What LEGO Taught Me

Benny’s Spaceship, Spaceship, SPACESHIP!

For my birthday my wife bought me the LEGO kit Benny’s Spaceship.  For anyone who’s seen The Lego Movie you’ll get the joke. It’s the outrageous monster outer space cruiser the little blue 1980s LEGO astronaut with the busted helmet finally can unleash his manic creative energy to build in a fit of frenzied, 9-to-14-year-old glee near the end of the movie.  Watching that moment in the movie, and holding the box, I felt the rekindling of that same mania, dull and dormant since it last animated me 30 years ago.

It was then when I realized I had essentially failed that younger version of myself.  Because if I had been true to my 12-year-old ambition, I would be working at LEGO right now or I would have worked on The Lego Movie.  Or, at least, I would have visited Legoland somewhere in the world.

But I had Benny’s Spaceship and I found the visceral pleasure of assembling it did not fade with age.  At the same time I happily watched a switch flip in the mind of my four-year-old son.  What had been a jumble of abstract multi-colored DUPLO blocks now took solid form in his mind.  He began to assemble cars, airplanes, helicopters out of the pure form.  And then, inspired by his favorite television show, he began to “transform” them.  Snapping a few pieces into different positions, he turned his vehicles into robots.

It took me years to do something like that.  I received my first LEGO kit, a train set, from Japanese friends when I was about five years old.  From then on, LEGO was, with the possible exception of plastique models, my favorite things to play with growing up.  I rarely bought blocks for their own sake and always built the pre-designed kits, but they eventually became something else entirely – ships, planes, submarines, spacecraft, battlefields, the whole populated physiography of a boy’s imagination.  Considering how expensive the kits were (and continue to be) they are probably the most cost-efficient toy on the market.  You can make them into almost anything you want.

At the risk of putting down the pure joy of childhood creativity with the needle of an adult’s hindsight, it’s been interesting to see how the same processes I cultivated on the floor of my bedroom as a child evolved into grown-up habits and skills.

Lord Business and Master Builders Need Each Other

The Lego Movie sets up a rigid dichotomy between the instruction-following if happy-go-lucky automatons and the rebellious, anarchic Master Builders.  But any organization needs both to succeed; indeed any person needs both creativity and attention to detail in order to function in modern life.  It may surprise my friends and family to find me poring over a LEGO instruction manual (or any manual for that matter).  Following instructions and conforming to rules are not my strength, but even as a pre-teen I would regularly do so in order to get the product shown on the box.  That attention to detail – an ability to focus and work precisely, behaviors not engrained in my character – may have been all I needed to get through school and my first few jobs.

But once I completed the kit I could break it down and use the new pieces to build other things.  I could build almost anything I could imagine or – a different notion entirely – a model of something else.   I had a whole fleet’s-worth of space-faring warships of my own design, but I found these to be less difficult to build because the problem set was more flexible – it could be whatever I wanted it to be.  On the other hand, trying to build a scale model of some real (or pre-existing) object was a much greater challenge.  Because the greater the fidelity, the greater the achievement – and with the blocky, finite resolution of the LEGO bricks, that was quite a challenge.

Creativity Is More Necessary – and Harder to Understand – Than You Think

I recently found a book published by LEGO diving into the design of it Architecture series which explores this concept in some detail.  Replicating the  Eiffel Tower, the White House or the Taj Mahal to high fidelity at 1/25th scale in a place like Legoland is impressive but, given the size, relatively easily done — and especially so after seeing how The LEGO Movie was designed.  But what about at a scale that will fit in a box on a shelf?  The Architecture book explores the engineers’ iterative process to find the right design, scale and parts to faithfully replicate these icons.  I went through a similar process as a child and tried to do the same thing as I started building again as an adult – replicating the ships from “Guardians of the Galaxy,” say, and seeing if my children could recognize them when I finished.

LEGO Architecture – The Visual Guide

This was (and is) a significant life lesson in engineering and problem-solving.  Engineers like to say that their job is about what can be – that is, solving real-world problems in real time for real people.  The situation, tools, and equipment will always be inadequate but your goal is to get the best outcome and improve for the next time.  I learned almost too late that creativity is a tremendous part of the sheer physical aspect of getting things made, fixed and done.  Without creativity, the greatest achievements in science, technology and engineering would have never left the chalkboards of theory.  I have applied a creative, half-now-is-better-whole-later approach to problem-solving most of my life.

