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“Life is, but, a sempiternal learning process! In its true sense, learning didn't start when you were born, it doesn't stop either, when you die, and it’s just that when you were born it continued from your parents and others in your milieu who'd have lessened the acclivity of their learning curve!”
I thought of finding a justification for it, of course I can attribute this post to the discussions I had, today morning, with Munmun & Satish.
Learning is a vital developmental process, through which an individual acquires knowledge, skills and a plethora of other abstract qualities. A human being can learn only when he can contain in his memory a particular happening or an idea and later apply it in context at the time of need. Knowledge, being a subset of the more generalised superset of the entire process of learning, can be tho
ught of as being slowly acquired when a child starts reasoning and understanding things. Why do I consider learning as sempiternal? There are certain aspects which were not taught by one’s parents, for everything else, there were of course books and myriad instructions to follow. For example, response to stimuli was acquired naturally, not when somebody actually taught us to react in that way. You’ll throw away a very hot pan, or your eye pupil will automatically contract when exposed to bright sunlight. You’ve the ability to flex your muscles or wave your hand laterally. Did that come from your parents? Yes, in a way, as they are the source of your existence. From the genetic point of view, these abilities were embedded in your genes accrued to the process of evolution, and again, the source (of the genes) was the parents.
The ebullience bubbling from within when you see something beautiful, think of an exotic holiday away from the din and bustle of city life, or the thought of an approaching weekend, a festival, a birthday or a marriage, is something quite natural. Nobody taught you
that you should react in that way, or did they? Your Mechanical Engineering lab attendant might have helped you at using a vise for the very first time, to clamp a work piece to allow work to be performed on it using other tools, such as saws, but he didn’t reiterate. That’s because you learned at a single instance what you were taught, and that got definitely added to your knowledge base, in your process of learning. When you hear of the bereavement of a very dear relative or a friend, you sit in stupor for a very long time, without responding, ruminating through the good-ol times you spent with the person, you feel nostalgic and truly lost somewhere, these are natural feelings emanating from you, again, you were not taught that at the receipt of such a bad news you are supposed to respond the way. Where do you think those feelings came from? Definitely, from your parents!
The apathy a person normally shows at beggars partly might be construed to the environment he’d grown up. When he’d never seen his parents donating a penny to them, he’d probably act in the same way. On the other hand, he might, as well, go against them, and turn out to be a great philanthropist. The pain and suffering of a person of limited means can only be felt; it is something to be seen and he could, as well, be helped at our own discretion, to somehow mitigate his sufferings, and make his two ends meet. If we leave his development at the suo motu cognizance of NGOs or the Government, we, perhaps, are waiving ourselves off the compunctions that make ourselves humane, the feelings that came to us naturally as a part of the learning process.
When you fall in love with a person, do you really understand how you drown yourself in the viscosity of emotions? Do you realise how much time you spend thinking about him or her, once again it’s natural, in the process of learning, rather, inherited from humankind!
And for the last clause of the issue, I’d like to bastion that on the judgement of a visionary. His vision would transcend quite a few years ahead, from the time of his existence, into that period which would come after he’d have knocked the doors of quietus. Where did that foresight come from? Obviously, from the knowledge acquired by him that far, and applying that to find out what’d happen in future. So, the process of learning in this case surpassed death, it went to somebody else from the person after his death, but especially when he’d already foreseen what’d happen in future, and he’d have possibly suggested ways of combating an impending mayhem that would have vitiated normal living conditions!
As our parents and relative grow old they gradually tend to lose their interest to learn, that’s the time when we become more zealous in that aspect. In a way, it instigates us more to learn, to acquire greater knowledge and apply it appropriately. Hence, the process of learning goes on and on eternally, transcending barriers, generations and time!
