Possibility junkies

More young people should become monks or nuns to provide balance for society.

Or could it be that there is no meaning to look for? The older I get the more I envy the young for their lack of memory. It is our memories that ultimately kill us.

"Knowledge is ubiquitous; wisdom scarce."

No, actually, information is ubiquitous. Knowledge is not even worth pursuing--learning is painful, knowing things is boring, people who know things are obnoxious, and people who get rich by knowing things are dangerous--so wisdom isn't even imaginable.

Most of what we talk about as learning is merely moving packets of information from one place to another, generally in exchange for pay.

See this link-- synchronicity?

I don't know anything about the current state of research on the origins of ADD, but I'm willing to bet there is a strong cultural component. Anybody who watches tv or listens to the radio or surfs the net is going to get interrupted every 2 or 3 minutes by some kind of "message", usually but not always commercial. The media are TRYING to give us ADD.

An argument for a slow, deliberate education with emphasis on analysis and history if I have ever heard one. What we lack as a culture more and more is the ability to analyze from experience, to consider, to form and dismiss (if unworthy) counterarguments. To LISTEN.

I have tried off and on this year to read Thomas Merton and realize that his way of thought is in a parallel universe. "Recollect yourself" he says again and again. His version of reality is far from the madding crowd, drenched in Sacrament and Meaning. It is the world of the Psalms, repetitive, deep, deliberate, and slow.

Everything I need to know about these matters I learned in my high school years thirty years ago, tasting education while not in class, in reading Albert Jay Nock; a few cogitations:

fee.org/library/books/cogitations.asp

How can there be any great men among us until the right relation between formative knowledge and instrumental knowledge becomes implicit in the actual practice and technique of education?

Every person of any character, I think, wants above all to keep the integrity of his personality intact, and under the idea of organization that prevails in this country, that seems impossible unless one stays out pretty resolutely.

One can go from New York to Chicago in four hours, and the morning papers of either town can be read in the other at noon, and this is supposed to be a valuable achievement — but why? One goes from a vacuous disheveling life in Chicago, and the newspapers merely inform one that such is the kind of life lived in both places. I doubt greatly that the sum total of human happiness is increased by increasing facilities for keeping the human body in rapid motion; or that the capacity for enjoyment is enhanced; I should say rather the opposite.

The trouble with the "Western civilization" that we are so proud of and boast so much about, is that it makes such limited demands on the human spirit; such limited demands on the qualities that are distinctly and properly humane, the qualities that distinguish the human being from the robot on the one hand and the brute on the other.

A nation's life consists not in the abundance of the things that it possesses; that it is the spirit and manners of a people, and not the bewildering multiplicity of its social mechanisms, that determines the quality of its civilization.

A society that gives play only to the instinct of expansion must inevitably be characterized by a low type of intellect, a grotesque type of religion, a factitious type of morals, an imperfect type of beauty, an imperfect type of social life and manners. In a word, it is uncivilized.

Our society has made no place for the individual who is able to think, who is, in the strict sense of the word, intelligent; it merely tosses him in to the rubbish heap. . . . Intelligence is the power and willingness always disinterestedly to see things as they are, an easy accessibility to ideas, and a free play of consciousness upon them, quite regardless of the conclusions to which this play may lead.

Our civilization, rich and varied as it may be, is not interesting; its general level falls too far below the standard set by the collective experience of mankind.

The civilization of a country consists in the quality of life that is lived there, and this quality shows plainest in the things that people choose to talk about when they talk together, and in the way they choose to talk about them.

Cicero was right in saying that a person who grows up without knowing what went before him will always remain a child. One may know it thoroughly, too, in an academic way, and still remain a child. Knowledge has to be reinforced by emotion in order to be maturing.

Wholesale indiscriminate travel is merely a leveling and vulgarizing influence.

The worst thing I see about life at the present time is that whereas the ability to think has to be cultivated by practice, like the ability to dance or to play the violin, everything is against that practice. Speed is against it, commercial amusements, noise, the pressure of mechanical diversions, reading habits, even studies are all against it. Hence a whole race is being bred without the power to think, or even the disposition to think, and one cannot wonder that public opinion, qua opinion, does not exist.

Why should one learn to depend on some new thing, when the inevitable burden of things is already very great?

One marvels continually at man's ingenuity in devising means of communication, and at the utter futility of the uses to which he habitually puts them.

We may find out that. there is a great deal of unsuspected fun in entertainment that we work out for ourselves. I have seen very young infants turn away from expensive toys to see if they could find an old nail or a piece of string or something that they could manipulate more on their own, and use a little inventive power on.

One notices the effect produced on the children by regular association with high-minded and highly-cultivated elders. One especially notices the effect produced on them by hearing good conversation carried on in good, pure, competent English.

I learned early with Thoreau that a man is rich in proportion to-the number of things he can afford to let alone; and in view of this I have always considered myself extremely well-to-do.

We are discovering that the way to a desirable thing can be made altogether too easy.

But even so, it was a cheering arid hope-inspiring experience to touch the fringes of a well-to-do, prosperous, hard-working society which does not believe in too much money, too much land, too much impedimenta, too much ease, comfort, schooling, mechanization, aimless movement, idle curiosity; which does not believe in too many labor-saving devices, gadgets, gimcracks; and which has the force of character - fed and sustained by a type of religion which seems really designed to get results - the force of sterling character, I say, to keep itself well on the safe lee side of all such excesses.

It is a mark of maturity to differentiate easily and naturally between personal or social opposition, and intellectual opposition. Everyone has noticed how readily children transfer their dislike of an opinion to the person who holds it, and how quick they are to take umbrage at a person who speaks in an unfamiliar mode or even with an unfamiliar accent.

I concur with the commenter who loves these sorts of posts.

I am in my mid-twenties, and it seems like me and all my friends are totally addicted to keeping up with pop culture, internet surfing, and constantly being in touch. It is very distracting, and concentrating on long-term goals and projects is more difficult than usual these days. Sometimes I fantasize about joining the Peace Corps and giving myself a chance to wean myself off of the grid for several years to see what parts of my thinking I can recover, but even so I would probably just lose myself in the addiction again when I returned to the states.

The part of the article that hit me the hardest was when the author addressed the idea that we always think another better option could be out there, and that the momentary awareness of the thousands of choices available right before we select one is actually when we are happiest. I can't seem to settle on anything at this point: a romantic partner, a career, a geographic location, even a general philosophic outlook beyond the Golden Rule. I used to think it was because I was too cynical, but maybe the paradox of choice has a role as well.

Thanks, Scott. That was a very spot-on article in response. Now if I can only figure out which doors I want to narrow my choices down to...