But creativity has a curious double edge.  I tried once again to model the venerable Enterprise from Star Trek – introducing my children to yet another commercial franchise – and I was as disappointed with my effort now as I was as a boy.  I instantly recalled a good friend who was a LEGO prodigy.  I remember his uncanny ability to assemble the Enterprise on virtually any scale — as an inch-long model or a foot-long version — with incredible fidelity.  When I was younger I was jealous and confused by his ability – as I was by those who could do other creative things “better” than me.  They could draw, sing, play music, and paint better than I could.  I didn’t understand what this “better” was – why, in a group of people, one object would necessarily be valued more than another.  I was confronting a fundamental question of aesthetic philosophy that I would never be able answer but one that fundamentally separates an art from kitsch.

Play is Mindfulness

Rifling my hand through the bricks I felt like I was back on my bike again.  Thirty years had passed but very little had changed.  I remembered their proportions, how pieces fit together, recognized their limitations, delighted to find new blocks and tools.  There was something intensely familiar and calming about the focus on what I was building.  And unlike work or writing, I didn’t feel any tension when my focus was broken by distractions, such as when my son would triumphantly display his latest LEGO transformer creation.  Happily we could enjoy this activity together.

Today we call this a mindful activity, also at the risk of killing off the pure notion of play.  It is interesting that I don’t feel my mind wander, I don’t use the time to think about other things, I don’t worry (usually) about other things I have to do.  But when I am building, I am focused and happy.  I am usually  pleased with the “good-enough” outcome I produce.  I can play with my children.   It is a finite activity that I can start and complete within an hour or so.

I have boxes of my old LEGO bricks piled in the basement.  I hesitate to bring them into the mix.  They are decades old, undoubtedly creased, worn, and dirty.   I like the shiny new bricks and the new parts and gears that came with Benny’s Spaceship.  I suppose I worry most about the memories they will evoke and the fact that they are, in fact, children’s playthings.  I shouldn’t be embarrassed by that and I’m probably half-justifying the sheer pleasure and enjoyment I have “playing” – which doesn’t quite capture what I’m doing – with them by writing about how LEGO affected my development as an adult.  I guess I just don’t want to think about them never being a part of me.

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Benny’s Spaceship, assembled.

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New Book Review: “Through a Screen Darkly”

I’m happy to post my review of Martha Bayles’ recent book on public diplomacy, Through a Screen Darklypublished this month in The Hague Journal of Diplomacy by Clingendael in The Netherlands.  The article is behind a pay wall but should be available in most libraries.

I take issue with Bayles’ central argument about the liability of American culture abroad. But I found much of her reportage and proposals to share commonality with arguments and observations I made in my own book. Moreover, Bayles’ book is an exhaustive overview of public diplomacy in the second decade after September 11, 2001.

I send my thanks to The Hague Journal of Diplomacy, Clingendael and especially editor Jan Melissen for agreeing to publish my review.

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Religion, politics, and public diplomacy

Today my interview with the Public Diplomacy Council — the association of retired US Information Agency and Foreign Service Officers involved in public diplomacy activities — was published online. I talked to Donald Bishop about my recent book and some other subjects of recent import in the arena of public diplomacy. I was especially pleased to be able to talk about religion and faith.

Once again I am happy to extend my sincere and great thanks to Don Bishop and the Public Diplomacy Council for publishing this interview.

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Do We Need A Cultural Foreign Policy?

The historical archives of Sarajevo, attacked and burned on Feb. 6, 2014 (via http://www.arhivsa.ba/)

This month in Bosnia-Herzegovina citizens protested government paralysis in every major city in the country, in some places leading to destruction of municipal government buildings. In Sarajevo, somebody took advantage of the chaos and burned the city archives – a terrible echo of the war of the 1990s, when the beautiful National and University Library was shelled by federal Yugoslav gunners and gutted, destroying the entire collection.