Learning is a vital developmental process, through which an individual acquires knowledge, skills and a plethora of other abstract qualities. A human being can learn only when he can contain in his memory a particular happening or an idea and later apply it in context at the time of need. Knowledge, being a subset of the more generalised superset of the entire process of learning, can be tho
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilHSyY6oNCGNmAWFqOMAPU6To3JdHdVj_dN1lQS8o0BBp8VIGBsdMoZpsjeq7mlCYqr5hogJiOOe4ysCht7RhdFKJTLK4iB2pzpUhiD3hQB12UBSU4QRRXFnQ7yoQktkiBLjdNE2tjtN4/s200/sleep-learning.jpg)
The ebullience bubbling from within when you see something beautiful, think of an exotic holiday away from the din and bustle of city life, or the thought of an approaching weekend, a festival, a birthday or a marriage, is something quite natural. Nobody taught you
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvhf4zUdfj1vdxgOd4cDzHFbAVqpJMmAEv39MtuwHxpLfVHvzXaLKZqdPPHPlnbUabU91GjCsRqNJdSTocWvL6yv_o6yYqZ5S7uK29sPazX07yMMAd7Fg5aphcn8ttLbTgWPkPw0wx-hI/s200/vise.jpg)
The apathy a person normally shows at beggars partly might be construed to the environment he’d grown up. When he’d never seen his parents donating a penny to them, he’d probably act in the same way. On the other hand, he might, as well, go against them, and turn out to be a great philanthropist. The pain and suffering of a person of limited means can only be felt; it is something to be seen and he could, as well, be helped at our own discretion, to somehow mitigate his sufferings, and make his two ends meet. If we leave his development at the suo motu cognizance of NGOs or the Government, we, perhaps, are waiving ourselves off the compunctions that make ourselves humane, the feelings that came to us naturally as a part of the learning process.
When you fall in love with a person, do you really understand how you drown yourself in the viscosity of emotions? Do you realise how much time you spend thinking about him or her, once again it’s natural, in the process of learning, rather, inherited from humankind!
And for the last clause of the issue, I’d like to bastion that on the judgement of a visionary. His vision would transcend quite a few years ahead, from the time of his existence, into that period which would come after he’d have knocked the doors of quietus. Where did that foresight come from? Obviously, from the knowledge acquired by him that far, and applying that to find out what’d happen in future. So, the process of learning in this case surpassed death, it went to somebody else from the person after his death, but especially when he’d already foreseen what’d happen in future, and he’d have possibly suggested ways of combating an impending mayhem that would have vitiated normal living conditions!
As our parents and relative grow old they gradually tend to lose their interest to learn, that’s the time when we become more zealous in that aspect. In a way, it instigates us more to learn, to acquire greater knowledge and apply it appropriately. Hence, the process of learning goes on and on eternally, transcending barriers, generations and time!
12 comments:
wow! that's very impressive. i skimmed through and found you judiciously used the ten words! wait for a more elaborate comment on the content!
Wow! you have woven a marvel very diligently with those 10 words. I guess i will have to read it again to make any comment, as i am now left in fidgety!!!!!!!
Dude learning is slow..learning is supremacy..learning is wisdom..learning makes us want more...its the root to all misery...the less u learn the happier you will be.....the bottomline is "Learning Kills!!!"
Circumstances maketh a man, genes merely define him. They just provide an option in a
situation-your discretion makes you accept or reject it. Your response to a
particular event - like that to a near one's death, may be very different
from that of your parents. Your genes will egg you on to respond in a
particular manner, like becoming aghast & gloomy, but if your level of
maturity and stability has become higher owing to your circumstances, you
will overcome those negative thoughts and respond to the event in a much
different manner. These circumstances can be your level of education, your
evolving contemplative prowess, and experiences in your own life, etc, and together they constitute learning.
Knowledge acquisation, in my opinion, is visually like a discreetish tan x graph(unlike a coninuous one), with each person starting from a nadir, and having a potential to go upto infinity; but the next one has to again start from nadir and can't have a legacy to push him up that slope!
Regarding reflexes, a ball does not 'learn' the art of rebound from anywhere; it is intrinsic in its nature. Similar analogy goes for our reflexes :-)
Thanks Sudhish for a detailed analysis, your feedback made me absolutely happy… here are my points for you…
If you hadn’t the genes, you’d have nothing! Some part of your learning came from your genes, though circumstances may define the way you react, but the base is always defined by your genes, you don’t start from a nadir in terms of reflexes! You know how to react to a stimulus, only thing u can see is how "well" do you react!
And knowledge acquisition is just a subset of the learning process, so it can start from a nadir, I accept that point fully, but the other elements in the superset “learning” doesn’t always start from a nadir. The other elements include emotional outbursts, care, love etc and also certain behavior. The human beings didn’t "learn" to stand on their feet all of a sudden, they evolved over the eons.. monkeys evolved to man, that also was an addition to the already available knowledge store "the genes" and how did they.. the genes continuously adapted to the surrounding conditions.. so generations wise something or the other was added…. Now isn’t that something which didn’t actually start from a nadir for every individual…rather continued all through?
