Learning, Internal Dialogue, and "Not Yet"

It is important to keep one's mind on the ball when learning. Any thoughts like, "I can't do this" are forbidden when the learner must learn a subject.

When the learner talks inside the head by using that "internal dialogue" that Allen Watts claims to run "interminably," then the learner needs to choose the right words. So negatives for the learner are not going to help. Positives for the learner will help.

I see when I am intensely involved with learning something "tough" for me, I need to agree with myself to come back to the task. I see that I need to ask myself, "Have you learned this yet" or "Are you going to be able to learn this stuff?" before stopping for the day. "Stopping," I see is preferable to "quitting" for the day, to regress.

I need to say to myself something like this: Have you learned what you need for the day on this project? "Not yet," I need to say to myself. This makes returning to the project at-hand much easier with a "can-do" attitude. It makes the forward-backward motion of the mind's learning more palatable.

It is just so with mathematics and other subjects. Math makes the "not yet" approach more apparent, more useful, and more easily measured -- of all things! When learning mathematics the learning pushes on into virgin territory. A keen focus must be kept if success is to prevail. I know that the learner is keenly focused on the math subject because without keen focus there is no learning in Math, other than "I can't learn this stuff when I'm not keenly focused."

My approach to learning the riveting type learning like math is to work into the unknown, conquering as I move forward. When I find that I can move no farther, when I've spent too much time on the problem, it is better to take a break, regroup until later. Then when I come back, I'm coming back from old territory that I have conquered. This way I have some solid learning ground to help my mind leverage itself into new ideas, new intellectual territory.

I see that learning should never be a negative, only a positive continuum. "Not yet" tells me that the learning will come with effort and persistence. Right knowledge is positive knowledge, not negative. (I will acknowledge the place of "negation" dialectial criticism, though, especially in literature.)

Eddie Evans
crime scene cleanup

Wall Street Watch - A must have bookmark

http://www.wallstreetwatch.org/


Wall Street Watch - See what happened when Reagon's economics became standard operating procedure on Wall Street.


eddie evans
crime scene cleanup

Obama the Pragmatist

"Asked in an interview with The New York Times if the United States is winning in Afghanistan, Obama said "no," while adding "our troops are doing an extraordinary job in a very difficult situation."

Here I've gone and lost my source for this article.
It's so exciting to have an articulate and engaged president after eight years of anti-intellectualism.

Obama's foreign policy is definitely enlightened. The English, the Russians, and now the Americans are KIA in the Afghanistan mountains. Obama wants to find a way out before the last of the US Empire's treasure is gone. He wants out to save young soldiers' lives.

I recall Vietnam with the Japanese, French, and then Americans. We don't need anymore of it.
Had Bush gone into Afghanistan with resolve instead of going into Iraq, we might have done something worthwhile. We could have given tens of thousands of dollars to every person in Afghanistan instead of dropping it in the form of bombs and bodies on Iraq.

Obama's pragmatic, not a fool like Bush.

eddie evans
crime scene cleanup

Military Suicides

Just heard on KPFK, but I'm not going to accept these figures until I have more to go on.

Last month, 20b active duty, US military committed suicide.

Last month, 400 US veterans committed suicide.

Eddie Evans
crime scene cleanup

What again? Antarctic glaciers melting faster than thought

Either there is a terrific melt underway or someone's crying wolf. Every time I turn around, every month anyway, there's another article about how the glaciers are disappearing. So now "satellite data and automated weather stations now indicate it is more widespread" and there's no end in site, at least not in my life time or anyone's life time for the next tens of thousands of years.

Now is someone crying wolf or what? I heard that story about the little boy crying "wolf" once too many times. Now I'm beginning to wonder about this ice deal.

Then, there's that old "Mother Hubberd who lived in a shoe" to think about. I know for a fact there's more folks on this planet than mechanized agriculture can feed any time soon. And some of these folks are using Brave New World technology to bring eight kids at a time!

Well, after my writing on the word "environment," I decided to write on the nature of English, syntax, and meaning. Now it's the ice man melting that has my dander up!

I will get to my re-editing of the environment piece and then move on to the next piece, the nature of screwing up a good marketing campaign by one word.

Eddie Evans (not melting -- yet)
Crime Scene Cleanup

"Environment" is a dandy, helpful word.

"Environment" is a good word for helping us give meaning to an event, place, or process. It is one of those words that allows us to mean a specific meaning while not pinning us down to fist fights over meaning. It is not a good word for the dogmatically oriented.

On the one hand, when we speak of the "environment," we might be speaking of an internal or external environment. On the other hand, when speaking of either, we are talking about more than the "internal" or "external" environments. In either case, we are talking about a place without solid, inflexible boundaries, but we are talking about a place. We are talking about a place that exists with relationships between internal and external environments.

Added to this, we are talking about temperature, cycles, seasons, and a becoming and passing away, processes. We are talking about habitat for critters, human and non-human, internally and externally. We are talking about what it is that makes an "environment," whether its embryonic fluid, human and non-human, or undersea habitat for deep sea critters. In both cases, most cases (not to be dogmatic), there is an internal and external flowing of material, be it gas, liquid, or solid material, an inward, outward flowing motion not unlike the Secret of the Golden Flower -- not to change the subject, either.

"Environment" works well with the word "total,' although when using the phrase "total environment," folks tend to understand the internal and external places with and without a connection, places that exist in relationship to other places without connections. For example, I can say the total environment of "symbiotic relationships for lichens," or I can say the "total environment" for "teenage relationships," and in both cases I can explain the two as if I can explain everything about the two. One exists in an environment influenced by temperature, moisture, light, humidity, nutrients, and seasons. The other exists in an environment influenced by family, friends, school, and more. So I can speak as if I am speaking about something common to either, but neither exists as it was an instant ago. Both are being, becoming and passing away because of their total environment's being, becoming, and passing away.

Then again, "Environment" does not work well with the word "total," because "environment" is the total. It is what it is because it contains the totality of what it needs to be an "environment." It is an odd word because to exist it exists by adjoining to another "environment." While it is doing this adjoining, it is also overlapping what it adjoins. And it still has a certain meaning for its users!

To really add to this mystery of the environment, the language mystery, "environment" has no real existence out there, out there in the non-human World. It is, in a way, like the tree in the forest. The tree in the forest which does or does not make a sound when it falls is silent, unless there is someone there to hear it fall, someone there to give meaning to the tree's total environment, its internal environment and external environments, the hearer's internal and external environments.

In the end, the word "environment" has its own environment, a World of contextual clues, meanings, to give it its own place in human usage. "Environment" is just one of those words that make life more interesting and understandable. It is an important word.

I am jabbering. It's late.

eddie evans
crime scene cleanup

Obama on Nukes

Before I forget to get this down, there is a big bright spot out there on the nuke issue, and that spot is Obama's spot.

Already he is moving toward reducing the US nuclear stockpile. It is a first step and an important step that Bush could not find his way to in any meaningful manner.

If and when the US stockpile is destroyed, then we can demand that all others be destroyed. This is one area that I would support US intervention.
What would Jesus do? He would destroy the war heads. What did that stupid Bush do? Nothing to be proud of doing as far as the warheads go. Bush is criminal.

eddie evans
crime scene cleanup