The Right Kind of Problems / Mozart, Guthrie, Norma Jeane

The Right Kind of Problems are the kind of problems that play to your strengths and stretch them over and over, over the 20+ years of development that's required to elaborate initial genetic biases into those incredibly complex, powerful, and compelling versions of intelligence, personality, and self which will be required to solve generational problems of a particular field/society, ie into key characteristics.

These are the kind of problems that Mozart faced practically from day one. These are the kind of problems little Wolfgang got when he ambled in one morning to find Nannerl and Papa doubling on the clavier. Nannerl and Papa just waiting for the little maestro to start "striking those thirds".

The kind of problems that Wolfgang found in Papa's little lesson books. In Nannerl’s packed with minuets & allegros & scherzos, with Agrell & Fischer & Wagenseil, with marches & themes & variations. Playing, laughing, singing up and down the keys, with Papa and Nannerl, and every half and quarter and quaver, every nuance of a note right there on the strings.

The kind of problems that came with every little game, with master Andres smiling, tuning, waving his bow. Ready to play. Go. Puppets, birds, toy soldiers flying, bouncing round the cart, almost singing, trying to march... and 1 and 2 and 1 2 3 and . . . laughing, chasing Andres, Nannerl; chasing every note off that ‘butter fiddle’.

The kind of problems Wolferl found in his own special little book, the one Papa stuffed with Bentgen and Telemann, and master Bach’s inventions; with suites and dances and serenades; with Grafe’s odes, Hasse and... continues in Arrival ...juggling, crossing, doubling; going a whirlwind ‘round the keys.

The kind of problems that came with Papa's desk. Quill tip dipping deep and dripping black; scribbling dots and blots and puddles and wings, loops and links right ‘cross the sheet.. . c, and b, and c, and c sharp to d. . . “No, Mein Herr Papa, a concerto. A concerto, the 1st part. For the clavier. Just like you do. See...“

The kind Wolfgang got for 3 years in Salzburg, 3 years of day, after day, after day. . . of minuets and allegros and Wagenseil and Bach and Telemann, of the clavier and violin; of Nannerl and Papas quill, and master Andres’ butter fiddle; of Schoberth and Eckart, all the difficult pieces; singing odes and choir and Eberlin’s Sigismundus.

The kind of problems Wolfgang got on his travels in Bavaria, in Germany, in France and Italy… continues in Arrival

… The right kind of problems are the kind of problems that Mozart got, that Picasso got, that Einstein got, that Hitchcock, and Michael Jordan, and Woody Guthrie and Marilyn got. The kind of problems that all of the 'greats' get over and over and over again.

These kind of problems are often what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi terms "flow activities". This is nearly always the case with regard to developing characteristics related to intelligence, e.g., those of Einstein, Mozart, Guthrie, or Michael Jordan. It is also often the case with regard to socially approved aspects of personality, e.g., the intense competitiveness of a Bill Gates or a Michael Jordan. The activities involved in either case "have rules that require the learning of skills", which "set up goals provide feedback and make control possible". These activities provide challenges that are appropriate to the person's level of skill and "facilitate concentration and involvement" in the activity, with the result that the person's skills improve and s sense of self is "transformed" so that over time e is able to take on increasingly more difficult challenges and in the process repeatedly have the same "optimal"/ "autotelic"/ intrinsically rewarding experience at ever higher levels of "complexity" - that sense of intense/ total "concentration", of "discovery", of being "transported into a new reality" - what Csikszentmihalyi terms the experience of "flow".

Such problem solving is equally involved in the development of other forms of personality and self, in the development of other types of extreme variations of personality and self which also become key characteristics of the ‘great’, e.g. the “schizoid” thinking of a Newton or a Kafka, the “manic-depressive” traits of a Balzac or a Michelangelo, the “obsessional” behavior of an Ibsen or a Stravinsky; the likes of Woody Guthrie’s terror of intimacy, or Hitchcock’s massively conflicted and repressed sexuality, or Norma Jeane's hunger for love. Only here the problems involved are far from socially approved. In fact they're just the opposite. They're covert and stigmatized, skeletons in the family closet. In contrast to 'flow activities’, the challenges provided here are seriously inappropriate to the person's level of skill - e.g. the challenges a 13 day old Norma Jeane faced when her mother 'dropped her off' for 7 & 1/2 years at the Bolenders; the challenges a 7 year old Woody faced "standing around the house for hours, lost in silence", in "mortal fear that something he'd do or say would trigger" that "low grumbling voice" and start his momma's "face to twitch and snarl", her body to convulse in "epileptics, arguing at every stick of furniture in the room, shrieking for hours at the top of her voice".

Instead of "facilitating concentration and involvement" in the activity, these problems trigger avoidance, uncertainty and fear, seeking elsewhere for a solution, an escape - like Norma Jeane looking to the smiling man in the slouch hat... continues in Arrival ... or Woody, "drifting" out into "running and laughing", punching and scraping, "fishing, swimming and playing hooky"; out into anything "just to try to forget for a minute that a cyclone had hit his home, to forget how it was ripping and tearing away his family, and scattering it to the wind".

While 'escape activities' definitely facilitate the development of new skills, as well as the 'transformations' of self that accompany them, such skills have little to do with the likes of learning scales or shooting hoops. They've more to do with street hustling, or purring up to men, or in Hitch's case, fantasizing about his "favorite character" in all of fiction, thinking back to "the ball', to the "Viscount" in his low-cut waistcoat", "sweeping her" across the cotillion floor, her "skirt swirling out against his trousers".

Over time, just as with the likes of classical music or physics or basketball, given the opportunity the person learns to take on and solve increasingly more difficult and complex challenges, such as posing for photographers with "nothing but the radio on", or "opening a film with a murderous rape", or turning thumbing through freezing "wind and snow", "rotgut whiskey", and "foggy bottom" Appalachian roads into ". . .'this land was made for you and me'".

And at the end of the day, when and if the person gets the chance to take on the right kind of problems for both mself and a field (e.g., in film or music or science or art), the prior years of painful 'escape activities', the activities that developed, e.g., Woody's terror of intimacy or Hitch's massively conflicted and repressed sexuality now contribute key personality characteristics which are essential to the 'flow activities' (e.g., Woody's songwriting, Hitch's moviemaking) for which they become famous.

Information and quotes re Mozart above come mostly from Schenk (1960), and Levey (1991).

The concept of The Right Kind of Problems was developed over the course of researching and writing Arrival. In addition to the material presented here, the book considers a fair bit of the massive research re the development of intelligence, the characteristics of problem solving activities involved, the role of genetic biases and experience in relation to various areas of expertise.

What is new to the concept of The Right Kind of Problems is that it can be applied not just to the development of characteristics associated with intelligence, but to those associated with personality and self as well.

References cited above are available in Arrival. see Sources.