Message in a bottle

 

A few years ago I figured out how learning works.

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to publish a book explaining How People Learn.

Very few people read that book.

I realised (as one does) that in explaining how learning works, I had begun answering the question regarding how thinking works.

I noticed that people were still talking about education, learning etc. and I faced a decision regarding whether I should continue to engage in this debate, or move on to tackle the bigger question about thinking.

I chose the latter.

That decision puts me in a position where I am distanced from the popular view to an increasing degree, and where my perspective is increasingly incomprehensible when I engage in debate, as a consequence.

I am writing this because the relationship between one paradigm and another is now what interests me; the 'unfolding' of truth, if you are poetically inclined. There is an inevitability to the shift; but it is remarkable to me how much people are constrained by current ways of feeling about the world. To put it as simply as I can: if you say something new, it cannot be understood. Thoughts have a ‘timeliness’ to them.

If you are wondering what that new thing is, there is no mystery - it is this: thinking is feeling. All ‘thinking’ is a type of affective response. It is incredible to me that we ever believed otherwise – after all, we tend not to think that thinking and feeling are separate processes in cats, rats & dogs. I can only think that we are very deeply attached to the idea of ourselves as supernatural creatures.

I am writing this as something of a message in a bottle. I can see with increasing clarity that it cannot be understood by anyone now: yet I know that it will be understood by almost everyone in future. I like the thought that this message will make a journey that I will not.

I don’t know why that matters to me. I think that the desire for human emotional connection runs very deep and cannot be entirely erased, even in someone like me.