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Sat 15 Oct, 2005 07:10 am
I am a retired engineer with a good bit of formal education and twenty five years of self-learning. I began the self-learning experience while in my mid-forties. I had no goal in mind; I was just following my intellectual curiosity in whatever direction it led me. This hobby, self-learning, has become very important to me. I have bounced around from one hobby to another but have always been enticed back by the excitement I have discovered in this learning process. Carl Sagan is quoted as having written; "Understanding is a kind of ecstasy."
I label myself as a September Scholar because I began the process at mid-life and because my quest is disinterested knowledge.
Disinterested knowledge is an intrinsic value. Disinterested knowledge is not a means but an end. It is knowledge I seek because I desire to know it. I mean the term ?'disinterested knowledge' as similar to ?'pure research', as compared to ?'applied research'. Pure research seeks to know truth unconnected to any specific application.
I think of the self-learner of disinterested knowledge as driven by curiosity and imagination to understand. The September Scholar seeks to ?'see' and then to ?'grasp' through intellection directed at understanding the self as well as the world. The knowledge and understanding that is sought by the September Scholar are determined only by personal motivations. It is noteworthy that disinterested knowledge is knowledge I am driven to acquire because it is of dominating interest to me. Because I have such an interest in this disinterested knowledge my adrenaline level rises in anticipation of my voyage of discovery.
We often use the metaphors of ?'seeing' for knowing and ?'grasping' for understanding. I think these metaphors significantly illuminate the difference between these two forms of intellection. We see much but grasp little. It takes great force to impel us to go beyond seeing to the point of grasping. The force driving us is the strong personal involvement we have to the question that guides our quest. I think it is this inclusion of self-fulfillment, as associated with the question, that makes self-learning so important.
The self-learner of disinterested knowledge is engaged in a single-minded search for understanding. The goal, grasping the ?'truth', is generally of insignificant consequence in comparison to the single-minded search. Others must judge the value of the ?'truth' discovered by the autodidactic. I suggest that truth, should it be of any universal value, will evolve in a biological fashion when a significant number of pursuers of disinterested knowledge engage in dialogue.
The experience the September Scholar seeks is solely determined by his or her own internal ?'voice'. The curiosity and imagination of the learner drive the voice. Our formal education system has left most of us with little appreciation or understanding of our own curiosity and imagination. That characteristic so obvious in children has been subdued and, I suspect, stilled to the point that each one attempting this journey of discovery must make a conscious effort to reinvigorate the ?'inner voice'. We must search to ?'hear' the voice, which is perhaps only a whisper that has become a stranger in our life. But, let me assure you, once freed again that voice will drive the self-learner with the excitement and satisfaction commensurate to any other experience.
I seek disinterested knowledge because I wish to understand. The object of understanding is determined by questions guiding my quest. These guiding questions originate as a result of the force inherent in my curiosity and imagination.
The self-learner must develop the ability to create the questions. We have never before given any thought to questions but now, if we wish to take a journey of discover, we must learn the most important aspect of any educational process. We must create questions that will guide our travels. We can no longer depend upon education by coercion to guide us; we have the opportunity to develop education driven by the "ecstasy to understand".
I suspect that most parents attempt to motivate their children to make good grades in school so that their child might go to college and live the American Dream. The college degree is a ticket to the land of dreams (where one produces and consumes more than his or her neighbor). I do not wish to praise or to bury this dream. I think there is great value resulting from this mode of education but it is earned at great sacrifice.
The point I wish to pivot on is the fact that higher education in America has become a commodity. To commodify means: to turn (as an intrinsic value or a work of art) into a commodity (an economic good). I would say that the intrinsic value of education is wisdom. It is wisdom that is sacrificed by our comodified higher education system. Our universities produce individuals capable of developing a great technology but lacking the wisdom to manage the world modified by that technology.
I think that there is much to applaud in our higher educational system. It produces graduates that have proven their ability to significantly guide our society into a cornucopia of material wealth. Perhaps, however, like the Midas touch, this gold has a down side. The down side is a paucity of collective wisdom within the society. I consider wisdom to be a sensitive synthesis of broad knowledge, deep understanding and solid judgement. I suggest that if one individual in a thousand, who has passed the age of forty would become a September Scholar, we could significantly replace the wisdom lost by our comodified higher education.
In the United States our culture compels us to have a purpose. Our culture defines that purpose to be ?'maximize production and consumption'. As a result all good children feel compelled to become a successful producer and consumer. All good children, both consciously and unconsciously, organize their life for this journey.
