A Map of the Disney Entertainment Empire Reveals the Deep Connections Between Its Movies, Its Merchandise, Disneyland & More (1967)

in Business, Comics/Cartoons, Film, Television | January 8th, 2020

We all remem­ber the first Dis­ney movie we ever saw. In most of our child­hoods, one Dis­ney movie led to anoth­er, which stoked in us the desire for Dis­ney toys, Dis­ney games, Dis­ney comics, Dis­ney music, and so on. If we were lucky, we might also take a trip to Dis­ney­land or one of its descen­dants else­where in the world. Many of us spent the bulk of our youngest years as hap­py res­i­dents of the Dis­ney enter­tain­ment empire; some of us, into adult­hood or even old age, remain there still.

Die-hard Dis­ney fans appre­ci­ate that the world of Dis­ney — com­pris­ing not just films and theme parks but tele­vi­sion shows, print­ed mat­ter, attrac­tions on the inter­net, and mer­chan­dise of near­ly every kind — is too vast ever to com­pre­hend, let alone ful­ly explore.

It was already big half a cen­tu­ry ago, but not too big to grasp. You can see the whole of the oper­a­tion laid out in this orga­ni­za­tion­al syn­er­gy dia­gram cre­at­ed by Walt Dis­ney Pro­duc­tions in 1967. Depict­ing “the many and var­ied syn­er­gis­tic rela­tion­ships between the divi­sions of Walt Dis­ney Pro­duc­tions,” the infor­ma­tion graph­ic reveals the links between each divi­sion.

Along the arrow­head­ed lines indi­cat­ing the flows of man­pow­er, mate­r­i­al, and intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty, “short tex­tu­al descrip­tions show what each divi­sion sup­plies and con­tributes to the oth­ers.” The motion pic­ture divi­sion “feeds tunes and tal­ent” to the music divi­sion, for exam­ple, which “pro­motes pre­mi­ums for tie-ins” to the mer­chan­dise licens­ing depart­ment, which “feeds ideas for retail items” to WED Enter­pris­es (the hold­ing com­pa­ny found­ed by Walt Dis­ney in 1950), which pro­duces “audio-ani­ma­tron­ics” for Dis­ney­land.

Some of the nexus­es on the dia­gram will be as famil­iar as Mick­ey Mouse, Goofy, Tin­ker­bell, and the char­ac­ters cavort­ing here and there around it. Oth­ers will be less so: the 16-mil­lime­ter films divi­sion, for instance, which would even­tu­al­ly be replaced by a colos­sal home-video divi­sion (itself sure­ly being eat­en into, now, by stream­ing). The Celebri­ty Sports Cen­ter, an indoor enter­tain­ment com­plex out­side Den­ver, closed in 1994. MAPO refers to a theme-park ani­ma­tron­ics unit formed in the 1960s with the prof­its of Mary Pop­pins (hence its name) and dis­solved in 2012. And as for Min­er­al King, a pro­posed ski resort in Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Sequoia Nation­al Park, it was nev­er even built.

“The ski resort was one of sev­er­al ambi­tious projects that Walt Dis­ney spear­head­ed in the years before his death in 1966,” writes Nathan Mas­ters at Giz­mo­do. But as the size of the Min­er­al King plans grew, wilder­ness-activist oppo­si­tion inten­si­fied. After years of oppo­si­tion by the Sier­ra Club, as well as the pas­sage of the Nation­al Envi­ron­men­tal Pol­i­cy Act 1970 and the Nation­al Parks and Recre­ation Act of 1978, cor­po­rate inter­est in the project final­ly fiz­zled out. Though that would no doubt have come as a dis­ap­point­ment to Walt Dis­ney him­self, he might also have known to keep the fail­ure in per­spec­tive. As he once said of the empire bear­ing his name, “I only hope that we nev­er lose sight of one thing — that it was all start­ed by a mouse.”

h/t Eli and via Howard Low­ery

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­ney­land 1957: A Lit­tle Stroll Down Mem­o­ry Lane

How Walt Dis­ney Car­toons Are Made: 1939 Doc­u­men­tary Gives an Inside Look

Walt Dis­ney Presents the Super Car­toon Cam­era

Disney’s 12 Time­less Prin­ci­ples of Ani­ma­tion

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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What Happened to the 1200 Paintings Painted by Bob Ross? The Mystery Has Finally Been Solved

in Art, Business, Television | July 15th, 2019

Very few artists enjoy the degree of recog­ni­tion that’s been con­ferred upon the late tele­vi­sion edu­ca­tor Bob Ross, though sales of his work hov­er around zero.

