Learn what?

I don't know that I agree with the concept that we are "here (assuming you meant "on Earth") to learn."

I truthfully don't know why I am here.

My mom would probably say that she is here to serve God, and win others to Christ.

I do not currently think this is my purpose...though I'm open to change.

Maybe my purpose is to lead others to heaven by making them run the opposite direction I'm headed, ROR.

Anyway, even though it is not my purpose on earth to learn, I make a concerted effort to learn a lot every single day--if for no other reason than to keep me from getting bored (carpet cleaning can be boring at times).

Today, for example, after I finished one boring job and one which was quite fascinating, I drove to my popcorn supplier (I also rent out professional popcorn services and equipment) and learned to call my wife and tell her that they now have Jelly Bellys before I leave and get back on the highway.

I had to turn around to buy the Jelly Bellys (sorry about the spelling--"Bellies" didn't seem right either, since it's a trade name).

On the way home, I stopped by to bring some note cards (another business of mine) to my honey and egg farmer (I buy "homegrown" honey and eggs from him). He's over 80 years old and knows bees like I know carpet cleaning.

Today I learned where the Tupelo variety of honey is raised, and the fact that it does not crystallize. I bought some, and can't wait to try it.

Learning for me is something I have to make an effort towards--I'm always asking questions of people, and always observing things around me (drives my wife crazy!).

This also means, however, that I'm easily dis

Hi, tcis, and welcome to A2K.

If you'll look through all the numerous categories, you'll find that there are threads that answer lots of questions that the folks here want to know.

Learning to navigate this site was, at first, difficult for me, but so many people helped, that with the exception of posting pictures, I have come to learn quite a bit.

One of my remaining challenges in life is learning to post pictures on A2K.

If we are here to learn it seems like we would want types of knowledge that is better than other types of knowledge. The reason we quite often view the truth as better than opinion is because it is eternal and unchangable - unlike opinion.

If you think your car is in the drive right now - you may or may not be correct - which is changeable, fallible, and temporary - yet is you KNOW it is in the drive then this is not changeable or fallible.

I am not saying I know what knowledge is but the one word answer to your question TCIS is 'Truth'.

That is what - if we are here to 'know' - is what we should be after.

TF

Hello TCIS,
Good Q! These answers I think were good too, especially thethinkfactory's. The way I understand it we are here "to know, love and serve God with a measure of happiness in this life and to be perfectly happy with Him in heaven in the next." I think this old catechetical formula best expresses the answer in the fullest possible way. It comes from the Church's years of pondering divine revelation. And please note, the order is important since we cannot love what we don't know and we will not serve what we do not love. Actually your question focus' on the first reason, to "know." This word implies we are here to learn so you got it right in assuming we were. As thethinkfactory suggests our pursuit for knowledge should be to seek truth, for what is truth but "conformity of our mind to reality" (I learned this from a very holy Jesuit priest named Fr. John Hardon). Our purpose is to know reality, thus to know the world around us and God, the latter of whom all reality comes from. Since falsity is the absence of truth then we surely are not to spend our time learning it as this would not help us reach our ultimate end... God. Furthermore what is false would not satisfy our intellect because we are designed with an appetite to know what is real. And this is where what thethinkfactory said is interesting, about opinion and truth. Opinion, contrary to the modern secular mind, is not something to be disdained. Opinion has a relation to truth in epistemology, it's knowledge which is uncertain. Of course we all seek certain knowledge and again, contrary to popular opinion, we can have knowledge that is certain. Unfortunately many, maybe most people think there is no such thing as truth because they have bought the philosophical skepticism which not only most contemporary philosophers teach but our society is impregnated with and propagates profusely. To the contrary we have an intellect to know truth and with to know with certainty and our mind is not at rest until we obtain this. So opinion occurs whenever and wherever we have knowledge with some doubt as to it's truth. The point to note here is that opinion is to be desired while at the same time we don't rest in it until we answer all the doubts, whence we possess certain knowledge.

