I had a fun time being interviewed by Ken Ludwig on Co-Creator Network.
I talk a little about my rebellion against school and how I had to learn to treat my mind more like a beloved pet and less like a slave or a machine.
This is the first radio interview I’ve ever done. Ken made it very pleasant for me. I’m grateful.
“Libraries raised me,” Mr. Bradbury said. “I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/20/us/20ventura.html?_r=4&hpw
This is one of my major arguments against the casual way people assume you have to “go to college” to have a future. If higher education were free, I would still oppose it as the only choice or default choice. But, in fact, it’s quite expensive for most people. I keep hearing from people who have huge student loans they are paying off.
Like Ray Bradbury (a friend of my parents, years ago, though I don’t think I ever met him), I haunted a big library, soon after I quit high school. I lived in Chico, CA, for a while, where California State University has a campus. I used to love being there with all the books (500,000 of them).
Since that time, I have not had the opportunity to live near a really huge library, but I am surrounded by several thousand of my own books (Here’s my non-fiction collection). And, of course, I now have the Web, which Bradbury never dreamed of… except perhaps in tattoo form.
There are vast free resources out there for people who want to learn. Some things about Universities are nice, but they are not the only route to greatness, and are definitely not the best route for disruptive thinkers like me.
“Self-educated people are in a class by themselves.”
(I googled it. No hits. I’m the first to think of it.)
Brother Jon came by this weekend to help me work on part 2 of “To Describe a Stone.” The project has grown into a beast. I keep wanting to do more research. I may end up writing a book out of this.
We shot more video footage and produced the actual stone description. Now I’m creating the documentation of how we produced the description. The whole idea is to show the nuts and bolts of a deep learning process that was inspired by something humble. It’s just like that Stone Soup folk tale, with a real stone inspiring us to learn, instead of make a soup.
Meanwhile, we created a new video about different challenge: testing an “Easy Button.”
(Since this pertains to both self-education AND technical work, I’m posting this on both of my blogs)
Randy Ingermanson has an interesting approach to writing fiction. It’s called the Snowflake Method. It looks interesting, but I won’t be following it in my work.
First, Don’t Follow
I only use my own methods. That is to say I’m happy to use anyone else’s ideas, but only if they become mine, first. I can learn from other people, but I don’t follow anyone. See the difference? The only way I can responsibly follow someone as a thinker is if they are supervising my work. For instance, when Captain Ben taught me to sail, I used his methods because he was right there to correct me. Also it was his boat, and he answered my questions and let me experiment with alternative ideas to see why they were inferior. As he trained me, his methods became my methods. I began to do them based on my sense of their logic– which means I also came to understand under what circumstances I might need to change them. That’s the difference between learning and numb indoctrination.
When Jerry Weinberg taught me the Fieldstone Method of writing, I formed my own interpretation of it, and now it’s the James Bach version of Weinberg’s Fieldstone Method. And when I teach Rapid Software Testing, my methodology ideally becomes personal to each student, morphing to their own preferences and patterns, or else they should not be using it.
“Composting” Good?
In describing the Snowflake Method, Ingermanson discusses something that he says every writer does: composting. That’s where you actually dream up the story. He writes that
“It’s an informal process and every writer does it differently. I’m going to assume that you know how to compost your story ideas and that you have already got a novel well-composted in your mind and that you’re ready to sit down and start writing that novel.He says how you do that is a personal creative matter.”
Okay. Interesting that he says nothing about how to do that, though, since for me that’s almost all that writing is. But now, the actual Snowflake Method, he says, kicks in after composting is done with. It’s a way of progressive outlining of the book so that you can write it in an organized way.
Wait, did he say that happens after composting?
AFTER composting? Seriously?
This is a problem for me, because I’m nearly always doing that thing he calls composting. For me, writing is an exploratory activity. I’m constructing my ideas before I write them down and also as I’m writing them down. I’ve written many articles and two books that way. I have not yet written much fiction, but I have a hard time believing my method will be or should be different for fiction.
“Seat of the Pants” Bad?
Here Ingermanson makes a tiresome rhetorical move: He contrasts his approach with the “seat of the pants” method. He believes his method is better. I agree that it’s probably better for him, because it’s his own personal method. But on what basis can he say that his method is better than the alternatives for anyone else? Besides, it sounds like “composting” is just “seat of the pants” that happens to be Ingermanson-approved.
This is typical best practices rhetoric, and the pattern generally goes as follows:
1. I conceive my method as figure and everything else as ground. I won’t talk about how my method blends into and is supported by any other methods or skills or talents or preferences. I won’t talk about how it may go horribly wrong. The method is an island.
2. Since I like my method better than the other not-the-method thing I once did, [cite anecdotal and cherry-picked evidence here], it is probably better.
3. Since I taught someone else to use my method and they said they like my method better than whatever unexamined way of working they once had, [did they actually use my method? Well, they said they did, but I didn't actually watch them do it], it is even more probably better.
There are a few problems with this pattern of reasoning. One is that it is not necessarily a comparison of one method to another. It’s more likely a comparison of a state of confusion to a state of decision. Decision usually does win over confusion. The people who are out looking for a method may not already have a sound understanding of the methods they already use. So they leap on any method offered as if it were a life buoy. This of course is no indication that the method itself is better than any other method, but merely that people hate feeling confused and incompetent.
Another problem is that even when it is a comparison of methods, it’s generally a comparison between an ineffable method and one that sounds good when explained. Things that are ineffable, no matter how useful, get a bad reputation. That’s why you’ve met at least one person in your life who has claimed that you need to “learn to breathe” or “remember to breathe.” In fact, you already have a method of breathing, and unless your eyes have just gone so fuzzy that you can’t read this at all, you are probably breathing pretty well right this moment. An effective way to present a method of breathing could be to say “If you are having problem X, one solution might be to try a special kind of breathing called Y. Let’s try it now so you can see what I mean…” This way offers the practice without implicitly or explicitly denying other ways of working.
Yet another problem is that all methods rest on a certain way of organizing the world. If you don’t accept that foundation, then the method won’t satisfy you. Ingermanson seems to find it easy to segment heavy creative work from the light creative work. Hence composting is good, but seat-of-the-pants writing is bad. Since I don’t accept that distinction, to use the Snowflake Method as presented would force me to become alienated from my creative process. I would not be in direct touch with my own mind, but all thoughts would be mediated through the controlling outline of the Snowflake. Ick!
A Rhetoric for Pushing Back
It’s not “seat of the pants”, I say. It’s not merely “ad hoc.”
It’s thoughtful and responsible, rather than mindless and robotic. It’s exploratory, rather than pre-scripted. It’s agile rather than rigid. It’s constructive and generative, rather than a mere conditioned response.
Want more? Try breaking the method down into sub-parts. In exploratory work, I might cite such tasks as:
Seat of the pants? That sounds like a put-down. Why don’t they call it dynamic control and development? Because that doesn’t sound like a put-down.
Reclaim Your Personal Method
As Adam Savage says, “I reject your reality, and substitute my own.” Yes, indeedy.
You don’t have to accept someone else’s intermediating artifice between you and your thoughts. Whether that’s a book outline, or a test plan document, TPI, or some method of artificial breathing you can say no. You can say “that would be irresponsible, because I must remain attached to the source of my own methods of working. I can’t drive a car safely from the BACK SEAT!”
Having said all that, I found Randy’s Snowflake Method interesting and I think I will try it. I will meld it with my exploratory style of working, of course, and claim it for my own.
In the famous Milgram experiment people were forced to choose between obedience to authority and following their conscience. Obedience won most of the time. It’s scary. See also the Stanford Prison Experiment and the BBC Prison Experiment.
With that background, I’m going to take a long leap: goals. I think one cause of the world’s ills is people being obsessed with setting and achieving goals. By obsessed, I simply mean treating the fulfillment of a goal as good in itself, rather than good because the goal was worthwhile and better than any alternative. This leads to doing things that you might come to believe are bad or hurtful, but you do them because you “promised” or, worse, you “promised yourself.”
