Fiber Raven Soiree

Deep Thoughts

Have you read about Ryan's Cuzzin Tom, the Mad Monk, lately? This is a man for the birds. Since I love birds, although I've never kept one as a pet, I wandered over to the website that Ryan has linked to her entries. Sure enough, just as she said, there on the home page is a picture of Juliet who picked herself featherless out of boredom. Not birdom. Boredom. Reading a bit further, I learned that tropical birds are so used to the stimulation and activity of the rain forest that without constant stimulation and attention, they get so neurotic that they will deplumage themselves, and their feathers will never grow back.

Shift scenes. See Madame Glitchbane yesterday as she reads her friend Syne Mitchell's book Technogenesis. Syne weaves, knits, spins, grows vegetables in her garden, grew up in Mississippi, has her Masters in Physics.... a true anomaly among a vast population of same-o, same-o. Technogenesis is about a future where (most) everyone is always connected to the Net via glasses, headsets, implants, whatever-- and without it they feel lost and are unable to do basic things like open locked doors, pay for purchases or make phone calls. With it they are able to instantly connect with friends, simultaneously play games, work and shop for groceries. Without the constant stimulation of interconnectedness they feel anxious, afraid, bored. Out of the prolonged interconnectedness of all these people there is formed Gestalt, an Overbeing which subtly controls... well, you should read it. It kept me up late last night finishing it. Once I start a good book it's hard to do anything else until I've finished it.

What does this all have to do with knitting? Before I go there, let me mention one more thing. A recent article cited results of studies conducted with monkeys; the scientists were experimenting with the effects of a genetic treatment that blocked the production of dopamine. It seems that monkeys with regular dopamine levels, when faced with a task and a deadline will, like most people, internally calculate how much time they have to finish a task in order to get the reward, how much time it takes to actually finish the task, and then work at a pace that suits them until they understand that they must hurry to finish or else they will get no reward. Until they are focused at the last, they tend to make more mistakes. Once they are focused, few mistakes are made.

However, when dopamine blockers are introduced to their systems, the monkeys work just as hard at completing their tasks as if it were the last minute, make few mistakes, and stay on task.

I have several thoughts here. First, do you think there a difference between distraction and stimulation?

Second, do you think all people do things for a reward? Can that reward simply be "occupation"?

When we are knitting, I believe we are stimulated as long as the knitting is new and exciting and we are approaching a reward of seeing the first pattern completed, or the first color repeat. Then we become bored; it is no longer stimulating-- rather, it is a task whose reward is supposedly the fulfillment of having completed a beautiful item. But as we approach the second sleeve or the seaming, we get a fresh rush of enthusiasm-- we see the reward dangling in front of us like a Dove Bar on a string in 100 degree weather.

Where does this put us? Does it mean that, like the parrot and the Connected, we have becomed so used to stimulation and activity that without it we become knitters who are stuck in an endless cycle of starting and not finishing? Is the rain forest of wide variety and availability of yarn and knitting resources, coupled with the influential "enabling" effects of knitting groups on the net, causing us to be overstimulated?

Would it be better if we had what is perhaps the equivalent of a dopamine blocker: living with just a few people away from the internet and with only one yarn store which is a 50-mile drive and has only a basic, but nice, selection of yarn? Would we be more focused, more calm and more likely to complete our items, or would we still be bored, allegorically plucking ourselves featherless, unable to revert to normality?

I have noticed one very interesting thing in the last few days. I have been forcing myself to "work" at least 6 hours a day on learning new technical skills. My mind is engaged in a challenge that it is capable of meeting yet which does not come as easily as picking up paw-paws and putting them in your pocket. As a result of this mental exercise, I am then able to focus on knitting despite its potential boredom, and I make progress. Is this technical learning a sort of dopamine blocker or is it stimulation?

This stuff is going to keep me thinking for a long time.

Posted by Sheila at August 25, 2004 08:23 AM | TrackBack