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Our assignment: To masticate and to swallow
Our assignment: To masticate and to swallow
It begins with our mother; it is continued by our teachers, and our college professors. Our intellectual food is prepared, cut into bit size portions, and spooned into our mouth. All we have had to do is to masticate and to swallow. When our schools days are over we must learn to prepare our own intellectual food or we end our existence as an intellectual being striving to be all we can be. We become easy marks for spinners (ideologues) to fill the vacuum with their particular views. |
Re: Our assignment: To masticate and to swallow
Nice title.
Indeed, a form of mindless conformity has always existed in society, and we are fed it from the very beginning. We fall victim to the work of our own animality on a daily basis because people can't see past the box that's been put over their heads. But that's the way the world works, I guess. As much as it is evidently a bad thing, at the same time I don't think society would be where it is now without forcing people to submit. You make a good point about the whole self growth thing, though...a piece that most people are missing from their lives. |
Re: Our assignment: To masticate and to swallow
I think that it is important to establish an intellectual life. If a person does not establish an intellectual life in the twenty years between the end of schooling and mid-life they will never have one. The following is a post I made some time ago about this matter.
Hey! Get a Life--An Intellectual Life Hobbies are ways in which many individuals express their individuality. Those matters that excite an individual interest and curiosity are those very things that allow the individual him or her to self-understanding and also for others to understand them. Interests define individuality and help to provide meaning to life. We all look for some ideology, philosophy or religion to provide meaning to life. When examining psychosis the psychiatrist advises either the establishment of an interpersonal evolvement or for finding interests and perhaps new patterns of thought. Many of us find that our work provides that means for identity and personal fulfillment. None of us have discovered our full potentialities or have fully explored in depth those we have discovered. Self-development and self-expression are relatively new ideas in human history. The arts are one means for this self-expression. The artist may find drawing or constructing sculptures as a means for self-discovery. The self-learner may find essay writing of equal importance. Consciousness of individuality was first become a possibility in the middle Ages. The Renaissance and further the Reformation enhanced the development of individual identification. As technology developed there grew a further enhancement of the perception of the individual. It was in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1674 that the word “self” took on the present modern meaning of “a permanent subject of successive and varying states of consciousness”. “Self” as an instance of compounds with other words appeared over this period of time. Self-knowledge (1613), self-examination (1647). Self-interest (1649). The word “individual” moved from the indivisible and collective to the divisible and distinctive. In this we see the development of an understanding of self-consciousness thus illustrating the dramatic change taking place in our developing understanding of the self as a distinct subject not just a cipher in a community. This was part of the Renaissance. I recommend that each of us develop the hobby of an intellectual life. We could add to our regular routine the development of an invigorating intellectual life wherein we sought disinterested knowledge; knowledge that is not for the purpose of some immediate need but something that stirs our curiosity, which we seek to understand for the simple reason that we feel a need to understand a particular domain of knowledge. |
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