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Revisiting Fellini’s 8 1/2
8½ is a personal film. It presents the paradox of a successful artist who can create beauty for others but struggles to incorporate that same beauty into their own life. It is a film that reveals different meanings with each viewing at different life stages.
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Post-utterance Clarity
Are there thoughts that we can only understand after expressing them?
- The relationship between language and ideas is recursive - our nebulous thoughts only take definite form through articulation.
- "Post-utterance clarity" occurs when we realize, after speaking, whether an idea actually represents what we believe. We often need to speak our thoughts to discover if we truly believe them.
- Our most authentic thoughts are often the hardest to capture in conventional language.
- This creates a challenge: how can we foster cultural expectations that allow people to express themselves imperfectly at first without fear of consequences?
Many valuable ideas need to fail in their first expression before finding their true form, yet our culture's intolerance for this process stifles authentic thought and communication.
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The difference between the essential and the accessory in our activities
Our focus on efficiency often reduces activities to their outcomes while overlooking the value in the process itself.
- "Essentialising" activities means reducing them to just the outcome (like drinking coffee) while treating everything else (the journey, circumstances, discoveries along the way) as "accessory".
- One can adopt a "witnessed methodology" as an alternative approach - being aware of our destination while remaining open to what happens along the path
- The paths we choose and how we witness them gradually shape our individuality - "the methodologies that we witness and make ours are the itineraries that slowly carve the essence of our individuality"
By treating journeys as essential rather than accessory to the goal, we open ourselves to human connection, unexpected discoveries, and a richer experience of life beyond efficiency.
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The option of ‘in medias res’ learning
An approach to learning that begins "in the middle of things" rather than with fundamentals.
- "In medias res" learning means starting with more complex, engaging elements instead of beginning with basics
- This contrasts with "cumulative learning" (mastering fundamentals before moving to complexity)
- The approach is "connective" because it requires connecting backward to basics and forward to mastery only as needed for a specific goal
- This approach creates immediate engagement and purpose, allowing learners to develop "good enough" skills quickly
By starting with challenging but engaging elements rather than basics, we create more motivating learning experiences that maintain enthusiasm while producing shareable results faster.
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The different other is homogenised, the similar other is humanised.
How do we perceive and interpret others based on similarity and difference?
- People we perceive as similar to us are seen as complex individuals with variable traits (humanised).
- People we perceive as different are reduced to simple collections of signs and grouped by common traits (homogenised).
- This cognitive tendency stems from our natural desire to conserve mental resources (cognitive economy)/
- Our interpretation follows paths of least resistance:
- For similar others: we look beyond appearances to unique individual traits
- For different others: we stop at the first signal of difference and fill the rest with pre-established categories/
- I illustrate this concept using skinny jeans as an example.