Born To Learn
As I awake the image of a child and a robot, and slight unease, something from the night before, a "quest for meaning", a picture, the brain from the 1970 Camera book.I try to quickly unpack the dream, it break down as I write words in my notebook; fuzzy sounds, images, associations, diffusion.
Vague, incomplete, half-baked thought begins to manifest itself. The robot, the computer, our bodies are not robots, our brains are not computers, of course . But these terms, metaphors, analogies, are used everyday to describe human beings. Quite often the brain and body are separated into either robot or computer.
The child wants to be active, experiment, communicate, interact, in other words to play with someone, another child. A "quest for meaning"? But she is left with the robot. Hence the unease.
Play involves the body and brain, being active, organising, planning, and trying out ideas, with other people; this symbiotic relationship adults call learning?
Our brain and body are divided as we are processed through the institutions of education, we're gradually refined into practical and academic products, and in the work space we become likened to robots and computers. Institutional learning breaks the human being, a learning being, into fragments.
The system we live within has divided our brains from our bodies, the brain sits in front of a computer screen most of the day, the body services the people who sit in front of the computer screens and an elite get to organise and plan what people do, not unlike a teacher in a classroom.
The system rules society.
I awoke from a dream, the dream-thoughts usually fade away, this one stayed and I followed my dream today and went out to play.
Comments
May 11, 2010
Tom said...
The system rules and that's the problem. I feel quite nostalgic for those days when we simply said 'the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class'. To say the system rules suggests that we are no longer sure who (if anyone) actually rules, and that is part of the problem.
The full quote is as follows: The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. (Karl Marx, The German Ideology)
May 11, 2010
Tony Hall said...
Tom, I'm just reading some about the Enlightenment in relation to 21st Century Consciousness - http://tonyhall.posterous.com/21st-century-consciousness - now wondering what what a Marxian Enlightenment would look like!! ?
Crisis of Capitalism talk by David Harvey here at RSA
http://www.thersa.org/events/audio-and-past-events/2010/the-crises-of-capitalism
May 11, 2010
Tom said...
Tony, thank you for those links. I enjoyed David Harvey's talk - a ray of hope in the crisis of capitalism. Good things seem to happen at the RSA.
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May 16, 2010
Tony Hall said...
Tom, having talks like these - http://www.thersa.org/events/audio-and-past-events - online gives us a world of information and knowledge which we've never had access to in this way before. It's easy to become overwhelmed. Part of the reason for doing these (posterous) 'notes from the everyday' is to try and signpost this wandering in Hyperspace, and maybe hone in on or define my core interests and concerns, and even rationalise these in some way.
May 17, 2010
Tom said...
Tony, there is a brave new world of information online, but for me the key words of your comment are: ‘It’s easy to become overwhelmed’. Defining personal core interests can help us use these new resources rather than being used by them. For me old habits die hard and my last few years of paid employment involved long hours at a computer screen; I find it all to easy to get drawn in. Sometimes I forget my own core interests. I need to re-set myself from time to time. I think I should go to my own posterous page (‘Tom’s Garden Shed’) and do that now.
Meanwhile for me the stand out item on your most recent RSA link is ‘The Placemaker’s Guide to Building Community’. Nabeel Hamdi is a name I remember from the AA.
http://www.thersa.org/events/audio-and-past-events/2010/the-placemakers-guide...
May 17, 2010
Tony Hall said... Tom, it's also interesting to note the involvement of the 'social media' people in this organisation - http://rsafellowshipcouncil.ning.com/forum/topics/what-might-a-post-bureaucratic .
The RSA and many organisations are talking/writing about 'citizens' and new forms of involvement, but little has happened that is concrete. It will be a long struggle for people who want to involve themselves with the embedded histories and powers of these organisations.
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