Book 243 - A Year of Magical Learning

Reflection Title: What I Learned on My Own, I Still Remember!

Book – The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (Incerto) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Book Description:

The Bed of Procrustes takes its title from Greek mythology: the story of a man who made his visitors fit his bed to perfection by either stretching them or cutting their limbs. It represents Taleb’s view of modern civilization’s hubristic side effects—modifying humans to satisfy technology, blaming reality for not fitting economic models, inventing diseases to sell drugs, defining intelligence as what can be tested in a classroom, and convincing people that employment is not slavery.

Playful and irreverent, these aphorisms will surprise you by exposing self-delusions you have been living with but never recognized. With a rare combination of pointed wit and potent wisdom, Taleb plows through human illusions, contrasting the classical values of courage, elegance, and erudition against the modern diseases of nerdiness, philistinism, and phoniness.

Reflection:

If you put a gun to my head and demanded I tell you something (anything), in 30 seconds or less, that I learned in 16 years of formal education, I honestly don’t think I could do it. I just tried it, without the gun obviously, and it took me about a minute and a half before something finally popped into my mind. Ironically, the first thing I remembered learning was from the only class I took in college that actively didn’t try to actually teach me anything at all called Econ 368, or philosophy of economics.

If you are wondering, the one thing my memory recalled was that 2+2 doesn’t always equal 4.

Econ 368 was my favorite class I ever took while at Purdue because there were no right answers or tests, each class was discussion and participation based, and it gave the students an opportunity to use their own minds to think and work through a topic collectively where there was no clear answer. Each day, we would show up after reading some hypothetical scenario or article and then discuss…That was it!

At the time, Econ 368 was a culture shock for me based on what I thought learning and education meant. I really didn’t know what to make of it. If I’m being honest, I thought the professor was a bit bonkers and that it was a blow off class. I was in my senior year of undergrad and I was ready to get my degree and get on with my life. With Econ 368, I was relieved I didn’t have to study hard, write a bunch of papers, and take a bunch of tests in order to check the box on this class and get one step closer to graduation and moving on. I didn’t get the class at all because I had spent my entire life in academia being drilled into my head that this isn’t how we learn. We learn by going to a class, opening a textbook, listening to a teacher share a lesson for the day that aligned to a set curriculum, take some notes, do an assignment related to what was taught, take some tests to prove you understood, get a good grade, and move on to the next course. That was learning to me…and I don’t remember a single thing!

The one class, which I didn’t even like at the time, which gave me an opportunity to explore my own thoughts is the only thing I still remember to this day.

Fast forward to today and 2 ½ years into this self-education experiment that I call A Year of Magical Learning, if you gave me the same hypothetical that I started this reflection with and asked to rattle off what I’ve learned / remember in 30 seconds or less during YOML, I would probably come up with about 50 things without even blinking an eye. I would probably even do you one better than just share what I learned; I would also talk about how I’ve applied the lessons to my life, the additional questions the knowledge generated, and the ideas and projects that resulted as a direct result…if you let me.

Exploring, asking questions, and letting that lead the way to what you learn, do, and create is the only way to be if you really want that knowledge to matter. Somewhere along the way in this Year of Magical Learning adventure, I realized the true magical power of self-education and it is something I will never forget.

PS – Here are some of my other favorite aphorisms from The Bed of Procrustes:

1. To cure yourself of the newspaper, spend a year reading the weeks previous newspaper

2. For so many, instead of looking for cause of death when they expire, we should be looking for cause of life when they are still around

3. Conscience ignorance can expand your world if you can practice it.

4. What makes us fragile is that institutions cannot have the same virtues such as honor, truthfulness, etc as individuals

Question: When was the last time you learned something new just because you wanted to?

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? - An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - Coming Soon

YOML Bookstore - The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms (Incerto) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb