Replying to LO28965 --
Dear Organlearners,
Ben Compton <benjamin_compton@yahoo.com> writes:
>I enjoyed this particular post. Many wonderful and
>insightful points were loquently and clearly made. Here's
>a little of my thinking on the subject. . .
Greetings dear Ben,
Thank you very much for your kind words.
In his book Personal Knowledge Michael Polanyi (the physical chemist who
turned into philosopher) writes on p 134 (The Tacit Component): "Science
then can no longer hope to survive in an island of positive facts, around
which the rest of man's intellectual heritage sinks to the status of
subjective emotionalism. It must claim that certain emotions are right;
and if it can make good such a claim, it will not only safe itself, but
sustain by its example the whole system of cultural life of which it forms
part."
Polanyi firmly believed that intellectual passion is one such an emotion.
In the essay LO28964, I took one small step in actualising Polanyi's
vision "... if it can make good such a claim ..." (that certain emotions
are right). I wrote that all passionate behaviour are at least spontaneous
behaviour, i.e. a lowering of spiritual free energy. I also stressed that
passionate behaviour is the very intense conversion of spiritual free
energy.
>The great tragedy of adulthood is that we leave
>behind the childhood curiosity that made adulthood
>possible.
Yes. We think of children as the lesser humans who can teach us nothing.
>Children naturally know how to learn. They question
>everything. They conduct quite sophisticated
>experiments. They are constantly engaged in
>learning.
Until they become the victims of an information driven society. Then their
minds get deluged by information which one day they might remember so as
to apply it hopefully with success.
>Here's a true story.
(snip)
>We talked about that for a while. Eventually it came
>down to the fact that she didn't like solving novel
>problems. She wanted to write software with a
>cookie-cutter -- with the cookie-cutter being the stuff
>she learned in college.
I feel very sorry for her like for millions of other students all over the
globe. Her experiences at college were a mess of information driven
training -- memorising information which one day might find some
application. I myself would have questioned her very carefully on this
"didn't like solving novel problems". Perhaps she wanted to articulate
that she didn't like the artificial world presented in college to be so
much different from the authentic world which requires constructive
creativity to keep it alive and healthy. In this she has all my sympathy.
>I gave her my interpretation of what college is,
>which was quite different from her intrepretation.
>
>I think of college as a place you go to increase your
>capacity to learn. I do not think of it as a place you
>go to learn, so you can go out into the world and apply,
>over and over, what you learned in college.
Dear Ben, close to our university there are several book shops catering
for university text books on almost every subject. It is disheartening to
go into such a book shop, browse through text books from subjects A to Z
and then find that without exception that they are written for information
driven training after which at the jobs applications may be sought for
their cooky-cutters.
>It may be that this woman simply didn't enjoy writing
>software, so moving on was the right thing to do. But
>I couldn't help notice that she had an aversion to reading
> -- except for the celebrity gossip magazines; she had
>an aversion to the news, because she didn't want to
>have to figure out "what was true and what wasn't" in
>the news; she had an aversion to visual art because
>"she couldn't understand what a painting was 'saying.'"
>
>My interpretation was that at 21 or 22 years of age,
>she had given up on learning.
>
>I cannot imagine why or how she had done this. But
>its not the first time I've seen this happen to a person,
>and I'm sure its not the last.
Ben, I strongly suspect that she could not digest the mental world around
her. To do this she needs "kernels of knowledge" which had to emerge
within her based on personal experiences and subsequent tacit knowing.
These "kernels of knowledge" can never be imported as selected excerpts
from external information to function as "kernels of knowledge". They will
stay fragements of information until horses get horns.
To go through college or university, pay and get all the training to
satisfy a particular ambition, but never even once having tasted the
fountain of intellectual passion, is a disgrace. Somebody in an article to
a local newspaper called it "intellectual prostitution". With about half a
dozen universities in the regions where this newspaper circulates, i
expected that the long knives would be hauled out of the closests
immediately and put into action. But nothing happened -- can you believe
it?
>As for me, I've told my wife that if I ever reach a
>state where I'm unable to learn due to illness then
>its time for me to die. I just can't come up with a
>reason to live if I can't learn.
Yes, this is how we learned to know you and to love your participation on
our LO-dialogue. Thank you for your responses.
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@postino.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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