If you find no library card you are not a self-learner. You are at best a dilettante, a dabbler in knowledge.
A self-learner has a multitude of clamoring questions, in a multitude of domains of knowledge, seeking answers. To discover the nature of reality and the answers to these questions one must have access to a library of books.
Most colleges have a ‘Friend of the Library’ card, which, for a small annual fee, will allow anyone to borrow books from that library.
After schooling is over the experience of learning begins. I think that the first step toward becoming a self-actualizing self-learner is to acquire at least one library card.
I suspect that most persons over the age of 30 agree with me that studying intently a subject matter from the PC monitor is not appealing. Perhaps this is an age thing but I suspect that even young people who decide to really learn a subject matter would always turn to a book over a monitor.
No I quite agree Chuck - it’s a nightmare to study any text on a monitor, even one of those fancy PDA screens. I have 20/20 vision but it still does my head in - you need the print on paper!
I need to move around a bit when I read. But I don’t have a library card. I prefer to spend exhorbitant amounts of money buying books, then giving them away, and then wishing I had them back, and buying them again.
It only makes sense.
But it doesn’t really matter what I do. I’m dead. Uccisore killed me.
I am currently rethinking the whole “God” thing, as I appear to be an extra on the set of “Friends” right now, which I am told will be in eternal syndication.
Books are bought not borrowed here. We reread far too many times to borrow. Its a pain to need to read a book, you run fast to the library and it is not there , some snot borrowed it and has kept it too long. You end up writhing on the library desk screaming in agonizing pain because your fix is not there. Cops are called then the paramedics with a straight jacket, its all rather embarrassing. Then Ucci comes in with his chainsaws, screaming Faust’s name while cutting up all the computers and lights. But, you end up being the one they haul away because they can’t see Ucci and Faust fighting over Dante’s Inferno. Nope, I buy books it is much easier.
Who reads books now a days? They are a horrible way to learn something quickly. I personally think that the television can give you much more information than a book. Also, reading a book takes a long time you can’t read a book in a half an hour compared to a television show. If you are looking for information on a specific topic the Internet is much more helpful than a book. You can’t just browse a book looking for the information you want.
Though I do have a library card, I disagree with the sentiment. Sure, books are handy, easier to read at length, and often better written and well researched than anything the net has to offer, the net can simply trounce any book in terms of ease of inquiry and breadth of content. The simplest example is in encyclopedias: Wikipedia is factually comparable to hardcovers as revered as Britannica, and what it lacks in grammer, punctuation, and clarity, it more than makes up for by offering pages on nearly everything, and growing daily. Granted, Wikipedia has its shortcomings (as Stephen Colbert illustrated), but its advantages are great, and its potential greater than any book could hope for.
One cannot “run into the gaping jaws of experience,” as Fritz put it, in a fucking library.
About the only gaping jaws you’ll be running into are the those of a disgruntled library worker by the name of Gertrude (Ms. Gertrude to you) who wears her glasses, which hang from a sterling-silver chain, at the end of her nose.
Socrates was a hideous deformity. He was the first accomplished intellect which means he had time to think. Nietzsche suggests that “men of wisdom” are sometimes exceptions to the average type, but a negative exception. For example, a tribesman who has lost his sight in one eye, by changing his duties since he can no longer fight, becomes more intelligent and reflective. He has a luxury which provides for him the necessary time to produce writing and oration, literation and art in general.
This is only a decent analogy and it is certainly not a rule. I just thought it would be ironic to propose that the intellect is a secondary addition to positive type, the “busy” individual. A negative addition only afforded to those who need more words to succeed in something…in this case literature and oration.
I suspect the anatomy of borgeois culture can be traced back to the ever-increasing population of intellectuals and the decreasing numbers of avergage type, those fit for work and military use.
I’d conclude that a good seventy-five percent of the world philosophico-archive of knowledge is a-bunch-cha bollocks.
Stay outta the libraries, because when one looks into Ms. Gertrude, Ms. Gertude also looks into them.