At mid-life many citizens begin to analyze their life and often discover a need to reconstitute their purpose. I suggest, for your consideration, that at mid-life you consider becoming a self-learner. Some of the advantageous of this self-learning experience is that it is virtually free, undeterred by age, not a zero sum game, surprising, exciting and makes each discovery a new eureka moment. The self-learning experience I am suggesting is similar to any other hobby one might undertake; interest will ebb and flow. In my case this was a hobby that I continually came back to after other hobbies lost appeal.
I suggest for your consideration that if we "Get a life?-Get an intellectual life" we very well might gain substantially in self-worth and, perhaps, community-worth. As a popular saying goes ?'there is a season for all things'. We might consider that spring and summer are times for gathering knowledge, maximizing production and consumption, and increasing net-worth; while fall and winter are seasons for gathering understanding, creating wisdom and increasing self-worth.
I have been trying to encourage adults, who in general consider education as a matter only for young people, to give this idea of self-learning a try. It seems to be human nature to do a turtle (close the mind) when encountering a new and unorthodox idea. Generally we seem to need for an idea to face us many times before we can consider it seriously. A common method for brushing aside this idea is to think ?'I've been there and done that', i.e. ?' I have read and been a self-learner all my life'.
It is unlikely that you will encounter this unorthodox suggestion ever again. You must act on this occasion or never act. The first thing is to make a change in attitude about just what is the nature of education. Then one must face the world with a critical outlook. A number of attitude changes are required as a first step. All parents, I guess, recognize the problems inherent in attitude adjustment. We just have to focus that knowledge upon our self as the object needing an attitude adjustment rather than our child.
I am not suggesting a stroll in the park on a Sunday afternoon. I am suggesting a ?'Lewis and Clark Expedition'. I am suggesting the intellectual equivalent of crossing the Mississippi and heading West across unexplored intellectual territory with the intellectual equivalent of the Pacific Ocean as a destination.
Chuck
A lot of what cob has said seems to me like what is said in the book " Man's search for Meaning" by Victore Frankl
Phoenix
I feel like the traveler who has spent the last two years in a foreign land and that has, for the first time in those two years, met a person called Phoenix who speaks English. I have been pushing this matter for two years and this is the first time I have found a person who immediately understands what I am talking about. You evidently have an entirely different set of friends, colleges, and Internet contacts than I do.
For the first time I have that someone with whom I can discuss the more dreamy aspect of this matter. It is my belief that the US badly needs a counterpoint to the present set of policy makers controlling the nation's public policy. I suspect if the country had one hundred thousand September Scholars banded together we could gain the confidence of the people and provide a balance to the oligarchy now in control.
For such a thing to happen we must induce a great number of adults into becoming September Scholars. What is your response to that idea?
Chuck
I'm in. I agree that continued learning is a key to a long and healthy life.
Yesterday afternoon I was having a discussion about this very thing while talking with a woman in her nineties. She was describing some of the courses she has taken while subscribing to the Great Ideas series. She says she's done this for years. While she says she has no doctorate after her name, she feels she has a lot to offer because of her own self-education. (I am arranging for her to do a program on journaling for our community that she calls "The Senior Years".)
Good stuff.
In the United States we have a group of individuals I call Policy Makers because they are a group of probably less that ten thousand owners and managers of Corporate America and Institutional America who determine public policy in America. (Thomas Dye has written books about this matter.).
Policy Makers control America by paying for the campaigns of politicians and by manipulating citizens through ideological organized systems of propaganda. These policy makers organize and maintain think tanks and college professors to provide the intellectual legitimacy for their policies.
I envision a large group of scholars loosely interconnected to provide a scholarly group to counter-point the intellectual legitimacy controlled by this powerful oligarchy. The scholarly group I label September Scholars.
I'm an early spring scholar myself.I recognise everything in cob's initial post as being valid and I can assure other threaders that the feelings of excitement cob refers to are absolutely genuine.
However,as cob gets more experience he will realise that any thought of banding together to improve how we are governed is totally futile and when he does he will be an October scholar.When the imagination of children is crushed it invariably stays crushed.
I think that those of us in the fortunate position cob is in can only hint and languidly direct others and hope that they will eventually see the point.We cannot possibly organise because we inevitably lose sight of our original project when we do and that,for me at least,would be catastrophic.
Splendid post cob.
Go on your way accordingly
And know you're not alone.
Bob Dylan-I Dreamed I Saw St Augustine.
Pheonix-
Nice.
If you haven't already seen it you might be interested in the palindrome Merry Andrew brought to the attention of Trivia threaders.It is a lovely example I think of what you mean.The sheer intellectual playfulness engaged in for no reason.
Spidergal
I think I did read the Frankl book several years ago but do not remember much about it. However, I did, and I suspect ours also, find that at mid-life there develops a need to find another purpose and meaning in life beyond the job and family. At mid-life our ambition begins to wane and our children's needs begin to require less effort. At such a time if one can find a different value system that places more concentration on building self-worth rather than net-worth it would be useful.
