Jun 28, 2024 01:18 AM
(This post was last modified: Jun 28, 2024 01:40 AM by Magical Realist.)
This is an excellent thesis by Paul Lutus (https://arachnoid.com/administration/index.html)
that I stumbled upon online that contains alot of interesting and insightful ways of thinking about our contemporary world. Its primary thesis, that we too often confuse symbols with things, is effectively demonstrated in the various institutions we are surrounded with, from government, to commerce, to religion, to marriage, and even to science. The solution it offers to this erroneous approach is re-education and re-thinking these institutions in such a way that returns us to their original and true natures. That it really all comes down to a renewed respect for and investment in individual experience and the first person thinking in terms of ideas instead of facts.
https://arachnoid.com/lutusp/symbols.html
In my opinion, the greatest single failure of American education is that students come away unable to distinguish between a symbol and the thing the symbol stands for.
"It is no accident that modern education doesn't teach the distinction between symbol and thing — if it did, education as we know it would fall apart. After that, after education reshaped itself to provide actual knowledge instead of the symbolic representation of knowledge, the society around us would be transformed.
But in the meantime, most "educated" people cannot tell the difference between a fact and an idea, the most common confusion of symbol and thing. Most believe if they collect enough facts, this will compensate for their inability to grasp the ideas behind those facts. And, because of this "poverty of ideas," most cannot work out the simplest conceptual questions, such as "why is the sky dark at night?" (unless you are in a small minority, the actual reason is not what you think — see more here ).
As a result of this educational deficit, our individually inspired sense of well-being, our direct participation in those actions that assure our continued survival, our sense that we must create our own reasons for living, have been replaced by a kind of conceptual totalitarianism, which has as its cornerstone a deliberate blurring of symbol and thing . This totalitarianism has several parts:...."
that I stumbled upon online that contains alot of interesting and insightful ways of thinking about our contemporary world. Its primary thesis, that we too often confuse symbols with things, is effectively demonstrated in the various institutions we are surrounded with, from government, to commerce, to religion, to marriage, and even to science. The solution it offers to this erroneous approach is re-education and re-thinking these institutions in such a way that returns us to their original and true natures. That it really all comes down to a renewed respect for and investment in individual experience and the first person thinking in terms of ideas instead of facts.
https://arachnoid.com/lutusp/symbols.html
In my opinion, the greatest single failure of American education is that students come away unable to distinguish between a symbol and the thing the symbol stands for.
"It is no accident that modern education doesn't teach the distinction between symbol and thing — if it did, education as we know it would fall apart. After that, after education reshaped itself to provide actual knowledge instead of the symbolic representation of knowledge, the society around us would be transformed.
But in the meantime, most "educated" people cannot tell the difference between a fact and an idea, the most common confusion of symbol and thing. Most believe if they collect enough facts, this will compensate for their inability to grasp the ideas behind those facts. And, because of this "poverty of ideas," most cannot work out the simplest conceptual questions, such as "why is the sky dark at night?" (unless you are in a small minority, the actual reason is not what you think — see more here ).
As a result of this educational deficit, our individually inspired sense of well-being, our direct participation in those actions that assure our continued survival, our sense that we must create our own reasons for living, have been replaced by a kind of conceptual totalitarianism, which has as its cornerstone a deliberate blurring of symbol and thing . This totalitarianism has several parts:...."
