I, Cognitive Metamorph
My mind is a sponge. I take in a huge amount of sensory information every single day. I soak it in like the dry parched earth during the peak of a sub-saharan dry season.
I wake, I learn, I dream.
Sometimes, I cannot remember if an experience is/was a dream or reality.
I think this is because every waking moment is spent learning things, and sleeping moments are spent reliving the things I have learnt. Or oddly enough, expect to learn. When I awake, I have learnt, or experienced learning. Or have I… ?
I learn all sorts of things and I learn fast. Scary fast.
Networks, geekstuff, multimedia, management, linguistics, robotics, artificial neural networks, design, aesthetics, martial arts, music, spatial geometry, quasars, blackholes and wormholes, movie making, 3D animation, electronics, psychology, metaphysics… the list goes on and on.
Some things don’t work out though… for example; I can’t cook, I can’t dance, I can only swim on pain of death.
I have one belief though: What I don’t yet know, I know I haven’t really tried as much as I should. So I know I can cook, I can dance, and I can swim.
And at some, I fail. Miserably.
The beauty of failing is you learn. And if you learn fast, and IF you learn from your failure… then you are at an advantage.
But to what end, all this learning? What higher purpose does it serve, this accumulation of knowledge?
Is it to excel in a severely competitive world? Is it to brag? To extol one’s own knowledge above one’s existence? Is it perhaps, to impress the people that are around us? An indication of our intellectual superiority over the homo sapien standing next to us? Or is it a search for meaning to a seemingly random existence? Is it to seek to understand our place in this universe? To put a name to that which we cannot understand, or pretend to understand so that for just a moment, we can get some respite to the endless search for ourselves?
Or perhaps, it is simply to amass enough knowledge to inundate innocent blog readers with a plethora of redundant words and semantic spiel?
The mind is an amazing thing. One of the most beautiful things about it is it’s ability to absorb incredible amounts of information. For some, the sensory overload quickly means a one way ticket to the psyche ward. For others, it can mean genius. Which also borders on insanity.
So is this endless learning a sure path to madness?
I think not. I think in some distant future, I will look back through time, through the crystal-clear eye of hindsight, and I will know that all this learning, all this knowledge was for a purpose.
The questions are many:
Will I be looking back in exultation, or with that sinking feeling of a lifetime wasted searching for answers that were staring me in the face?
And will I learn when to learn and when not to learn? Or will I learn that in learning to learn, I have learnt things that should be unlearnt?
And ultimately, will it all make sense?
Will it?
February 3rd, 2008 at 4:22 am
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