It is a luxury to be able to choose when, what, or how we learn. Most of us do not have that luxury.
It's not unusual for our "what" and "how" of learning to be thrust upon us. "When to learn" is too often right now — given that the prior best time to learn has passed. That applies to all of us, including the President, who says he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, Wharton School of Business and Economics.
In our time-pressured learning, both "what to learn" and "how to learn" are important. But "how to learn" is the priority.
I'm too young to remember, but I have read about Will Rogers, a wise-cracking observer of the human condition who hit his peak about 100 years ago. He said something like this about learning:
There are three kinds of people:
The ones that learn by reading, The few who learn by observation, And the rest who have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.
A jolt is hitting all of us, no matter how we voted. All of us are now caught in a double fool's bargain — the temporary feeling by many that only the 47th President knows all the answers, and that success must mean people who are not like "us" don't matter and can be disregarded and even mistreated. It's the thing of "us" vs. "others."
I don't want it, but unless something changes, all of us will end up suffering as a result: in our wallets and, more importantly, in the loss of rights, relationships, allies, and our country.
The price of eggs and gas was said to be what the 2024 election was about. So far, this administration has done nothing about the price of eggs or gas other than hide and avoid reporting avian flu and its effects and threaten tariffs on our allies and other countries from which we import oil and other goods. It's only a week in, and the price of eggs and gas has both risen.
Unlike the price of eggs and gas, I have not seen any memes showing a way to measure our loss of allies, alliances, human rights, and human relationships. These are more important but less readily stated in a meme and less easily quantified. These ought to be our focus — once diminished, it's hard to bring these back.
Learning is hard when we avoid thinking and rely on others to think for us. A foundation of learning is curiosity, questions and more questions, and then analysis, interaction with others, empathy, and understanding. Questions are so important.
There is often (but not always) more than one way to view a situation.
It's often said that life is for learning. I wonder: why do we, as individuals, states (yeah, Kansas...), and the country, often choose to learn the hard way? Why don't we read, observe, ask questions, and think? We have the examples of Nazi Germany, authoritarian Russia, and theocracies in Iran and Afghanistan — so why did we pee on the fence?
