What is Education?
Here and there I stumble upon interesting thoughts. And sometimes I stumble upon them several times, over time, in different times. Experiences shape the mind, the way of thinking, and suddenly that thought gets another dimension.
As does everything.
And that is education. Adding perspectives, adding experiences, adding angles and levels to everything we observe. From the mono-dimensional “I speak” to the 4 dimensional model by Schulz von Thun. From there the digital panopticon, to why we communicate the way we do, what we realize about what we communicate.
Everywhere.
Not only in communication. Everything we do is multi-dimensional, and the more we know about what we do, the more we reflect on it, the more surprising perspectives we gain. And those make life interesting, as there is always something else to discover, even when repeating the same over and over again.
Martial arts got that figured out.
The original ones that is. Even repeating the same form for the 10,000st time, there’s still something else. If you are open to it. That, too, is very important. Education never stops. It just goes deeper and further, spreads out until every curtain moving in the wind becomes the result of quantum mechanics, history, meteorology, product design, chemical structure of fabrics, cultural heritage, general physics, biology, socio-economics.
A stone is never just a stone.
And this is not a plaidoyer to overcomplicate life. As with everything, when we really learn a new perspective, indulge it, it’s not complicated to add it the rest of perspectives we already had. It’s only one more, and we’ll automatically take it. It’s an effort in the beginning, like everything, but as soon as we assimilated it, the subconsciousness does its part and that’s it.
And that’s missing.
Taking other perspectives. Even if it’s just to try it out, see what there is. Even if it’s not really applicable, nor of one’s opinion. There must be a curiosity and capacity to want to see everything from a different angle. To cover all perspectives. For a very egoistic reason:
Peace of mind.
Being able to look at something from others’ perspectives is a blessing. It helps you to understand them, even if you don’t agree with them. And that takes away the unknown, and that takes away the fear, and that takes away the hate. And it doesn’t have to do anything with intellect or intelligence. I know many incredibly smart people who block out other perspectives. It’s easier to believe in the dichotomy of good and evil than to accept that everything is the result of an unfathomable complication. And that includes humans.
Tranquility.
I find the absence of hate in my life quite calming. And invigorating at the same time. To explore more ideas. Understand more, on a broad level. I never aimed to be a specialist in something, but to obtain enough understanding of the world to not be mad at it all the time. At least that’s what I see now. Earlier on, it probably about knowing more than others, or just genuine curiosity. By now, I know that knowledge brings power, but not the one that I expected. Not and aggressive one, but a passive one.
To not be bothered by everything all the time.
What are your thoughts about this topic? Please feel free to engage in any original way, including dropping links to your posts on similar topics. I'm happy to read (and curate) any quality content that is not created by LLM/AI, as well as read your own experience and point of view, I love to learn!
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