But our need to know is not without purpose as I stated above. We want to know so we can love and so there is a relationship between the two. Actually when we have the one we have the other because once I know I am attracted to what I know. Why? Because our knowledge is of being, of created being and of the Creator, whose Being is the source of all other, and this knowledge attracts us to the good in that being. All that God has created is good and cannot be otherwise. Intellectually we hunger for God so thereby are attracted to Him through His creation. This is especially true for other being like us. Human beings desire to be in communion with other human beings. That word "communion" comes from the Latin, cum (with) + municare (union), meaning: union with. This follows for the word communication and community. We communicate to become united and form communities. So we all want to be in union with God and with each other. One of the deepest human communions is found in the relationship we call marriage (much malaligned and misunderstood today). Why not since marriage reflects the movements within the Blessed Trinity, in other words what God is. The three Persons in God are a community of Persons who share love. Our heavenly Father knows Himself fully and that knowledge of Himself is the Word (from the Greek word Logos, meaning a "mental expression in the act of knowing"), the second Person of the Blessed Trinity, whom we also call the Son. Furthermore the Father loves that knowledge of Himself and therefore He loves the Son. The Son knows the Father intimately, completely, and gives this love back. Now this love between the Father and Son is so real it's a third Person we know as the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is also said to be the life of the Blessed Trinity for out of love comes life. Likewise, with marriage between we who are created in the "image and likeness of God," we know each other, man and woman, and in knowing we are attracted to each other. This attraction is what we call love. That love is so real between a husband and wife that nine months later it expresses itself as a new person! So this is how we image the Trinity and is why the family is so important to the Christian view of reality. In fact this is why we are said to be like God. In that special human relationship we see an analog, or as sacred scripture puts it, an image of Christ's love for His Bride... the Church. This is what marriage is about and ultimately... the why of it. It's interesting to know that this image is written into each person so deeply that even our bodies express it since we find the woman's body is designed to receive the man's. It is a mirror of the heavenly Father receiving the Son spiritually speaking. Pope John Paul II speaks and writes about this in what is called his theology of the body. In the book of Genesis when Adam and Eve came together it is said they "knew each other." The conjugal act within marriage implies an intimate knowledge being shared between a man and woman and this is why prostitution, pornography and fornication in general fall far short of God's plan for us... precisely because we cannot reach this degree of union outside of a committed monogamous marriage. As a matter of fact the Church has always seen marriage as a sacrament (from the Latin meaning "oath") where God gives additional grace by means of this very union. This grace communicated through sacramental marriage helps a couple see reality as it is and live out the two-fold purpose of marriage: love and life. Love unites the couple and out of this union of two-flesh comes new life. Theologically this is called the unitive and procreative aspects of marriage.

So notice, that love is really our intellectual attraction to the good in another being. The being we are attracted to can be a sleek black panther, a colorful bird, a beautiful flower, a lovely tree, an delicate butterfly or an intricately designed insect, a breath-taking landscape or glorious sunset, or even a car (an artificial creature fashioned by men) or mathematical formula (a purely intellectual artifact). We are attracted to the goodness in each of these beings seen as a form of beauty. But ultimately the greatest Good is to be found in God and therefore since we image God more closely than the rest of creation our goodness surpasses all other created being. When we "see" goodness we cannot help but be attracted to it and knowledge of any or all being is knowledge of some aspect or all of reality. As I said previously, truth is when our mind comes into accord with reality so truth and love belong together. In fact they are so closely associated with each other we can say they are convertible or interchangeable (albeit they always remain two distinct entities or aspects of reality). We can also say by association that knowledge and goodness are interchangeable. You may have heard someone say "I love truth" which is the same as saying "I love goodness" or the good in being or being itself. The point here is that knowledge is about recognizing another being and in doing so we want to move closer to it. We desire to know more closely because of our need to be in union with other beings. Watch someone who hears a sudden noise and notice how they will always turn toward it, thus training their senses upon the source. They may even move closer toward whatever made the noise and look more closely. We all want to hear, to see, to smell, to taste, and to feel our world around us, and in doing so each being we are attracted to tells us more about our world and God, their source. Our senses literally want to be filled with more and more of everything which exists since this is how we come to know. We desire to know so we can unite and thus the closer we are to each created being, especially other persons like us, the more we know about God whom they all come from. We become closer or more united to God through these other beings precisely because God continues, by a sheer act of His will, to hold everything in existence. And this imminent presence of God in all things is why we can know Him through the created order. This is why in scripture Jesus emphasized the Golden Rule which is to "love God" and to "love others." Precisely because they come from God and are like Him, and our knowledge of other persons (ultimately God) comes with and from this intellectual attraction to them.