It’s not due to scarci­ty. Ross pumped out three near­ly-iden­ti­cal paint­ings per episode of his series, The Joy of Paint­ing (watch them online here). That’s 403 episodes over the course of 31 sea­sons on pub­lic television—or 1209 can­vas­es of clouds, moun­tains, and “hap­py lit­tle trees.”

Shouldn’t eco­nom­ics dic­tate that these would have only increased in val­ue fol­low­ing their creator’s untime­ly death from lym­phoma in 1995?

A hand­ful have been donat­ed to the Smith­son­ian Nation­al Muse­um Of Amer­i­can His­to­ry’s per­ma­nent col­lec­tion. Leav­ing those aside, why are there no Bob Ross­es fetch­ing high prices on the auc­tion block?

Is the painter’s leg­endary hyp­not­ic appeal a fac­tor? Did he sub­con­scious­ly manip­u­late even the most cut­throat col­lec­tors into a state of sen­ti­men­tal attach­ment where­in prof­it mat­ters not a jot?

As The New York Times-pro­duced video above points out, Ross’ great mis­sion in life was to get oth­ers painting—quickly and joy­ful­ly.

Which is not to say he blithe­ly tossed the fruits of his labor into the incin­er­a­tor after that pur­pose had been served.

The rea­son Ross’ paint­ings aren’t on the mar­ket is they’re neat­ly stacked in card­board car­tons at Bob Ross Inc. in Hern­don, Vir­ginia. It hard­ly con­sti­tutes archival stor­age, but the box­es are neat­ly num­bered, and every­thing is account­ed for.

And that is where they’re like­ly to remain, accord­ing to exec­u­tive assis­tant Sarah Strohl and pres­i­dent Joan Kowal­s­ki, the daugh­ter of Ross’ long­time busi­ness part­ner. (Her moth­er, Annette is Ross’ for­mer stu­dent and the fore­most authen­ti­ca­tor of his work.)

For now, if any­one endeav­ors to sell you a Bob Ross orig­i­nal, it’s safe to assume it’s a fake.

Bet­ter yet, paint your own. Bob Ross Inc. tends to both the master’s rep­u­ta­tion and his lucra­tive off-screen busi­ness, sell­ing instruc­tion­al books and paint­ing sup­plies.

Be fore­warned, though, it’s won’t be as easy as the ever-placid mas­ter made it seem. Have a look at these come­di­ans scram­bling to keep up with his moves for the Bob Ross Chal­lenge, a fundrais­er for the Leukemia & Lym­phoma Soci­ety.

Ross, of course, nev­er broke a sweat on cam­era, which lends a bit of cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance to the Times’ video’s fre­net­ic edit­ing. (I nev­er thought I’d have to issue a seizure warn­ing for some­thing Bob Ross-relat­ed, but those can­vas­es flash by awful­ly quick­ly at the 1:09 mark and again at 10:36. )

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch Every Episode of Bob Ross’ The Joy Of Paint­ing Free Online: 403 Episodes Span­ning 31 Sea­sons

Watch 13 Come­di­ans Take “The Bob Ross Chal­lenge” & Help Raise Mon­ey for The Leukemia & Lym­phoma Soci­ety

A Big List of Free Art Lessons on YouTube

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Join her in NYC on Sep­tem­ber 9 for the kick off of anoth­er sea­son of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

 

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Steve Jobs Shares a Secret for Success: Don’t Be Afraid to Ask for Help

in Apple, Business, Entrepreneurship, Life | April 26th, 2019

In 1994—the year Apple co-founder Steve Jobs filmed an inter­view with The Sil­i­con Val­ley His­tor­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion in which he encour­aged peo­ple to go for what they want by enlist­ing oth­ers’ assistance—there was no social media, no Kick­starter, no GoFundMe, no Patre­on…  email was just becom­ing a thing.

