Surface Knowledge & Going Deeper

 Reading a Reddit post about the Rosetta Stone today reminded me to never stop learning. The Stone is one of those things that we hear about all the time without a lot of us really knowing what it is or why it's important. Surface knowledge.

We live in the age of the internet, being "connected" and having access to so much information that we don't absorb details. Surface knowledge.

How many of us are fortunate enough to have a good education? How many of us who have access take full advantage of a good (or even decent) education? 

I honestly believe that many of us didn't realize the importance (and good fortune) of having that access. I don't think that I did. For me, getting just through school was the thing. I was a nervous and shy student. My family, being military, moved around a lot. I never spent more than a year or two at any one school. I'd start at a school and have to get through the anxiety of being the "new kid". By the time I stopped feeling so lost and out of place, it was on to a new school. I believe my older sister felt the same. My brothers, who are more confident and outgoing, all did really well. They are all very "book smart". They really enjoyed their school years and have fond memories about every set of teachers and students they interacted with.

Now that I am much older, I still have the social anxiety and awkwardness of my youth. But now I have the internet. I have access to information of all sorts literally at the fingertips on my keyboard. Not learning about stuff in this society means I am mostly dumb on purpose. Ain't that a shame?

Before I got sick, I was too busy working and enjoying being healthy to take full advantage of all this free knowledge. Now, I have more time but my brain works at half-power. Still, I just cannot get enough of learning. I'm not great at retaining what I learn, but I still get to explore.

When I saw the post about the Rosetta Stone, I did some Googling and - wow.

For all of you out there with a healthy body, mind, and brain, I urge you to take advantage. If you even have 1 hour - even just half an hour - of time that you can set aside for it, go deeper. Please. 

Today, I spent about 40 minutes looking up information about the Rosetta Stone. While I was at it, I wandered down a few rabbit holes and picked up some information about language and culture in general. I will talk more about cultural literacy in just a moment and you will see why I think it's so important.

You can start by picking a book that you've always heard about but never got around to reading. You don't even have to read the book if you don't have time. You can look up notes about it or find a cheat sheet for it. I can't tell you how many lists there are of "Books Everyone Should Read...". Good Reads has a "General Knowledge Books" list.

Years and years ago, I read Cultural Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know (by  E.D. Hirsch Jr.). That was the first time I started thinking about how I had shorted my own education post-school. Even though I'd had challenges during my school years, there was nothing really stopping me from going further and deeper afterward. I was just too busy working and being young and cute.

Coming up on that Reddit post and then writing this blog post has encouraged me to get another copy of Hirsch's book. I highly recommend it to anyone who agrees with me about life-long learning. Just because we are no longer in school - or see ourselves as "brainy", there is no reason at all not to continue learning. Maybe we wouldn't be in such an awful mess as a nation right now if we... Never mind. That's a whole other blog post!

I guess the main thing I want to get across is that we let things keep us from learning and growing. Shame is a big obstacle. I was always horrible with math but once I had to use math skills in a job that I loved, I got so much better. (Sadly, those skills were the first to go when I got sarcoidosis). What I have learned since my brain decided to be funky is that there should be no shame in going back to the basics to learn anything. My sister bought me a math book for children when I was first laid up in bed. I had nothing else to do so...  These days, when I am curious about something, I will start with the basics - looking for books written "for beginners" or for children. No shame, people. 

These days, with so much information available to so many, there is no excuse not to at least attempt to learn and grow. Barring health and developmental problems, we are only as dumb as we choose to be.

By the way, here is the Amazon author page for Hirsch. I plan to take a look and see what else he's written.

Peace

--Free

Ignorance and Distraction

Does it ever occur to anyone else that we live in a society that works very hard at distracting us from anything important?

For the first time in a long time I found myself flipping through TV channels for hours. I myself don't own a TV set. I watch a few shows via Netflix and Hulu; I get my news and other information from certain online sites and podcasts. Yesterday, the weather was cool and gloomy while I did some emergency babysitting. The kid entertains himself with some of the three millions toys he has. I entertained myself with Satellite TV. It would have been horrible except for the observations I made.

