Well the internet is free and you can learn more because you are free to question, where in a university environment that is not the case as much.Greta wrote: ↑Fri Nov 16, 2018 4:34 amI did get forced by a boss to do a year post grad in management in middle age. I learned a fair bit from it, actually, but was not impressed with the parroting aspect of the education. Substantial work based on real research from the workplace earned low marks and regurgitation of outdated theoretical course material earned top marks. So it goes. Thus, as with every other part of society, you are taught not to say what you think is true but what you think others want to hear.Eodnhoj7 wrote: ↑Thu Nov 15, 2018 10:45 pmBarring job opportunities, I can personally assure you you are not missing much with the education system in light of the advancements on the internet in the past 20 years.Greta wrote: ↑Thu Nov 15, 2018 10:03 pm
True about the short term futility of reason amongst the unreasonable.
I personally hold on to reason because the alternative is unpleasant. Being uneducated, I spent much of my life being unreasonable, too often unthinkingly using emotion and strategy rather than logic to influence events. It's been a slow journey to escape what was, in hindsight, a bit of a nightmare of confusion. So I'm not going to abandon all that just because the Zeitgeist favours unreason and feverishness. It just means that I and others who won't abandon reason are pushed into the role of ballast.
I wonder if this sense of being a self within blackness (as in a sensory deprivation tank or suchlike) is so fundamental. As far as I can see in nature there's a whole lot of ways of being and most seemingly lack what we'd think of as a sense of self. The "self" as we know it emerges through what I think of as humans' superior "temporal senses" as compared with other animals. That is, adults can perceive and conceive the flow of time to an extent that other living things can't, so the self is constructed of past and present impressions.
Rather, that fundamental base of consciousness would seem to be the mindless atavistic sense of being of simple organisms. Our relatively sophisticated sense of self is one of a number of interim layers of consciousness, which is reflected in the structure of the brain.
Try sitting on a park bench for 15 minutes. Stare at a point in space and be aware of what you observe with your eyes and in your thoughts.
I would have loved to have studied science, though - probably biology because astronomy requires too much physics - but I was bullied out of school back in the days when no one cared. So, instead of gaining an education, I took intoxicants almost every waking hour to numb the pain, so loafing around staring into space was a common activity. You learn from that too, albeit more slowly.
All the sciences (biology, chemistry, psychology, etc.) as extension of one source, the all, have common underlying principles that are universal.
Atoms were discovered strictly through shear question and reason prior to the invention of the microscope. Simple self reflection and observing everyday occurrences give ample evidence over the nature of reality.
Try staring into a point of space intentionally, as a chosen experience, and not out of boredom or despair or any negative mood. Try clearing your head, and heart, and reflect on the experience itself.
