Thought Art

When do we consider ourselves "educated"?

6 posts in this topic

I am assuming that being educated is a relative notion. However, in the name of wisdom and living a good life when are we educated? Is it when we are adequate to life? When we are able to feel loving for ourselves? Achieve our goals? Live a good life? Act holistically? 

I am taking an accounting program right now which is only 8 months. It isn't the hardest thing in the world but it also isn't easy. I am realizing that everything in life must be like this. The challenge is always what we are working on in that moment. I feel a sense of shame or something similar that I am not a well educated Phd. I feel like I am on to something with actuazlized.org teachers and my Qigong certifications, my accounting degree. But, I also realize that I am ignorant as well. There is so much information in the world, so much potential skill, so much potential depth and nuance to understanding reality. It seems impossible to be able to see truth in all things in reality when each field, area of expertise and inquiry is so deep, nuanced and specialized. I sense I have knowledge and relative wisdom, but I am also largely ignorant and uneducated. 

There is a direct relationship between time spent working on something ,learning something, putting in the emotional labour on something, talking to, reading and learning from direct sources and then testing your knowledge of what you are learning. To me this is amazing. We can only do one thing at once. It's no wonder so many of us are fools. Reality is deep and sprawling and each of us only has so much time to learn anything. Accounting is taking up a lot of my time. Specialization is important but also an unfortunate aspect of reality. We only get one life yet, we waste it doing these specialized tasks. We only can eat a few flavours of ice-cream in this life. 

I sense I have skills and ability which have done me well in the past. But I also have a lot of foolishness and neurosis that hold me back. What does it mean to be educated? Does that mean to have integrity, wisdom and an adequate level of knowledge and skill to act masterfully in whatever relative domain you operate in? Would that also incorporate a more sprawling and deep holistic wisdom?  

Being educated is clearly not a singular thing. Wisdom is clearly not a singular thing. We can't develop infinite understanding of reality and it seems that we wouldn't want to. But we want to make sure the quality of finite understanding we have is heavily based in the highest truth. 

(not well edited my bad)

Edited by Thought Art

 "Unburdened and Becoming" - Bon Iver

                            ◭"89"

                  

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This begs the question: what should we be doing with ourselves? Is gaining knowledge enough? One answer is that we should educate ourselves in meta skills, for example epistemology, because they they apply to so many different areas. Breadth. This is just the application of the Pareto principle. Another answer, is that we don't have to do anything at all; who is judging us on what we should be doing anyway? And yet another answer is that doing never stops, we just keep on breathing and moving.

Edited by LastThursday

57% paranoid

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I will never consider myself educated; nor anyone else.

Even if I turn to an expert, or claim to be one myself - in the words of Obi-wan - ‘there’s always a bigger fish’

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When we are able to view something without a biased judgement. "sed intelligere" - in the words of baruch spinoza.

Edited by Megan Alecia

"We are like the spider. We weave our life and then move along in it. We are like the dreamer who dreams and then lives in the dream. This is true for the entire universe."

-- The Upanishads

Encyclopedia

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The deepest lesson I learned as a Ph.D. is that I know nothing. Education is bound to relative reality. Wisdom is realizing the sameness in everything. I choose wisdom over education.


Just because God loves you doesn't mean it is going to shape the cosmos to suit you. God loves you so much that it will shape you to suit the cosmos.

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