The Thickest Walls - The barriers we build in our own minds.

Article Summary

John S Veitch
The Network Ambassador

Learning is usually like osmosis. We absorb their mannerisms and ideas and style of speech of other people.
We are programmed by our parents to be like them. Being true to that model, we try to be "like me" in the choices we make, as we live our lives.
We build a fortress for ourselves, in which we hide to remain true to ourselves.
The main secret to success is the ability to understand change and to adapt to it.
If we are going to build an "Open Future ©" for ourselves, we need to take active steps to increase our adaptability.
"A Short History of Progress" by Ronald Wright, is the history of four past civilizations.
Civilizations develop a successful strategy which for many years seems to create progress.
Cultural beliefs and vested interests strongly resist the need to change. Wright calls this an "ideological pathology".
"Wright concludes that "our present behaviour is typical of failed societies at the zenith of their greed and arrogance" (p. 129).
We badly need new theories, principles, and innovative ways of resolving conflicts.
Sadly, we tend to invest a huge amount of effort protecting our current beliefs from attack. We try to reinforce the castle of ideas we have built.
The last frontier is to explore how you learn, and how you can recognise and correct the mis-built learning of the past.
If you are accumulating your "own data" keeping a record of your own experience and accumulated knowledge, you should "self discovered" useful things.
I recommend maintaining a journal, but a lab book, bench notes, a change log, might serve the same purpose.
That will give you insight other people don't have. Insight often first appears as a mystery.
You start to ask questions nobody else considers important. You are opening up for yourself a pathway others are not walking.

If you need the original article it's here.