#this is the first one i ever made so there are some sig errors in the setting

[lamingtonladies]

Ur-Fascism – Umberto Eco

Printable pamphlet here

In 1942, at the age of ten, I received the First Provincial Award of Ludi Juveniles (a voluntary, compulsory competition for young Italian Fascists—that is, for every young Italian). I elaborated with rhetorical skill on the subject “Should we die for the glory of Mussolini and the immortal destiny of Italy?” My answer was positive. I was a smart boy.

I spent two of my early years among the SS, Fascists, Republicans, and partisans shooting at one another, and I learned how to dodge bullets. It was good exercise.

In April 1945, the partisans took over in Milan. Two days later they arrived in the small town where I was living at the time. It was a moment of joy. The main square was crowded with people singing and waving flags, calling in loud voices for Mimo, the partisan leader of that area. A former maresciallo of the Carabinieri, Mimo joined the supporters of General Badoglio, Mussolini’s successor, and lost a leg during one of the first clashes with Mussolini’s remaining forces. Mimo showed up on the balcony of the city hall, pale, leaning on his crutch, and with one hand tried to calm the crowd. I was waiting for his speech because my whole childhood had been marked by the great historic speeches of Mussolini, whose most significant passages we memorized in school. Silence. Mimo spoke in a hoarse voice, barely audible. He said: “Citizens, friends. After so many painful sacrifices … here we are. Glory to those who have fallen for freedom.” And that was it. He went back inside. The crowd yelled, the partisans raised their guns and fired festive volleys. We kids hurried to pick up the shells, precious items, but I had also learned that freedom of speech means freedom from rhetoric.

A few days later I saw the first American soldiers. They were African Americans. The first Yankee I met was a black man, Joseph, who introduced me to the marvels of Dick Tracy and Li’l Abner. His comic books were brightly colored and smelled good.

One of the officers (Major or Captain Muddy) was a guest in the villa of a family whose two daughters were my schoolmates. I met him in their garden where some ladies, surrounding Captain Muddy, talked in tentative French. Captain Muddy knew some French, too. My first image of American liberators was thus—after so many palefaces in black shirts—that of a cultivated black man in a yellow-green uniform saying: “Oui, merci beaucoup, Madame, moi aussi j’aime le champagne…” Unfortunately there was no champagne, but Captain Muddy gave me my first piece of Wrigley’s Spearmint and I started chewing all day long. At night I put my wad in a water glass, so it would be fresh for the next day.

In May we heard that the war was over. Peace gave me a curious sensation. I had been told that permanent warfare was the normal condition for a young Italian. In the following months I discovered that the Resistance was not only a local phenomenon but a European one. I learned new, exciting words like réseau, maquis, armée secrète, Rote Kapelle, Warsaw ghetto. I saw the first photographs of the Holocaust, thus understanding the meaning before knowing the word. I realized what we were liberated from.

In my country today there are people who are wondering if the Resistance had a real military impact on the course of the war. For my generation this question is irrelevant: we immediately understood the moral and psychological meaning of the Resistance. For us it was a point of pride to know that we Europeans did not wait passively for liberation. And for the young Americans who were paying with their blood for our restored freedom it meant something to know that behind the firing lines there were Europeans paying their own debt in advance.

In my country today there are those who are saying that the myth of the Resistance was a Communist lie. It is true that the Communists exploited the Resistance as if it were their personal property, since they played a prime role in it; but I remember partisans with kerchiefs of different colors. Sticking close to the radio, I spent my nights—the windows closed, the blackout making the small space around the set a lone luminous halo—listening to the messages sent by the Voice of London to the partisans. They were cryptic and poetic at the same time (The sun also rises, The roses will bloom) and most of them were “messaggi per la Franchi.” Somebody whispered to me that Franchi was the leader of the most powerful clandestine network in northwestern Italy, a man of legendary courage. Franchi became my hero. Franchi (whose real name was Edgardo Sogno) was a monarchist, so strongly anti-Communist that after the war he joined very right-wing groups, and was charged with collaborating in a project for a reactionary coup d’état. Who cares? Sogno still remains the dream hero of my childhood. Liberation was a common deed for people of different colors.

In my country today there are some who say that the War of Liberation was a tragic period of division, and that all we need is national reconciliation. The memory of those terrible years should be repressed, refoulée, verdrängt. But Verdrängung causes neurosis. If reconciliation means compassion and respect for all those who fought their own war in good faith, to forgive does not mean to forget. I can even admit that Eichmann sincerely believed in his mission, but I cannot say, “OK, come back and do it again.” We are here to remember what happened and solemnly say that “They” must not do it again.

But who are They?

