One of the biggest problems facing us humans is a mismatch in our instincts and modern life.
Our instincts were developed to help us thrive in a hunter-gatherer environment.
But since society has been changing FAR MORE rapidly than our instincts can keep up, sometimes they slow us down.
The easiest way to see this is hunger.
Back in the caveman days, it was a BENEFIT to ALWAYS be hungry.
It was a benefit to eat as much as you could whenever there was food available.
Those that DIDN’T have this trait (to always be hungry and to always eat as much as possible whenever possible) were at a significant disadvantage.
Needless to say, if you ate as much as you could TODAY, whenever you had a chance, you wouldn’t be very healthy.
Consequently, something that HELPED us back in the day is something we MUST struggle with constantly.
Another thing that helped back then but can mess us up in all kinds of surprising ways is putting the cart before the horse.
It was a benefit, (it helped to speed up our thinking, and motivate us to action a lot quicker) to “mix up” cause and effect.
If we had to take the time to use pure logic and rationalize everything out, we would have died off LONG ago.
But those who made quick causal connections (A causes B, etc) even when they were FALSE, tended to last longer.
But today, we very rarely assume accurately whenever we make a “connection” between A and B.
News media (and medical researchers) take advantage of this ALL THE TIME.
It’s easy to find a CORRELATION between two things.
But it’s VERY DIFFICULT to prove one is CAUSING the other.
But that doesn’t keep us from ASSUMING that one thing is CAUSING the other.
One of the ways is the confusion between LEARNING and EDUCATION.
Most people think that EDUCATION causes LEARNING.
They both happened at the same time.
That was the stated purpose of “education.”
But could it be that LEARNING happened DESPITE education?
Could it be that whatever you LEARNED during the industrial process of EDUCATION was because of your NATURAL ABILITY to learn, and NOT the structure, or the environment?
After all, EDUCATION has only been around a few hundred years.
But humans have been LEARNING since before we even learned to speak.
In fact, most of the inventions of modern society happened OUTSIDE of traditional “education.”
Which means if you can get in touch with your inner-natural-learner, you can REDISCOVER that ancient process of lifelong learning.
And to NOT satisfy your teacher (or your parents or your boss) but to satisfy YOU.
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