On Creativity at Universities: Thinking Locally, Operating Globally, Caring Humanely

Universities are systems, not marketplaces. They are also part of bigger systems.

The now media-highlighted declining part-time student situation of the UK Open University, and the proposed bill for colleges of the University of London to become universities on their own, seem to go contrary to their systemic nature.

Letting universities to operate in global markets without considering that not every type of student can afford attending a course or a programme, could continue creating unexpected ripple effects in universities and their communities. It could result in less local, part-time or single-courses students attending as the Open University knows it too well.

Many universities in the UK and elsewhere have heavily invested in revamping their facilities to attract more students. The communities around them could be better involved in using them. New libraries, theatres or medical schools could also be put to the service of the elderly, the mentally and physically disabled and the unemployed.

University technology parks could be also directed to host social enterprises. And university students could be encouraged to work in community projects as part of their courses or their final dissertations.

Many other universities around the world have to cope with the pressure of getting accredited nationally and internationally whilst operating in very unique environments. For them, there might not be a need to build big infrastructure projects just to ‘catch-up’. The evidence could come from the small or only slight increases in student satisfaction obtained by those that have embarked in such types of projects.

With this evidence, and the worrying situation of staff and students in relation to our mental health, universities could then focus their attention in caring for people. An impressive building or laboratory is only as good as the people who work in them. Investing in people has never been a bad idea neither for universities nor for any other type of organisation. Perhaps the returns on this sort of investment cannot be clearly identified. I wonder, can those investments in infrastructure be?

We have now learned lessons from having priorities about globalisation, localisation and caring in the wrong order.

What else do we need to be convinced that universities are systems?

Creative Recycling: Our relationship to waste and to ourselves

On the 10th of August 2018, I was interviewed on the BBC radio as a recycling 'expert' (you can listen to the last ten minutes of the 3 hour programme on the link).

To prepare for this, I read and thought what could be the best piece of advice to give to people who are unsure of what to recycle from the waste of their households.  

This, in the wake of recent claims from different organisations about the futile efforts of some recycling (saying that not everything that can be recycled becomes recycled), and of some local council proposals to reduce the number of times that waste is collected from households.

So I wanted to raise the issue of our relationship to waste.  My reading took me to consider how waste has become something of value to many organisations, and how social enterprises help them to improve their recycling as well as the design of products to make them easier to recycle or to dispose.  

After my reading, and also getting an email from my thoughtful friend Andy Hix, I started thinking like that as individuals, we often conceive of waste as something that becomes foreign to our homes, to our lives.

With a better and more inclusive view of waste, one in which we establish a kind of acceptance relationship with it, we could start thinking that it is not waste but ourselves with whom we would need to become better friends with. Friends that knowing the good and not so good about each other, work to make their relationship work.  

For myself, in the last few years recycling has become a way of accepting that there are times when I feel anxious and in need of clearing out my mind. Managing waste allows me to get back to what is important for me, to spend time organising my thoughts and my lifestyle.  When anxious, I do lot of recycling.   When not, I let waste sit for a while, so that I also enjoy its company (bit weird I know, but then I can think of what to do for the benefit of both of us). Waste also allows me to have a conversation with my wife about future plans.  

Recycling (which involves classifying waste, taking some of it to recycling centres, and making sure the waste bins are ready for collection) makes me feel in harmony with myself, my loved ones and the rest of the world around me. 

Prior to and after the interview, I have started to become more interested in recycling information and have become a bit more aware of knowledge about it.  It is interesting to see that many products from the supermarket have recycling information, and that this information suggests consulting further with local recycling centres about their capabilities to recycle different parts of products.  

At the interview I was asked what could be recycled. I think I gave a couple of suggestions. I felt though that I couldn't get my views across too much.  Maybe I was not the sort of expert they were expecting.   Or maybe there was little time.  

