Learning From Everything

In a world in which information is so abundant and easily accessible as it now, there is no reason one has to go to school or to college to learn anymore -- because one is learning all the time, from everything, if the mind is simply paying, or giving attention -- which is to have an open mind.

But in a world in which we are taught to compete incessantly for attention, the one with all the power is the one who gives attention -- and is aware and can fully appreciate what everybody else is doing. That is always the most powerful person in the room -- he who knows what everybody else is doing, and not all those so caught up in what they are doing, that they have no idea that anything else is going on.

Such people are conditioned to be "busy" compulsively, and so their minds and bodies are never still and quiet -- to observe what is happening, but rather think, that nothing happens, unless they make it happen. And so they think that whatever happens, happens because of their efforts -- and only their efforts. Nothing is known, unless they know it -- and are the first to know it, and until they do, it is the unknown.

That was knowledge in a previous time -- something personal and private, and not accessible to anyone else as well. Such knowledge became a process of time and effort -- which made it a virtue and accomplishment instead of the readily accessible, obvious and verifiable.

That was a paradigm shift that changed the world -- and how we think of it. But our cultural institutions and occupations, have not caught up to that new reality -- and keeps insisting, that nothing has changed, so we still need to do things the way they've always been done before, which in the old school education, is to learn it from the properly designated and certified expert for that instruction.

Immediate knowledge and insight, is not permitted; one must take the time-consuming route as the only indication that one has properly learned the material -- in the properly accredited course of instruction. Any other manner, is still not recognized -- although it is becoming more difficult to ignore, deny, control, and manipulate/deceive.

Who has authority, and speaks with authority? And who just pretend to do so? Who decides?

It is determined by those with the most confidence to do so. Not just those with self-confidence, but confidence without the self- imposing its limitations of understanding and observation, which is only the incessant need to be right and feel superior. That is not knowing oneself -- and so everything one knows, or thinks they know, is only a projection of their own needs and desires, and not the thing they think they "know."