This event is particularly poignant given the recent release of “The Monuments Men,” the George Clooney film about an odd clutch of Allied soldiers tasked with saving art looted from across Europe by Adolph Hitler. Such an action may seem superfluous in the middle of the titanic struggle with fascism in Europe and nationalism in Asia, with literally millions of lives in the balance. Indeed, as the movie and the book by Robert Edsel make clear, the treasure hunt was seen by some as a distraction from Allied war aims. But Lt. George Stokes, Clooney’s character, understood the stakes all too well. “If you destroy a people’s history, it’s as if they never existed,” he says. “That’s what Hitler wants.”

Unfortunately, as events in Sarajevo demonstrate, the world’s cultural patrimony faces an array of threats less immediate but all the more dire and insidious for it. And we lack a coherent, coordinated ability to respond to threats to art and culture that measures up to the achievement of the monuments men.

The Sarajevo Haggadah (Wikimedia Commons)

Today the Sarajevo Haggadah – the oldest Hebrew codex in the Balkans – sits in the National Museum of Bosnia-Herzegovina which has been closed for a year, unprotected. The Bosnian national parliament cannot agree on its status as a federal institution and refused to fund it. The Balkan Wars, both world wars and the wars of the former Yugoslavia could not shut down the museum, which until last winter had remained open for 125 years. This is only part of the reason why Bosnians are protesting.

Without funding and support, professional curators and preservationists cannot ttend to their collections and artifacts. Climate goes uncontrolled. Collections are left unguarded and unmonitored. An entire nation’s patrimony is at risk. And Bosnia is not alone in Europe. Due to the financial crisis, the governments of Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania cut funding and closed many or parts of their national museums and galleries. Their collections, too, were threatened.

Direct threats remain as well. When the Taliban destroyed the Buddhas of Bamiyan, they ripped out a part of the Afghan nation. When Ansar Dine extremists destroyed the mausoleums of Sufi Muslim saints in Timbuktu, they assaulted an ancient center of Islamic history and Malian identity. It is difficult to justify intervention on behalf of works of art, but it is impossible to say we won’t help restore them the way the Stare Most was rebuilt after it was destroyed more than 20 years ago in Mostar, Bosnia.

But the United States today has no means, no unified institution and no philosophy – in short, no foreign cultural policy – to do what the monuments men did 70 years ago: to advocate on behalf of, preserve and, if necessary, rescue endangered art and culture around the world. What we have now in the United States is a hodge-podge of various agencies, bodies and private foundations – the Smithsonian Institution and National Gallery of Art, the State Department, USAID – each pursuing its own, limited projects without coordination, direction or support to match the need.

Some of these projects are important and noble. For example, the Smithsonian moved rapidly after the 2010 earthquake leveled Port-á-Prince to rescue Haitian art. The Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation provides flexible funding to U.S. embassies to support museums and galleries. But programs like these are small-bore or one-off. The Ambassadors Fund amounts to little more than $5 million per year for the entire world and only a fraction goes to securing the art works themselves.

In my recent book, I proposed creating a public-private entity called the U.S. Arts Restoration Trust to coordinate government and private resources for the advocacy of art and culture around the world. USART would need to work with the State Department, because execution of these projects would by necessity be enabled through American embassies which have permanent personnel on the ground. And it would need to work with private foundations and galleries with the financial resources and technical know-how to help preserve and restore art in foreign countries.

USART would represent, too, an ideological argument in our particular American approach to promoting art and culture. Culture in the United States is not entirely cut loose in the free market, but it is far more so than the rest of the world. American galleries and museums depend on philanthropy, particularly in contrast to their European or Asian counterparts. While the Smithsonian receives some federal funding, most municipal galleries and museums rely on local foundations and corporate charities. More precisely, we have a far deeper and longer history of philanthropy to draw on. When the European arts community was hit by the financial crisis, it was largely a recession of state support, and they had nowhere else to look for funding. As a result, their collections and personnel suffered.

The Ma’il Qur’an, British Library (via http://www.islamitalia.it)

While traveling abroad I saw the Ma’il Qur’an at the British Library, one of the oldest copies of this sacred text in the world. The importance of a library for preserving a codex becomes clear when you hear what senior conservator David Jacobs told the Arab News about the Ma’il Qur’an. “The problem with that particular manuscript is pigments that are quite friable and flaky, so obviously it needs care and attention and constant monitoring of its condition.” That kind of monitoring is no longer available to the Sarajevo Haggadah and possibly countless other irreplaceable texts and art pieces around the world.