Back then, ask­ing for help meant engag­ing in a face-to-face or voice-to-voice real time inter­ac­tion, some­thing many peo­ple find intim­i­dat­ing.

Not so young Jobs, an elec­tron­ics nut who relat­ed more eas­i­ly to the adult engi­neers in his Sil­i­con Val­ley neigh­bor­hood than to kids his own age.

As he recounts above, his desire to build a fre­quen­cy counter spurred him to cold call Bill Hewlett (of Hewlett-Packard), to see if he’d give him some of the nec­es­sary parts.

(In light of the recent col­lege admis­sions scan­dal, let us rec­og­nize the 12-year-old Jobs not only had the gump­tion to make that call, he also appears to have had no parental assis­tance look­ing up Hewlett’s num­ber in the Palo Alto White Pages.)

Hewlett agreed to the young go-getter’s request for parts. Jobs’ chutz­pah also earned him a sum­mer job on a Hewlett Packard assem­bly line, putting screws into fre­quen­cy coun­ters. (“I was in heav­en,” Jobs said of this entry lev­el posi­tion.)

Per­haps the biggest les­son for those in need of help is to ask bold­ly.

Ask like it’s 1994.

No, ask like it’s 1968, and you’re a self-starter like Steve Jobs hell­bent on procur­ing those spe­cial­ty parts to build your fre­quen­cy counter.

(Let’s fur­ther pre­tend that lying around wait­ing for Mom to order you a DIY fre­quen­cy counter kit on Ama­zon is not an option…)

Need an extra push?

Psy­chol­o­gist Adam Grant’s best­selling Give and Take makes an effec­tive case for human inter­ac­tion as the path­way to suc­cess, whether you’re the kid plac­ing the call, or the big wig with the pow­er to grant the wish.

Social psy­chol­o­gist Hei­di Grant’s book, Rein­force­ments: How to Get Peo­ple to Help You, explains how to ask with­out snivel­ing, self-aggran­diz­ing, or putting the per­son on the receiv­ing end in an awk­ward posi­tion.

And that shy vio­let Aman­da Fuck­ing Palmer, author of The Art of Ask­ing and no stranger to the punk rock barter econ­o­my, details how her “nin­ja mas­ter-lev­el fan con­nec­tion” has result­ed in her every request being met—from hous­ing and meals to prac­tice pianos and a neti pot hand deliv­ered by an Aus­tralian nurse.

Just don’t for­get to say “please” and, even­tu­al­ly, “thank you.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Steve Jobs on Life: “Stay Hun­gry, Stay Fool­ish”

A Young Steve Jobs Teach­es a Class at MIT (1992)

Steve Jobs Nar­rates the First “Think Dif­fer­ent” Ad (Nev­er Aired)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in New York City this May for the next install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Economics 101: Hedge Fund Investor Ray Dalio Explains How the Economy Works in a 30-Minute Animated Video

in Business, Economics | April 11th, 2019

Want to know how the econ­o­my works? It “works like a sim­ple machine,” accord­ing to Ray Dalio, who explains its mech­a­nisms in the 30-minute video above. The pre­sen­ta­tion is “sim­ple but not sim­plis­tic,” says the site Eco­nom­ic Prin­ci­ples, a research arm of Dalio’s com­pa­ny Bridge­wa­ter Asso­ciates. The les­son packs in most of the major bold­faced con­cepts in the aver­age over­priced col­lege eco­nom­ics text­book, “such as cred­it, inter­est, rates, lever­ag­ing, and delever­ag­ing.” And it does so in that most engag­ing means of learn­ing things online, an ani­mat­ed video, nar­rat­ed by an expert.