If we still think of the totalitarian governments that ruled Europe before the Second World War we can easily say that it would be difficult for them to reappear in the same form in different historical circumstances. If Mussolini’s fascism was based upon the idea of a charismatic ruler, on corporatism, on the utopia of the Imperial Fate of Rome, on an imperialistic will to conquer new territories, on an exacerbated nationalism, on the ideal of an entire nation regimented in black shirts, on the rejection of parliamentary democracy, on anti-Semitism, then I have no difficulty in acknowledging that today the Italian Alleanza Nazionale, born from the postwar Fascist Party, MSI, and certainly a right-wing party, has by now very little to do with the old fascism. In the same vein, even though I am much concerned about the various Nazi-like movements that have arisen here and there in Europe, including Russia, I do not think that Nazism, in its original form, is about to reappear as a nationwide movement.

Nevertheless, even though political regimes can be overthrown, and ideologies can be criticized and disowned, behind a regime and its ideology there is always a way of thinking and feeling, a group of cultural habits, of obscure instincts and unfathomable drives. Is there still another ghost stalking Europe (not to speak of other parts of the world)?

Ionesco once said that “only words count and the rest is mere chattering.” Linguistic habits are frequently important symptoms of underlying feelings. Thus it is worth asking why not only the Resistance but the Second World War was generally defined throughout the world as a struggle against fascism. If you reread Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls you will discover that Robert Jordan identifies his enemies with Fascists, even when he thinks of the Spanish Falangists. And for FDR, “The victory of the American people and their allies will be a victory against fascism and the dead hand of despotism it represents.”

During World War II, the Americans who took part in the Spanish war were called “premature anti-fascists”—meaning that fighting against Hitler in the Forties was a moral duty for every good American, but fighting against Franco too early, in the Thirties, smelled sour because it was mainly done by Communists and other leftists. … Why was an expression like fascist pig used by American radicals thirty years later to refer to a cop who did not approve of their smoking habits? Why didn’t they say: Cagoulard pig, Falangist pig, Ustashe pig, Quisling pig, Nazi pig?

Mein Kampf is a manifesto of a complete political program. Nazism had a theory of racism and of the Aryan chosen people, a precise notion of degenerate art, entartete Kunst, a philosophy of the will to power and of the Ubermensch. Nazism was decidedly anti-Christian and neo-pagan, while Stalin’s Diamat (the official version of Soviet Marxism) was blatantly materialistic and atheistic. If by totalitarianism one means a regime that subordinates every act of the individual to the state and to its ideology, then both Nazism and Stalinism were true totalitarian regimes.

Italian fascism was certainly a dictatorship, but it was not totally totalitarian, not because of its mildness but rather because of the philosophical weakness of its ideology. Contrary to common opinion, fascism in Italy had no special philosophy. The article on fascism signed by Mussolini in the Treccani Encyclopedia was written or basically inspired by Giovanni Gentile, but it reflected a late-Hegelian notion of the Absolute and Ethical State which was never fully realized by Mussolini. Mussolini did not have any philosophy: he had only rhetoric. He was a militant atheist at the beginning and later signed the Convention with the Church and welcomed the bishops who blessed the Fascist pennants. In his early anticlerical years, according to a likely legend, he once asked God, in order to prove His existence, to strike him down on the spot. Later, Mussolini always cited the name of God in his speeches, and did not mind being called the Man of Providence.

Italian fascism was the first right-wing dictatorship that took over a European country, and all similar movements later found a sort of archetype in Mussolini’s regime. Italian fascism was the first to establish a military liturgy, a folklore, even a way of dressing—far more influential, with its black shirts, than Armani, Benetton, or Versace would ever be. It was only in the Thirties that fascist movements appeared, with Mosley, in Great Britain, and in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece, Yugoslavia, Spain, Portugal, Norway, and even in South America. It was Italian fascism that convinced many European liberal leaders that the new regime was carrying out interesting social reform, and that it was providing a mildly revolutionary alternative to the Communist threat.

Nevertheless, historical priority does not seem to me a sufficient reason to explain why the word fascism became a synecdoche, that is, a word that could be used for different totalitarian movements. This is not because fascism contained in itself, so to speak in their quintessential state, all the elements of any later form of totalitarianism. On the contrary, fascism had no quintessence. Fascism was a fuzzy totalitarianism, a collage of different philosophical and political ideas, a beehive of contradictions. Can one conceive of a truly totalitarian movement that was able to combine monarchy with revolution, the Royal Army with Mussolini’s personal milizia, the grant of privileges to the Church with state education extolling violence, absolute state control with a free market? The Fascist Party was born boasting that it brought a revolutionary new order; but it was financed by the most conservative among the landowners who expected from it a counter-revolution. At its beginning fascism was republican. Yet it survived for twenty years proclaiming its loyalty to the royal family, while the Duce (the unchallenged Maximal Leader) was arm-in-arm with the King, to whom he also offered the title of Emperor. But when the King fired Mussolini in 1943, the party reappeared two months later, with German support, under the standard of a “social” republic, recycling its old revolutionary script, now enriched with almost Jacobin overtones.