Chuck
Piffka
I have also been very influenced by the Great Books Discussion Groups. In fact I could point to my very first encounter with one of these groups as a first awakening of intellectual curiosity.
Several years ago after two decades of self-actualized learning I began to focus my attention on the process it self. In so doing I decided that I would try to help others find this intellectual awakening that has been so important to me.
Self-learning is a lonely journey and I thought it would be nice to belong to a group of scholars like myself so that I would have someone with whom to discuss ideas and conclusions. I have had little success in finding like-minded individuals. I have been engaged in several discussion forums on the Internet but find that primarily young people who find such groups to be "verbal video games" frequent most forums. However, like here, occasionally I come across individuals capable of comprehending such matters as self-learning.
Chuck
Spendius
I speak of scholarship as being a September event only because I recognize that the first half of life is often filled with job and family leaving little time for hobbies. But I also have come to suspect that if this critical thinking does not begin shortly after schooling an individual is unlikely to ever begin. It appears to me that most people tend to place their intellect in a chest in the attic after they complete school. I think our attitude toward education, as educational institutions itself leads us to such conclusions, leads us to many unhealthy attitudes toward learning.
I suggest that people think of self-actualized learning as being a hobby and it is treated like any other hobby, it ebbs and flows in time.
I have been actively engaged in an effort to demonstrate to individuals in the first half of life that self-learning can be very satisfying. My impression so far is that schooling has not prepared most people to learn on their own. Most people have no concept of the meaning of self-actualized learning or how to go about doing it. Also such individuals are very defensive about this matter and their egos are easily bruised. I sense that most people feel a cognitive dissonance about learning.
Chuck
Phoenix
Phoenix you quickly see the problems in something that most people have great difficulty even comprehending. I suspect that most people have great difficulty understanding something so simple, as that which I propose, because our educational system has managed to inhibit the natural curiosity and imagination of our young people so that they cannot see any other means of learning.
I think that a person can be induced, guided, enlightened, into discovering their talents that lay hidden and must be discovered. I think that often a catalyst is required especially in a society in which such self-critical probing seems to be discouraged by the social norms that exist. I see this problem as the "lift yourself by your own bootstraps" problem. How does a person become a critical thinker if that person has never been a critical thinker? I suspect that often a catalyst is required.
But I do not wish to spend effort talking about a future that comes only after decades of effort required to bring to light that talent that lay dormant because it requires self-discovery by persons who have never learned how to self-discover. My speculations about a future, decades away, are not important. What I think is important is the awakening of the sense of curiosity that is required for developing a critical thinking citizen.
In 1981 I was reading a book about the Vietnam War and was perplexed about how the civil war between North and South caused such brutal behavior between family members and friends. I was perplexed and decided to study our Civil War in an effort to better understand this type of situation. One thing lead to another and one question lead to another and one book lead to another until twenty-four years later here I am.
Five years ago I came across this quote that really resonates for me: "All men, like all nations, are tested twice in the moral realm: first by what they do, then by what they make of what they do. The condition of guilt, a sense of one's own guilt, denotes a kind of second chance. Men are, as if by a kind of grace, given a chance to repay to the living that it is they find themselves owing the dead."
"Coming to Terms with Vietnam," by Peter Marin, Harpers, Dec. 1980.
Assume that you live in a very isolated community wherein all citizens were colorblind at birth and no one had any conception of what color was. Suppose you discovered by accident that when you preformed a certain group of exercises you became able to perceive color. What would you do? My situation is similar to this imagined situation.
Can I or you or anyone who understands the importance of our discovery refuse to awaken in others the understanding of what can be gained by becoming a September Scholar. What are to be gained are both of enormous benefit to the individual and to the community. If no one takes it any further than this then it is still a wondrous thing to ?'examine life', which is what such scholarship means.
Forget any practical goals I may imagine such are not important when set in parallel with what the individual and the community gain regardless of any group that may or may not develop. The important thing, I think, is not to keep our secret. It seems to me that we owe something to the dead that has made our world possible and this may be our only way of repaying that debt.
I think it is imperative that we try to awaken those citizens to the enormous importance of this reality so that those who have the means to reply do not fail to perceive color just as we have. I think many people just need a nudge to make a very important change in what they would otherwise become.
Chuck
Phoenix said
>>I do agree with heartily with one of your remarks. If a person can be introduced to the concept of pure learning early on, and embraces it, learning may then become an important value to the individual. If so, he is less likely to eschew learning at times of stress, as learning has become an important part of his very existence. <<
I agree too!! Teach your kids this, and they will carry it with them forever.
