in-the-blank worksheet. The worksheet demands compliance; the measuring tape invites play.
It is ironic that we fear improv so much (I feel that urge to 'ponder' too!) when, as you point out, we are already improvising every day. We just do it anxiously instead of joyfully. Perhaps that is the 'oblivion' we fear the loss of the script that guarantees our status.
Thank you for adding that Shakespearean layer to this; it fits perfectly.
Rigid conformity masquerading as learning. This does indeed reflect my own experience growing up - or trying to. Endless exhortations by "the adults" "you must grow up, but it must be on our terms".
.
"...what if the workplace meeting, the academic conference, the civil hearing, the family dinner, all of it, is theatre?"
All the world's a stage. Shakespeare was on to something.
.
"Everyone is too busy playing safe". To be ridiculed is devastating.
.
"... sins that modern meritocracy punishes far more severely than dishonesty or cruelty".
A result of being ruled by psychopaths?
.
This is most pertinent in these most uncertain, trying times.
Winston, you zeroed in on the exact mechanism of control. Johnstone writes that 'Laughter is a whip that keeps us in line'. That is why ridicule is so devastating, it is the sound of the group enforcing the 'rigid conformity' you describe.
When you ask if we are ruled by psychopaths, it brings to mind Johnstone’s description of high-status players who maintain their position by crushing others. They are experts at the 'theatre' of the boardroom, but they have lost the ability to be human. In these 'uncertain times,' as you say, that rigidity becomes a liability.
Johnstone adds the terrifying footnote: the play we are performing is a status game, and we are terrified of missing our cues. Thank you for highlighting those specific lines; they really are the heart of his excellent book.
Curiosity may be the seed, but it only grows in ground that doesn’t shift under it.
What you’re describing here — seeing the world with steadiness instead of certainty — is the same place the Faust Baseline operates from. Not prediction, not control, but a structure that keeps a person (or an AI) from tilting when the moment changes.
Improvisation without grounding becomes chaos.
Grounding without openness becomes rigidity.
The Baseline sits in the middle:
clear thinking, calm tone, and consistency that lets curiosity move without getting lost.
Beautiful piece, Colin — different lane, same direction.
Wonderful Michael: ‘Steadiness instead of certainty’ is a perfect distinction. It reminds me that Johnstone’s first great teacher, Anthony Stirling, used the Tao Te Ching as a manual. The Taoist sage 'does not contend', which sounds very much like the calm consistency of your Baseline.
Johnstone argues that we block our own creativity because we are trying to control the future (certainty) rather than reacting to the present (steadiness). As you say, without that ground to stand on, the curiosity has nowhere to root. Thank you for this parallel.
Taoism got there long before technology did. Don’t contend, don’t force, stay grounded, and the path reveals itself. The Baseline isn’t about predicting the future or controlling it; it just removes the panic that makes people chase certainty in the first place.
Creativity shows up the moment the floor stops moving.
Steadiness isn’t passive,
It’s what makes forward motion possible without fear.
The best minds at my school...remind me of Ginsberg's poem 'Howl'...
"... I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness..."
These were the class fools that could tell a story and make us laugh and keep us all entertained; no small feat. The insolent that could leave teachers stunned, the magnificent bored who were able to scare the best teachers speechless and with fury...
And the all-knowing absentees that would not waste their time in the stifling school environment...
All geniuses before their time...battered by a system that required mindless rote consumption of facts and figures and languages...to fit the cogs of consumer society...
That comparison to Howl is hauntingly accurate. A good teacher would recognize those 'best minds' immediately. What we call 'sanity' is often just a pretence we perform to avoid being rejected by the group.
Schools are often places where 'grown-ups are expected to distort the perceptions of the child'. Your 'class fools' were the ones who refused to have their perceptions distorted. Thanks for this powerful tribute to them.
To paraphrase, Thus sayeth the Raven, Never Bored! To encourage curiosity at every age is to keep learning in every setting, even while others are bored sitting. The curiosity of the mind should never be in harness. Live unbridled by a rigid mind and wonder as you wander always!