There was only a single Nazi architecture and a single Nazi art. If the Nazi architect was Albert Speer, there was no more room for Mies van der Rohe. Similarly, under Stalin’s rule, if Lamarck was right there was no room for Darwin. In Italy there were certainly fascist architects but close to their pseudo-Coliseums were many new buildings inspired by the modern rationalism of Gropius.

There was no fascist Zhdanov setting a strictly cultural line. In Italy there were two important art awards. The Premio Cremona was controlled by a fanatical and uncultivated Fascist, Roberto Farinacci, who encouraged art as propaganda. (I can remember paintings with such titles as Listening by Radio to the Duce’s Speech or States of Mind Created by Fascism.) The Premio Bergamo was sponsored by the cultivated and reasonably tolerant Fascist Giuseppe Bottai, who protected both the concept of art for art’s sake and the many kinds of avant-garde art that had been banned as corrupt and crypto-Communist in Germany.

The national poet was D’Annunzio, a dandy who in Germany or in Russia would have been sent to the firing squad. He was appointed as the bard of the regime because of his nationalism and his cult of heroism—which were in fact abundantly mixed up with influences of French fin de siècle decadence.

Take Futurism. One might think it would have been considered an instance of entartete Kunst, along with Expressionism, Cubism, and Surrealism. But the early Italian Futurists were nationalist; they favored Italian participation in the First World War for aesthetic reasons; they celebrated speed, violence, and risk, all of which somehow seemed to connect with the fascist cult of youth. While fascism identified itself with the Roman Empire and rediscovered rural traditions, Marinetti (who proclaimed that a car was more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace, and wanted to kill even the moonlight) was nevertheless appointed as a member of the Italian Academy, which treated moonlight with great respect.

Many of the future partisans and of the future intellectuals of the Communist Party were educated by the GUF, the fascist university students’ association, which was supposed to be the cradle of the new fascist culture. These clubs became a sort of intellectual melting pot where new ideas circulated without any real ideological control. It was not that the men of the party were tolerant of radical thinking, but few of them had the intellectual equipment to control it.

During those twenty years, the poetry of Montale and other writers associated with the group called the Ermetici was a reaction to the bombastic style of the regime, and these poets were allowed to develop their literary protest from within what was seen as their ivory tower. The mood of the Ermetici poets was exactly the reverse of the fascist cult of optimism and heroism. The regime tolerated their blatant, even though socially imperceptible, dissent because the Fascists simply did not pay attention to such arcane language.

All this does not mean that Italian fascism was tolerant. Gramsci was put in prison until his death; the opposition leaders Giacomo Matteotti and the brothers Rosselli were assassinated; the free press was abolished, the labor unions were dismantled, and political dissenters were confined on remote islands. Legislative power became a mere fiction and the executive power (which controlled the judiciary as well as the mass media) directly issued new laws, among them laws calling for preservation of the race (the formal Italian gesture of support for what became the Holocaust).

The contradictory picture I describe was not the result of tolerance but of political and ideological discombobulation. But it was a rigid discombobulation, a structured confusion. Fascism was philosophically out of joint, but emotionally it was firmly fastened to some archetypal foundations.

So we come to my second point. There was only one Nazism. We cannot label Franco’s hyper-Catholic Falangism as Nazism, since Nazism is fundamentally pagan, polytheistic, and anti-Christian. But the fascist game can be played in many forms, and the name of the game does not change. The notion of fascism is not unlike Wittgenstein’s notion of a game. A game can be either competitive or not, it can require some special skill or none, it can or cannot involve money. Games are different activities that display only some “family resemblance,” as Wittgenstein put it. Consider the following sequence:

1 2 3 4 abc bcd cde def

Suppose there is a series of political groups in which group one is characterized by the features abc, group two by the features bcd, and so on. Group two is similar to group one since they have two features in common; for the same reasons three is similar to two and four is similar to three. Notice that three is also similar to one (they have in common the feature c). The most curious case is presented by four, obviously similar to three and two, but with no feature in common with one. However, owing to the uninterrupted series of decreasing similarities between one and four, there remains, by a sort of illusory transitivity, a family resemblance between four and one.

