Xenophilic Xylograph 9/11/09

We are all still in elementary school.

DB - The Vagabond
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Come in and join the party.
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I want to know everything there is to know. I read the newspaper because I want to know everything there is to know. I subscribe to a number of different magazines and journals because I want to know everything there is to know. I own a huge 2,230 page dictionary of the English language because I want to know everything there is to know. I have a large and varied collection of books about: early Scandinavian history, Medieval Spanish philosophy, horse racing, World War II Russian military tactics, the psychology of revolution, Civil War weaponry, stock market investing (as if I had any money), Roman Stoicism, Native American Tribal history, the rise of Nazism, Chinese mystical traditions, astrophysics, human anatomy, the Dead Sea scrolls, the journey of the Mayflower, contemporary gang warfare, biographies of several American Presidents, calculus and cooking, just to "scratch the surface" because I want to know everything. And what do I know? I know that if I lived for a thousand years I would still not know everything I want to know.

Unfortunately, or maybe not, the small family I grew up in was not intellectually curious. I tried in vain to get my mother to consider ideas that were outside of her tidy little mental box. She simply refused. What was worse is that if I was reading a book on Buddhism, let's say, someone would remark "Oh, I suppose you're becoming one of them now." I often felt I had to hide whatever I was reading under the mattress as if it was pornography.

During my career I became very frustrated with actors who were so involved with their own emotional lives they never took the time to do any research. I once did a public reading of a play in which the title of a Wagnerian opera was mentioned several times. The other members of the cast called it "Tanhowser" instead of "Tahnhoyzer" which is as near correct as English speakers are going to get it. Ironically, I was the only actor in the play who didn't have the word in my script. I tried to give them the right pronunciation but no one believed me.

Einstein once said that he wasn't all that smart but he was just very curious. Well, I beg to differ, Al. If it was just curiosity that made a genius I would be there with the Nobel Prize around my neck.

Some people dive down and scoop up what's in the ocean, some go digging in the desert, some go peering through telescopes. I never had the luxury to do any of those things. So, instead, I go poking my nose into books. It's about discovery, expansion, realization, improvement, satisfaction. I want to know something today that I didn't know yesterday. To know it, not to say I know it.

I admire people who can make a garden flourish, who are masters of a musical instrument or who can figure out the income tax. I respect people who know things I don't know and if they write a book about it I'll read the book and enjoy it.

Some people still scorn my curiosity. They think I'm being presumptuous, or playing trivia games, or something. If a fact fascinates me then it's a fascinating fact and I don't care what someone on a mental chain gang has to say about it.

Every bit of knowledge, understanding and wisdom you have is yours. You own it and it's a valuable possession. Stock up, I say.

DB - The Vagabond
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May you always be blessed with amiable companions.
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SUMMER QUIZ

This is not a contest.



A young man out west just took home 88 million dollars from the lottery.



Whether you play the lottery or not, if you suddenly had 88 million dollars, or the equivalent of whatever your currency is, what are the first three things you would do with it?



You have all summer to answer if you wish.

21 responses so far.



DB

Dangerous Diminishment 6/26/09

Iron rusts from disuse, even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.

Leonardo Da Vinci
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Hello again.
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I believe in mental might. Years ago I read a statistic which claimed that on the average we use about 15% of our brains. I thought, then what do we do with the rest of it? Let it rust?

I decided to investigate the thinking of those who I was sure were more intelligent than I. While some of them, it turned out, were actually at the 10 or 11% level of mental use, there are some, such as Da Vinci, who were pushing at the limits of their mental usefulness. The common quality they all seemed to express was curiosity. Albert Einstein once humbly remarked that he wasn't all that clever but that he was just very curious. He also wrote "It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education."

Then I wondered just how much our formal education dumbs us down to our 15% capacity. I saw that it wasn't education itself, but the way it was presented. So much of how I was taught growing up was about incapacity, not capacity, of mental ability. I was taught what to think not how to think. If my thinking did not conform to the rules of the day, I was deemed "wrong," Once I got out from underneath the dictatorial dogma of public school education I learned that not only could I think for myself, but that some day I would even learn to think beyond myself.

It's a truism to say we are all capable of more than we do. But wisdom can't stop there. If so, how do we learn to do more? How do we increase our capabilities, our capacities for doing more? Fearlessly and unashamedly admitting our useless 85% is a good start. It's like owning a 100 acre plot of land and never venturing past the back yard. It's safe. It's easy.

One day in a life drawing class I was sitting next to a woman who stopped drawing at one point and put her pen down. I asked her why and she said that she didn't like the pose. I suggested that she should draw it anyway. If we only draw the poses we like we won't do much drawing nor will we learn much.

Mighty mentality can't be gained by sticking with the safe and easy. If I come to a thinker whose ideas perplex me I don't want to turn away and say "It's too confusing. I don't understand it." Rather I want to stick with it until I do. Curiosity and expansive thinking are what get me out of my backyard and into the fascinating forest beyond.

Vagabond Journeys
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May you see something pretty you haven't seen before.
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SUMMER QUIZ

This is not a contest.



A young man out west just took home 88 million dollars from the lottery.



Whether you play the lottery or not, if you suddenly had 88 million dollars what are the first three things you would do with it?



You have all summer to answer if you wish.

6 responses so far.



DB