Anyway,  I finished by saying that anything we can do to help a bigger recycling system in our society could help.t

For me, it is time to continue thinking if and improving my relationship with myself and waste through recycling.  

What about you?  Are you too busy to even taking the waste bins outside?  That might signal you do not have a good relationship with yourself.  Time to review it my friend :)

The Soul of Behaviour: Frank Barron on Creativity

How good is to be alive?  Is a question that Frank Barron reminded us in the late 1960's when speaking about creativity and psychotherapy.  

In the last twenty four months I have been endeavouring to write about creativity and systems thinking.  When re-reading a book of Frank Barron today and when revisiting my diary I then paused to look at this question.  

For myself this question took me again by surprise.  I have tried to be a good person in many respects:  As a father, a husband and as an academic.  Often, I have lost myself in this quest.  It is easy to become trapped in making this quest an impossible one, in particular when I keep being nudged into doing more.  

To make matters more complicated as well as interesting, there is an emerging trend in the UK to use behaviour as a predictor of happiness.  One can just see books like "Happiness by Design" by Paul Dolan (2014) to get a feeling that we could (and should) make better and simpler choices to be happier.  It seems it is possible if we pay attention to what/who gives us a feeling of inner satisfaction.  No need to think too much.  Just do things.  Governments can also be helpful by nudging us in the right direction.  

Barron reminds us however, that the question of how good is to be alive is an important one, not only because we 'could' decide or be nudged on our own happiness, but because there is a history of human kind we need to bear in mind when making decisions.  Those interested in behaviour seem to be in need of be reminded of it.  Creativity has a dark side.  It has led humans to engineer atomic bombs.  Useful knowledge, valuable knowledge can be turned into commercial, political and military weaponry.  

That is why the too good to be true ways to be happy give me a bit of concern.  Being alive should be good for all of us, all of this.  

Sorry is not enough

The cat is out of the bag and our electronic data has been handed in. Any excuse or public apology does not cut it. Those seeking profit by handing our online behaviour might not have fully understood what this meant. But there was intention and with it there needs to be responsibility.

As Alan Watts said a long time ago, the massive use of technology is just self indulgent. It is not helping us to better live the present. Rather, it is pushing us too much in the direction of having to foresee the future.

The past can be forgotten but not relived. We are tricking ourselves to store memories that are not experiences of the past. We think we can predict the future when we know that if certain rules are followed, something can turn out in some expected ways.

What are our intentions? Are we trying to become immortal by doing the above? What will we gain if we cannot just enjoy the present as it is?

Enslaving AI and ourselves or something else

Recently I attended an interdisciplinary event on artificial intelligence or AI.  This is a very fashionable topic.  After 2016 (the so-called declared global year of AI), there is still interest also because we can now see how some AI solutions have entered the market.  Robots that can fry burgers and of course self-driving cars are becoming normal examples of life. 

Still, my sense is that both love for and fear of AI is rooted in either we becoming slaves of new forms of intelligence or subverting them to what we think we need help with.  

Being enslaved by AI seems to many the end of the human species.  AI will decide for us and that will include deciding if we are still worth preserving in the human planet or beyond.  

Enslaving AI would mean that AI will do the less interesting tasks of life whilst human beings move onto the more sophisticated ones.  

As I currently research on creativity, the role of technology and AI is not yet fully decided.  Computers could create beautiful things, they could compose music or poems by sieving through lots of old music of poems.  They could even create new language.  But if we conceive of creativity as a social phenomena where audiences have to accept and adopt creations, then possibly technology and AI could have a different role.

And then there is the ethical question of doing good with what you create.  AI could help us build or operate new armaments (more autonomous drones for example).  AI could help us distance themselves from those that we could harm.  So that AI could take the blame for doing harm.  Or for doing good.  

Will we as human beings delegate ethical responsibilities to AI?  And by doing so will we then enslave AI and ourselves?  Or will AI and us be able to work out other ways of advancing our joint future together?