Fascism became an all-purpose term because one can eliminate from a fascist regime one or more features, and it will still be recognizable as fascist. Take away imperialism from fascism and you still have Franco and Salazar. Take away colonialism and you still have the Balkan fascism of the Ustashes. Add to the Italian fascism a radical anti-capitalism (which never much fascinated Mussolini) and you have Ezra Pound. Add a cult of Celtic mythology and the Grail mysticism (completely alien to official fascism) and you have one of the most respected fascist gurus, Julius Evola.

But in spite of this fuzziness, I think it is possible to outline a list of features that are typical of what I would like to call Ur-Fascism, or Eternal Fascism. These features cannot be organized into a system; many of them contradict each other, and are also typical of other kinds of despotism or fanaticism. But it is enough that one of them be present to allow fascism to coagulate around it.

The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition. Traditionalism is of course much older than fascism. Not only was it typical of counter-revolutionary Catholic thought after the French revolution, but it was born in the late Hellenistic era, as a reaction to classical Greek rationalism. In the Mediterranean basin, people of different religions (most of them indulgently accepted by the Roman Pantheon) started dreaming of a revelation received at the dawn of human history. This revelation, according to the traditionalist mystique, had remained for a long time concealed under the veil of forgotten languages—in Egyptian hieroglyphs, in the Celtic runes, in the scrolls of the little known religions of Asia. This new culture had to be syncretistic. Syncretism is not only, as the dictionary says, “the combination of different forms of belief or practice”; such a combination must tolerate contradictions. Each of the original messages contains a sliver of wisdom, and whenever they seem to say different or incompatible things it is only because all are alluding, allegorically, to the same primeval truth. As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth has been already spelled out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message. One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements. The most influential theoretical source of the theories of the new Italian right, Julius Evola, merged the Holy Grail with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, alchemy with the Holy Roman and Germanic Empire. The very fact that the Italian right, in order to show its open-mindedness, recently broadened its syllabus to include works by De Maistre, Guenon, and Gramsci, is a blatant proof of syncretism. If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled as New Age, you can find there even Saint Augustine who, as far as I know, was not a fascist. But combining Saint Augustine and Stonehenge—that is a symptom of Ur-Fascism.

Traditionalism implies the rejection of modernism. Both Fascists and Nazis worshiped technology, while traditionalist thinkers usually reject it as a negation of traditional spiritual values. However, even though Nazism was proud of its industrial achievements, its praise of modernism was only the surface of an ideology based upon Blood and Earth (Blut und Boden). The rejection of the modern world was disguised as a rebuttal of the capitalistic way of life, but it mainly concerned the rejection of the Spirit of 1789 (and of 1776, of course). The Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, is seen as the beginning of modern depravity. In this sense Ur-Fascism can be defined as irrationalism.

Irrationalism also depends on the cult of action for action’s sake. Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation. Therefore culture is suspect insofar as it is identified with critical attitudes. Distrust of the intellectual world has always been a symptom of Ur-Fascism, from Goering’s alleged statement (“When I hear talk of culture I reach for my gun”) to the frequent use of such expressions as “degenerate intellectuals,” “eggheads,” “effete snobs,” “universities are a nest of reds.” The official Fascist intellectuals were mainly engaged in attacking modern culture and the liberal intelligentsia for having betrayed traditional values.

No syncretistic faith can withstand analytical criticism. The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason.

Besides, disagreement is a sign of diversity. Ur-Fascism grows up and seeks for consensus by exploiting and exacerbating the natural fear of difference. The first appeal of a fascist or prematurely fascist movement is an appeal against the intruders. Thus Ur-Fascism is racist by definition.

Ur-Fascism derives from individual or social frustration. That is why one of the most typical features of the historical fascism was the appeal to a frustrated middle class, a class suffering from an economic crisis or feelings of political humiliation, and frightened by the pressure of lower social groups. In our time, when the old “proletarians” are becoming petty bourgeois (and the lumpen are largely excluded from the political scene), the fascism of tomorrow will find its audience in this new majority.

To people who feel deprived of a clear social identity, Ur-Fascism says that their only privilege is the most common one, to be born in the same country. This is the origin of nationalism. Besides, the only ones who can provide an identity to the nation are its enemies. Thus at the root of the Ur-Fascist psychology there is the obsession with a plot, possibly an international one. The followers must feel besieged. The easiest way to solve the plot is the appeal to xenophobia. But the plot must also come from the inside: Jews are usually the best target because they have the advantage of being at the same time inside and outside. In the US, a prominent instance of the plot obsession is to be found in Pat Robertson’s The New World Order, but, as we have recently seen, there are many others.

