The recent lockdown has led to a substantially greater number of people cooking and eating at home and not restaurants. I noticed some interesting psychological inter-play when doing this. The process of purchasing, preparing, cooking, and presenting a meal forces so much mental involvement in the process, that it continually distorts and diminishes the sensation of hunger. Therefore, we often find when we are hungry, if we take time to cook, we may not have the same urgent sense of “I must eat, now!” Which is very different to when we know our meal simply awaits us devouring it. What can we learn from this? A culture of consumption as opposed to proactive engagement in process takes many forms. I recently prepared a relatively simple toasted vegetable sandwich, and the process of firstly choosing the salad, inspecting the leaves with your fingers, then seeing the water droplets cleanse the leaves, then later chopping cucumbers and seeing the soft seeds inside contrast against the relatively thick green skin, then applying the various spreads and sauces to add taste - this process gets you in touch, it conditions the mind to become familiar with the meal. It is also comparable with a warm up before sparring in martial arts. It helps acquaint you with your body and its condition, its movement, the feeling of your muscles when handling different challenges, and gets the senses geared up. After spending time preparing the meal, bites will inevitably be more conscious and appreciative. The fast food culture trivialises the process. Instead of making it a conscious process, it creates desensitisation. The same principle will be scalable for many things. A leader who is very disengaged from the workings on the ground is another good example. If there is a factory that is suddenly taken over by someone with little experience in the field and with such environment, it automatically creates a disconnect. If however, we build up the familiarity of looking at the cucumber seeds, we will appreciate more when we taste it. If we walk the floors, talk to people, we will appreciate more the output. If we appreciate the individual journeys, we will value our staff. If we don’t, it will be like fast food - use for our benefit, and discard when useless to us.
The Library
A prominent Chinese scholar was asked why he liked living in Europe. He said he liked the old buildings there. Indeed when I went to work in mainland Europe in the past few years, I noticed how the bank buildings were not newly formed glitzy sky-scrappers. Rather they were buildings frequently put up after World War II, and some that dated before this. This beautiful heritage and value of it, creates a culture of appreciation and depth. Appreciation means referencing the past, since it refers to what someone has done, or a culture has done. With focus solely on what needs to get done, without appreciation, this is similar to the “I need to eat, now!” consumerist mentality. The University of London had as one of their shared facilities, the Maughan Library (pictured above) which is near to the Royal Court of Justice on Fleet Street. It was tucked away, a private little place. WIth lamps, and meters high of books all around you in a very large round room, it oozed a spirit of deep thinking, contemplation, thought and learning. It is not a place for rushing. At times I’ve entered it in a semi-panic pre exam, with a need to cram as much as possible. Yes, it served that purpose for me, but this was not the spirit of the place. The paintings, the dim light, the carvings outside, gave a feel of attention and above all appreciation for the process of education. A simply beautiful experience, the educational equivalent of taking a slow breathe of fresh air at the summit of a mountain. It is in such a place that the mind can be open to education, where there are no constraints. Education after all, is a two way process; the knowledge getting to you, and also of you assimilating the knowledge and personalising it to become acquainted with it. This is not something that materialism can create simply be amassing lots of wealth. It is an experience on the mental platform of mental openness, facilitated by an environment that allows for mental comfort and intellectual stimulation. It is then not a surprise that the worlds most wealthy opt to study in these institutions and environments.
Fast Food Education
Fast-forward to the lockdown. It resulted in me doing a number of things in the house which I wouldn’t do normally. On the digital front, more time on Netflix, more time watching videos on YouTube etc. What we watch, often depends on our mood and what we prefer to digest at a particular time. When my mind feels a hunger to learn, I don’t put on Tiger King. Conversely, when I am in a more laid back mood, I will not watch a very serious documentary about World War 1. Anything meaningful takes effort. Periods of prolonged study do not pay off immediately. The opportunities for applying what we study may take time to manifest. However, a continual cycle of learning, checking what we have learnt against the real world we observe, will keep us ever evolving. Discipline also plays a great role. Social media has played a huge role in personal discipline. Checking feeds is an activity we begin doing when we might be bored, but ends up becoming such a habit that we do it when we are supposed to be doing other things. When we are distracted mentally, we might go on social media platforms. Human and animal-kind are both organised by natural hierarchy; it’s just the way we work. The more efficient will know the call of the day, and make it to the top. Most won’t, and will be governed by the others. Irrespective of form of government, this is just how things will work out, because it is natural. The average person may not be as disciplined as those that make it to the top, and therefore the vast majority will gain their knowledge through the mainstream forms; the precise reason why politicians are swarming to social media platforms to attract the masses to their messages. How does medium affect acquisition of knowledge? Well, do we want fast food, or conscious food. There is something about digital platforms that seems to grab the brain and make it hostage. Sadly, as generations continue to go on, the availability of such fast food style education is increasing. Ultimately there is a paradigm shift. This does not necessarily need to be negative since humans will always have some tendency to seek knowledge. However, it will certainly dumb down the extent to which there is a more conscious approach to seeking it. For those that have a more old-school tendency towards the beautiful high ceilinged libraries, layers of books, carvings on the ceilings, and this kind of environment to help open the mind, this can be done, it might just take more effort in an increasingly digital age.
“The only thing you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.” Albert Einstein
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