"Different Ways of Knowing the Truth"

There are two different ways to know Truth. One way is to study what others have learned. The other way is to experience things oneself.

They’re not necessarily incompatible. Actually they can complement each other beautifully. "Good luck happens in the law library at 2:00 a.m." is an example of that complementarity. Being in the law library at 2:00 a.m. means that this person is willing to study what others have learned. At some length. And yet the good luck is the insight, or the inspiration, to put things together in some new, meaningful, important way.

Like many other balances and polarities, we can have many different possible relationships between these two ways of knowing.

For some couples this can be a power struggle. One may be the advocate of formal learning, the other may prefer inspiration that comes from within. In a worst-case scenario, each could invalidate the others approach to knowledge. Book-learning can be disparaged as rote, un-original, un-creative, stale, lifeless, un-thinking knowledge without wisdom. Insight can be put-down as ungrounded, deluded, grandiose, incorrect, etc.

When my wife went to school, she liked to learn the answers and remember them so that she could repeat them on the test. At home, she would line up her dolls and teach them the days lesson. By repeating it, she came to know it and remember it. She was worried that she wouldn’t understand, so she focused on remembering.

I never liked remembering things at school. I could do it if I had to — I used flash-cards — but I found it a whole lot of work, and not very rewarding. What I did like was re-deriving things. I liked being able to figure it out again, from scratch, so I wouldn’t have to remember it. I particularly remember doing this with the quadratic equation. So I spent my time on understanding, rather than remembering. I liked math, I hated history. I was worried that I wouldn’t remember, so I went focused on understanding.

Like any other paired-trait, or polarity, over the course of a lifetime we get numerous opportunities to reconsider the strength of each trait and the balance of the two. I would desire to have the ability to learn both ways, so that the two could inform each other.

It’s wonderful to study traditional sources and let oneself get into thinking what they might have thought, feeling what they might have felt, seeing the world through their eyes.

When I was into ropework and knots, I read a saying from the British navy, "Old ways are best." When considering whether to use a new knot or an old one for a part of the rigging, the commonly accepted wisdom was that the old one had been keeping sailors alive for many years, the knew knot was untried. Kind of made sense when I looked at it that way. . .

But by doing old things old ways, we sometimes get insights that we couldn’t have gotten any other way.

Right now I’m learning and ancient language and an ancient chanting system. It’s the same reason that I got fascinated with tipis and with tipi making. And with contra dancing. And with sailmaking. And with cutting wood by hand. And with sharpening saws.

Try the old way. See what happens.

But I also don’t like to get bored, by doing it someone else’s way. I want to learn their way. Oh yes, certainly. But I also need to make it my own, by learning the essence of it, being able to tell apart what is the surface structure and what is the deep structure, what is essential versus what is just one person’s way of doing it. I feel like I have to do these things to really understand it.

Then, when I understand what they were trying to get at, I let myself play with variations, and see if there’s anything I can learn myself about how to make this work. Learning by doing is especially fun. There are so many things that teach us in the doing of them. Because it you do it enough times, it becomes obvious that there are easier and harder ways to go about it.

This is learning by direct experience. And this is also irreplaceable.