Is it really a case where one person desire’s more knowledge than another? Could it possibly be that people vary in their appreciation of cognitive knowing and affective knowing? There are many who find value in acquired cognitive knowing -ie- how to be a good doctor, lawyer, indian chief… There are those who value gaining understanding from cognition and then releasing that ‘knowing’, use their understanding to watch the ‘kettle boiling’.
While all of us continually gather in knowledge as part of our experiencing, any differences may lie in how we value and use our knowing.
I’m guessing that a large part of the “What kind of job can I get with this degree?” attitude is a consequence of poor people (like me) getting increased access to higher education. Why the hell else is a poor person from a poor family going to give everything they have for an education? So they can go back home and be the world’s most educated assistant manager at Burger King? The glory days (which may be imaginary, according to Dunamis) of people going to college for the sake of edification and nothing more was fueled by colleges being full of rich people’s kids who didn’t need to worry about a career, so they had the luxury of ‘education for education’s sake’.
I’m guessing that a large part of the “What kind of job can I get with this degree?” attitude is a consequence of poor people (like me) getting increased access to higher education.
Well, then most likely it’s being paid for (wholly or partly) through grants, scholarships, Federal assistance programs,bank loans, personal savings.
The loaned money seems to be a godsend for people who wouldn’t have been able to afford a University education any other way. “Get an education and do not pay until 2012…(by which time you will surely be making more than enough money to do so)” is held like a carrot in front of the noses of the poor.
So it’s off to Uni to get a Bachelor’s degree…then the options are:
A) find a job and start paying off the debt
B)continue on in hopes of increasing your chances of finding a high-paying job.
If it works out and a person makes enough money to pay off the debt while building this brilliant future, good for them.
Many times, however, the indebted degree holder has to “go back home and be[come] the world’s most educated assistant manager at Burger King.”
I have no problem with a body of scholars training professionals, I have a problem with the hard sell and the manipulation of an impressionable youngster’s fear of poverty.
Because they have been convinced that it is the best investment.
I think that what Shyster is talking about is the difference between a professional and someone masquerading as one. The assumption is, and I didn’t know if it’s true, that a long time ago “academics†went to school as it was their nature to do so, while other people did other things. As I think of it, it could be true, because there were positions for craftsmen and other artisans in many communities. So, it is possible that it was mostly the norm that people of a certain mind attended school.
My school experience has proven me to be unique as compared to most others that I’ve known. Based on a professor’s recommendation I decided to read all of the source material in my field. It, in fact, became a point of pride to do so. To date I have never met another person that is as well-read in psychology as myself. Now, this should be nothing to be proud of because all of these books are for sale or can be found in a library. However, the pride comes from actually having done it and having done it with happiness. That’s what a scholar does. That’s what all professionals should do though.
This is vastly different from what I have seen in the top university that I attended, as well as other places that I have gotten degrees from. Students are never assigned the original material to read, rather they have books that contain encapsulated second, third, or maybe even fourth-hand interpretations of the original stuff. The authors of these texts are telling YOU what YOU need to know. That’s not thinking.
Alfred Adler, due to his socialistic ideas, was one of the first people to suggest a public school system in the US. He did this, in part, to cut down on the number of poor vs. rich murders that were going on in his time. The concept was that if everyone could have a shot at “success†we would all feel better. This concept has also influenced the college system. However, the process has defeated itself in that each degree has been cheapened by the ease of it’s attainment.
It’s a sad fact, but I don’t think that the process can be reversed and I certainly don’t think that greedy halfwits can be stopped for hustling their way through school.
" I decided to read all of the source material in my field. It, in fact, became a point of pride to do so. To date I have never met another person that is as well-read in psychology as myself. Now, this should be nothing to be proud of because all of these books are for sale or can be found in a library. However, the pride comes from actually having done it and having done it with happiness. That’s what a scholar does."
Well put. We agree. Modern education, through its own ignorance, has degenerated into considering man as primarily a “function” rather than a human being. Naturally then, over time, its motivations will be primarily for greed and prestige rather than understanding.
Now, since you are on a roll with this, let me ask you if you believe it can be different? The following is from Jacob Needleman’s book: “Lost Christianity:” He had been delivering a lecture when ideas alluding to this topic came up which raised the following question for him:
Technically it should be the religions that should inspire the second half of education or the development of man’s being. But existing in public at the same level as culture, religion just becomes another face of culture only IMO sinking deeper into the cave. Education, for its survival in a secular culture, must reflect its values as you’ve rightly seen as dominated by the lower emotions such as greed.
Dr. Needleman’s question pertains to this. Excluding cultural influences, is our attraction for truth stronger than our attraction to pleasure? It is a tough one because it is hard to imagine ourselves psychologically free of detrimental cultural influences. Simone Weil could be this way but I’m no Simone Weil. I’m working on my inhibitions. But the bottom line is the willingness to become open to the effort and not be content with escapism.
But this is what Plato suggests. There are those that are willing to sacrifice meanings built on imagination as provided by cave life for the sake of becoming open to the objective human condition whatever that is. Professor Needleman suggests that it is not necessary to make it such a frightful negative thing. It just requires slowly becoming open. I agree and I think that it is only through becoming completely acclimated to cave life that this need to understand is artificially suppressed. But this is easier said than done since everything is against it.
I remember reading once that this path was actually the study of idiotism. A person having seen the light and through impartial self knowledge begins to see that in relation to his potential he is an idiot. He tries speaking about this to friends and experts who think him an idiot for thinking such things with concern for his self esteem. It comes to the point where he is convinced that he is an idiot and his friends also become more convinced that he is one. Now he has become a complete idiot and can begin to become open to objective experience free of inhibition. How many can be willing to become such an idiot? Just the connotation is frightening enough.
