stuff you learn is not all created equal

learning what i dont know

 

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“Some of it, you really want to unlearn.”

 

=

Keith Richards

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So.

 

Who would have thought Keith Richards would say something so smart.

 

And simply too.

 

Not everything you learn is valuable.

 

Whew.

 

I am a learning guy. A curiosity guy. A guy who believes you can never learn too much. A guy who believes you never stop learning.

 

In general … I believe learning is valuable thought, characteristic and effort.

 

But unlearning?

 

Unlearning is a discussion not often had <and, yet, should be>.

 

 

Learning shit is not just about accumulation.

snowflake nose

 

And that may actually be a bigger thought than anything else I babble about.

 

Far too often we seem to put value on accumulating knowledge.

Number of education degrees. Number of books read. Number of things experienced.

 

All things “addition” to what goes into your pea like brain.

 

Rarely do we discuss the subtraction. As in the things you shed as you learn something new.

And maybe we should.

 

And this is not about ‘we only have so much room in our brains to store up information’ but rather ‘what I have learned has made me change my mind, my opinion, my attitude, my belief, my whatever.”

 

To be clear.

 

Truth, in Life, can be unequivocal.

Truth, in one’s mind, is contextual.

 

What I just wrote may be aggravating if not uncomfortable to people. I think most people like to accumulate learning as a sign of personal growth <and public acknowledgement of ‘personal enhancement’>.

 

But accumulators can be blowhards.

And accumulators can be pretentious.

And accumulators can become fanatical.

And accumulators can become a menace to real learning.

 

“I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. ignorance and closed mind

It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress.

=

Daniel J. Boorstin

 

Me?

 

I believe learning is addition thru subtraction. I tend to believe great learning is about … well … gaining 2 things and losing one thing. I believe we should constantly learning … which creates some constant unlearning.

 

Sound crazy?

 

Maybe.

 

Look.

 

Keith Richard certainly shouldn’t be anyone’s role model for learning or accumulating knowledge.

But that doesn’t mean he can’t say something smart and insightful on occasion.

 

Being enlightened is not only about accumulating learning. In fact it is maybe more about unlearning shit as you learn new shit.

 

Unlearning is about shedding some guard rails and boundaries and ‘what I knows.’

Unlearning is recognizing that not all things learned are created equal … and that some things actually lose value as you gain other things.

 

Maybe the reason we don’t talk about unlearning as much as we should is because that means we also have to talk about … doh … “I changed my mind.”

Or the fact that something I learned yesterday … of which I placed a lot of value … has a significantly lesser value <in truth> today because I just learned something new.

 

Well.

 

That is a different post for a different day.

 

Today?

 

Think about learning and adding and subtracting.lazy thinking etc

Think about constantly learning as much as you can and unlearning some things along the way.

 

Think about the fact learning is not just about accumulation. It is also about ‘decluttering.’

 

And.

Think about the fact there are some things you really want to unlearn.

 

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Written by Bruce