...Finally. Seems I'm running a bit behind here.
So, I guess I'm supposed to keep track of my encounters with each of the 23 beasties here. Well, let's begin, shall we?
Thing #1, methinks, requires no elaboration. You see, in my experience, people who work in libraries often know how to read and, what's more, comprehend what they're reading. Such is the case here.
Thing #2 is a different matter. Now, I guess I consider myself a "lifelong learner" (though I prefer to think of it in terms of just being curious about pretty much everything), but it is difficult for me to envision myself doing all the stuff they recommend. Frankly, it seems way too much like
work. It seems to me that the whole essence of learning lies in step 7 1/2, by far the most important step: Be curious. My personal approach to learning something new has always been to simply immerse myself in (read: obsess about) the subject, and before long I attain some degree of proficiency. It is the curiosity that drives the process, the desire to learn; with this, any effort made is by necessity fun, or at least satisfying. Of course, where curiosity is missing, well, there's a problem.
I remember reading
The Illuminatus Trilogy by neurolinguistic philosopher Robert Anton Wilson, and in that humorous work he brought up the concepts of the
neophobe and the
neophyte. Simply put, the former is an individual who is for some reason reluctant to embrace novelty (that is, new stuff- ideas, technology, etc) due to fear of some sort, while the latter is one who enthusiastically absorbs such things . By extension, the neophyte has a much easier time not only embracing new technologies or ideas, but is also able to abandon outmoded or incorrect thinking patterns (or models of thought, or reality-tunnels) as well. For the neophyte, thinking itself becomes a tool, whereas for the neophobe a rigid model of thought becomes in many ways essential to one's very
identity and is therefore very difficult to discard or revise. As the Buddha said, "All we are is the result of what we have thought". This idea ties directly into the notion of Learning, which is where I'm heading with all this claptrap.
When we learn something new, we are essentially reprogramming (or restructuring) our brains to some degree or other. In purely general terms, someone with a neophobic bent is going to be more resistant to some types of learning because this may require the changing of long-held attitudes or biases essential to the person's identity, and this causes discomfort or fear. Individuals with this largely unconscious attitude cannot make the necessary metaphorical connection between something they already know and that which they don't- which is essential to really understanding something new. It is for this reason that my mother never learned to use her VCR and can't use a TV remote with any degree of certainty. While she can use Microsoft Word and Excel (because the former is almost like a typewriter and the latter is like, well, a spreadsheet), many other aspects of computing elude her because in her day there was no interactivity with machines. A machine that responds to your input as though it were thinking is offputting to her, as it is to many people of her generation. Don't get me wrong- my mother is a very intelligent, well-read lady; but modern technology kinda freaks her out, because she has very little that is familiar in her mind to compare it to. She was not raised with video games like I was (Atari, anyone?), so interactivity is new to her and goes against her ingrained world-view.
Anyway, I have babbled way too long about this (although I could go on). In a nutshell, my view on learning is this: One must be curious and full of wonder; one must view one's brain as a tool and not hold too tightly to one's own opinions or beliefs; it helps immensely to metaphorically connect something one already knows to that which one is trying to learn (such as viewing a computer as a glorified filing cabinet). The great thing about learning is that the more one learns, the more one is able to make metaphorical connections between different realms of learning. This, for me, is inspiring, because one's understanding gets deeper and deeper and the world gets more and more amazing. From my experience, these attitudes make learning fun, and learning broadens one's worldview, making the one's own world bigger and more interesting- and who doesn't want that?