Thanks for the article that opens the door for fresh air! Stale is a state of mind, but to notice with imagination is exciting!
Stale is a state of mind’, that is the perfect summary. Johnstone describes how, as he grew up, the world became 'grey and dull,' and he assumed this was just aging. It was a revelation to him to discover that 'clarity is in the mind' and that we can make the world 'blaze up again' just by changing how we look at it.
I love the Raven paraphrase! It’s true, Johnstone argues that 'boredom' isn’t a natural state for children, but a reaction to being suppressed. 'Never Bored' is a wonderful motto to live by.
Oh Colin, it’s nearly year’s end and you’re tempting my book budget.
I’m just kidding, I don’t have a book budget :-)
I own two improv books, as I previously ran a public speaking class for teens, and improv was an essential part of it. Irony here is I hate improv, as I want to ponder before I speak. Improv scares one's mind forcing it to grasp at Anything to say, so as not to stand there embarrassed, wordless. No small wonder improv classes are few!
What if all of life is theatre? As you said, our lives are less akin to the eloquence in, “ As You Like It' where, “And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts” but more akin to ”unedited improvisation performed by people afraid of being foolish”. Since we live that improv every day, you’d think we might be less wary of it.
When struck me most when I first read Shakespeare at twelve years old was the rest of that soliloquy:
“ His acts being seven ages.… a soldier…“Jealous in honour, sudden and quick in quarrel....Seeking the bubble reputation”… and shifts to “ His youthful hose, well sav’d, a world too wide, For his shrunk shank... until ends this strange eventful history,..into mere oblivion.. sans everything.”
See there "The bubble reputation"! My how Shakespeare revealed life to me, a serious quiet girl, who now understood it ends the same for all, no matter how learned one becomes. How then best to live, while one still has the moment to choose?
Just Imagine encouraging improv in fields or arenas where “the justice,
In fair round belly with good capon lin’d,
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
Full of wise saws and modern instances” lives by status games.
To some, it must feel like oblivion has come, to turn off the hard won intellectual status gain, especially when all of childhood’s erroneous teaching is that status is the purpose of adulthood; failure is not an option.
As for play, experiments and listening in education, as a private tutor, I grieve the fill in sheets sent home to complete after watching a Youtube video teaching basic science- at a high school level. When asked if their child needs more intensive tutoring to improve their grades, I rather forcefully suggest they allow their children exploratory play with scientific ideas, so they understand principles, and their interest in learning will re-spark. It’s so simple, like using multiple sized plates with a tailor’s tape implants what π means far more than memorizing a formula. Children are Not inherently bored, they are filled with curiosity, but every student I tutor says that school is so boring. Boring? This is a crime against their capable minds and imagination ! How can learning be boring, when there is exponentially new and vast knowledge unlearnable in multiple life times? Education, as in life itself, is a series of falling and rising, and so I seek to re-inspire my students’ imaginative curious drive by reminding them that while a life with failing ( first attempt at learning) can initially feel death defying, the self satisfaction of self-education is worthy of the deed.
Sadly, it is not only adults who need permission to imagine, for not only is our culture terrified of an unregulated life, it seeks more productivity, more optimization of humans, not unregulated imaginative improv.
Yes, oh yes, let’s imagine a civic culture where children are not raw material to be corrected, and that imagination is not a defect to be banished for mechanization. May we make of this recent turmoil ,this forced paradigm shift in education, an opening in the ways of improv so we may foster what humans were created to be.
Oh, I relate to that 'book budget'! But Wendy, your insight about the 'bubble reputation' is brilliant, that is exactly the tragedy of the high-status player Johnstone describes. We spend our lives protecting a bubble that is destined to pop.