I was lucky enough to have a father who whole-heartedly supported my learning....regardless of what anyone else thought, who I was in line with, what I was interested in.
"Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he eats forever. "
Sorry, just had to jump in there.
coberst-
You are a bit of an idealist.I think it has fallen to Phoenix and myself to knock that aspect out of you at the risk of bruising your ego.This recent "discovery" of yours has got you a trifle over-excited and you seem to be on a mission.It simply has no legs.Scholarly types are hopeless politically.I have been active in both major parties in the UK and the qualities required to shift things are not those of scholars.
The major difficulty here,as I see it,is the sheer volume of ideas you are throwing out.In the above 3 posts there are so many points being made that I hardly know where to begin.
Phoenix and I seem to be in agreement that the disinterested intellectual curiosity is a personal quality which one has from a very young age.I have difficulty,as I expect Phoenix does,with the idea of it being dormant and then suddenly flowering in a retired engineer.I don't see how the genuine article can ever be dormant.It is too easy to lay the blame on the educational system or a diffused oligarchy.How can one's eyes and ears ever be dormant.It is how one uses them.If it is with a sense of awe and wonder at anything and everything you have what I would say is the capacity for scholarly thinking.Flaubert somewhere takes great pains to describe a great building in the Orient and nobody does such things better.And then an insect alights in his field of vision.He studies the insect's wing and dismisses the building as trite by comparison.Hardly even trite.Pathetic more like.And there's the seemingly insignificant scene of Emily Bronte lying on the bank of a backwater dangling a hand in the water playing with the minnows for hour after hour whilst dreaming of other things.And there's Marcel Proust dreaming his life away and so many more-oh so many more and there are plaques on the walls now where these people lived and visitors from all over the world come to stare at them and to feel a little closer to the source.Many,many thousands go to Haworth every year just to tread where Emily trod.
And Peter Marin will never inspire such love.
Such is a very brief glimpse of my idea of scholarship.Great Books Discussion Groups are anathema to this view.Just more tunnel vision.Your library is where to begin the real journey and famous names are what you want on the spines of the books you choose.Names that have stood the severe test of time.The rest is journalism and who can compare to Mailer in that field."The people" are not so in a chest as you think.
One doesn't carry out this process to better oneself.
One does it for the sheer joy of it.You are still a practical engineer and quite understandably so but now you are retired the fascinating world is your oyster and nothing in it is boring to a real scholar.
I hope I haven't rendered you "very defensive" or "bruised your ego." Good luck.
spendi.
I'm vastly amused that Spendius writes with callow disregard for the thoughts of others, yet expresses such reverence for the "severe test of time."
While in Scotland a few years ago I was interested to find that throughout the British Isles, but particularly prevalent in Scotland, were small community clubs. These "Mutual Improvement Societies," thrived in nearly every village. They were developed solely for the purpose of bettering the mind. There were evenings every week set aside for "talks" and discussion groups. I think that Coberst is imagining something similar in a "virtual" setting.
see also:
A Brief History of Thinking About Informal Education and note especially the Mechanics' Institutes.
Piffka wrote-
Quote:While in Scotland a few years ago I was interested to find that throughout the British Isles, but particularly prevalent in Scotland, were small community clubs. These "Mutual Improvement Societies," thrived in nearly every village. They were developed solely for the purpose of bettering the mind.
I think the choice of the word "solely" here is somewhat naive.I could easily think of a number of reasons why such clubs developed all of which would likely,not certainly I feel it neccessary to stress,be a candidate for the main motive force behind the initiative.Mailer once said that if you see someone looking to do you some good-run!
There is also the somewhat mute point of what "betterment of the mind" means.
The original post,and some subsequent ones,is not very complimentary to the ordinary person of the type I mix with socially and whose learning difficulties I accept with never,hardly,a murmer.There was a degree of "callous disregard",not to say inchoate elitism,in some places which I thought would benefit from some gentle teasing.
And anyway-a good discussion group needs members who can do a bit of chopping otherwise it falls quickly into that direst of all conditions;a mutual stroking society, and fades away as most of the discussion groups seemingly have done since those days Piffka looked us over.We have a discussion group in the pub every night of the week and there is no agenda.
I think I know as much about Mechanic's Institutes as anybody not professionally engaged in running them.They have evolved a considerable distance in recent years and a few of them are now fully fledged universities.
But it is nice to know that I provided some "vast" amusement.
Spendi
It appears to me that you are not acquainted with Great Books Discussion Groups. These discussion groups read and discuss what many consider to be the classics of Western thought.
Some of your other comments indicate you have not read my 'essay' to the point that you make comments that are contrary to that essay.
Chuck
) that I was afraid to take when I was being graded. I think those few years were probably some of the most fascinating in my life.
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