ON ABSORBING KNOWLEDGE

an essay resulting from pages of notes on this subject

We each develop a unique personal paradigm by building a storehouse of knowledge which defines our selves, our concept of the world, and our place in it.

We attain this knowledge through a process of learning that begins at birth.  This learning is accomplished either by interpreting personal experience or by acquiring the recorded learning of others.

At the moment of birth we cry from sensory overload and comfort comes or not.  When we are uncomfortable again we cry and comfort comes or not.  We quickly learn that there are causes and there are effects that result.  We can cry to get positive, or negative, reactions from our environment.  This is the beginning of personal knowledge attained from experience.

Facts enter our brains through our senses, are processed, filtered, and judged.  If we deem them worthy, they are stored in a portion of our memory for later recall.  We use them to make decisions, to generate creative fantasies, or to draw conclusions.  Experience teaches us who to trust, how to avoid pain, and how to get our basic needs met.  

As we enter childhood our needs become more complicated.  Our personal knowledge and our understanding of our world grows.  We begin to absorb knowledge from those around us. For example:  “Tommy hit me for no reason I can see.  He’s a bully to avoid.” or “Mary smiles at me and makes me feel good. Spend time with her, and give her what she wants.”

And we learn from beyond our personal experience. 

 For example: “Mary says Tommy’s daddy beats him when he’s drunk.”  We may deduce that this is true to Mary’s experience, not our own, and could explain Tommy’s behavior.

A new source of knowledge opens to us as we learn to read and study.  A vast storehouse of knowledge recorded by others becomes available.  To progress and grow, we begin to consume a steady diet of information.  Logic and reasoning skills evolve and we sort, categorize, and file knowledge away. The ability to create our unique evolving paradigm is magnified.

As adults we are faced with an overwhelming flood of choices concerning our sources of knowledge and how we spend our limited available time.  In making these choices, we continue to define our selves.

To function well in this modern technical world we learn beyond our experience and the recorded word becomes our best source. Whether online, on screen, or from books and magazines, we must continue to absorb knowledge to grow and function.

Knowledge learned from experience provides the foundation for sorting, for categorizing, and for judging the truthfulness and the validity of knowledge gleaned from recorded sources.

Reviews

[Salvatore Buttaci]

Congratulations for winning the essay-on-knowledge contest!

[angelina neves]

Very well said. Wonderful!

[Helena]

I am really thrilled that this topic encouraged your writing juices to flow!
Brilliant write, thoughtfully penned and some really very
excellent points you have setdown. I enjoyed this so much!

Thank you for submitting this to Albert's Essay contest!

L&L ~ Helena

[spence]

As a student of and practitioner of working with people of diferent ages and stages I found this account of lifespan development concise and to the point with many valid 'live' examples entered to clarify any ambiguity that may have been interpreted. I think this would be a great introduction to students learning a trade in the 'helping relationship' industry, education, social work, community work, et al. I saw shades of Maslow, Erikkson, Rogers and even Paulo Friere in this essay, though it is completely unique as a stand alone piece. It's a shame that academia demands empirical evidence from overcomplex intellectual sources to qualify every statement that a person feels is true, as this has accurately described the process of learning from birth to young adult.
I enjoyed reading this- I wish I'd read it 12 years ago and it would have maybe given me a bit of a head start, take care, spence

[Rick Puetter]

Dear papaed,

A nice essay. You write very well. And I hope this is entered in the current Albert's Cafe contest. I suspect it is.

Very well done, and I have to agree with you. In fact I thought the premise of the Albert's Cafe contest was a bit silly. After all, written knowledge is a result of experience. So to ask which is better written knowledge or knowledge gained by experience is really nonsense. (Well maybe they meant "personal experience", but even that begs the question of whether you think your experience is better than someone else's, whereas I think knowledge is knowlege. Me experiencing it directly doesn't make it better or more true.)

Nicely written my friend. I enjoyed your piece.

Kind regards,

Rick

[papaed]

I love essays, but find them hard to write because I tend to be wordy. I wrote this for a contest. It's about 1/3 the size it started as.