All that’s well and good, but can we real­ly under­stand such a volatile beast as “the economy”—an abstrac­tion that some­times seems like a cru­el­ly rigged game and some­times like a not-par­tic­u­lar­ly-benev­o­lent (to most peo­ple) deity—in only half an hour? Should we trust Dalio to sum­ma­rize its com­plex­i­ty? The bil­lion­aire hedge-fund man­ag­er did, he tells us, man­age “to antic­i­pate and to side­step the glob­al finan­cial cri­sis.” And he has made quite an impres­sion on peo­ple like Forbes Senior Con­trib­u­tor Carmine Gal­lo with his “7,500-word LinkedIn arti­cle titled ‘Why and How Cap­i­tal­ism Needs to be Reformed.’”

In that piece, the “vora­cious learn­er who stud­ies nar­ra­tive and com­mu­ni­ca­tion… turns an enor­mous­ly com­plex sub­ject into a sim­ple, com­pelling nar­ra­tive.” He also makes it clear right in the title that by “the econ­o­my” he means a cap­i­tal­ist econ­o­my. It’s a point large­ly tak­en for grant­ed in the ani­mat­ed explain­er but an impor­tant one nonethe­less giv­en the under­ly­ing assump­tions of the the­o­ry. Seri­ous cri­tiques of cap­i­tal­ism seem much hard­er to con­dense because they’re tasked with unpack­ing all those assump­tions.

Marx’s Das Kap­i­tal spans three vol­umes, though he only lived to pub­lish the first one, itself a mon­ster of a read. Thomas Piketty’s Cap­i­tal in the 21st Cen­tu­ry is maybe a lit­tle breezi­er, at 696 pages (though if you let The Econ­o­mist read it for you, they can sum it up in four para­graphs). By con­trast, Dalio offers a com­pre­hen­sive primer in brief for those of us who skipped that macro­eco­nom­ics course, or who nev­er got the chance to sign up for one. But else­where he has matched cap­i­tal­is­m’s biggest crit­ics with his own best-sell­ing book Prin­ci­ples: Life and Work, a huge and high­ly-praised look at eco­nom­ic crises of debt, gross inequal­i­ty, stag­nant wages, etc. See him describe the book, in five min­utes, on 60 Min­utes, just above.

Cap­i­tal­is­m’s best-known crit­ics, even those who want to see the cur­rent sys­tem swapped out for a more equi­table, sus­tain­able mod­el, have known they must begin by learn­ing how the cur­rent sys­tem works, or how it doesn’t. Dalio him­self isn’t set­ting out to build a worker’s par­adise or to make financiers like him­self obso­lete, but he does have some tren­chant thoughts on capitalism’s failures—and they are many, in his esti­ma­tion. Still, he believes he knows how it can be reformed “to pro­duce bet­ter out­comes.” Learn more in his com­pelling­ly-writ­ten essay here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How The Eco­nom­ic Machine Works: A 30-Minute Ani­mat­ed Primer by Hedge Fund Investor Ray Dalio

Free Online Eco­nom­ics Cours­es

David Harvey’s Course on Marx’s Cap­i­tal: Vol­umes 1 & 2 Now Avail­able Free Online

Piketty’s Cap­i­tal in a Nut­shell

Free Online Eco­nom­ics Cours­es 

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The New York Public Library Lets Patrons Check Out Ties, Briefcases & Handbags for Job Interviews

in Business, Entrepreneurship, Libraries, Life | September 10th, 2018

Once upon a time, pubic libraries’ cir­cu­lat­ing col­lec­tions were lim­it­ed to books and oth­er print­ed mate­ri­als.

Then audio record­ings and movies entered into the mix.

Tele­scopes…

Board games…

There’s a library in Ohio that lets its patrons check out gui­tars.

And now, New York Pub­lic Library card­hold­ers can bor­row a neck­tie, brief­case, or busi­nesslike purse for a one-time, three-week lend­ing peri­od.

The New York Pub­lic Library Grow Up pro­gram at the River­side branch is mod­eled on sim­i­lar ini­tia­tives in Philadel­phia and Queens.

The branch is sit­u­at­ed across the street from two high schools, and librar­i­an Thad­deus Krupo told Crain’s New York Busi­ness that the pro­gram was launched in response to the high num­ber of stu­dents tak­ing advan­tage of the library’s free career resources, such as print­ed sheets of job inter­view tips.

