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freshman seminar course at Penn State that he calls “Failure 101.”

“the frequency and intensity of failures is an implicit principle of the course. Getting into a creative mind-set involves a lot of trial and error.”

“As soon as someone in the class starts breaking the sticks,” he says, “it changes everything.”

“Examine what in the culture is preventing you from creating something new or different. And what is it like to look like a fool because a lot of things won’t work out and you will look foolish? So how do you handle that?”

be willing to fail but that failure is a critical avenue to a successful end.

When ideas from different fields collide, Dr. Cramond says, fresh ones are generated.

rephrasing problems as questions, learning not to instinctively shoot down a new idea (first find three positives), and categorizing problems as needing a solution that requires either action, planning or invention. A key objective is to get students to look around with fresh eyes and be curious. The inventive process, she says, starts with “How might you…”

“A lot of people can’t deal with things they don’t know and they panic

make creativity happen instead of waiting for it to bubble up. A muse doesn’t have to hit you.”

Seeing more and more aspects of our lives as games to win through maximization has a sort of self-perpetuating effect with perverse consequences, not the least of which is the impairment of what Diesing terms social rationality; the cherishing of unique relationships, personal connectedness, cooperative functioning, solidarity and sentiment.

If winning efficiently is the goal, then the rules (ethical, moral, legal, and spiritual), are essentially obstacles to game.

In our schools, competition for access to elite preschools, for grades, for social status, in sports, over positions of leadership, and for admission to exclusive colleges transforms one of our most basic institutions for fostering community, ethics and learning into competitive, individualistic corporate training-grounds. In these settings, the importance of competitive sports becomes paramount, for both financial and training purposes, and the artistry of cheating (see this year's Stuyvesant High School cheating scandal) and rule-bending (see Joe Paterno) revered. Such intense competition encourages the professionalization of parenting -- through tutors, highly-educated nannies, prep courses, and professional training camps (such as investment camps). You can imagine the deleterious effects these trends have on the ethos of care and moral responsibility in our families and schools, a critical buffer against bullying and violence in the lives of our children.

We become hyper-connected through technologies, boasting our number of "friends" on Facebook, and have less and less intimacy.

We choose friends with benefits or Internet porn over romantic relationships as they are less messy, more efficient.

Life is a race and we are losing.

The prescription for Facebook despair is less Facebook. Researchers found that face-to-face or phone interaction — those outmoded, analog ways of communication — had the opposite effect. Direct interactions with other human beings led people to feel better.