You may think it’s bad to “be a quitter” and that “follow-through” is an important skill. I disagree. Follow-through is not a skill, it’s just a natural consequence of finding something to be worth doing and investing in it because it’s worth doing. And meanwhile, to promise yourself something is to enslave your future to the wishes of a younger, stupider you. In the chilling social experiments I cited above, the participants enslaved themselves to a duty. This may be important in order for a group of people to get things done quickly, but we must approach it with care. We must not let ourselves become robots who process any arbitrary goal as input, regardless of how it hurts ourselves or others.
Being obsessed with goals fixes our minds in the future and encourages us to devalue the present. It also cuts ourselves off from full contact with what’s happening. Maybe a better goal will suggest itself to us, but whoops, we’re already committed to a different goal and we don’t know how to switch. We’re on automatic pilot.
In my way of learning, quitting and procrastination play a big role. Procrastination gives me room to reconsider. Quitting opens me up to new possibilities. When I quit I am telling my past self, “No, you don’t own me. I own myself, here and now.”
I actually do have goals, but I have them in the sense that some people have cats: pets that come and go. I don’t feel bad when I don’t reach a “goal”, or at least, if I feel bad, it’s not because of the abstract notion of “failing to attain what was targeted”, but rather because I don’t get the direct benefit of that particular goal. The concept of a goal is useful, especially when I’m explaining why I do what I do, but I ignore all the morality and I deny all the nobility of achievement for the sake of achievement.
So throw away your “bucket list.” If you want to visit Italy before you die, then go ahead, but not because it’s on some damn list. Go because, on the day you made the reservations, you were curious to discover Italy, and that seemed to be the better use of your limited time of the planet. And if get there and find you don’t like Italy, by all means cancel the trip, or head to Switzerland, instead.
It took me 26 years to write my Buccaneer-Scholar book. I’m glad I didn’t rush it. I became the person capable of writing it only a few years ago. I know that now. You might tell me “James! But you can’t take so long to produce work! How will you live?” Of course, I did other things instead of writing that book. I was not idle. I have many projects going at once.
Tell your past self to go live in the past, and leave your present alone!
My friend Helen Lowe just won an award for her book Thornspell, which is a novel showing the Prince’s side of the Sleeping Beauty story.
This is cool because not only is Helen a great writer, she’s quite a buccaneering thinker, too. I have had dinner at her house a couple of times, along with her husband Andrew Robins, whom I knew as a software tester.
When I first met her, I expected she wouldn’t say much. For one thing, I, um, talk a LOT. And besides, Andrew and I are testers, whereas Helen is not a technical person. Instead, she surprised me on two fronts. A) it turns out she’s a gourmet chef. The food was amazing. If Helen Lowe invites you to dinner at her house SAY YES! And, B) Helen has an encyclopedic grasp of European history. I don’t know how we got onto the subject, except that I had been listening to a series of lectures on the history of the English monarchy. So, I might I have been gushing about that. The conversation soon turned into a good-natured “rap duel” except instead of rhymes we were barking out little known bits about the Reformation. Helen actually lectured us quite a bit, but it didn’t feel like being lectured at. I guess because what she had to say was so interesting.
I wish every conversation was like that! Helen was an excellent hostess in the old sense of serving food, arts, and intellect in an evening. Andy and I were well looked after. At the end of that first dinner we agreed that we would discuss 16th century Poland at our next meeting. One year later, we did just that (although I forgot to bring my Polish history books and ended up cramming on Wikipedia the night before…)
Have you ever noticed that, around some people, ideas seem both more fluid and more vivid? And thinking is welcome and comfortable? Anyway, that’s what it’s like around Helen.
So go read her book. She deserves to give up her day job and write more of them.
Dad left the family when I was four. I would have almost no contact with him for another eight years, and not much contact through my adulthood. Mom was there every day until I left home, and she deserves credit for coping with the angry and willful child that I became. But even so it was my nearly absent father who, more than anyone or anything else, shaped me as a man. The way I challenge the world, relate to people, and most of all how I learn, is deeply influenced by Richard Bach the man, and his writings.
(Oh, he hates it when I tell him that. “You did it yourself!” he says, waving his hands as if dismissing imaginary mosquitoes. Still, the truth must be told.)