Most of the kids from Fiorel­lo H. Laguardia High School Of Music & Art and Per­form­ing Arts (aka the “Fame” school), one of New York City’s most com­pet­i­tive pub­lic schools, can be pre­sumed to have a tie or two in their clos­ets, along with what­ev­er else they’re required to wear onstage for their var­i­ous con­certs and per­for­mances. They’re also being trained in how to present them­selves in an audi­tion-type sit­u­a­tion.

Such uni­ver­sal assump­tions don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly apply to the mas­sive Mar­tin Luther King Jr. Edu­ca­tion­al Com­plex next door. Stu­dents there tend to have a rougher time of it than their neigh­bors across 65th street.

While Laguardia coasts on its rep­u­ta­tion, MLK has nev­er real­ly got­ten out from under the trou­bling sto­ries left over from its bad old days. (Its orig­i­nal incar­na­tion was ordered closed in 2005 as part of sweep­ing city­wide edu­ca­tion­al reforms. These days, the build­ing hous­es sev­en small­er schools.)

Hope­ful­ly, the library’s teen patrons won’t seek to com­plete their pro­fes­sion­al look by check­ing out pants and pumps. The Grow Up pro­gram isn’t set up to pro­vide the full-body cov­er­age offered by like­mind­ed non-prof­its Dress for Suc­cess and Career Gear… though its bor­rowed bags and ties are cleared to attend prom and grad­u­a­tion.

via Men­tal Floss

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New York Pub­lic Library Card Now Gives You Free Access to 33 NYC Muse­ums

Med­i­ta­tion is Replac­ing Deten­tion in Baltimore’s Pub­lic Schools, and the Stu­dents Are Thriv­ing

100 Nov­els All Kids Should Read Before Leav­ing High School

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 24 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Museum of Failure: A Living Shrine to New Coke, the Ford Edsel, Google Glass & Other Epic Corporate Fails

in Business, Design | March 27th, 2018

All suc­cess­ful prod­ucts are alike; every unsuc­cess­ful prod­uct is unsuc­cess­ful in its own way. Or so a mod­ern-day Tol­stoy might find him­self inspired to write after a vis­it to the Muse­um of Fail­ure, a mov­able feast of flops which began last year in Hels­ing­borg, Swe­den and has now opened its doors on Hol­ly­wood Boule­vard in Los Ange­les. The Don­ald Trump board game, Apple’s New­ton, Noki­a’s N‑Gage, Ford’s Edsel, Col­gate Beef Lasagne, Harley-David­son Cologne, New Coke, Google Glass: these and oth­er shin­ing exam­ples of fail­ure appear in the videos about the muse­um at the top of the post and just below.

Con­sid­ered today, many of these prod­ucts, whether well-known or thor­ough­ly obscure, look hilar­i­ous­ly ill-con­ceived. But the Muse­um of Fail­ure’s founder, a psy­chol­o­gist named Samuel West, does have high praise for some of the prod­ucts he’s col­lect­ed in his insti­tu­tion.

As you’ll find out on a vis­it there, though, they’ve all got at least one fatal flaw — a design prob­lem, bad tim­ing, mis­judg­ment of the mar­ket, falling into the cracks of exist­ing offer­ings — that drove con­sumers away. You can’t say that any of them did­n’t take a risk, but risks, by their very nature, burn out more often than they pay off.

“Why do I have all these fail­ures?” asks West in his TED Talk just above. “The point of hav­ing the muse­um is that we can learn from these fail­ures. I want us to start to admit our fail­ures as com­pa­nies, as indi­vid­u­als, so we can learn from it.” Amer­i­ca’s rel­a­tive lack of cul­tur­al stigma­ti­za­tion of fail­ure often gets cit­ed among the rea­sons for the coun­try’s rep­u­ta­tion for inno­va­tion and eco­nom­ic dynamism, but there, as any­where else, an increased will­ing­ness not just to fail but to bet­ter under­stand the nature of indi­vid­ual fail­ures would­n’t go amiss. Noth­ing suc­ceeds like suc­cess, so the say­ing goes, but the fas­ci­na­tion that has built around the Muse­um of Fail­ure so far sug­gests that we have much to gain from its oppo­site as well.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Thomas Edison’s Creepy Talk­ing Dolls: An Inven­tion That Scared Kids & Flopped on the Mar­ket

