Basic Knowledge

I think I mentioned a long time ago that one of the most inspiring professors I had as an undergraduate was the teacher of Philosophy 100, a basic introductory course. These kinds of courses are hugely important because they tend to provide the foundation for all of our later ideas and progress--if they are good, that is! This professor, every now and then, would preface the class with what he called a "public service announcement." This consisted of something he had come across that he thought might be generally useful. One of them, for example, was regarding the use of hard contact lenses--he recommended against them (I don't think they are even offered any more).

This post is offered as a public service announcement. The basic idea I want to offer is that of knowledge and learning. I had a very wise friend once who said that all wisdom is boring. By that I think he meant that wisdom consists in basic truths that we already know. This is one of them: knowledge is good and therefore learning is good because we add to our store of knowledge. I have heard reference to one's skill set or stack which is a similar idea. What do you know? More specifically, what do you know how to do?

After quite a few years as a professional classical guitarist I ran into some roadblocks and this caused me to re-evaluate my course in life. The best thing that came out of this was a revival of my intellectual curiosity as a result of going back to school as a PhD candidate in musicology. Courses like research methods and paleography woke up my intellectual side which had been somewhat dormant. The nice thing is that I have continued to develop this side even many years later.

I took the Canadian Securities Course online which is what qualifies you to be a stock-broker and was horrified to discover that you only needed 60% to pass. I did the University of British Columbia pre-licencing course in real estate and also taught myself statistics. All these because I had neglected all these kinds of math-related things since Algebra in grade 11 which had really turned me off. I was asked to give some pre-concert talks as part of the chamber music series so I gave myself mini-seminars in Chopin and the Beethoven Diabelli Variations.

You see, when I was in high school it was a very difficult time in my life: my parents had divorced and I had no real guidance. I just felt isolated and alienated. University helped fix that, but since I was a performance major a lot of my intellectual capacity was not used. I think most of us have unused intellectual capacity. All I want to say here is seek knowledge, especially in areas where you are weak.

The thing is that we live in a distorted cultural environment where crude ideologies are being used to propagandize and manipulate the general population. You should ask a few questions: cui bono? Who benefits? In most cases there are very obvious beneficiaries and you should discount everything they say as special pleading. I don't want to get too specific as this is really not a partisan matter--we are all being manipulated. But just for example, when a Hamas military leader tells you how many innocent civilians were killed by Israel, this should immediately be discounted as special pleading. Sadly, even the major wire services like Reuters and Associated Press seem to lack any critical skills.

What is necessary to fill in the gaps in basic knowledge? These days very basic things like history and geography are needed so stop reading social media and pick up a couple of books. And beware of recent books in these areas because they are likely to be catering to the crude ideologies I mentioned earlier. Perhaps the safest thing to do is not read anything written since about 1970--even earlier in some disciplines. I say this because there is a Canadian school district that decided to remove everything from their libraries that was published before 2003 as being insufficiently deferential to the reigning ideology. Which is exactly why you should seek out the older books.

Right now I am giving myself a seminar on Wittgenstein largely because I find it extremely hard to understand what he is saying. Perhaps there is something else worth mentioning: the only person that can really educate you is yourself. Apart from the cost of buying a couple of books and a pencil to take notes with, education is free. All it takes is the will to learn and an investment of time.

Everything I read about higher education these days horrifies me: the idea that people would go to institutions that charge tens of thousands of dollars a year in tuition only to be crudely propagandized is both insulting and embarrassing. Insulting that this could be considered by any intelligent person as "education" and embarrassing that so many actually fall for it.

We really need some palate-cleansing music after that. Here is Scott Ross with a bunch of sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti.