Learning..Higher Learning vs Ignorance...Higher Ignorance

Terry

By the time of our adulthood we have a certain amount of learning "capital" in our memory bank account.

Let's take a look at what it consists of and ask a few important questions.

What we "know" as an adult consists of the following:

1.What we have absorbed: (Passive acquisitions as a child. Folk wisdom. Opinions of family, society and friends. Prejudices.Propaganda.)

2.What we have been instructed to learn: (Family teaching. School didactives. Memorization.)

3.What we endeavored to teach ourselves consciously: (Research, investigative inquiry, decision-based choices.)

If there is a one on one match between reality (fact based data) and our opinion of reality (our world view diluted by misinformation mixed with fact) it might well be considered a miracle!

Consider this.

Humanity is emotional and has a vested interest in the outcome of its beliefs about life. People want their lives to turn out well. Yet, many setbacks threaten that outcome. With limited information mixed with misinformation, humanity often fills in the blanks with HOPE, FAITH, WISHFUL THINKING and SUPERSTITION.

So, there could be said to be a scale of "knowing" from 0 to 100. Abject ignorance to...........................Absolute fact-based knowledge.

We can laugh at that last phrase: absolute fact-based knowledge. Nobody has it!

Each of us is somewhere on that highway from Abject ignorance to a stall somewhere on the road to really "knowing"!

The CLUE to where we are is the condition our life is in at any given point.

If life is working for us we are applying what we know successfully to the real world.

There is an odd word for this: PHRONESIS.

The ability to apply practical knowledge to everyday life is more important than all the hope, faith, wishful thinking and superstition in the world.

DO YOU have it? Does your life PROVE you have it? Or, are you stalled on the side of life's road with your HOPE up on a jack with the wheels off?

Whatever importance you place on your superstitions, your hopes, your wishes, dreams and religion IS A DIRECT INDICATION of how badly misplaced your toolset of KNOWLEDGE is in a real world!

In other words, if your life is all about LIVING rather than hoping you are on the right track.

But, if your life is all about what you HOPE will happen, what you BELIEVE will bail you out and what you pray for; you are out of touch with practical everyday wisdom.

This I will call Terry's Law of Phronesis: The more you hope the more disabled you are right now in dealing with life.

Why can I confidently state this?

Because the ONLY life you have is the one that is NOW! It will ever be this way. A series of NOW.......NOW.......NOW......and not the warm and fuzzy hope for a lottery win at the end: PAYOFF!

If you put 10% of every dollar you earn into an investment there is growth.

Why not invest 10% of EVERYTHING YOU LEARN into an investment for reality?

Each and every time you find yourself wallowing in thoughts about God, Spirituality, the Bible, Heaven or the afterlife---STOP---and invest at least 10% of the the same amount of time LEARNING SOMETHING PRACTICAL AND APPLYING IT TODAY!

What do you think?

Meeting Junkie No More

I think overall, you have a point. Where I differ is here:

wallowing in thoughts about God

I never wallow in thoughts about God...I revel in them.

Terry

I think overall, you have a point. Where I differ is here:

wallowing in thoughts about God

I never wallow in thoughts about God...I revel in them.

Monopoly has a Get Out of Jail Free card.

GOD is our version of that card.

It is nice to have it tucked away against disaster. But, really now--you may as well revel in the juicy flavor of a bowl of waxed fruit as to invest hope in the mental construct of an invisible superpower with a vested interest in pulling your bacon out of the fire!

Little children clutch their teddy bears and dollys and talk to them. Children even invest considerable feeling in these inert constructs onto which they project a wonderful fantasy-reality. But, our conception of GOD is much the same as that.

We "feel" deeply. We experience profound awe. Our thoughts of GOD are the trigger for those emotions. Our hope.

What we truly, madly and deeply NEED to be there we shall place "there" no matter how little reality is connected!

Then, like the teddy bear or the favorite dolly we begin to react to our projection.

We "revel" in our "communication" with that.........thing.......called..........god.

Meeting Junkie No More

OK - Terry, you lost me at GET OUT OF JAIL...what jail are you talking about? Overall, I have a very successful life (as per the current connotations of 'success')- ALL IS GOOD; in fact for the most part, I feel my particular slice of the pie is disproportionate to the probably 3/4s of earth's population who don't have enough to even feed themselves or their children this very night. So, I try to imagine how I can do more to assist those who have less.

By the way, what's wrong with teddy bears? You know ambulances usually carry them, and not just for the kids. They work wonders...

I admire your eloquence...which I sorely lack. That and I can't post long posts while at work. But anyhow, I did say you had a point!

Meeting Junkie No More

You know I have been thinking about this very thing lately; how we are all dealt a set of cards when we enter this journey called LIFE - why we get dealt the particular cards we do, I cannot say. So some of us here have a worse time of it than others. 'Whatever gets you through the night' as they used to say. I thank 'God' everyday that I can even contemplate his/her/its existence; sometimes I am tempted to blame him, but seeing my particular relevance in the giant scheme of things, I tend not to want to blame him/her/it/. There are probably a trillion factors I am not considering; I have supreme confidence that at some point, all will be revealed. In the meantime, I have HOPE for that day; nothing to do with saving anybody's bacon. If at the end of the day, THIS IS IT!, well, so be it but in the meantime I sincerely hope I never lose HOPE.

The Finger

Surely you need to prove what reality is and that it is the same for all of us. Isn't your reality just in your head? If your reality is in your head then your thoughts of God are just as real as anything else maybe more real unless you can be sure you are the creator of your thought process and it wasn't given to you by a higher power. So to believe in God is the start of all reason. No?

Meeting Junkie No More

The Finger - YES!

THE GLADIATOR

Terry You have not been keeping such a close eye on the class here recently. This board has become a playground for people living a life of of delusion. You are the slap on the back of the head that the teachers used to give when I was day dreaming. The kick up the ass that we all need, even if we don't yet know.

When I'm not with you I lose my mind
Give me a sign
Hit me baby one more time
How was I supposed to know
That something wasn't right here
Hit Me Baby One More Time!

Meeting Junkie No More

The Gladiator: Why is a life of delusion a playground? Doesn't compute.

If you put 10% of every dollar you earn into an investment there is growth.

Well, there may be. Then again, at current interest rates, that would be negative growth. Got that? NEGATIVE GROWTH.

Someday all you skeptics will get the real kick up the ass and the slap on the back of the head that you need, which I trust will do y'all a world of GOOD!

Satanus

True, terry. On the negative side, the other end of 'higher ignorance' spectrum, but still a debillitating quality, there is fear. Fear also causes a lot of people to be less, do less, have less than they could, if they were able to procede in the now w a balanced view. As someone said, FEAR is the root of all evil.

S

Learning..Higher Learning vs Ignorance...Higher Ignorance

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