If I Only Learned it the Right Way

Humans have the capacity for empathy with relevance being one of the main characteristics. Because we crave understanding, a big component of life is finding those who relate with oneself. But another one lies with the notion of legacy. As knowledge is passed through generations it contains a power constructed through mentorship, which is mentioned because learning is just a series of moments where people absorb from each other to reap rewards. 

In our current system, positive experiences consist of moments of learning (i.e. improving one's situation) but what is learned could be false, aka FAKE NEWS. Everyday we see this type of media based on statements that do not provide validity. With recent events such as the racial pandemic of 2020 or the increasing access to technology, a period of fact checking has arisen. Perhaps these moments remind us to check our sense of understanding as ignorance is not always bliss. 

Impressionable Phase

Babies are full of innocence and are born impressionable, starting the process of learning. They are usually taken care of with the guardian’s goal of supporting their survival and, as mentioned earlier, spreading generational knowledge.  With the mixture of people we learn from (guardians, family, friends, teachers, neighbors...) the complicated factor is that these individuals can internally provide positive (pure knowledge) and negative (fallacies) experiences that could be positive or negative externally. For example, wrongly learning or excluding someone’s point of view, causing problematic historical views, to support inhumane rhetoric. To some, this may be positive if it supports your own thinking but overall is damaging on a humane level. 

Life, a Learning and Unlearning Cycle

With many people’s problems stemming from childhood, which identify moments where needs were not met. The frequent response is a desire to have learned positive mechanisms earlier to avoid said problem. 

So how does one unlearn, especially when that impressionable phase extends beyond childhood and people will interact with those throughout life who will make impressions? The main ingredient, willingness. 

Unless an individual has the willingness to unlearn, the behavior will go unresolved because of dependence; thinking that the knowledge is to their benefit as it has worked towards survival. With that bleak observation, why try influencing others when it is a gamble? Some may say: “...influence early to avoid problems happening later” as someone might get influenced by someone else. Again, backing up the impressionable nature of humans. It is like making an Apple fan switch to Android or vice versa, often they are committed to the brand. A parallel erupts when thinking about the older generations who tend to be set in their ways. The very same groups of people who have the most power. Therefore, power is crucial to changing mindsets. The more power you have the easier to spread knowledge while the less you have diminishes your influence. This represents the society we have created, which blocks autonomy and values resources over truth.

Exploration can be a savior because it exposes an individual to multiple ways of thinking. Life is just a big survey using the responses from people to understand how to function. The more data you have the better your actions, which means it is important to not stay stagnant. The ones who are unwilling to learn are often stuck in their sense of reality but our world is filled with an array of experiences that have the power to teach us beyond ourselves.

So is it too late to unlearn the past or do we have a chance to learn a better future?