Irritate & Inspire
I’m a big believer in the value of maintaining a beginner’s mindset.
This concept can mean different things to different people, but to me, being a beginner means the unabashed embrace of the unknown, the frustration of things you can see but not grasp, the ability to ask questions without social penalty, and a general sense of unlimited potential.
As we learn and grow, and in some cases achieve some kind of credibility or even prestige as knowledgable, capable people, we become less inclined to say “I don’t know.”
This is a socially reinforced tendency, as to some people, admitting ignorance can be construed as an admission of low intelligence or value.
Most of this construal is in our own heads, but there are certain social structures that reinforce this concept, as well. Grading guidelines used by schools, for instance, can unintentionally reinforce this association, as can workplace hierarchies and other systems that reward a particular dimension or interpretation of capability, often to the exclusion of all other possible metrics for the same.
Being able to look out at unfamiliar terrain, though, and bask in its utter unfamiliarity, is a gift.
If we can extract ourselves from the necessity to pretend foreknowledge, and defy the assumption that admitting any knowledge-gaps will lessen us in the eyes of our peers, we thus liberate ourselves to explore, experiment, and endeavor. We retain (or regain) our natural inclination to question, to challenge, to do the “wrong” thing in the pursuit of previously unnoticed or unacknowledged facets of understanding.
Spending less of our time accumulating the trappings of socially defined expertise frees us up to pursue true comprehension and proficiency.
Re-learning how to perceive unknowns as opportunities rather than threats can provide us with jolts of enthusiasm, and grant us access to veins of curiosity that otherwise lay dormant or underutilized.
Asking “why?”, and then asking “why?” again, over and over and over, until the foundations of the foundations of the foundations all come into view and inject context to whatever it is you’re exploring, is likewise vital to this process.
It would be imprudent to model all of our behaviors, in all aspects of life, after children.
But when it comes to digging for the sake of digging, and scrambling to fill in the many blank spaces in our understanding of things, we could do far worse than to reacquire some of our adolescent, unbridled curiosity and accompanying nonacceptance of self-imposed intellectual boundaries.
An appreciation for what we don’t yet know is often paired with a sense of frustration in proportion with that ignorance. Such vexation is almost always a sign that we’re pushing up against the boundaries of our current understanding.
By pushing a little harder, a little more intentionally and in the right places, we can expand those horizons, increasing the size and capacity of our knowledge-kingdoms, unveiling new territory, new boundaries, and exciting new irritants that we can challenge and inspire ourselves with next.
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Projects
Brain Lenses:The Half-Life of Knowledge (podcast episode) & Anticipation (essay)
Let’s Know Things:Protein Folding Problem (podcast episode)
Yesterday’s Newsletter:Moderna, Climate Goals, McConnell (curated news summary)
Curiosity Weekly:December 15, 2020 (curated list of interesting things)
Other: I’m continuing to work on my geography fundamentals, and can now fill in blank maps of North, South, and Central Americas, Africa, and Europe. Next is Asia, then I’ll start working on some island-heavy regions.
I’ve also been rediscovering my love for charcoal and graphite drawing, am filling in some significant gaps in my Javascript knowledge (if you choose to learn JS, do yourself a favor and start with a more contemporary collection of resources than I did; a lot changed, post-2015), and am working my way through an old math textbook, to brush back up on the basics.
Interesting & Useful
A wrap-up of (wonderful, beautiful, at times devastating) photo collections for the year, from various publications:
A Year Like No Other(2020 in photos, by the New York Times)
The Most Striking Images of 2020(from the BBC)
A Year Like No Other(from The Times in the UK)
A World in Distress(2020 photos from the AP)
Top 100 Photos from 2020(via TIME)
Wrapping Up the Year(2020 in photos from The Atlantic)
Pictures of the Year, 2020(from Reuters)
Year in Pictures(from National Geographic)
Best Photos of 2020(from My Modern Met)
The Best 2020 Photos from Around the World(via Al Jazeera)
2020 Souvenirs, in Pictures(from The Guardian)
The Year in Pictures(from CNN)
Outro
It’s amazing how much one can learn and then forget over the years.
This is perhaps especially true when the initial learning took place in the context of “learning for the grade,” rather than “learning to actually know, understand, and evolve one’s contextual understanding and worldview.” I got good grades throughout my formal educational experience, but I feel like I’ve actually learned and retained substantially more in my post-school years.
This is possibly the consequence of different aims and metrics of success, it’s maybe because I can now learn in ways that make sense to me, rather than having to adhere fairly rigidly to a template that’s meant to apply to as wide a population as possible, and it’s maybe because the available resources and means of accessing those resources have gotten better (for my preferred methods of learning, at least) in recent years.
I was fortunate to have some really wonderful, enthusiastic, and skilled teachers throughout my academic career—some of whom managed to get knowledge to stick to my brain, despite the myriad other priorities and distractions against which they were competing for my time and attention.
That said, my self-guided, post-formal-education experience with learning has been a lot more fun and intellectually satisfying. I’m constantly coming across information that changes my understanding of a particular event, body of knowledge, or the world as a whole, and can’t help but think, “Why didn’t they teach me this, in this way, back then? I would have gobbled it up!”
Then again, there’s a very decent chance that I simply wasn’t the person I needed to be, yet, to crave that information the way I do now. Basic life experience seems to have a way of priming the brain to accept and retain new information—possibly by creating new relevancies where they didn’t exist, previously.
Quick question: I’m thinking of publishing a series of short guides to various topics, likely in ebook/book-format. If I do, are there any topics you’d be particularly keen to learn about (can be anything at all, from “humanism” to “quantum computers” to “the United Nations”)?
Learn anything particularly interesting, recently?
Adopt any new habits, or thinking of adopting any new habits in the near-future?
Any predictions about the new year you’d like to share?
Drop me a line and tell me a bit about yourself, and/or what you’ve been up to. You can do so by responding directly to this email, or at colin@exilelifestyle.com.
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Historical Misconceptions For You to Bring Up During Family Dinner.