A crime against their capable minds’, I couldn’t agree more. Your story about the measuring tape and the plates is the perfect example of what Johnstone meant when he said the teacher’s skill lies in presenting experiences where the student is 'bound to succeed'. I also really like your definition of education as 'falling and rising.' It reminds me of Johnstone’s note that we must 'blame the teacher' if the student fails, because it removes the fear of falling. Your students are lucky to have someone who protects their 'exploratory play' against the tyranny of the fill-in-the-blank worksheet. The worksheet demands compliance; the measuring tape invites play.
It is ironic that we fear improv so much (I feel that urge to 'ponder' too!) when, as you point out, we are already improvising every day. We just do it anxiously instead of joyfully. Perhaps that is the 'oblivion' we fear the loss of the script that guarantees our status.
Thank you for adding that Shakespearean layer to this; it fits perfectly.
Rigid conformity masquerading as learning. This does indeed reflect my own experience growing up - or trying to. Endless exhortations by "the adults" "you must grow up, but it must be on our terms".
.
"...what if the workplace meeting, the academic conference, the civil hearing, the family dinner, all of it, is theatre?"
All the world's a stage. Shakespeare was on to something.
.
"Everyone is too busy playing safe". To be ridiculed is devastating.
.
"... sins that modern meritocracy punishes far more severely than dishonesty or cruelty".
A result of being ruled by psychopaths?
.
This is most pertinent in these most uncertain, trying times.
Winston, you zeroed in on the exact mechanism of control. Johnstone writes that 'Laughter is a whip that keeps us in line'. That is why ridicule is so devastating, it is the sound of the group enforcing the 'rigid conformity' you describe.
When you ask if we are ruled by psychopaths, it brings to mind Johnstone’s description of high-status players who maintain their position by crushing others. They are experts at the 'theatre' of the boardroom, but they have lost the ability to be human. In these 'uncertain times,' as you say, that rigidity becomes a liability.
Johnstone adds the terrifying footnote: the play we are performing is a status game, and we are terrified of missing our cues. Thank you for highlighting those specific lines; they really are the heart of his excellent book.
Curiosity may be the seed, but it only grows in ground that doesn’t shift under it.
What you’re describing here — seeing the world with steadiness instead of certainty — is the same place the Faust Baseline operates from. Not prediction, not control, but a structure that keeps a person (or an AI) from tilting when the moment changes.
Improvisation without grounding becomes chaos.
Grounding without openness becomes rigidity.
The Baseline sits in the middle:
clear thinking, calm tone, and consistency that lets curiosity move without getting lost.
Beautiful piece, Colin — different lane, same direction.
Wonderful Michael: ‘Steadiness instead of certainty’ is a perfect distinction. It reminds me that Johnstone’s first great teacher, Anthony Stirling, used the Tao Te Ching as a manual. The Taoist sage 'does not contend', which sounds very much like the calm consistency of your Baseline.
Johnstone argues that we block our own creativity because we are trying to control the future (certainty) rather than reacting to the present (steadiness). As you say, without that ground to stand on, the curiosity has nowhere to root. Thank you for this parallel.
Taoism got there long before technology did. Don’t contend, don’t force, stay grounded, and the path reveals itself. The Baseline isn’t about predicting the future or controlling it; it just removes the panic that makes people chase certainty in the first place.
Creativity shows up the moment the floor stops moving.
Steadiness isn’t passive,
It’s what makes forward motion possible without fear.
The best minds at my school...remind me of Ginsberg's poem 'Howl'...
"... I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness..."
These were the class fools that could tell a story and make us laugh and keep us all entertained; no small feat. The insolent that could leave teachers stunned, the magnificent bored who were able to scare the best teachers speechless and with fury...
And the all-knowing absentees that would not waste their time in the stifling school environment...
All geniuses before their time...battered by a system that required mindless rote consumption of facts and figures and languages...to fit the cogs of consumer society...
That comparison to Howl is hauntingly accurate. A good teacher would recognize those 'best minds' immediately. What we call 'sanity' is often just a pretence we perform to avoid being rejected by the group.
Schools are often places where 'grown-ups are expected to distort the perceptions of the child'. Your 'class fools' were the ones who refused to have their perceptions distorted. Thanks for this powerful tribute to them.