Posted on 05/18/2007 5:52:23 PM PDT by humint
True pleasure comes from finding things out. Acquiring knowledge is like a zero dollar investment that can pay its owner dividends for the rest of their life. If you’ve ever experienced the feeling of breaking new intellectual ground, you know it’s transcendent. Discovery is a form of renewal, more revolutionary than any war or politics. Having experienced epic revelation is like being born again; renewed through cognitive baptism. When you know you’ve learned something [so extremely] important, it consumes you, that’s Shangri-La! Learning has an extremely spiritual dimension to it which makes it deserving of its own religion. Learnianity, for example; with a charismatic prophet and a clear definition of God, would likely hold its own as a new religion among the family of existing monotheistic religions. To be sure; Judaism, Christianity and Islam each have their own selective approaches to learning that leave many curious minds unsatisfied.
True pleasure comes from finding things out. Acquiring knowledge is like a zero dollar investment that can pay its owner dividends for the rest of their life. If you’ve ever experienced the feeling of breaking new intellectual ground, you know it’s transcendent. Discovery is a form of renewal, more revolutionary than any war or politics. Having experienced epic revelation is like being born again; renewed through cognitive baptism. When you know you’ve learned something [so extremely] important, it consumes you, that’s Shangri-La! Learning has an extremely spiritual dimension to it which makes it deserving of its own religion. Learnianity, for example; with a charismatic prophet and a clear definition of God, would likely hold its own as a new religion among the family of existing monotheistic religions. To be sure; Judaism, Christianity and Islam each have their own selective approaches to learning that leave many curious minds unsatisfied.
Religion aside, It takes a fool to equate ignorance with bliss. In the context of the familiar cliché, “ignorance is bliss”, willful ignorance is little more than an illusionary shield used to protect a fragile mind from destabilizing information and ideas. Whenever I hear it, I wonder why anyone would want to protect themselves from information. Presumably, information perceived to be depressing or incongruent with an individual’s experience can be unsettling. The reality is, information and ideas are not always helpful or positive, and as a result learning can, at times, be a painful and regressive experience. Out of abject fear, individuals self censor and make excuses for important subjects outside the scope of their understanding. Ignorance has its place. It is important if only because ignorance has a role in our everyday lives. Specifically; secrets are a passive form of managing ignorance, while lies actively propagate ignorance.
In an environment rife with ignorance, a genius formulates tests. In nature, these tests manifest in the form physical experiments. Archimedes, Galileo, Copernicus, Newton and Franklin were notorious for their brilliant experiments. In society, tests could be refutations of presumed secrets or unverifiable truths. Thomas Jefferson and his political rival Alexander Hamilton exposed secrets, ignorance and lies in early America. The truths they revealed about consensual government have benefited all mankind. Likewise, the pursuit of universal truths might be a social alternative to hidden or socially implicit truths. In religion and spirituality, John Locke interpreted freedom of thought and expression as natural rights for all inhabitants of God’s Kingdom. In the spiritual realm tests are equally if not more, important than physical or social tests. Maintaining faith in one’s beliefs through hardship is the standard quiz. Information post mortem, is inherently unknowable by the mortal mind. In God’s Kingdom, it would appear faith pushes the stakes higher than any other.
If geniuses simply formulate great experiments in their respective environs, what prevents every one of us from becoming geniuses? The answer, as I understand it, is counter intuitive. Society compartmentalizes information and eventually appoints subject matter experts to each compartment. Instead of delivering new revelations, experts tend to perform guard duty over the status quo. In many cases, Instead of exploring the field, experts are expected to be human reference material. It shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone that a contemporary University is an extraordinarily effective means of pacifying society. Rewards are granted by familiar and systematic procedure. Grades and degrees are earned respectively. Failure, while possible, is not probable. Given the number of opportunities a university student is given to succeed, success in life appears preordained. Unfortunately, real discovery which leads to genius is far less predictable. A contemporary University, instead of the Learnianity church it could be, serves its host community as a socialist network of interested parties.
While there are many drawbacks to universities as institutions of intellectual discovery, universities have a gravity that pulls true genius into their orbit. The fact is; no bureaucracy albeit a university, government or organized religion can fully contain what is not yet known. Spiritual faith in particular, requires knowledge of scripture. The best any bureaucracy can do is to facilitate discovery and protect discoverers. The spirituality inherent in discovery deserves mankind’s highest recognition; however Learnianity should not become a formal religion as this essay proposed earlier. While discovery brings humanity closer to God, it’s a fool’s game to restrict discovery to a bureaucracy. The natural universe is God’s Cathedral and it serves humanity as the only legitimate chapel of Learnianity. Every genius is a prophet and the recordings of their experiments represent scripture.
In conclusion; look to the future, experiment and learn from each cognitive adventure. Genius is bliss!
Hint: Go read some Owen Barfield.
Cheers!
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