Education vs. Schooling

We are exposed to so much popular culture everyday that it's astounding. You've seen more stories than Shakespeare, you've heard more music than Mozart, you've seen more diverse images than Caravaggio. And we are more influenced by this culture than you can imagine. What would true media literacy look like?

The medium of television has some very deep concerns for psychologists. The more we learn about it, the more we know how such a powerful medium can change the way people work together. In the second half of the 20th Century, the Sitcom became the formula that designed the expectations people had for life, and masked their abilities to design their own surroundings.

The defining characteristic of our culture is the ability to tell stories. Stories have guided the fabric of our culture since our larynx became capable of speech. We learn through stories what the expectations are of our culture, who we should be, what we should look like, what values we should display. Television has taken control of this like no other force in the history of Earth.

The music industry does something really amazing: it creates identity templates and invites us to reform ourselves through them. This makes us easier to predict, easier to please, and much, much easier to sell to.

American music reflects the dichotomy of the country: great wealth and oppression. Popular music in America has always been the voice of the counterculture, the voice of the working class (or slave), and the spirit behind that culture is what makes it so powerful. In this segment, we switch gears to talk about the development of this music, and end on the note that Art and Commerce don't always agree.

Wrapping up our talk about advertising, let's go full-foil-hat and take a look at the underside of advertising that we would rather avoid. Advertisements are sneaking into our daily lives, grabbing our attention in ever more engaging ways, embedding themselves into the fabric of our days.

Why do some people consider ads "harmful?" Part of it has to do with the amazing power they have to perpetuate stereotypes. When stereotypes become powerful, they become expectations; when expectations get out of hand, they become demands. Advertising uses cultural stereotypes to deliver messages and makes the entire system stronger.

Having covered the cultural groundwork on which popular culture is built, we are finally now able to discuss advertising. Responsible for nearly 20% of the American economy, advertising is a huge presence in all of our lives. The first and more important rule of advertising is the one that you are probably not aware of: advertisements want to create a pre-cognitive link between acquiring their product and the resolution of some primitive emotion in your mind.

Our popular culture is based on a rather vague, idealistic notion that is most often called "The American Dream." It's a dream of wealth, success, and, ultimately, "more." This is the very foundation on which advertising, television, the internet, and your personality are built. We must deconstruct it if we are to take an honest look at anything else.

Most people haven't spent enough time with the question of "Who you are?" We take for granted the world that we perceive through the bodies we inhabit and the stories we've been told. This episode kicks off Season 3 with a broad look at culture and what it means to be a part of it.

In this season (and, perhaps, series) finale, we recap what exactly we are trying to do here: we are thinking about thinking and considering our options when it comes to how we choose to pilot our lives. By being mindful of our thinking, not instantly reacting to stimuli and situations, we can manage to take as much control as we consciously can of our lives, given our condition, our environment, and our time. And when we really deconstruct our collective, cultural notions of success and morality, we can become even more free to be who we are, and we can get a little bit better at being us every day.

You cannot control the circumstances of your life. You are in an environment that you didn't choose, working with values that you didn't choose, trying to choose to do something that matters to you. Your sphere of influence is exceedingly limited, and if you just borrow meaning from the world around you, you risk being at the whim of this environment. A sense of purpose that transcends your job description, that reaches beyond even the importance of your own livelihood can help your mental health and definition of success far more than anything else. What is it that you want your existence in this world to say? Building upon everything we've learned about critical thinking, lateral thinking, and emotional intelligence, this is the lecture to pay attention to.

The primary way in which we humanize ourselves is through fiction. Sounds like an insane hyperbole, but fiction is the distinctive factor of personhood, above all else. Through fiction, we have built massive social structures, directed collective effort, and essentially created a new world (for better or worse, y'all). This is why literary analysis is such an important and often overlooked skill that is taught in school. As a matter of fact, it's generally taught wrong, as a kind of sideshow act that is adjunct to reading. But detecting, distilling, and articulating the messages found in literature is a power that is not only important, but dynamic.