The followers must feel humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies. When I was a boy I was taught to think of Englishmen as the five-meal people. They ate more frequently than the poor but sober Italians. Jews are rich and help each other through a secret web of mutual assistance. However, the followers must be convinced that they can overwhelm the enemies. Thus, by a continuous shifting of rhetorical focus, the enemies are at the same time too strong and too weak. Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.

For Ur-Fascism there is no struggle for life but, rather, life is lived for struggle. Thus pacifism is trafficking with the enemy. It is bad because life is permanent warfare. This, however, brings about an Armageddon complex. Since enemies have to be defeated, there must be a final battle, after which the movement will have control of the world. But such a “final solution” implies a further era of peace, a Golden Age, which contradicts the principle of permanent war. No fascist leader has ever succeeded in solving this predicament.

Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak. Ur-Fascism can only advocate a popular elitism. Every citizen belongs to the best people of the world, the members of the party are the best among the citizens, every citizen can (or ought to) become a member of the party. But there cannot be patricians without plebeians. In fact, the Leader, knowing that his power was not delegated to him democratically but was conquered by force, also knows that his force is based upon the weakness of the masses; they are so weak as to need and deserve a ruler. Since the group is hierarchically organized (according to a military model), every subordinate leader despises his own underlings, and each of them despises his inferiors. This reinforces the sense of mass elitism.

In such a perspective everybody is educated to become a hero. In every mythology the hero is an exceptional being, but in Ur-Fascist ideology, heroism is the norm. This cult of heroism is strictly linked with the cult of death. It is not by chance that a motto of the Falangists was Viva la Muerte (in English it should be translated as “Long Live Death!”). In non-fascist societies, the lay public is told that death is unpleasant but must be faced with dignity; believers are told that it is the painful way to reach a supernatural happiness. By contrast, the Ur-Fascist hero craves heroic death, advertised as the best reward for a heroic life. The Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death.

Since both permanent war and heroism are difficult games to play, the Ur-Fascist transfers his will to power to sexual matters. This is the origin of machismo (which implies both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality). Since even sex is a difficult game to play, the Ur-Fascist hero tends to play with weapons—doing so becomes an ersatz phallic exercise.

Ur-Fascism is based upon a selective populism, a qualitative populism, one might say. In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view—one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction. To have a good instance of qualitative populism we no longer need the Piazza Venezia in Rome or the Nuremberg Stadium. There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People. Because of its qualitative populism Ur-Fascism must be against “rotten” parliamentary governments. One of the first sentences uttered by Mussolini in the Italian parliament was “I could have transformed this deaf and gloomy place into a bivouac for my maniples”—“maniples” being a subdivision of the traditional Roman legion. As a matter of fact, he immediately found better housing for his maniples, but a little later he liquidated the parliament. Wherever a politician casts doubt on the legitimacy of a parliament because it no longer represents the Voice of the People, we can smell Ur-Fascism.

Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak. Newspeak was invented by Orwell, in 1984, as the official language of Ingsoc, English Socialism. But elements of Ur-Fascism are common to different forms of dictatorship. All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning. But we must be ready to identify other kinds of Newspeak, even if they take the apparently innocent form of a popular talk show.

On the morning of July 27, 1943, I was told that, according to radio reports, fascism had collapsed and Mussolini was under arrest. When my mother sent me out to buy the newspaper, I saw that the papers at the nearest newsstand had different titles. Moreover, after seeing the headlines, I realized that each newspaper said different things. I bought one of them, blindly, and read a message on the first page signed by five or six political parties—among them the Democrazia Cristiana, the Communist Party, the Socialist Party, the Partito d’Azione, and the Liberal Party.

Until then, I had believed that there was a single party in every country and that in Italy it was the Partito Nazionale Fascista. Now I was discovering that in my country several parties could exist at the same time. Since I was a clever boy, I immediately realized that so many parties could not have been born overnight, and they must have existed for some time as clandestine organizations.

The message on the front celebrated the end of the dictatorship and the return of freedom: freedom of speech, of press, of political association. These words, “freedom,” “dictatorship,” “liberty,”—I now read them for the first time in my life. I was reborn as a free Western man by virtue of these new words.

We must keep alert, so that the sense of these words will not be forgotten again. Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It would be so much easier, for us, if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, “I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Black Shirts to parade again in the Italian squares.” Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new instances—every day, in every part of the world. Franklin Roosevelt’s words of November 4, 1938, are worth recalling: “I venture the challenging statement that if American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land.” Freedom and liberation are an unending task.

Let me finish with a poem by Franco Fortini:

Sulla spalletta del ponte Le teste degli impiccati Nell’acqua della fonte La bava degli impiccati.

Sul lastrico del mercato Le unghie dei fucilati Sull’erba secca del prato I denti dei fucilati.

