The answer for many people, including myself would be: Not Soon Enough!
The usual regrets aside, my descent into critical thinking, strangely enough, started after University as it was only then that I had enough time to really start powering through the books that I had been accumulating while working on my degree. All that stuff that I was ‘responsible’ for learning was still there, but my curiosity led me down the path toward a greater understanding of the mechanics of how our society works. I owe a great deal to Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and Ronald Wright for fuelling my intellectual growth and move toward a more nuanced understanding of how history and society works and access to a larger context background that helped(s) make sense of world events as they unfolded.
The difference in taking courses before and after my degree was quite startling as learning because you ‘have to’ versus because you ‘want to’.
The challenge now is to continue the journey and start reading again seriously. With the rise of the siren song of social media and video games maintaining an intellectual focus is quite challenging. Getting back into the reading for comprehension and understanding groove is quite difficult. I’m thinking that hitting the University for some courses may be the tonic to this particular problem.
We’ll have to see what’s in the cards and hope to heck there is something interesting to take this upcoming spring/summer. :)
6 comments
February 2, 2019 at 7:07 am
Steve Ruis
I eventually got tired of the format. Too many lazy professors and, especially, lazy students. So, I gave up taking courses … but not reading.
Wait … history works? Are you referring to history as a primal thing or as to how we all distort what we call history to serve our world views?
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February 2, 2019 at 8:03 am
The Arbourist
@ Steve Ruis
I like my personal distortion of history, thank you very much. 😀
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February 2, 2019 at 11:38 am
Bob Browning
Yes Arb I too am satisfied as my conclusions of things evolve. Mr Ruis is right on that too many decide that their best chance for survival is to go along and play the game w/o too much thinking about kindness, ethics and respect for others. I hope I’m not being obtuse but one could go on and on about fears of various types and degrees that drive people- and or shut them down.
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February 2, 2019 at 11:44 am
john zande
Agreed. I can’t say I was especially clued-in till way after uni. Life should run in reverse, heading into youth armed with everything you know long after you’ve lost the energy to do anything about it.
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February 2, 2019 at 12:11 pm
The Arbourist
@JZ
Yeah, tell me about it. Some days I can really feel the “well… I know better now, but too late to fix” vibe. I just try and stay focused on the here and now, and continue to work toward making my small patch of world a slightly better place.
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February 2, 2019 at 12:13 pm
The Arbourist
@Bob Browning
Isn’t it amazing the games we play for shit (in the big schema of things) is worthless. Is denigrating your co-workers really worth that promotion? Is chasing the buck really that satisfying? The difference between what we want and need seems to grow bigger every year, and I think that schism is much to our detriment.
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