How we talk might seem like it makes sense, is natural, and is the right way to communicate; however, many, many arbitrary habits and norms have been built into how we code our own communication. While we communicate directly, indirectly, and through metamessages, we build trust, competition, or intimacy with the people we are in communication with. Misunderstandings are rife, conflicts are increased, and we all fail to make ourselves heard more often that we think is reasonable. The truth is, our communication style is distinct; it is not hard-wired, but is a habit that we have been indoctrinated into through our social conditioning; gender identification, social group, ethnic traditions, economic status, neighborhood--all of these have an impact on how we communicate. Switching codes is intentional, sometimes, but can be learned through reading great literature.

Logic, intelligence, and strategy are great, but as great as those things are, they are not good predictors of happiness, wealth, or success. One place where the structure of formalized education really fails us is in dealing with emotional intelligence. In order to access all the aspects of human happiness that aren't direct constructs, you have to have a good understanding of your own internal emotional life. While you develop this starting with your first breaths, it grows and is refined all your life. There are ways to develop and grow this ability intentionally. Want to be more positive, experience less anxiety, and have a happier life? Let's go.

Hopefully, by now, you've begun to distrust some of the conclusions that you come to. I don't want you to question your own alignment here, wondering if you're in fact a good person or not or whatever, but to question the justifications and basic truths that you aren't used to questioning. In order to apply this, it's necessary to come up with a systematic way to consider decisions, projects, and changes in your life. Time to put on your thinking hats!

Not being boring about actual information can be a challenge, but herein, we try. How we are informed about the happenings of the world is important to how firmly and reliably we understand the outside world. This is something that we can all take for granted in "The Information Age," but more than ever we need to apply our skeptics hat. Headlines are plenty, but the in-depth knowledge that lies behind headlines is harder to access; what's more, we barely want to access more in-depth information, most of the time. But when it matters, we need to be vigilant so that we don't spread misinformation, a habit that has literally be weaponized against the entire country in the last decade.

We construct a narrative that paints us in a pleasing light, not matter how far we may stray from the ideals that we think we hold dear. Our brains are excellent at doubling-down on bad decisions in an effort to resolve the dissonance in our heads as we try to hold two truths that conflict with each other. One of the biggest driving forces behind all of this is based on the biases in our minds that we don't even see. In an effort to make the world into a story where we are the heroes, we lose the ability to see the world clearly; history itself is driven by this folly. If we are going to actually use critical reasoning, we have to dispel this illusion.

We have a high degree of confidence in ourselves; in our opinions, our understanding, and our daily version of the world that we see around us. We also have a high degree of confidence in the experts around us, of every walk. However, we probably shouldn't? The world is not what we think it is, and we react in bizarre, irrational ways that only employ our System 1 emotional, reactive thinking most of the time. Let's look at what we can do to stop that knee-jerk picture of reality in our heads. In this episode, we have the thesis of Season Two.

Why do we bother with the formality of skepticism and the scientific method? These ideas seem so familiar as to represent basis of how we normally think, but this falls into yet another one of those cognitive illusions that we are so prone. There are vast holes in our knowledge that come from what we believe, rather than what we know. In order to build reliable systems of knowledge, from which we can create practical applications, we have to apply a formalized system of checking and rechecking what we feel is true. Thus, Critical Reasoning relies on skepticism and the scientific method. It means that we can only verify things that can be disproven and only accept knowledge that is proven repeatedly. This episode looks at some differences between knowledge and belief.

Common Sense is often relied upon for making big decisions. In many, everyday ways, it serves well because you are navigating a world that is familiar and even repetitive. However, when interacting with larger groups of people, when interacting with people from different walks of life, and when making decisions that don't involve normal situations within your comfort, it cannot be relied upon. Despite this, your "System 1" brain will comfort and console you as you rely upon Common Sense. In order to make larger decisions with more impact outside of your direct, anecdotal experience, you have to rely on "System 2," the larger, more powerful part of your brain that doesn't like to wake up and contribute.

Being smart is great. But even a smart person is open to misinformation, poor thinking, and crappy decision making. Thinking skills are not hardwired, but are systems that are taught and learned, even if you don't know that they're happening. This episode opens up the theme of the second season: systems of thinking, metacognition, and how to get the most out of the intelligence that you have while building more. Sounds pretty good, right?

In the Season One Finale, we wrap up any loose ends and solve every problem that had been left on the table in the previous 13 episodes. Okay, not quite, but we do talk about our overall notion of reality and why allowing it to be disturbed and disrupted opens you to creative and cognitive freedom. Far from being focused on self-help, the idea here is that you are already good enough and with your own consent, you can start feeling that way right now.