Mordere l’aria mordere i sassi La nostra carne non è più d’uomini Mordere l’aria mordere i sassi Il nostro cuore non è più d’uomini.

Ma noi s’è letto negli occhi dei morti E sulla terra faremo libertà Ma l’hanno stretta i pugni dei morti La giustizia che si farà.

On the cobbles in the market- places The fingernails of those lined up and shot On the dry grass in the open spaces The broken teeth of those lined up and shot.

Biting the air, biting the stones Our flesh is no longer human Biting the air, biting the stones Our hearts are no longer human.

But we have read into the eyes of the dead And shall bring freedom on the earth But clenched tight in the fists of the dead Lies the justice to be served.) —poem translated by Stephen Sartarelli

[jrtataut]

Reflective Blog Post: The Marshmallow Challenge

The instructions were simple - create a free standing structure to support the weight of a marshmallow using nothing but spaghetti and tape.

The highest tower wins.

With the competitive and time-based elements introduced everyone was enthusiastic and ready to get into it.

We got into groups, the timer began counting down and we were off.

One of my teammates immediately brought his idea to the table: it would be easier to start from the top and work our way to the base.

So from that moment onwards he became our leader, creating the top of our tower by sticking four stands of spaghetti into our marshmallow. While him getting in front of the project would save us time from thinking about what to do, it did limit us to a very basic design and there was not much the others could offer. While one half of the team was building the tower, the others either watched or walked around the room seeing if they could borrow any ideas.

We kept two things in mind to apply to the structure; its height and resilience; and experimented with how we were going to keep it standing. There was not much play involved in the development of the tower.

In the end, through reinforcing lots of tape and spaghetti wherever it was needed in order to hold our tower up, the design looked something like this:

It was among the tallest of our peers, beaten by a tower of the same design with the simplest of modifications - an antenna to hold up the marshmallow.

What stuck with me after that activity was the explanation given afterwards, how kindergartners managed to beat their older and ‘wiser’ counterparts:

The secret of this task, was to focus on getting a feel for the weight of the marshmallow and how it affected the spaghetti.

Really basic stuff right?

Yet the majority of us completely missed it and either went straight to trying to replicate structures of previous design or sciencing the hell out of it. This usually didn't end up amounting to much.

The most successful of us were the ones who played around with the marshmallow and contributed their ideas.

Why?

The teamwork aspect of it all is obvious: the towers will be taller if people experiment with their own ideas and use the best parts of that to develop the final object.

The act of playing with the marshmallow however is a lot more subtle, even more so that we are older and more experienced. I saw that many people took to previous knowledge and experience to solve the problem at hand: for example, a few of the towers had the characteristics that you would see on some bridges and landmarks such as the Eiffel Tower.

Even though it seemed easier to begin with, it was actually more difficult and time consuming to replicate these previous designs, as the materials we were provided with were absurdly impractical; yet that was the whole point of this challenge.

You see no one building spaghetti and marshmallow towers on a regular basis. Coming into this experience, I had no knowledge of anyone ever having attempted this before. We had to start from scratch in order to achieve the best results for the challenge.

The success of our tower included no prior knowledge of engineering principles, just pure trial and error. Our structures were skeletons of skyscrapers patched up excessively in order to keep it standing. We only did what was necessary because we figured out the necessary bits by starting from the top. There weren’t any intricate plans or designing it in an aesthetically pleasing way, we just had a goal. With the requirements of that goal given to us, we were able to focus on fulfilling them and accomplishing it.

There are many things my group and myself could have done differently though. The winning tower obviously bested us because their creators were more familiar with the interactions between the marshmallow and noodle. If we spent more time playing with the marshmallow, we would have reached the same discovery as the winning team and maybe improved our tower even further. We could have made use of all the people in our team by first working individually to produce small towers before coming together and then compiling what was best from each of our designs into one. Even though we sent our spy around the room, we didn’t incorporate any of what he told us into our tower because we were so set on our current design that we felt it was superior.

The marshmallow challenge represents creativity and innovation. It's human nature: “the highest level of human performance” (Sawyer, 2012, p.1). When we create, we are experimenting to solve problems that better our lives as a whole.

Of course, our towers were nowhere near engineering marvels, however the method we used to create them were what our ancestors used to develop the skyscrapers we have today.

The marshmallow challenge has encouraged me to start from the basics and that making mistakes is beneficial to the creative process. This allows us to “to escape from local optima and discover better solutions” (Bateson & Martin, 2013, p. 5).

