Truly learning or just reinforcing current beliefs
Yesterday a tweet came along in my screen I really would like to share with you:
Amazing how often when we think we’re learning, we’re really not. We’re just seeking evidence to reinforce our current beliefs – Jonathan Mead
I would like to follow this quote with another one that I’ve taken from someone I believe is one of the most honest men on the planet.
I never leaned anything that I already “knew” – Peter Ralston
Peter Ralston is a martial arts teacher and in 1978, he became the first non-Asian to win a world martial arts tournament held in the Republic of China. The reason I tell you this is exactly the same reason he took part in this tournament. People didn’t believe what he was saying so he needed to prove his point. Would you take notice to what this guy was telling you if he was just a passer by on the street?
What are Jonathan and Peter talking about here.
A huge problem that we all suffer from. We’re stuck in our ways. Not only in the form of micro habits but also in how we feel things, react, talk and think. We percieve everything in the world through a filter that we have created ourselves, a filter that by it’s very nature hides the truth from us.
We might think we understand something but what is there to understand about moving your body. You can’t learn a martial art by reading about it. You need to go past the filter or in other words:
The power of transforming the body lies in the experience of the body, not in our thoughts, opinions and beliefs. If we make a distinction between those two activities, we can progress towards mastery in any endeavor – Peter Ralston
What’s more, we need someone with authority to tell us we are wrong or we won’t believe it. But even in this there is a filter, who has authority in our filter? The only way to get rid of that filter is to really experience what is going on. I’ll give you an example, one that’s perfect to illustrate Peter’s teaching style:
If you have some martial arts experience you’ll probably “know” that the centre of gravity on the human body is somewhere below the navel. You can take this for the truth or you can experience it. So what Peter did was take a strong stick and together with several students he balanced on of the students on the stick in all three axis. They concluded that indeed the centre of gravity in this student was in the lower abdomen, just below the navel.
Although science has provided us with a lot of “truths”, religion has done the same and so have popular media. They all help build our filter, a filter by which we tend to see everything as wrong or right without taking the time to experience it and form our own opinnion. Those with authority (in our oppinion) lead and we follow blindly.
All to often we just want to reinforce what we already “know”. But that’s not learning now is it.
How then do you suggest we go about learning, obviously we don’t have the time to do all the experiments ourselves. I often take the time to examine the other side of the coin and attempt to prove it but I find my self building straw men in many cases.
It’s true that we believe we don’t have all that time to experience things for ourselves and thusly have to accept what other people offer us as the truth. However, this truth that they offer might not be reality, only their interpretation of it through their filter.
It’s perfectly okay to accept these truths, but only accept them for what they are: The truth according to the other guy.
This is where urban legends come from. We hear something, and accept it without ever checking the facts. Like the myth that you’ll catch a cold if you don’t dress yourself warm enough on a cold day. The common cold (and the flu) are both viruses. You won’t get them just because you are cold. You get them from other people, and what do we do in the winter? We huddle up, and close all the windows. No air circulation and lot’s of people in a room. You couldn’t make a virus more happy.
In “things you can do with the body” (dancing, martial arts, playing an instrument) accepting someones truth isn’t good enough. You will never master what you are learning without experiencing it for yourself.
What’s more, either it’s wrong, or right. There is no “almost got it” in throwing a punch. Either you do it the right way, or it’s not a punch. It’s here that we often lie to ourselves and tell ourselves that we almost have it. So we repeat the “almost right” (read: wrong) punch over and over again. Training ourselves to perform that wrong punch. if it didn’t work, scrap it and begin anew.
If you don’t scrap it you’ll end up creating another filter. “it should look something like this” You keep working with the one that went wrong.
All in it’s a hard concept to truly convey through writing. I think Peter had done a better job of it than I ever can. If you want more reading on the subject might I suggest you picking up one of these two books by Peter:
Principles of effortless power
Ancient wisdom, new spirit
“Principles” is centered around his martial art, “spirit” is more about the mind.
I never have thought about this before. It’s really true that we often “learn” things we already know and that our “leaders” define what we see as true or false, not ourselves through experience.
I knew that experience is crucial – and thats why action is too – but I never imagined that our wrong learning behavior would affect us in such ways..
thank your for thinking.