When I ranted the other day about the different food shows, I didn't mention that I rarely watch them anymore. These days, the only televisions shows that I'm ashamed to admit watching are from Bravo's "Real Housewives" franchise. (I can't even believe I admitted that in print.)

Most of the very popular shows on television are made to numb our brains to any important social issues. Unless grown women acting like "tweens" is an important social issue.  We even like to be entertained while we catch up on news, which is why I we love Jon Stewart and Fox News. And why does it seem that there are so many people emulating the behavior of out-of-control celebrities? When's the last time you saw a kid voicing their goals to be the next Jon Stewart or Rachel Maddow? Being smart doesn't get as much attention as being drugged out or good at twerking.

When I was in my late twenties, my father gave me the book "Cultural Literacy" by E.D. Hirsch, Jr. My father was big on education and he believed that learning was a lifelong pursuit. I was young and very distracted by all things pretty, shiny, new and fun. I figured I'd made it out of high school and into a good job. My father figured I was a little bit ignorant in my complacency. He was right. Let me tell you something: ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is dangerous.

Not many years before he died, my father and I had one of our long and interesting talks. One of the things he told me then was that he wished ignorance was more embarrassing than it was. He said that when he was younger, it was an honor to receive as much education and knowledge as one could. He had to join the military to get his education. Outside the formal classrooms, he was always curious about the Why, How and What of almost everything.

I remember that my father was very strict about my siblings and I spent our free time. We rarely watched television because the TV set was hardly ever turned on. My parents watched the news and the late shows. I know that I watched shows like "The Brady Bunch" and I have memories of shows like "H.R. Pufnstuf". If I close my eyes now and try to remember the living rooms of our homes, I can't picture a TV set being powered on. I can promise you that the living room was the only place for TV sets we owned.

Since I've been "grown", there are lots of times when I've vaguely wondered about life without all the televisions, computers and cell phones in family homes. Apparently, I get amnesia about the years previous to the last twenty. If I gave myself just a good ten minutes to think about it, I could tell you about that life.

Not too many years ago, people had to really go out of their way to find an "escape" or distraction from important things. Now, we have to work hard just to escape all the distractions.

If I had real guts, I'd give myself some challenges throughout my life:

• Go for a week using my cellphone only for calls - no games; no messaging or emailing; no pretending to check my phone just to avoid making eye contact with other human beings.
• Going computer-free for a few days. Of course, I'd have to buy printed newspapers and books. I don't even want to think about this challenge if I have to be honest and classify my cellphone a "computer", which it is...
• No TV of any kind for a month. "No TV" would mean no Netflix or Hulu or whatever.
• To name and identify every major member of the current presidential administration. 
• Study up enough to be conversationally comfortable on the subjects of law, medicine and literature of the last 15 years. Watching "Matlock", "House", "Grey's Anatomy" wouldn't be allowed as study materials. (Did I just reference "Matlock"? ~head-slap~)
• For one year, actually write (and mail via the Postal Service) all birthday, anniversary, and other cards that I usually just get online and send via email. 
• To learn as much about my neighborhood and neighbors as I know about people who live halfway around the world from me.

You see what I mean? We keep so busy just keeping up with the latest thing to "manage" our lives that we've lost control of managing our lives without those things. We have so much useless (though entertaining) garbage thrown at us that our brains have no room for important or useful information.

I don't know about everyone else, but I think I need a brain detox. I need to clean out some of this crap that clutters my mind so that I can regain some of my cultural literacy. Too many of us have a PhD in Kardashian while we couldn't pass a high school test on the timeline of any U.S. military action of the last decade.

Ignorance and distraction. We went looking for escape and ended up getting lost.

By the way, if you are interested, you can test yourself. (Don't ask me about my scores. I'm not telling!)

Peace

--Free