This is why we want to learn. It's built into us, intrinsic to our nature you might say. We are intellectual creatures who want to know the truth and as scripture says "you will know the truth and the truth will set you free." Christ also claimed "I am the Truth, the Way and the Life. No man comes to the Father but by me." So ultimately as we learn about reality we are learning Christ, whom scripture again tells us the whole world was created by, through and for. In Him we live and move and have our being we are told in the book of Acts. Like St. Augustine said "our hearts are restless, O God, until they rest in thee!" This speaks of our strong desire to learn from the universe of being all around us and thereby learn about their Source. This hints at the rest our mind has when it possesses truth. It speaks of the constant hunger and satiation we have for all that is real around us. Our happiness comes not in denying this, or skewing it, but in living out to the fullest our nature as human persons which is to know and hence love all creation around us and ultimately God, it's source. Again as St. Augustine cried "God's glory is man fully alive!" Science came about as a result of this hunger within men and women. Philosophical inquiry birthed our scientific endeavors precisely because good thinking leads us to think more and desire to know more about the world around us. In fact in heaven we will be so filled with AND so hungry for what can be known about God and His "new creation" that we will forever and ever pursue learning and possessing what we know. Ultimately this translates into we will possess God in a true sense or as St. Peter put it "we will partake of the divine nature." We will unite with our Creator in such a way that He remains God and we remain His creation, but that unity will be so deep and satisfying that we will want more and more and become happier and happier on into eternity.

THAT IS WHY WE WANT TO LEARN!

Sincerely, TCB

i hope this is an honest question because im going to answer it as if it is...

in order to share files on the web you must upload your file to a computer which is acting as a server...there are numerous free servers for small purposes such as pictures, here is one:

http://image.uploader.net/user/

it will give you a url which you can use like a regular internet link or you can use forum code like [ img ] url [/ img ] to display the image in the text.

Well, we obviously learn. The older we get the smarter and wiser we get... until we get TOO old...

The point is, those of us who apply ourselves do improve, it doesn't matter if we don't seem to improve because of specific badm or useless things.

Knowledge = Systematized Experience

We will continue to learn just by living, although repititious experiences probably don't teach us a lot.

Precisely...and following from this, by reducing the repetition in our lives, we can increase the amount which we learn.

Then, again, the stuff we repeat a lot, we are REALLY GOOD at!

Tsao, good point...but I think there is a difference between becoming really good at somethign and learning a lot about something.

If you repeat the EXACT same task, you would become very quick at doing it...if it was a physical task, your body's reflexes would become an expert at the motions...and I think our minds can become experts at performing the same motions as well.

But by doing the same task over again, I don't think we are actually LEARNING anything...just becoming more efficient at that task. In order for us to learn, there must be differences that come up. In real life, situations are never exactly the same...so it is these small situational differences that we actually learn from, I think.

But the human mind can learn more than the simple differences that occur in a routine. If we purposefully take classes where we are exposed to a great wealth of information, or purposefully take a different route to work each day, purposefully try a new method of doing somethign after mastering the old method...we are bound to learn faster.

I don't know why we're here, but I don't think it is to learn. If so, why do so many people forego learning more than the basics?

Some die before they have a chance to learn anything, some cannot learn and must rely on others, some learn nothing more than what they need in order to survive, some choose only to "learn" what fits in with their beliefs, some enjoy learning as much as they can, and a very few make the effort to seek out truth and discover new knowledge.

When our neural connections wither or decay, our hard-earned knowledge simply disappears - unless we wrote it down or transmitted it to others. Does anyone honestly believe that when people with Alzheimer's or brain damage die, they magically regain everything that they lost?

It may be that our purpose here is to add to the collective knowledge of mankind so that the species may progress toward some unknown goal. It is more likely that there is no purpose at all, so we would be better off living in whatever way gives us the most happiness and satisfaction (with the caveat that we may not cause unnecessary pain to others) without worrying about why. It would be a shame to live the life of an ascetic, only to discover that our spirits were endowed with bodies just so that we could experience the full range of human pleasures.

Live and Learn
The haunting, thought-provoking questions:

Why am I here?
Why do I exist?
Of all the people in this world, why was I born?
Why am I me?
What is my purpose?

I don't think we are here simply to learn, but to experience all the things a mortal life has to offer.

