Do You Know You Know?

Realising one’s ignorance is the first step towards learning

Our mind is really an archive of old records because it can only think about the known. From the day we are born Our experiences of different sensation, situations and environments help our brain and thinking skills to develop.

So thinking is based on the known. That’s why it is repetitive and moves in a circle. It can go on refining the known but can never come to know the unknown. It can only make a guess at it.
 
And it is only through our imagination that we can dream or think about the unknown. Science, however, lives in both the known and unknown worlds. It keeps converting the unknown into the known.

We are all familiar with this ancient proverb:

He who knows not and knows not he knows not, is a fool — shun him.
He who knows not and knows he knows not, is simple — teach him.
He who knows and knows not he knows, is asleep — wake him.
He who knows and knows he knows, is wise — follow him.

Let us examine the term ‘know’ with reference to the diagram below in which:

• Awareness of self is represented by the vertical line
• Knowledge of the world is represented by the horizontal line

There are four possible quadrants:

1. Not knowing you don’t know 
Many students start from this position — a state of being unaware that you don’t know something, a state of ‘ignorance is bliss’. So the first move is to make learners aware of their ignorance. Though it has to be said it can be tricky.

2.     Knowing you don’t know 
This state marks a progression from the earlier and is is what most learning, and hence teaching, is all about.

3. Knowing, but not knowing that you know 
This one is rather complex and falls into two basic categories. The first is the kind of thing you can ‘do without thinking’, like basic driving skills. In the second category you would find people who are skilled, wise or learned without ever having received any formal training or education. They are literally born with a talent and are often unaware of their skills.

4. Knowing that you know but not knowing how or being able to express it. 
Again, this zone has two categories. The first is one in which a person can be a good coach in say, tennis, but not be able to play the game himself.

The second is the opposite, where an individual could be a genius in math, but not be able to teach others and pass on his knowledge.

When we are fresh from our education and enter the big bad world, we often take recourse to the books and notes we collected during our education. At some stage, however, without any conscious action on our part, this knowledge gets internalised subconsciously without our realizing it.

Several years ago, during a spell of spring-cleaning, I came across a long forgotten box of stuff that had been stashed away. Among the contents were my carefully preserved notes from my two years at IIM, Ahmedabad. They had not seen the light of day in at least 20 years. The pages were faded and worn. I could see pencil notes all over the margins and inside the covers. Sentences were underlined in ink and whole paragraphs were highlighted in a now barely discernible yellow.

As I turned those crumbling pages, I was reminded of how, once upon a time, I used to carry those notes around, like a Bible. Any time anybody had a question or there was a discussion, I had my references ready.

Then, one day, many years later, something changed. I don’t know why, it just happened. And suddenly, I didn’t need my notes any more.

And as I gazed at my notes, the meaning of this profound saying dawned on me:
“Those who have not attained Awakening should penetrate into the meaning of Reality, while those who have already attained should practice giving verbal expression to that reality.”

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Thought for the Week

“To know is to know that to know is not to know
and that not to know is to know”
Ancient Zen saying
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First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times

Ever Tried A Shift?

A paradigm shift is not just a corporate buzzword. 
You can use it to transform your life

A paradigm (pronounced ‘pa-ra-dime’) is a world view. We all look at the world around us in accordance with a certain paradigm which we use depending on what we believe is reliable and true. It is derived from the Greek word paradeigma, which means ‘pattern’ or ‘example’.

Thomas Kuhn defined paradigm best as “an entire constellation of beliefs, values and techniques etc shared by the members of a given community.” It is a framework, a perspective, how you interpret your part of your world.

Simply put, paradigms are how you see things.

A classic example that demonstrates the power of visual paradigms is a simple drawing. 

Do you see a vase or two human faces facing each other? Depends on your current paradigm: is it what you ‘expect to see’ or what you ‘actually see’?

A paradigm shift is a change to a new game and a new set of rules, from one fundamental view to a different one.

Let’s try another exercise.

Close your eyes and imagine a yellow object that normally appears yellow. However, if I were to ask you to see it through a red glass, it would appear orange; if through a blue glass, it would appear green. Which of these colours is correct?

Perhaps even yellow is not correct, since the actual colour of the object’s surface could be white, which reflects yellow light thrown on it externally.

What is Paradigm Paralysis
Paradigm paralysis is the inability to see beyond the current models of thinking. For instance, our earth was believed to be flat for ages until it was conclusively proved to be spherical by Magellan’s circumnavigation of the Earth.

There are no rights or wrongs when it comes to paradigms. (contradicts Magellan and Galileo!)

To give you a more contemporary example, in India, we are habituated (and legally required) to drive on the left side of the road. But we are faced with a paradigm shift when we have to drive, on the right side of the road, in the USA.