While striving to be better and to learn how to make things better is a great thing, perfectionism has a tendency to stop people in their tracks. The idea that perfection exists and is attainable is more like a defense mechanism than it is a work ethic. Jumping into action, taking the leap, and doing different things over and over again is more likely to not only get the job done, but to make the overall work better. Hopefully, this episode can help you shelve the idea that "perfect" is a reasonable goal.

Intellectuals tend to see the body as the thing that carries their head around so that it can do important things. Much to their disappointment, the brain cannot be separated from the body and more effectively than the mind can be separated from the brain (in function, y'all; we aren't talking about severing things). Exercise is right up there with mindfulness when it comes to brain health, your ability to think, memory recall, and overall cognitive function. In this episode, we explore why that is so and then we deal with it.

One reason why people spend so much time decoding symbols and metamessages is because it's a large part of how we think. In fact, most of what we see, hear, feel, and consider to be objectively factual is only brought into our inner worlds by means of metaphor and representation. While that all sounds abstract and completely impractical--which wouldn't be overly surprising--we do have some practical ways to address the way that we process information, especially under stressful conditions.

The most astonishing thing you'll ever do is just about completed by age five. It's not a new idea to look at how language informs our thinking. In this episode, we take a look at how looking into our thinking through our language, we are able to see more clearly how our perception molds our thinking and dictates much of our experience. Understanding this sheds light on why changing our thinking is so difficult, especially when language has solidified in our minds. This all sounds really heady, but I try and make it go down easily enough.

Probably the most practical episode of the lecture series, this puts the pieces of the previous eight together into a roadmap for new thinking. By now, we've established that most of how we interact with our environment and relations is through thoughts and behavior patterns that we did not consciously choose. If you've been following carefully, you can now slow things down a bit and choose new directions in your thought and behavior patterns. It isn't easy, but the world of novelty and creativity can open up.

This episode, we address one of the biggest myths that drives the hopes and expectations of people in the adult world: the idea that there is a finish line. Power and authority are deeply codified in our culture as something real that can be possessed. The idea that you can study and work and achieve the secret of this power is one of the ways that we deny our own actual power or authority. One of the wisest fairy tales, "The Emperor's New Clothes," speaks to the dissolution of this myth; that power and authority are not innate, but are an outgrowth of common belief. A cynical, yet liberating lecture.

In some ways, this episode is an extension to episode 06, but takes us into a bit darker territory. In what ways are we so immersed in our context within our current culture that we cannot tell the difference between who we are and our indoctrination? If we look at people from history, it's easy to see the way that their cultural context had them enslaved to foolish, misguided beliefs and practices. But what beliefs, practices, and goals do WE hold that come from our context?

One reason that people limit their own learning, or choose to study something they don't like instead of something they love, is because they can't see how to properly monetize it. It would be a lot of fun if this episode told you how to make money in your sleep so you can pursue your passions, but that's beyond the reach of anyone who isn't making money off of the listener in their sleep while they pursue their own passions on the listener's dime. No, this is about how our grade system, our economy, and our social construction has left the idea of intrinsic value in the dust ages ago. Recognizing it, getting it back, might let you be free even without the money.

Since weighing anchor, we've left the shore far behind, to the point where you might not recognize what it looked like even if it came back into view. This episode is our thesis; we are looking at our purpose here. There is a lot of stuff that looks and acts like learning, but 'aint learning. Avoiding pitfalls, keeping focus, and understanding the broader purpose of an intentional education are all covered.

The challenging nature of learning is deceptive. Things that we think of as tools--like "common sense" and our brain--can be just as distracting from real learning as anything else. This episode talks you through the reason to undergo formalized and intentional learning.

If you don't govern your thoughts, there are plenty of monied enterprizes who will happily govern them for you. Taking the fist step to understanding how, when, and why your thoughts and feelings surface involves maybe the most difficult task you can possible do: sitting and doing nothing.

Examining the really strange system of instruction that is so familiar to us, yet often alienating.

What are the basic ideas of Education? How do these ideas reach people and how do they alienate people? It's deep and complicated.