I recently discovered an interesting list of suggestions offered to students of social science (that would be me) to increase the variety in their lives. The reason for doing this (increasing variety) is to cultivate creativity. In reading through this list, I thought to myself, I am not doing too bad – I should be just flowing with creativity! I now will offer said list and my comments on each part, as applicable.
1. Cultivating a diverse set of friends in terms of age as well as culture, politics, and religion.
2. Knowing multiple languages well enough to be able to think in them.
3. Living in another country and adapting successfully into its culture rather than remaining in an American ghetto.
4. Reading books and newspapers or listening to television or radio programs, especially when foreign, that disagree with our cherished perspectives and attempting to understand their criticisms of our own ways.
5. Taking double majors in college or shifting disciplines between college and graduate school, especially if they represent disparate ways of thinking.
6. Studying and working in teams, learning how to read the other team members’ feelings and hidden ideas.
- Jerald Hage, pp. xvi, in How to Build Social Science Theories by Pamela J. Shoemaker, James William Tankard, Jr. and Dominic L. Lasorsa (Sage Publications, Inc., 2004)
I am batting well over .500 on this list! For the first point, regarding friends, I have friends here in Taiwan (locals, not just expats like me), friends in Nebraska, friends in a lot of places, due to contacts made over the past 15 years traveling. I would say the a largest part of this group of groups are probably not markedly different in worldview than I am, but there is enough variety in the disparate factions to have a decent mix, methinks.
I can honestly say that I am working my way towards item 2. Obviously, having spent the greater part of the last 18 months either learning a foreign language full-time, or, as is the current situation, living in a foreign environment (mark off point 3 here – we do not live in an expat ghetto in Taiwan, but rather right in the heart of the metropolis, with a large majority of the people in our building and our neighborhood people of Taiwan), I hope to someday approach being able to think in Chinese without having to think about doing it, but I am not there yet. This is a solid “work in progress.”
Number 4 is a bit harder for me. There are enough books, newspaper and magazine articles, journals, blogs, and so forth that I like to read (and that, I suppose, are in congruence with my viewpoints) that I don’t often feel the need to try to find something I would consider “contrarian” in order to challenge my belief system.
That said, I would like to add that I hope to take a class next year on US foreign policy in the 20th century. I had the opportunity to attend one session of this particular class during the first week of school, but then had to curtail my attendance because the required course load for my first semester did not allow for additional elective courses. However, based on the number of times that I was called on to give my view or opinion as the only American in the class (taught by a person from Hong Kong and the other students consisted of Taiwanese, Singaporean, German and French students) during this single session, I have no doubt that this class will do quite a lot of challenging of my basic American worldview as a US foreign policy course taught in the US by an American with mostly American students would never be able to. I am looking forward to this opportunity next year.
I often find myself thinking, when I am asked to tell people what I studied as an undergraduate, that if I could go back and do it all over again I would have chosen a double major in history and political science. As it was, I struck a pretty fair balance between hard science courses for my major in exercise science and humanities courses completed as the equivalent to minors in history, political science, Asian studies, and international studies. Not only that, but if you take into account the first time that I was an undergraduate student right after high school (3 semesters majoring in pre-architecture), taken as a whole it’s a pretty diverse foundation.
Coming back to the present, I am certainly finding myself forced to try on different ways of thinking for my current studies in international relations, particularly in the “philosophy of social science” course I am taking. I have taken exactly *one* introductory philosophy course prior to this in my life (my first semester back at school full-time after getting out of the service) and I did not find a lot of appeal in the course that time around either (it was a requirement then and it is again now). However, even if I am not enjoying the course a lot at this point, I must admit that I am learning new things every time I pick up the latest assigned reading. I should just think about how much more diversified I am becoming as I struggle with the latest piece on metaphysics, transduction, retrodiction, primary and secondary qualities, and empiricism!
For the last point, I am not doing a lot of group studying at this point, although I imagine there will be more of this as my studies here continue. Right now it is just individual work, which is probably good for everybody else – they would be carrying me as the weak link right now for sure. I would like to add that I have been a part of teams in the past where the camaraderie and teamwork were so good that you could literally know what the other person(s) were thinking without even having to say a word. It’s quite a fine situation, when that level of cohesion is reached.
In summary, I guess the old cliché is as true as ever, time will tell how creative and variegated I am able to make myself in the coming years. But it sure seems that according to this list, I am on a good path.
GJS
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