Iteration and collaboration is evidently key to not only making towers from spaghetti, but to any project in the future. In later projects, I seek to encourage myself and others to share their ideas, start from the ground up (so to speak), and look at everything with the curiosity of a child. Utilizing what I have learnt from this activity should enable me to better my ability to come up with creative solutions to various issues I will come across during my time in BCT.

The lessons of this exercise has major implications for not only future projects in BCT but the extent of which we are able to push ourselves. Our creativity is simply our individuality expressed, doing something no one has ever done before and if it is exercised enough, it can lead to amazing things.

Bibliography:

Bateson P. & Martin P. (2013) Play, Playfulness, Creativity and Innovation Retrieved from https://books.google.co.nz/books?hl=en&lr=&id=WylYWy4MGdoC&oi=fnd&pg=PR7&dq=ancestors+innovation+creativity&ots=iQLrjMWkoB&sig=cCcCz1PbZ8nEUU839ko7yWZWVvw#v=onepage&q=ancestors%20innovation%20creativity&f=false

Sawyer R. K. (2012) Explaining Creativity: The Science of Human Innovation Retrieved from https://books.google.co.nz/books?hl=en&lr=&id=P9hoAgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=human+nature+creativity+innovation&ots=ykhJVSaPUC&sig=j3cbuw46CFelzUxcFlbin40iXZw#v=onepage&q=human%20nature%20creativity%20innovation&f=false

[biopsychs]

physics doesn’t have to suck: how to enjoy and do well in your required physics classes

As someone who doesn’t intend to take a physics class ever again, I was relieved when I walked out of my second semester physics final. That said, physics doesn’t have to suck or drag your average down. 

(1) How to enjoy physics: Adjust your attitude. Physics is so cool if you actually think about it. Your attitude will dictate your experience. (2) But physics is so hard: Change the way you study and don’t give up. I did better in university physics than in high school. The content was way more difficult but it was my studying methods that made the difference.

This post is split into 3 parts: Introductory physics (very basic physics, that unit of physics you had to do in a lower level science class), high school physics (physics from an algebra-based perspective), and university physics (calculus-based physics and labs). (Obviously these overlap a lot but I needed to organize this somehow)

INFO IS UNDER THE CUT B/C THIS POST IS RIDICULOUSLY LONG

1. INTRODUCTORY PHYSICS

Skills you should master that will greatly help you now and in the future

Converting between units

What all those symbols actually mean

Interpreting what graphs mean

Scientific notation

Know how to do algebra fairly well (esp. rearranging equations)

Khan Academy is a great resource for introductory and high school physics.

Start every question by stating all of your known and unknown variables. Write down which variables you have and which ones you need. Then, you can easily figure out which formula you need.

Make sure you’re actually understanding the concepts behind everything; plugging numbers into equations will only get you so far.

Rearrange formulas to equal the variable you need before you substitute your known values into the equation.

Use your knowledge of physics from your own experiences. Don’t overthink. Just try to picture what would happen if, say, a ball and a feather were dropped from the same height.

2. HIGH SCHOOL PHYSICS (ALGEBRA-BASED)

(Everything from part 1 applies, esp Khan Academy)

Pay attention to in class demos.

Draw free body diagrams whenever you can -- they can be annoying but quickly being able to visualize all of the forces acting is an important skill

Ask your teacher for help or clarification if you need it! You won’t always have the opportunity for one-on-one help, plus your teacher may mark you a bit easier if they see you’re really trying.

Know trigonometry well! In fact, if any of your algebra skills are weak, be sure to review. Don’t let basic math hold you back -- you can do this!

Your first step for any problem should be to write down any known variables or numbers and then the variables you need to find.

Work with a study group (just make sure everyone else is as committed as you are, otherwise studying with others won’t help). People think in different ways and you’re bound to find a solution eventually -- and less likely to give up if you can’t do it.

Get all the part marks. Write down your variables, a formula that could be applicable -- anything that might earn even half a mark (teachers are a lot more forgiving than you think)

Double check your final answer. Ensure you have the right units and ask yourself if your final answer makes sense.

Don’t give up! A big mistake I made in high school was giving up the first time I couldn’t figure out a question because physics was hard and I would never understand it. No excuses! Ignoring a question won’t help you answer it when it comes up on a test. Figure it out on your own or get help.

3. UNIVERSITY PHYSICS (CALCULUS-BASED + LABS)

(Note: Some university physics classes are algebra-based. My university is dumb and forced me to take difficult, calculus-based classes.) 

(Again, most things from part 1 and part 2 apply here as well.)

A) Lectures, studying, finals, etc.

