The fourth revolution

[Knowledge as power/disempowering; learning to learn, learning to become a self-directed experiential learner; learning to use our brain, using our body for clues]

There’s a whole wealth of knowledge just waiting for our amazing brains to soak up and turn into insights that can improve the quality and pleasure of our lives – and help us overcome hurdles. Yet there’s also a lot of information in the world that’s just junk: negative stuff, stuff that makes us feel bad about ourselves, stuff that distracts us from moving forward in life, stuff that’s misinformed, miserable and manipulative.

Knowledge is power (so the proverb goes) if you’re able to use it to your own advantage. Yet knowledge is disempowering when it’s used against you.

Learning how to pick, sieve, filter, accept and block information is a skill in its own right. So too is learning how to process information and adapt it to our own needs, learning how to separate truth from lies and learning how to retain and remember information.

Ideally, everyone would grow up to have full control and command of their own learning. They’d learn how to think for themselves and how to learn for themselves. But sadly, many people lack the ability to think and learn independently, instead relying on others to provide the information and tell them what to do with it.

Self-directed learning is not like at school where a teacher asks a question and you have to guess the answer. Instead, it’s where you’re trusted to work out what information you need and trusted with how you apply that information to your own set of circumstances. Meanwhile experiential learning is a process whereby a person has an experience that they then reflect on before acting upon the layered learning in some way. Self-directed experiential learning can be a route to greater consciousness, greater awareness, greater choice and greater well-being.

This is the start of our fourth revolution: using the whole of our body to find clues that we can act upon; that we can then build upon.

Within our internal world we have memories, stored experiences, the ability to learn; we have emotions, thoughts, senses and hormones; we have an identity, values and beliefs, all of which interact with one another, all of them ensuring our survival, all of them helping to give us a certain quality of life. Yet how sharp, how refined are these parts of us? Are there a greater number of clues we could be picking up using all that our body offers, if only we were more attuned, if only we had the time, the will and the focus?

For example, we know when we’re ill. But when do we know we are ill? Could a slight change in our behaviour clue us in, before our glands swell, before our throat is sore, before we feel lousy? Can we use this early-bird information to enter into self-care mode, to recover sooner rather than later?

We know when there’s trouble in a room. But when? When we’re already caught up in the drama? Or in the moments before it kicks off, when we can leave quietly through a side door? If our radar is switched on, we can use it and act upon it. If it isn’t on, we can’t.

We know that our values have been challenged and compromised in some way. Do we go into an existential meltdown? Do we suppress the dissonance? Or do we reflect on the experience and adjust ourselves accordingly? Do we do the learning that will come in useful for our future self? Or do we not?

“The highest form of human intelligence is to observe yourself without judgement.”
Jiddu Krishnamurti