I’m beginning to believe that before we can really learn anything, we have to unlearn everything we ‘know’ related to that thing. Not necessarily because of a limited capacity to learn, but because a lot of what we ‘know’ can be unhelpful, misleading, or outright wrong.
Maybe this is a controversial statement, that much of what we ‘know’ is wrong. But it seems obvious to me at this point that we have been taught a whole bunch of stuff that we have never thought about.
Examples I use in this episode include religion, politics, and music. There are tons more. An example of being wrong about what you know is your religions affiliation. Are you a Christian? How? Why? Did you make that decision? When? Did you consider all of the other religions equally and then DECIDE you were Christian? Hopefully, you see what I’m saying.
Some things we just never THINK about, but we LEARNED them. From our parents. Our siblings. Our extended family. Our school teachers. Our bosses. All of the people around us teach us things every day. Some of this we are aware of.
Probably we learn things before we can really comprehend them. No ones fault, it’s just a thing that happens. Then it’s just a matter of whether or not we ever realize this and, if we do, whether we then try to decide for ourselves.
Oh yeah, unlearning. So before we can really LEARN anything, we have to unlearn the stuff we learned when we weren’t paying attention. So, if that’s true – did we really LEARN it in the first place? I don’t know about that, but I think we still have to unlearn first.
Full podcast and video episodes this Friday on KEW.