I definitely have to say that it is the best blog written by Partha so far and obviously one of the best writings that i have experienced in recent times . Language wise , it was just superb , highly prolific with the proper usage of some sensational words & expressions . There were plethora of innovatives ideas also pumped into it and all directed in the right channel . There are so many things in this which may apparently turn out to be so natural or ordinary , but i or may be , so many of others did not think in that way in any point of our life so far . That makes the whole experience of reading it more enthralling , specially the whole idea of genes & vision/foreseeing surpassing the two extremities of our life & thus making the learning sempiternal was not just a cliche , in fact it was much more than that . In that way , it really must have ploughed a lot of creative thinking . The only thing which was probably a little bit out-of-sync with the otherwise excellent standard of this blog might be excessive use of the examples for explaining some particular idea(s), thus sometimes making them redundant . That again may be attributed to partha's way of convincing some new idea to somebody else who is probably not aware of that . He likes to give a lot of examples to make his idea crystal-clear so that there can happen no let-down from the other side . May be , in such a highly enriched writing , that passion can be contained or curbed to some extent.
haha, I can see things heating up for a debate here!
Learning, in my opinion, comes from personal striving & conscious indulgence. Anything that resides in you without these is just a 'property' that you exhibit. Our ancestors learnt that upright posture through great effort, and after their doing so, it merely became a property/characteristic of humans! They learnt it, so it can be shown on their learning curve, not on ours. Our curve will show what we learned, and hence the learning curve would be discreet.
Regarding genes, I can see that you too echo my point that they provide only a base, our discretion decides whether we want to stay on that base or not. And by that ball example in my last comment, I had already put my point for reflexes. A knee jerk type reaction for a reflex is just a characteristic that we have, something that is inherent, and more importantly, something that is retained without conscious indulgence - and hence, can't be qualified as being 'learnt'.
And, my friend, Love, of all the things, is one learning that always starts from nadir! And this one doesn't even need an example ;-)
Thanks Sudhish once again, this gives me good platform to carry on a constructive discussion. I am really very happy
Well yeah, we could really go on and on, on this topic. But I guess we have concurred to some extent as you said. The ‘property’ of exhibition you were talking about surely came to us, our ancestors ‘learnt’ it and passed it on to us, it can’t feature in our curve for obvious reasons, but it can be very well considered as something that transcended our birth from our ancestor, and also that it was a part of the “learning” process of human beings at some point of time. So, the touché is we are at a better position as we have evolved over the years. Yeah, we do have the ‘characteristics’ but how do we have it, it didn’t come to us all of a sudden, there should have been a source, and that source being our parents, isn’t it?
‘Love’ for an individual does start from a nadir, I accept that, but the ‘characteristic’ that you ‘can’ love, or bear the feelings doesn’t, its just that we have that intrinsic quality of ‘loving’ at some point of time, so the ‘love’ meter for a person starts from a nadir, but the process of falling in love or for that matter, the ‘ability’ to develop feelings doesn’t. What do you say?
@ Mun2, Satish
Thanks yaar, well the idea as you know was to put those words into proper context. I am awaiting a detailed anaylysis from both of you :)
@ Debkanta
You have taken me to the stars with that feedback of yours, definitely that gives me an extra bot of encouragement to continue on the blogshpere. Thanks so much yaar. I know you will always be there to read my asinine posts if nobody else . I can always count on you :-) Thanks for being there
Hehe, as they say - 'All roads lead to Rome'! Mine and your roads differ slightly on the definition of the term 'learning', hence the difference in opinion!
And, lest I forget it again this time - well written! Amidst all the critique, I simply forgot to acknowledge your work, which, by all standards, is a beautifully thought about and carefully woven piece of text. Kudos!
Thanks Sudhish once again, for your appreciation, what actually makes me happy is that you had dedicated some time over this piece, understood what I meant to say, and then told me that you differed with me, providing strong reasons, am very new to blogging, but then you showed me that, this is really a platform where one could come out with the weirdest of thoughts and then get the feeling that people read them, not only for the sake of reading, but also apply thought in the process. And am flattered for your piece of appreciation. I have also seen and “blogrolled” you, will obviously like to read your musings, when I get time. And yeah we could have discussions at everything, as I want my ‘learning’ curve to remain active
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