All of eververdant's Comments + Replies
There seems to be some variance in how deprivation affects creativity. I have a friend who will start hallucinating if she stares long enough at a white wall alone. Most people probably won't though, and would just experience some dull mind-wandering.
There's something going on with social deprivation and creativity. Monastic orders like Benedictine Christians and Zen Buddhists encourage long periods of silence, along with sensory deprivation like fasting, and it seems to work for them. If you have some kind of psychological discipline (innate or trained) t...
1This is especially true with geography. The political implications of hastily drawn borders are one example, but even which states get established at all.
For instance, in 1606, the Dutch were the first Europeans to step foot in Australia, but they do much. They thought the land was too arid and resource-deficient, so they mostly just created maps of the Australian coastlines and kept their focus on the East Indies. Australia wasn't colonized until the late 18th century, just because the British were more optimistic about it.
1One thinker that comes to mind is Friedrich Schiller, who described gracefulness as the “beauty of form under freedom’s influence.”
When habits are being formed, they are conscious and deliberate. Gracefulness is the nature of practiced habits that are so deeply instilled that they seem effortless.
For instance, when you are learning to have ideal posture, you need to regularly remind yourself to roll back your shoulders, and undo your slouch, and speak at a reasonable pace. After this becomes habit, you don't think about it, you just do.
Schiller appli...
I wonder if any culture has developed a more complex vocabulary of pedestrian-driver communication. It seems tricky though, since the costs of miscommunication are so high -- you don't want to risk false negatives about intending to cross the street.