Lady A asks:
People have three basic ways of experiencing and reacting to the external world: senses, feelings, and associations. Each person is inclined more in one way more than the other two. This is why an elementary school such as “Blue Rock” I previously linked, stresses balancing these three in their students. Unfortunately,a lot of secular education has no concern for balance becoming more fixated with associative thought for the purposes of creating the mechanized being for the subjective interpretation of the fashionable societal good being taught and maintaining the cycles of the Great Beast.
I agree with Shyster than one can learn much watching a kettle boil. The trick is in the watching with attention and with the whole of oneself. The result is real education.
But why does it have to bean eirther/or proposition? A fully educated man in the sense of the cave allegory has the knowledge known in the cave and human perspective acquired with the help of what lies outside the cave represented by the sun.
A person could have knowledge of nuclear physics. However a man of “being” or acquired human perspective would not want to create bombs not for conditioned moral reasons but from inner morality reflecting human perspective.
The allegory doesn’t suggest an advantage in being oblivious, it just suggests what is lost from becoming fixated with knowledge in the context of imagination. Consider how Simone Weil put it from the linked site:
Knowledge by itself is neutral. It is our attitudes created through our captivation by imagination that perverts it.
Consider if a person were free from concern about what others think from the gradual freedom from cave influence? They could assume any personality, become salesmen for example, and make millions. One would not need a degree to make money since they would have the psychological freedom to do so.
The idea for the steam engine began with a young man spending the afternoon watching a kettle boil over and over again. The desire for knowledge is a passionate and determined curiosity…a need to know. I can’t pinpoint the exact reason why some people are blissfully happy knowing as little as possible while others cannot seem to sate their desire for wisdom.
Just for clarity I believe there is a vast difference between knowledge and wisdom. However, some people are apparently born with a predisposition to being wise, these might have no external knowledge whatsoever, they might acquire knowledge and turn that into wisdom as they grow through their personal life experience. On the other hand there are those who have vast stores of knowledge, but certainly are not wise.
I am of the opinion that there is a reason for everything, even as we reflect on our own lives, things that happened in the past, one year, two years, ten years ago, we begin to understand the significance of those events. Not always while we are in them. Then we see that our lives are scripted and meaningful. So, everything has a reason, even though it appears that we tend to stop short at why. Yet, if we observe our lives, the things that we are experiencing now, and reflect on those things, if we are acute in our investigation, we begin to see reasons.
So, is the difference between one child with a predisposition to wisdom, and another child who aparently has a lack of or even a desire for knowledge, not rooted in the past? i.e. past lives?
“I can’t pinpoint the exact reason why some people are blissfully happy knowing as little as possible while others cannot seem to sate their desire for wisdom.”
Is not “marketing” simply propaganda, the inculcation of the ‘subject’, the making of ‘someone’ that they see things a certain way? And is not Plato also propaganda given to the priviledged sons of the rich of a slavery state? Is not the insatiable desire to see things a certain way, similar? How do you distinguish them?
That’s less of a joke than it sounds. Such traits in their mild form are what propels a lot of people to the upper ranks in standard business. I believe that they are actually good traits to be found in a slave. Paris Hilton does not need to be OCD. That’s why it’s good to ask yourself just who are you serving with your hard work.
Marketing:
I once saw an economist on TV talking consumerism and some other stuff. Anyway, he reported that the concept of personal progress in the US keeps people in a constant state of debt. The idea is that one always wishes to be in the next economic class and one tends to buy items appropriate to that class, thus most people are in debt. The solution would be to say to yourself that no matter what I do I won’t ever be in that class and then be content with what you have. However, I assume that when one gets a raise or whatever, then things would change.
I never found out if the guy was saying that this system is by design or by chance, but as I recall from the Fox news channel’s financial shows post 911, I would vote for it being by design. Consumerism is fueled by an envy of the rich and their goods, by the rich. Interestingly, Adler warned of this trend way back in the 1930s and predicted that it would lead to increased crime and all kinds of discord in society.
This is totally out of control, however, if one practices a bit of asceticism then one can escape some of the frantic anxiety to be successful and find a bit of peace.
Letting Socrates add his two cents appears to support the Adlerian’s claim:
However, this presumes a person having a normal disposition for philosophy as it relates to wisdom. We’ve all experienced around here how easily it degenerates into complaints where philosophy becomes just a form of cave expression rather then as a vehicle to experience wisdom.
It seems that considering the effect of the cave to hide the reality of the human condition, most need an extra incentive to create the anxiety necessary to be open to understand further. Hemorrhoids have a purpose.
Even Jesus needed this psychological hemorrhoidal effect. This is why he said “get behind me Satan.” rather than “go to hell.” It helps one stay awake, attention in the spiritual sense, so as to receive the help coming from outside the cave.
Dunamis
Perhaps the cave version of philosophy and their debates are the same as product marketing in that both cater to and are expressions of egotism. This is what I believe to be the depth of Simone Weil’s remark:
What is left I believe is what attracts us to the unchanging pattern of things. The mind sets the stage and prepares for contemplation where a higher form of reason can initiate able to experience the sun.
How do you know Plato had good intentions? Are you not under the sway of his extensive propaganda - his version of events? What if his intentions were simply to pervert and seduce fine young men and make a name for himself? The people of Athens were not so sure that his intentions were so “good” as displayed by the putting to death of his teacher. Was not Plato a facist who encouraged anti-democratic, privileged elements that eventually lead to treasonous actions against the state, in favor of its enemies. Are not the intentions of corporations to drive the economy by encouraging the exchange of goods. Were not Adam Smith’s intentions as “noble” as Plato’s? I’m not sure how you are able to know Plato’s intentions apart from his version of them which has won out?
