Divergent Thinking

A friend shared this on the FB...spend the 10 minutes on it and return here.



These are my facebook comments--sue me for recycling:

In the end it's a VERY TALL order for change as it requires a dissociation from the idea of education to a purpose like work. One can say it has a purpose and if you were in ancient Greece you'd call it happiness (but not in a facile sense)--eudaimonia --which is apparently better thought of as "flourishing". This must be distinguished from products and consumption and being consumers and producers, which, to my mind, is far from promoting human (and other animal) flourishing.

Re: divergent thinking and the genius of the 5 year-old.

One might also note that mere "living" might require you "reduce" to ideas that achieve the goals of shelter and food (ie, you get "dumber" or reduce your potential in order to eat) rather than remain a "divergent" thinker, a mind in the state of potentiality. One might now argue that we no longer NEED to focus on mere living and and so could then encourage a return to divergent thinking and creativity--I believe this was marx's point about freeing the laborer to be an artist.