I have a strong desire to comprehend stuff

As you read more and better non-fiction you will discover that to learn a domain of knowledge you must find an author who is capable of communicating compex matter to the lay person in understandable form.

You might try "QED" by Feynman just to get an idea of how a good author can help the lay person understand truly compex matter.

We do not learn such things from our educational system. The world will open up to you as you begin to learn what learning is really about after you scool days are over. The shame is that so few ever start this process of learning.

 

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I've read Feynman and he does write well.
1) how did this book help you self-actualize?
2) I am not denying that non-fiction can communicate effectively. I disagree with the idea that it is better at dispensing knowledge than fiction.

 

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self-actualization -
the achievement of one's full potential through creativity, independence, spontanaeity, and a grasp of the real world.

(this was from an online dictionary.)

One's full potential, creativity, independence and spontanaity are clearly focused on in great novels. Here we have people who do not even take the standard use of language for granted. They present consciousness, the world, human interaction in novel ways - pun intended. FEynman may be clear and creative, but his focus is on transparancy not creativity. Compared to Joyce going into the workings of the mind itself or Dostoyevsky's exploration of guilt, as one example, or the intense dynamic schismogenesis that can occur between two people - the Idiot comes to mind - and creativity and use of language is taken to entirely different levels.

Non-fiction can give the brain data. It can help one learn how to think rationally. It can back up or change thinking about specific topics. Generally it does not change the form of thinking itself. It does not challenge one to a generalized self-reflection and introspection, except perhaps along one issue - for example a white person reading Malcom X's biography might introspect about his or her relations to and thoughts about blacks.

Again, to self-actualize seems a much broader kind of transformation than that offered by non-fiction. REading a book on meditation or shamanism and then engaging for a long time in the actual techniques. OK. There we move into areas of self-actualization. The Country Doctor by Kafka definitely affected me as a person much more than Feynman who engaged just the more verbal mental parts of my brain in linear ways. 100 years of solitude blows Feyman out of the water in self-actualization terms. It changed the way I experience people, landscapes, time, aside from insights into Latin American culture and history, relations between the sexes, how things get passed on through generations in families and so on. And not to speak of the use of language itself or creativity in general through his use of images. As a creative person it settled in my bones. Feyman gave some parts of my frontal lobes a buzz. Tip of the iceberg.

(I am being polemical, I realize. I actually think the two forms of writing complement each other well. But in the face of discrimination against fiction the polemicist in me comes out. Pardon)

 

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Granty

I understand the urge to be negative, i.e. polemics, I have been posting on these forums for almost 4 years and almost everyone thinks that being negative is the proper procedure for combat on the Internet.

What I like about non-fiction is the specificity that is possible when seeking answers to specific questions and specific questions are the essence of self-actualization. The random nature of fiction and of all education generally deters from the effort at self-actualization. Self-actualizing is a very personal activity it is the attempt to connect those dots and to develop meaning, which is very subjective.

 

I can see that you understand the urge to be negative, it was precisely that negativity in you in relation to fiction that brought out mine. And I was not apolagizing for being negative. I was admitting that I was being polemical: ie. overstating my sense of the limitations of non-fiction IN REACTION to someone judging fiction negatively. I was saying my actual sense is that both are valuable in different ways for gaining knowledge and self-actualizing.

Why are you so negative about fiction?

Quality fiction (and also non-fiction) is hardly random. This seems ignorant to me.

My education was not random. It was in fact highly organized at public school levels, and to its detriment (and mine).

And oddly enough I see subjective and highly creative, independent works of art, like many novels, to help with self-actualization. I think it is strange that you think the only way to subjectivity is via objectivity. Learning a lot of facts does not unleash one's full potential, even if one connects the dots. In some ways I think you share with traditional public schooling the idea that the student's role is primarily passive and about absorbtion of facts.

Great works of art, including literature, are in themselves records of individuals of great intelligence and creativity making meaning. You keep saying how good non-fiction is for self-actualization, but I cannot understand why you think fiction is not as helpful. It is certainly not random.

 

re: Education, it doesnt have to be a bad thing.
Going back into education as an adult has shown me that half the hang-ups i had about the education system when i was younger were mostly rooted in the fact that i was rest-less and academically lazy.

Its abit of a syripy cliche but you 'get out of it what you put into it'.
There's things i learn at school now that i couldnt get anywhere else - how to analyse a piece of fine art, how to take short-hand notes when watching a film or attending a lecture.
Education is just another means of information transmission, there's no reason why you can't supplement it with self-learning at the same time.
Infact i think that's where people tend to foul up - getting caught in a binary way of thinking in which they can only see themselves doing 'one or the other'.
Luckly i have some great teachers at college and they encourage us to 'self-learn' outside of class, and actually promote it as an integral part of the process of growing and learning.

*polemic over*

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Granty

We shall have to agree to disagree.

 

I have had similar experiences. But as an adult who accepts his or her own goals and who tends to be respected much more as an equal and cocreator of that education, the experience is radically different. We, as adults, are using the education and reaching out by choice for certain packets of information, even if the specific teacher in the room confuses 'putting information in their heads' with teaching. It is a whole other can of worms to come at even the most traditional and stodgy pedagogy as an adult.