I envision souls living for eternity in blissful heaven. But, a few hundred thousand years of never-changing, constant bliss might get kind of stagnating. What is eternal life? What would it be like?

"Hi soul #144,000, I've been blissfully happy living here in the shining light of heaven forever and ever--how about you?"

"Me too."

"Okay, how nice," I respond as I twiddle soulful thumbs for another hundred thousand years.

Perhaps we are born into mortal lives on earth so we can break up the monotony of eternal life in our soul forms. Who really knows for sure?

Near Death Experience
Many, many years ago--when my mother was suffering from end-stage COPD--she nearly died because her lungs were failing. Based upon her test results, she should have died. My brothers and sisters and I were called and urgently told to travel to her hospital death bed so we could have an opportunity to say good-bye before it was too late.

I was in the middle of my law school semester finals. I had to make arrangements to postpone my remaining finals and then make the 400 mile trip. My older sister and younger brother had to travel from distant states. My younger sister and youngest brother lived closer and made it more quickly than I did.

When we all finally arrived, mom's condition mysteriously improved. My mom, not a religious woman at all, informed us that she met with the council. She emphatically told the council that she wasn't ready to leave this mortal life because she wanted an opportunity to see all of her children before she died. The members of the council tried to dissuade her. They told her, if she didn't come at that point, she would end up suffering nearly three more years before she would die. Mom told the council that didn't matter because it was very important for her to see all of her kids again.

When mom told us about her meeting with the "council," I chalked it up as a delusion she had due to lack of oxygen to the brain.

But, she lasted nearly three more years--just like the "council" allegedly said she would....

Hmmmm.

You would think that this woman, who persuaded the "heavenly" soul council to allow her to come back to earth to live nearly three more suffering years, would have wanted to come back to make amends and set things right with her children before her eventual death.

Not so.

The first thing she said to my older sister and younger brother was, "You're not getting anything--all my property goes to the youngest." (Okay mom, we didn't come to see you in hopes we would get anything--didn't know you had anything. LOL)

To me, she said, "See! I told you I was sick!"

I often times wondered, what did my mother learn from this life?

So, I have to stick by my original assessment. We are not necessarily here to "learn" because, for some people, that would be an exercise in futility. I believe we are here to experience LIFE--the good and the bad.

Debra, Welcome to A2K. That was an interesting anecdote about your mother. Sounds as though she was her own person. I had a similar experience with my mom. She was staying with us for a bit as a reprieve from her home in the country. I heard her make a strange noise in the night, and went to her room to check on her. She told me in a rather pragmatic way, that death had tried to pull her from the bed, and she had told the entity very succinctly, "I'm not ready yet." When she lost her independence, and had to stay with my oldest sister, I think she was "ready". Frankly, my mother never talked to me about what she had learned in her 93 years on this earth as she was a very tacit woman. but if learning can be equated with coping, I would say that hers was a silent testimony.

Learning takes place whether we are aware of it or not, and there are times when we choose to learn, and times when we choose NOT to learn.

For example:
Most of us probably have already learned that killing is bad, for example. Yet, we still get to keep seeing it day after day. A guy gets beheaded. What are we really supposed to learn from that? That this is a bad thing? What is it that I am supposed to learn from seeing this kind of thing repeatedly, for years? I already feel I know that killing is bad. I've learned it. Yet I will continue to see it while I am here. What is there to learn from that?



let start off with the guy being beheaded, what can you learn from that?
how good we have it here, in a perfect wold seeing someone be beheaded should cause outrage you should stand up, if the whole world, or if thousands of people actually got off their butts instead of sitting their watching it on t.v. and did something these sort of things can be preventable. so what do we learn about somebody that is beheaded, that we are cowards, shumcks that have it too comfortable in life that don't care to do anything why? well for excuses like nobody will stand up with us, cuz lets face it who want to leave ones comfortable environment to deal with possible threats and even death.? it like that age old ques. why do people starve, why are people born with deformities. my theory is that it is because human beings are inheritantly evil, selfish , coward, anything that goes wrong in our world we immediately get down on ourselves, depressed, esp. here in america where nothing can go wrong, wher eif you 're depressed it's only cuz you want to be, so we need these reiminders, the people in africa starving, people being murdered to remind us everyday that life isn't as bad as it could be, it is our fault for being so evil that this occurs, it is the best ans. i have come up with, what do you think?