A paradigm shift is a change to a new game and a new set of rules, from one fundamental view to a different one. For instance, Galileo’s telescopic observations prompted him to refute those who believed that the Sun and planets orbited the Earth, a major paradigm shift from geocentrism to heliocentrism.

The evolution of a new paradigm marks a new stage in thinking. Major paradigm shifts that have dramatically impacted our lives include the internet, the microwave, the mobile phone, iTunes etc.
Paradigms can impact your life and your success profoundly at another level. For instance, we are all familiar with the proverb, ‘Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder.’ But if you create a paradigm that lets you see only people’s beauty and wonderfully unique qualities, think of how your relationships will be positively influenced.

Creating a new paradigm has become one of the most overused buzzwords in the corporate world today. What kind of individuals can initiate a paradigm shift to meet new challenges?

Some of them could be young people, fresh out of training. Older people can do it too if they shift vocational fields. Both can be successful because they bring naïveté and don’t know what can’t be done. They ask ‘dumb’ questions, they probe with fresh eyes, they wonder. When training newcomers, try giving them some of your shelved problems. They will not do it the ‘correct’ way since they don’t know the current paradigm. Bingo! New paradigm.

One type of paradigm shift is when a problem itself is redefined. The person who does this requires both imagination and vision. 

Then there is the Maverick, who has knowledge of the paradigm but is not captured by it. Or the Tinkerer, who plays around and keeps fiddling. We also have serendipity (covered earlier) or chance discoveries that happen when the mind is prepared and open to them.

Given that change is the only constant in life, a paradigm shift could be one way of changing your life.

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Thought for the Week

“Your paradigm is so intrinsic to your mental process 
that you are hardly aware of its existence 
until you try to communicate with someone 
with a different paradigm.”
Donella Meadows
(American organic farmer, journalist, and systems analyst 1941- 2001)
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First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times

Knowledge or Creativity?

They are related, but which is more important?

Open Mind has already crossed sweet 16 in terms of number of articles and I am simply thrilled with the reader interest expressed through the wide range of your questions. Many of them have already become the seeds of entire columns and will continue to do so. So keep writing in. Who knows, your question may appear here and enlighten others as well.

Shailesh Aggarwal
Can we can materialise anything from our imagination? Let’s say I want to sell my house at a good price. If I keep thinking about it with focused willpower, will my desire be fulfilled?
Shailesh, in one of my earlier columns I had pointed out the AIDA - Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action pathway. First meditate on your desire (which should be positive not negative), and if it is really warranted, move on to Action i.e. orienting your subconscious accordingly through clear intentions and appropriate affirmations along with “creative visualisation”. Remember even Alladin’s Genie appeared only after Alladin made the effort of rubbing the magic lamp.

Devendra Ambekar 
I appreciate your articles on memory enhancement, but I would like to know how much of the information we read, we hear and see, we usually remember.
The numbers vary greatly depending upon the individual. Some people are visual learners, remembering things that they see very well. Other people are audio learners, remembering what they hear. And still others learn best by doing things.

But we forget what we learn very quickly. A day after a lesson if we have done nothing with the information we learned and didn’t think about it again or read it again, we will lose 50 to 80 per cent of what we learnt. Seven days later, we remember even less, and by day 30, we retain only about two to three per cent of the original!

In short we remember things much better if we go over concepts or lessons very soon after we first learnt them. If we spend 10 minutes reviewing the information on the same day that we receive it, we will remember almost all we learnt.Because it is then moved from your short-term memory into long-term memory.Even a week later, if we take five minutes to “reactivate” the same material, we can still retain almost 100 per cent.

An ancient Chinese proverb says “I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand”. That is all what learning is about.

Priyanka Waghre 
I found the concept of “Nexting” interesting. Is it the same as “expecting”
Surprise is an emotion we feel when we encounter the unexpected. Because feelings of surprise are generally accompanied by reactions that can be observed and measured - such as eyebrow arching, widening of the eye, dropping of the jaw and characteristic noises, psychologists can use them to tell them when a brain is nexting. Let me clarify by saying that while our mind expects, our brains nexts.

Ramesh Iyer 
How are knowledge, creativity and imagination inter-related, and which one is more important.
Ramesh, the best answer comes from Albert Einstein, one of our greatest ever scientists, who said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Imaginative feats such as Einstein’s general relativity are rare, resulting in a completely new idea, which, still remains too conceptual and abstruse for most of us to grasp. This is great science and great art.

So, can a scientist ever be a great artist? Yes!
Can an artist ever be a great scientist? Absolutely.

However, can a great scientist ever be a great artist? Or is one intrinsically the other.

Again let me quote Einstein : ”The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources”.

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Thought for the Week

“When I was younger, 
I could remember anything, 
whether it had happened or not.”
Mark Twain
American Author (1835-1910)
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First published in Gray Matter - The Hindustan Times