Saturday, June 21, 2008

Unlearn !!!!! Part 1

As a continuation of many of those posts which i have written advocating the whole leberation of thoughts and ideas i stumbled upon thi word ... " UNLEARN ". Again as my Guru says disclaim what is not yours ( which includes most thing ) here is the latest disclaimer . I came across this word during a drunken reverie with a friend of mine . I guess i was too drunk to remember exactly where the conversation had begun but i rememeber this word from the conversation.
UNLERN !!!!!!
Have your ever thought how important it is to learn ??? i m sur all of us have very strong views emphasizing its importance. But as my beliefs in sufism tell me ... there is more to unlearn before u can learn ....... Think of it this way, when we were a kid our sense of vision told us that the ground under our feet looked flat . based on that we believed that the earth was flat . But when we went to school we were tought tht the earth was a sphere and how it rotated around itself and so on .. in this whole new learning process we subconciously unlearnt the whole theory of earth being flat ....
Similarly i think there is a need to understand that many of our so called value need to be unlearnt to live in this ever changing and complicated world that we live in . Many of them we have but there is a need for more of that change .
For instance thw way middle class looks at mall culture is with a lot of resentment which cannot be faulted either but its not the only truth there is a need to look at it from a different perspective. Even more than the need to change is the realisation that change cannot be haled and we need to change according to the world around us .....
I know so many friends of mine who dispise smoking and boozing. Agreed its a health hazard but does anyone give heed to the psychological need for such thing... i mean come on dont u think when defend the antismoking thingy so vehemently and still see people smoking that u need to realise the other take on this situation !!!! this is not just about antisocial habits there is more to the issue that meets the eye ... there is a growing need to accept other cultures other value in the globalised scenario. Here i would like to quote another example of my dearest friend when he went to UK for his last yrof education he found it very difficult to live with people with different set of values. Hence the quick fix cure for all such problems UNLEARN !!!!!

10 comments:

Akshay Parchure said...

hmmmm good but i dont completely agree, u do need to aceept things and foreign cultures and views but that dosent mean completely 4get your own things. I agree that the everchanging world demands a lot of change but it is not wise to change ur values and views but rather twist them according to situation, after learnin that earth is round did u give up on the fact that ground is flat? or just because you learnt a new thing u 4got wat was old n began 2 believe somethin else? Think abt it chao

Radhika Mohandas said...

Wassup!
A concept to think about, of course, but is it really as easily applicable as it seems? here we.re faced with the difference in 'fact' and 'perception'.take your example of the earth being round/flat. No denying the earth is round, but to what concerns the ground under our feet, boringly easy at it seems, the degree of the curve is so low, it is technically flat. theory of a flat wavesurface. flat, is our perception, that doesnt change the fact that the earth is round.
Coming to your smokers example. fact, is that smoking is hazardous to health. perception is what leads to the affinity of smokers to the act, and dislike of anti-smokers towards it.
P.S.:I'm a non-smoker, not antismoker. a person smoking doesnt bother me, unless it's someone I'm all too attached to...who cares if you screw up your own lungs anyway?

Unknown said...

@ hellbound
good u are rite in pointing out the difference between perception and fact ... but shall we just look a little deeper inside our intellectual brains and ask ourselves who told you that the earth was round and its a fact ??? you believed in sumones perception who cud prove to you that the perception was rite ... the only thing which i wanted to point out thru the example of smoking was that does anyone realise that a simple thing as smoking can lead you to have varied expereinces ... its a health hazard true ... but which health are we talkin about ?? the phisiological or mental ... my post here is on a much more intellectual level... whts the point of good health you cnt do things that make you happy isnt it the ultimate goal in whatever you do ??

Unknown said...

@ akshay .. i hope our little discussion down at lalit cleared the my point of view .. your explanation is valid cause you are still segregatin between a theory and and its practical implication ... i m sure Einstien didnt realise that his research on relativity would open so many more doors for so many more theories ... which help us understand the universe a lot better than we had before it was proposed but tell me my friend arent these the same theories which will for the basis of our future FACTS !!!! as my dear friend HELLBOUND has mentioned !!!

Unknown said...

I agree. But as hellbound points out, it isn't easy. However, I must say that the ability to unlearn is one of the most unique and precious of our gifts. It is the manifestation of imagination, something very beautiful, but easily lost.

I wrote about this some time ago, in a queer mood. And it has indeed helped me move on. Back to my natural state of being.

Unknown said...

@ alok
dude i went thru your blog our thoughts seem to be identical ... but where you left off in your post and where i have left off in part 1 i plan to carry it forward ... not only show the importance of unlearn but also to make it a habit to unlearn u are rite that its noteasy but careful thought wud make it comparitively easy ...

Over Rated said...

Unlearn!! That's the word I was looking for ...

Thanks a ton my friend ... Unlearn ...

one word which encapsulates a lot of meaning ...

Unlearn ...

*keeps repeating to self* ...

Unknown said...

Awaiting further parts...

Anonymous said...

Lets start by unlearning the habit of boozing and smoking ourselves ..shall we??
Pissed!!!..how about unlearning that too..
My views- it solely depends upon an individual to learn or unlearn according to his /her discretion . When your Guru says "Disclaim" what is not yours.Its depends on you to decide what is yours and what is not..You can lead a horse to the water but you can't make it drink

Unknown said...

@ natasha ...
yes i never said that unlearn was an objective to be achieved its all about subjectivity and as u rightly put discretion ... hence i do not consider unlearning the smoking habit ... its solely upto me ... i m only telling to free urself from ur prejudices which for the basis of a lot of our perceptions