The Pitfalls of Tradition… and Learning… and Consciousness in General

People believe what they’re told, especially if you say it confidently.

Usually it helps if it’s written.

You believe me, don’t you?

Uncritical subscription to tradition has functionally prevented people from learning how to learn. Accepting philosophy, politics, and so on as a sort of matrilineal inheritance sounds ridiculous when stated, but is the reality of most people’s opinions. Even during the opinionatedly rebellious years of college, most perspectives are simply the reactions to [rejections of] parents’ beliefs.

It seems that learning for most is the process of memorizing responses to questions and commentaries on situations.

It is a matter of conditioning rather than a process of understanding.

I think most people would agree that this is not learning as it should be.

Those answers – the ones unquestioningly taught you in your Sunday school class, in dinner table conversations, and on slanted TV – are not answers at all.

They are the incarnation of bias.

The thought is a parasite. This parasite’s eggs, laid in your mind, hatch into larvae that creep through your heart and into your soul. After incubation, they spew forth from your mouth in a repulsive regurgitation of divisiveness.

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An unrecognized courage, and maybe even faith, is required in the decision to reflect on your education, your tradition, or your life. To reconsider the very philosophy that has for so long delineated your identity is something deeper than a challenge. In fact, it’s impossible should you not commit, throwing yourself into the whirling cosmos of philosophical (and I suppose perspectival) pedantry. And all that in full daylight rather than coy consideration of righteous perversions of your tradition in the dark room of your bedtime brain, waiting to fall asleep and be freed from such discomfort.