Pay attention in class and write good notes

My physics lectures were boring but trying to catch up by reading my textbook later was so much worse

Your lecture notes may not make much sense at first but later on you’ll be able to tell which concepts were stressed by your prof

Draw any diagrams your prof shows you (or take a picture with your phone if you’re lazy). Be sure that the diagram is complete and don’t forget about labels. Don’t worry too much about neatness as long as you know what the diagram is supposed to show you.

Keep all your notes in one notebook: Use one colour for writing regular notes, another colour for circling formulas or starring things you don’t understand,  and be sure to write the date down for each lecture and leave space if you fall behind during the lecture (you can always copy someone else’s notes later)

Get a good textbook!

Talk to older students and see if the textbook was helpful for the class. If it’s useful then actually use it! If it’s not, find a good textbook to use! 

Do lots of practice questions

My profs tended to go over more conceptual ideas in class and didn’t do many examples.

Try to do a variety of questions! This will tell you if you actually understand the content or if you’ve just memorized how to do certain questions.

Work with other people on assignments (and join/start a group chat for your class)

I had online assignments due every Friday at midnight. My friend and I would meet up on Wednesday or Thursday to work through most of the assignment together. If there was a question we didn’t get, there would always be someone in our class group chat wondering the same thing and there was always some smart physics student that would be a bro and explain how to approach the problem (on another note: don’t leave assignments till the last minute)

Group chats are also great if you miss class or can’t remember when the cutoff for the midterm is

If you don’t understand something get help before it’s too late. 

Be prepared with specific questions. It’s hard for someone to help you if all you can say is that you don’t know anything. Go to your prof, TA, tutor, etc. 

I found my profs to be super nice about everything. They just want people to be excited about the subject they teach!

If you’re just stuck on one thing there are tons of resources online! Just be specific in what you’re googling and check out resources that other profs have posted online.

Understand the math before you start doing questions

Know the basics of derivatives and integrals

It’s super important to be able to draw a rough graph of the first, second, etc. derivative when all you are given is a graph of the original function (i.e. drawing the graphs for velocity and acceleration when given a graph of displacement)

But don’t ignore the conceptual stuff

This is why a good textbook is important!

Plus you can get part marks for some questions by stating whether one value should be higher/lower than another value, even if you can’t figure out the calculations -- and you can check your answers this way.

For example, it’s pretty important to know what magnetic flux density is before you can calculate it’s value

When studying for tests, don’t just assume you know how to do a question.

Looking over the solution for a problem and actually completing the problem are two very different things. This is the biggest mistake I’ve made when studying physics.

Understanding the solution is only one step in actually being able to answer the question. Looking over solutions is lazy studying if you’re not even trying to do the work. Start the question. Glance at the first part of the solution if you’re stuck. Keep going from there.

For first year physics classes, you really shouldn’t skip over any parts of problem. Yeah, rearranging that formula might look easy but can you actually do it? Practice makes perfect.

If you have a midterm coming up that tests material from a few weeks ago, be sure to do questions from the older units. The content might look familiar but just because you could do a question 2 weeks ago doesn’t mean you can do it now.

Don’t leave your studying till the last minute.

Get a planner and carve out enough time to do practice questions every few days. Trying to catch up on four chapter’s worth of problems is not fun and won’t work very well. Plus, you don’t just have to know how to answer questions. You have to be able to answer questions efficiently.

B) Labs

My labs were very different each semester.

First semester content included kinematics, relativity, forces, momentum, work, etc. The labs were super boring but super easy. For most labs we used motion detectors and a program called logger pro to collect and graph data. Lots of carts.

Second semester content included light, energy, radiation, magnetism, circuits, etc. The labs mostly involved bread boards and wires.

Regardless of content, some general comments on labs are...

Labs won’t always follow lecture content. Apparently that’s too difficult to organize.

That said, get your prelabs done. Properly, if you can. If you don’t fully understand a prelab question, ask your TA once you’ve handed it in. This will save you so much time.

Find a good lab partner. Not sure if there’s a trick to this but just try your best. And be a good lab partner too!

Make note of how strict your TA is with sig figs and error calculations. There’s no sense in losing a few marks when you could stay an extra 15 minutes and do the work properly.

Eat some food and hydrate before your lab -- you never know when your lab will take you 3+ hours to finish.

If you’re not sure if your experiment is working ask your TA. Trying to complete the lab with incorrect data is difficult and your TA will probably make you repeat the experiment anyways.

I hope this post was helpful! I struggled with physics in high school (my worst class) but it ended up being one of my best classes in university (A’s both semesters). The content was way more difficult but my studying habits and test-taking methods were what made the difference!!

Feel free to add additional advice to this post!

My Other Posts:

AP lit tips

high school biology

organization tips

recommended reads

reminders for myself

using your time wisely on public transport

what i learned from high school