Blade Run­ner: The Pil­lar of Sci-Fi Cin­e­ma that Siskel, Ebert, and Stu­dio Execs Orig­i­nal­ly Hat­ed

Why Do So Many Peo­ple Adore The Room, the Worst Movie Ever Made? A Video Explain­er

Meet the World’s Worst Orches­tra, the Portsmouth Sin­fo­nia, Fea­tur­ing Bri­an Eno

Paulo Coel­ho on The Fear of Fail­ure

“Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Bet­ter”: How Samuel Beck­ett Cre­at­ed the Unlike­ly Mantra That Inspires Entre­pre­neurs Today

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Why Incompetent People Think They’re Amazing: An Animated Lesson from David Dunning (of the Famous “Dunning-Kruger Effect”)

in Business, Psychology, TED Talks | December 6th, 2017

The busi­ness world has long had spe­cial jar­gon for the Kafkaesque incom­pe­tence bedev­il­ing the ranks of upper man­age­ment. There is “the Peter prin­ci­ple,” first described in a satir­i­cal book of the same name in 1968. More recent­ly, we have the pos­i­tive notion of “fail­ing upward.” The con­cept has inspired a mantra, “fail hard­er, fail faster,” as well as pop­u­lar books like The Gift of Fail­ure. Famed research pro­fes­sor, author, and TED talk­er Brené Brown has called TED “the fail­ure con­fer­ence,” and indeed, a “Fail­Con” does exist, “in over a dozen cities on 6 con­ti­nents around the globe.”

The can­dor about this most unavoid­able of human phe­nom­e­na may prove a boon to pub­lic health, low­er­ing lev­els of hyper­ten­sion by a sig­nif­i­cant mar­gin. But is there a dan­ger in prais­ing fail­ure too fer­vent­ly? (Samuel Beckett’s quote on the mat­ter, beloved by many a 21st cen­tu­ry thought leader, proves decid­ed­ly more ambigu­ous in con­text.) Might it present an even greater oppor­tu­ni­ty for peo­ple to “rise to their lev­el of incom­pe­tence”? Giv­en the preva­lence of the “Dun­ning-Kruger Effect,” a cog­ni­tive bias explained by John Cleese in a pre­vi­ous post, we may not be well-placed to know whether our efforts con­sti­tute suc­cess or fail­ure, or whether we actu­al­ly have the skills we think we do.

First described by social psy­chol­o­gists David Dun­ning (Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan) and Justin Kruger (N.Y.U.) in 1999, the effect “sug­gests that we’re not very good at eval­u­at­ing our­selves accu­rate­ly.” So says the nar­ra­tor of the TED-Ed les­son above, script­ed by Dun­ning and offer­ing a sober reminder of the human propen­si­ty for self-delu­sion. “We fre­quent­ly over­es­ti­mate our own abil­i­ties,” result­ing in wide­spread “illu­so­ry supe­ri­or­i­ty” that makes “incom­pe­tent peo­ple think they’re amaz­ing.” The effect great­ly inten­si­fies at the low­er end of the scale; it is often “those with the least abil­i­ty who are most like­ly to over­rate their skills to the great­est extent.” Or as Cleese plain­ly puts it, some peo­ple “are so stu­pid, they have no idea how stu­pid they are.”

Com­bine this with the con­verse effect—the ten­den­cy of skilled indi­vid­u­als to under­rate themselves—and we have the pre­con­di­tions for an epi­dem­ic of mis­matched skill sets and posi­tions. But while imposter syn­drome can pro­duce trag­ic per­son­al results and deprive the world of tal­ent, the Dun­ning-Kruger effect’s worst casu­al­ties affect us all adverse­ly. Peo­ple “mea­sur­ably poor at log­i­cal rea­son­ing, gram­mar, finan­cial knowl­edge, math, emo­tion­al intel­li­gence, run­ning med­ical lab tests, and chess all tend to rate their exper­tise almost as favor­ably as actu­al experts do.” When such peo­ple get pro­mot­ed up the chain, they can unwit­ting­ly do a great deal of harm.

While arro­gant self-impor­tance plays its role in fos­ter­ing delu­sions of exper­tise, Dun­ning and Kruger found that most of us are sub­ject to the effect in some area of our lives sim­ply because we lack the skills to under­stand how bad we are at cer­tain things. We don’t know the rules well enough to suc­cess­ful­ly, cre­ative­ly break them. Until we have some basic under­stand­ing of what con­sti­tutes com­pe­tence in a par­tic­u­lar endeav­or, we can­not even under­stand that we’ve failed.

Real experts, on the oth­er hand, tend to assume their skills are ordi­nary and unre­mark­able. “The result is that peo­ple, whether they’re inept or high­ly skilled, are often caught in a bub­ble of inac­cu­rate self-per­cep­tion.” How can we get out? The answers won’t sur­prise you. Lis­ten to con­struc­tive feed­back and nev­er stop learn­ing, behav­ior that can require a good deal of vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and humil­i­ty.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

John Cleese on How “Stu­pid Peo­ple Have No Idea How Stu­pid They Are” (a.k.a. the Dun­ning-Kruger Effect)

Research Finds That Intel­lec­tu­al Humil­i­ty Can Make Us Bet­ter Thinkers & Peo­ple; Good Thing There’s a Free Course on Intel­lec­tu­al Humil­i­ty

The Pow­er of Empa­thy: A Quick Ani­mat­ed Les­son That Can Make You a Bet­ter Per­son

Free Online Psy­chol­o­gy & Neu­ro­science Cours­es

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Edvard Munch Scream Action Figure

in Art, Business | November 3rd, 2017

“I was out walk­ing with two friends – the sun began to set – sud­den­ly the sky turned blood red – I paused, feel­ing exhaust­ed, and leaned on the fence – there was blood and tongues of fire above the blue-black fjord and the city – my friends walked on, and I stood there trem­bling with anx­i­ety – and I sensed an end­less scream pass­ing through nature.”― Edvard Munch

That’s how painter Edvard Munch described the dread-filled scene that led him to paint “The Scream” in 1910. As Dr. Noelle Paul­son notes over at Smarthis­to­ry, except for da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Munch’s paint­ing “may be the most icon­ic human fig­ure in the his­to­ry of West­ern art. Its androg­y­nous, skull-shaped head, elon­gat­ed hands, wide eyes, flar­ing nos­trils and ovoid mouth have been engrained in our col­lec­tive cul­tur­al con­scious­ness.”

“The Scream” might also be one of the more fetishized and com­mod­i­fied paint­ings we’ve seen to date. These days, you’ll find “The Scream” on t‑shirts, jig­saw puz­zles, and non-slip jar grip­pers. And, thanks to a Japan­ese com­pa­ny called Good Smile, you can now buy The Scream Action fig­ure. It has pos­able joints, allow­ing you to put the fig­ure into dif­fer­ent pos­es (wit­ness above). Or you can stand it along­side the oth­er art his­to­ry fig­ures in Good Smile’s collection–da Vin­ci’s Vit­ru­vian Man, Rod­in’s The Thinker, and The Venus de Milo. Oh, the fun you could have this week­end.

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via io9

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Edvard Munch’s Famous Paint­ing “The Scream” Ani­mat­ed to the Sound of Pink Floyd’s Pri­mal Music

30,000 Works of Art by Edvard Munch & Oth­er Artists Put Online by Norway’s Nation­al Muse­um of Art

Hierony­mus Bosch Fig­urines: Col­lect Sur­re­al Char­ac­ters from Bosch’s Paint­ings & Put Them on Your Book­shelf

Sal­vador Dalí’s 1973 Cook­book Gets Reis­sued: Sur­re­al­ist Art Meets Haute Cui­sine

The Tarot Card Deck Designed by Sal­vador Dalí

Sal­vador Dalí Fig­urines Let You Bring the Artist’s Sur­re­al Paint­ings Into Your Home

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