RE: Being vs. doing
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I have agreed with you that experience is a teacher.
But aren't exchanging words already an experience of a certain kind?
Words in the form of "I'll pass on my knowledge to you" are less effective if they are only informative, I agree.
They are more effective when they come in the form of questions.
So let me rephrase:
Are words more effective if they are directed to you as a question?
Can a question directed at you be therefore be perceived as an experience?
Is a question capable of letting you imagine an experience of any kind in your mind?
If recognition lights up, are you experiencing something inwardly that you can relate to, after having been asked something?
If you could not refer to an experience you already had, it would be hard or even impossible to understand a question, is what I think. But do you fully own it? Is it not the case that you could, if you wanted, put yourself in the shoes of another one, in order to understand his experience, even if you never had that exact experience yourself?
we can't easily transmit it to another person.
I have given birth to a child. You won't make that exact experience. But what if I ask you about your exact experience of manhood, am I unable to relate to it? I know I am a woman. I have a very unique experience in that regard. I started to bleed when I became a woman. Your body experience was different but it was the same experience as mine, since you entered manhood, while I entered womanhood.
I now do not need to become a man in order to have that same experience, since I already had it. You don't need to become a woman, right?
All experience happens because of me being in touch with not-me. Therefore, I cannot have an experience solely on my "own", since I need "other" to relate to "own".
If you'd live all by yourself on a lonely island, after a while, what would happen to your "own" experiences? What would happen to you?
To answer your question spontaneously: Hair is what grows out of my head.
Well, yeah, we can agree. We can put ourselves in other people's shoes, I think, at least to a degree. That's largely why reading stories, even fictional ones, works. But I think it works more the more similar we are to the person in question, and the easier we can identify with them.
If we see that someone does things that we could do and is either rewarded or punished justly for that action, we can learn from that lesson, for example. It is cathartic.
But again, I think it depends on how similar we are. We can understand each other's experiences because we are similar to some extent. Maybe I have felt pain in my hand, and you have felt pain in your foot. It would be different with someone who has not felt pain.
I think we can learn many things through words, but the greatest learning, I think, probably comes from experience. If you stay alone on an island for a long time, what happens? You will still learn a lot about life. I think.
I like your answer. The goal of the experiment is to give an answer that is your own to the question. It's about saying authentically what we think, and not trying to give a "right answer". If you are forced to say what you think in this way, you will end up giving an original answer that is not based on repeating what someone else said. Even if what you say matches something you have heard, I would ask, are you saying it because it matches what you have heard, or because you truly believe it to be so?
I think your answer stems from you, and it's not something rephrased, is it?
I think we have become accustomed to saying things, not as we think them, but trying to sound right. And I don't know which is better, but I think we learn much more, and grow much more, when we talk about things as we conceive them. The more authentic we are, the better. Sometimes people are afraid to say what they think, because they don't want to be wrong. Sometimes we don't realize how much we would grow if we did. But I digress.