I dedicated my Buccaneer-Scholar book to him, over his objections. He suggested I honor instead self-educated people everywhere. “Dedicate it to your readers, not me.” I replied that I had to acknowledge the one person who is responsible for me writing it at all. I wrote that book for him. I would not have written it if not for him.
I have to tell you, my approach to life and learning is based on Dad’s book, Jonathan Livingston Seagull. I owe a lot to that talking gull.
Secrets of a Buccaneer-Scholar is a book about how I created myself as a free thinker. It’s about how I left school, educated myself, found success and colleagues and even have students now. Anyone else can do the same kind of thing I did. But to do that you have to learn how to walk through certain kinds of walls. I learn without teachers, I get recognition without degrees, I accept no limits on what I may study or believe.
As it turns out, my life is basically the plot of Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
I read JLS nine times before I was twelve. While I did not understand its metaphysical bits at the time, I knew it was a book about leaving the insidious prison of social convention. Even as a kid I looked for ways out. If everyone wanted something, I would want the opposite. Although I didn’t get to talk to my Dad, he was famous enough that I sometimes felt as if I were the son of an Olympian God. I saw myself as Hercules, who must prove himself worthy.
In the fleeting visits I did have with the man, Dad made it clear that he wasn’t interested in limitations. We weren’t allowed to use the word “can’t.” (of course I constructed an argument why “can’t” is a useful idea, and that established a pattern that would last until my thirties– debating with Dad about details and dynamics, while in my behavior mostly living in a way I felt he would approve of. Dad approved of bold and brash challenges to perceived authority.)
There were really just two sentences in the book that did it for me. Two sentences that set the arc for my entire professional life. The first was in the scene where Jonathan Seagull take on a new student, Fletcher, who is already good at flying. He says to Fletcher “Let’s begin with level flight.”
What a puzzling thing for Jonathan Seagull to propose as a first lesson. Fletcher already knew how to fly! Every time I read that, I would stumble on it. My eight year-old brain goggled. Is Jon teasing Fletcher? Why is he wasting his time like that?
Years later that line would come into my mind spontaneously, an echo from the past that found its way across the void to where I was teaching testers how to see what is right in front of them. I teach experienced testers, mostly. And I often find myself posing very simple problems that have subtle and powerful solutions. I do this because I need to break down the assumptions my students have made about the way technology works and how it ought to be tested. I could teach them with complicated and advanced-sounding examples, but instead I start with ones that seem to have simple answers (but they never do!)
Begin with level flight. Begin deep learning by reinventing what seems obvious.
A lot of my deepest learning has come from trying to do something very simple, but to do it very well. I’m in the midst of one such project now: trying to describe a stone. That’s all. Just describe it. Well, I have read two books from cover to cover, so far, and have skimmed about fifty others, in my quest to learn how properly to describe one humble stone! I also have a stack of academic papers to go through.
For the last ten years or so, since I first recalled it from my childhood reading, Jonathan’s prescription to Fletcher “begin with level flight” has resonated inside of me.
Now, just tonight, I remembered another line, too. It’s the last line of the book: “His race to learn had begun.” The line refers to Fletcher, who, with his teacher’s blessing, had graduated to a teacher himself.
Dad is against gurus. He won’t let me be a guru, either, unless it is a way to lead my students to self-reliance and self-possession. JLS is a book about learning and also about freedom. I talk about collegiality, in my book, as a loose confederation of fellow students helping each other learn. Dad shows what that looks like in the pages of JLS. Elegantly and simply.
Father’s Day is coming up. I live in hope that I am a good example and model for my son in the way that my Dad has been for me.
My name is James Marcus Bach. I call myself a buccaneer-scholar. That means I think and learn on my own terms. I am not the product of an educational institution, even though lots of other people (maybe you) help me learn. My hunting ground is the entire sea of human ideas. Although I'm not precisely an atheist or agnostic (I would describe myself as an apatheist, a pyrrhonian skeptic, or simply a philosopher), I have affection for atheism, hence the scarlet "A".
Powered by WordPress