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Independent learning suggests ideas such as “self-taught,” or “autodidact.” These imply that independence means working solo. But that’s just not how it happens. People don’t learn in isolation. When I talk about independent learners, I don’t mean people learning alone. I’m talking about learning that happens independent of schools.
[…]
Anyone who really wants to learn without school has to find other people to learn with and from. That’s the open secret of learning outside of school. It’s a social act. Learning is something we do together.
Independent learners are interdependent learners.
” —Don’t Go Back to School – a must-read on how to fuel the internal engine of lifelong learning. (via explore-blog)
True fact: I’ve learned far more from self-education than I have in school. Our educational system just doesn’t work for some people but that shouldn’t kill our desire to learn. It’s just a matter of finding like-minded people who have a curiosity for everything.
(via mohandasgandhi)
Absolutely!
(Source: , via mohandasgandhi)
“The soul hath its senses, like the body, that may be cultivated, enlarged, refined, as itself grows in stature and proportion; and he who cannot appreciate a fine painting or statue, a noble poem, a sweet harmony, a heroic thought, or a disinterested action, or to whom the wisdom of philosophy is but foolishness and babble, and the loftiest truths of less importance than the price of stocks or cotton, or the elevation of baseness to office, merely lives on the level of commonplace, and fitly prides himself upon that inferiority of the soul’s senses, which is the inferiority and imperfect development of the soul itself.” — Morals and Dogma (via idrumtth)
(via ursa1984)
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By now we’ve been trained to record only those behaviors that reflect well on ourselves, lest our employers interpret our cocktail-crushing prowess the wrong way. But Facebook’s privacy settings are clumsy and easy to circumvent. Elsewhere, blog posts, life-tracking data, consumer preferences, and check-in beacons can just as easily be ripped from their context and misdirected to an unintended audience – and meanwhile, the social networks, publishing platforms and shopping hubs just keep multiplying. For those young people interested in running for office, this poses considerable danger.
[…]
Contrary to the language and ethos of popular social networking sites, our identities are not fixed and singular. Our “authentic selves” or “essential attributes” cannot be articulated on a single profile like a Pokémon card. Thinkers have long disputed the idea of a static identity, since such a notion would ignore how we associate in different contexts, the way our speech changes depending on our speaking partner, how varied environments shape our growth, and all the ways in which we experiment and imagine, pretend and explore.
Individuals whose life stories buck standard social scripts—immigrants, LGBT youth and ethnic minorities—are more aware of this than most. Members of these groups often navigate several social realms, swapping different speech patterns and modes of behavior depending on the context. As the much-missed Dave Chappelle once said, all black Americans are bilingual, equipped with one language for the street and another for the job interview. This ability to develop and express one’s dynamism, and to control one’s appearance based on a particular audience, is stifled by pervasive exposure.
” —Hamza Shaban, Live in Infamy
Being a leftist in a conservative world of business caused me difficulties for decades, and as a result I was acutely aware of the need for multiple ‘me’s.
Now that I have come out (as a much-more-than-liberal leftist) I am not confronted with the same sense of self-concealment, but I remain aware of the multiphrenia latent in human existence, and the ways that social networking sites try to make us be one indivisible self, despite all evidence to the contrary.
The crisis of publicy is not just that we might be outed, but that a repressive social order can and will judge us, and exclude us from publics we want to participate in.
Louis Brandeis and Samuel Warren argued for the right to privacy in 1890, and we are still struggling with the form of that, one hundred years later. Today, we need a stronger right, the right to publicy: we need to be allowed to share information online and not suffer retribution because of our activities, wants, connections, or thoughts, so long as we cause no harm.
But we live in a repressive world, a world of retributive sanctions, where a night of drunken rowdiness captured on a smartphone and published to the web can end a job, or wearing the wrong halloween costume can lead to a political candidate losing a race.
What we need is a more relaxed, less judgmental society, rather than better laws. We have a long wait, I’m afraid.
(PS The New Inquiry is a great publication, a must read for me.)
I don’t know that the wait will be as long as you think… I suppose we shall see. :)
(via stoweboyd)
“When stubborn pride has flowered, it
ripens to self-deception
and the only harvest is a glut of tears.”
— The spirit of King Darius in Persians, by Aeschylus, trans. Lembke & Herington (via heartbloodspirit)
♥╭╮♥: maisonmartinmargielous: people who think being overtly negative and... -
people who think being overtly negative and cynical is the same thing as being realistic……..literally bye
having a positive outlook on life doesn’t mean you’re delusional or not in tune or aware of all the atrocities that occur in this world nor the mundane aspects of life. It means that despite all the external circumstances that are not in your control, you still cultivate a strong sense of security within yourself that isn’t defined by what others think or do.
I’m tired of condescending pseudo intellectuals who feel like they have some sort of inherent superiority simply because they hate everything and everyone. You just ultimately hate yourself motherfucker.
The world isn’t terrible, you are.
I’ve been on both sides of this, having been cynical for a number of years myself, and I have one thing to say in response: absolutely.
“In a time like ours there are four kinds of people. There are those who consciously wish to sink further and deeper into chaos and darkness. There are those who willingly or unwillingly, are always ready to endure anything. Then there are also rightwing dinosaurs around who live the present situation by way of lamenting. From whining to commemorations, they imagine they can bring back the old order, which explains why they constantly score defeats. But there are also those who yearn for a new beginning. Those who live in the darkness, but are not of the darkness; i.e. those who strive to resurrect the light. Those who know that beyond the real, there is also the possible.” —
Alain de Benoist
(via tremblingcolors)
(via heartbloodspirit)
If you are one of those who are praying for, and looking forward to, a happier world beyond the grave, here is a message of gladness for you: you may enter into and realize that happy world now; it fills the whole universe, and it is within you, waiting for you to find, acknowledge and possess. Said one who knew the inner laws of Being. “When man shall say lo here, or lo there, go not after them; the kingdom of God is within you.” What you have to do is to believe this, simply believe it with a mind unshadowed by doubt, and then meditate upon it till you understand it. You will then begin to purify and to build your inner world, and as you proceed, passing from revelation to revelation, from realization to realization, you will discover the utter powerlessness of outward things beside the magic potency of a self-governed soul.
(via rellphoenix)
“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” — Alice Walker (via thelovelyloner)
(via petit-guerrier)
“The less I needed, the better I felt.” —
Charles Bukowski (via blue811)
Yes!!
(via paravivir)
(Source: lizattemptstoblog, via paravivir)
“Perhaps men of genius are the only true men. In all the history of the race there have been only a few thousand real men. And the rest of us—what are we? Teachable animals. Without the help of the real man, we should have found out almost nothing at all. Almost all the ideas with which we are familiar could never have occurred to minds like ours. Plant the seeds there and they will grow; but our minds could never spontaneously have generated them” —
Aldous Huxley
(via growthofthesoil)
(via heartbloodspirit)
(Source: jade-samantha12, via mysteriouslives)