Trying Not to Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity
Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2014 4:09 pm
This is a book reivew by by Maria Popova, the creator ofBrainPickings. It is a superb book review of "Trying Not to Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity" written by Edward Slingerland. Her opening paragraph begins...
“ 'The best way to get approval is not to need it,' Hugh MacLeod memorably counseled. We now know that perfectionism kills creativity and excessive goal-setting limits our success rather than begetting it — all different manifestations of the same deeper paradox of the human condition, at once disconcerting and comforting, which Edward Slingerland, professor of Asian Studies and Embodied Cognition at the University of British Columbia and a renowned scholar of Chinese thought, explores in Trying Not to Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity."
Within this excellent review you are presented with a thorough précis of this school of thought which, in western terms, might be considered the dichotomy of being vs. doing. Here is where you can read the review...
Trying Not to Try: How to Cultivate the Paradoxical Art of Spontaneity Through the Chinese Concept of Wu-Wei — by Maria Popova
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/ ... ingerland/
Welles
“ 'The best way to get approval is not to need it,' Hugh MacLeod memorably counseled. We now know that perfectionism kills creativity and excessive goal-setting limits our success rather than begetting it — all different manifestations of the same deeper paradox of the human condition, at once disconcerting and comforting, which Edward Slingerland, professor of Asian Studies and Embodied Cognition at the University of British Columbia and a renowned scholar of Chinese thought, explores in Trying Not to Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity."
Within this excellent review you are presented with a thorough précis of this school of thought which, in western terms, might be considered the dichotomy of being vs. doing. Here is where you can read the review...
Trying Not to Try: How to Cultivate the Paradoxical Art of Spontaneity Through the Chinese Concept of Wu-Wei — by Maria Popova
http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/ ... ingerland/
Welles
