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Word Salad – A Post in the Raw
Everything blends together in my mind. I haven’t figured out yet if this is normal or not. The first time I noticed this was when a boss told me to leave my personal life at home.
"Hmmmm…. Are we talking Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind or Clockwork Orange forget?"
I would have said that but he would not have gotten it.
I have studied a lot of things. Unfortunately they blend too. Game theory mixes with occult magic which mixes with symbolism which mixes with design which mixes with ceremony which mixes with religion which mixes with public opinion which mixes with political science which mixes with sociology which mixes with cultural anthroplogy. I could keep going. Object oriented programming mixes with the Kabbala which mixes Herman Hesse which mixes with set theory which mixes nature vs nuture and IQ tests.
"Jack of all trades, master of none," an expert on phonographs once told me. I told him my record player was in the basement and went on reading my biography of Leonardo Da Vinci so I could get onto the one of R. Buckminister Fuller.
Gestalt: "a structure, configuration, or pattern of physical, biological, or psychological phenomena so integrated as to constitute a functional unit with properties not derivable by summation of its parts."
Maybe there has been a few in history that agree with me.
Synergy: "refers to the phenomenon in which two or more discrete influences or agents acting together create an effect greater than that predicted by knowing only the separate effects of the individual agents."
So much for specialization.
"Think out of the box."
That assumes that you should climb in the box in the first place. What about thinking before the box? What about trying to figure it out and then going to the manual?
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.”
-Shunyru Suzuki
There was one statement that I did disagree with when I was a kid, but totally believe now. When I asked why I had to learn all the stupid shit in school, I was told, "You never know when you are going to need it."
3 Responses to Word Salad – A Post in the Raw
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“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few.â€Â
-Shunyru Suzuki
Great statement!
Now this is a great post. I especially love the last bit.
I will never forget being 8yrs old and crying (literally) over math homework and begging for a calculator.
My father, the electrical engineer and math guru, turns to me and says “you don’t get a calculator until you don’t need one”.
Then he had 8 purple heads, now I totally get it.
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That’s from a book called Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind which I read first when I was studying different religions. I got to the point where it seemed all these religions were like the three blind men trying to describe an elephant, each at a different point on the elephant. I figured if I could step back, I could get a fuzzy image of the elephant. Each new book became a different point of view.
I reread the book later when I was getting into programming for some reason or another. I realized the blind men/elephant analogy crossed not only related disciplines but vastly different fields of study.
Eventually I saw knowledge and books as templates for thoughts more than hard truths. If I could read a book with an open mind and allow books that I had read before influence my thoughts, strange patterns start emerging between totally different subjects. I just let it happen.
Eventually I became able to learn, understand, and remember things I read much more quickly. They all become part of one whole, attaching to bits and pieces of other knowledge.
That’s exactly how I had to learn. I didn’t get a calculator until Calculus. My dad said the same exact thing. But it has helped a lot. At my first job, I didn’t realize the cash register had a change function for 6 months. I didn’t need it.