When viewing treasures saved by the monuments men or preserved in the British Library, it is impossible to imagine them not existing. But that is because they survived and are protected to this hour. Rescuing threatened art was a mission we assumed 70 years ago and it is a duty we should take even more seriously today.

Gen. Dwight Eisenhower (r), Lt.Gen. George Patton (c) and Gen. Omar Bradley (l), inspect art looted by the Nazis (NARA via DeutscheWelle).

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Culture Shut Down

US National Park Police and National Park employees direct visitors away from the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial yesterday. (Mark Wilson/Getty Images via The Grio)

It was hard not to feel a sense of schadenfreude watching Republicans yesterday as they wriggled in a box of their own design, desperately proposing to re-fund those “non-essential” elements of government they were so keen last month to de-fund in order to spike the Affordable Care Act. No doubt reeling from the effects of seeing veterans barred from the World War II Memorial on the National Mall, or this morning’s Washington Post front showing cops barricading the Martin Luther King Memorial on the Tidal Basin (see above), or seeing millions crash the ACA online exchanges, Sen. Ted Cruz suggested a series of piecemeal continuing resolutions to re-open popular parts of government like the National Park Service and the Smithsonian Institution.

But this is a small and fleeting feeling. Something much larger and more ominous has happened as the doors have shut on our national museums and art galleries, and gates have gone up around our national monuments and public parks. The National Park System — which includes the monumental core of the nation’s capital — is the largest of its kind in the world, a vast archipelago of public lands. The Smithsonian is the most-visited museum complex in the world, no matter what the Louvre may claim.

So what the Republicans have wrought — and despite my usual nonpartisan tone I blame with animus this entirely avoidable and artificial crisis on the House Republican Caucus — is a shutdown of publicly accessible American culture. And for all the usual raving from the cultural right about the decrepitude of American culture and the stupidity of government funding of cultural projects such as NPR, PBS and the NEA, the finest examples of American and world culture and values are in fact collected, protected and curated by government mandate for anyone to enjoy. This obvious fact has now very suddenly occurred to the Republicans as they see thousands of tourists milling about the capital, deprived of their own national patrimony by Congressional cupidity.

From left to right: Jasmin Mujanovic, Azra Aksamija and Susan Pearce at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC.

My friends with the artistic collective CULTURESHUTDOWN could be forgiven for the prophetic irony we may feel for warning less than two weeks ago of just such a trend toward the official denigration of national culture. Speaking at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Prof. Susan Pearce of East Carolina University, Jasmin Mujanovic of York University, and Prof. Azra Aksamija of MIT spoke about the parliamentary paralysis that has suspended operations at six cultural institutions in Bosnia-Herzegovina without official status and called for an end to the political crisis in that country.

We warned that similar obstacles were cropping up in other countries like Hungary and Bulgaria. I even joked, unintentionally, about a world where the US Congress failed to agree — that’s when the laughs started — on whether the Smithsonian should continue as a federal institution, just as the Bosnian parliament has. In retrospect that was mere  foreshadowing of the fiscal shutdown that followed Oct. 1 and shut down all of the Smithsonian museums and galleries in earnest.

Of course most of the rest of the government continues to be funded and to operate. Planes must be controlled in the sky, our borders must be defended, meat must be inspected, wars must be pursued. Our way of life must be protected. All of that is essential governmental activity.

But what remains “non-essential,” including the patrimony that we curate and cherish, represents that way of life and what it means to be an American — more specifically, how we are American. Just as narrow-minded chauvinists in Bosnia, who hate the idea of a Bosnian identity incorporating all its faiths as well as Bosnia’s pre-history, have strangled the institutions that present that plurality, so too now have the small-minded ideologues in Congress held American heritage hostage to advance their agenda.

If our representatives could now see the best of our history arrayed in the museums, and the land over which men like John Muir and Theodore Roosevelt once trekked — they are closed now, but I’m sure exceptions could be made for Members of Congress — they’d learn about characters much bigger, and generous, and large-minded, than this runt litter of small and mean and petty men and women now assembled.

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