In our lives, it seems to be a requirement that to build a career, we must learn just about everything about our interests, and then strike out on your own into the field, to make your mark in the world. If that is not the case, at the very least you are able to work on something that contributes to the creation of something bigger, or to provide services to others. Regardless, there is a skill that you need to learn to be able to do what you do, whether it translates directly to your career or not. Thus, it has become an integral part of our lives to go to school when we are younger, building up credentials through opportunities to boost our employability. Throughout our lives then, we are learning first the basics and then advanced techniques to become who we want to become.
Despite all this, and although I am deep into academia due to my current status, it seems to me that there is a slight technicality to education in general. For while education happens to be an essential part of everything that we do, whether we receive it formally or through association, experience and apprenticeship, one thing can be said about all of it.
That is, everything you learn is arbitrary.
Even though what you may learn seems to be pure fact about what you see in the world, the fact was most likely written as an observation by an ancestor of ours, and evaluated over time to become the “facts” as far as we see them. Sure, we have our theories and our laws of nature, and they very well may be true. However, even today some of the most long-standing of these can fall as a result of new, improved experiments that were not feasible in the past. It is likely that in the future we will continue to revolutionize our theories and methods through new discoveries. Thus, one can never be completely certain, even if they are an expert in their field. Those that are experts, however, happen to be able to make the best guesses based off what we do know. Those that are able to rise to this pedestal are then remembered in history for what they have done, bound to what they have contributed to our wealth of knowledge.
Let me provide a few examples for your own analysis. First, in biology we preserve an extensive naming system to categorize all known organisms on our planet. Is this not an arbitrary system that we continue to add upon year after year, adding new species to the list due to the smallest of differences? Another is the physical sciences of chemistry and physics; over time, we have focused on attributing the phenomena we see in our world to a faith in small particles that make up everything we hold dear to ourselves; particles that, while still naked to the human eye, we have begun to visualize with huge detectors that have been built solely to determine if they truly exist. The field of economics is based off a marriage of policy and math that, in a way, replaces the original barter system of the earliest civilizations. To that regard, the math that we use to describe these particles use rules that were developed in the minds of people long ago, to still be used years later by those who choose to find more abstract rules to define their own field’s validity, or apply to the phenomena yet to be explained.
Even social science and language are not safe from this analysis. Within the languages of all nations, every word that we think to use in daily correspondence was first thought up by one person and then accepted by many to become part of what we speak. These words allow us to then describe what we see in the world and those that we find to be “different” than us. I may have said this before, but one thing that we all have in common (even with other species on this planet) is that we all are unique. Not everyone is confined by what anthropologists, sociologists, and those that study history believe to be true about how we interact. Those that go to the same place on a map will describe their experience differently, and those that work with a business will give different reviews based on who they worked with and what sort of day both parties were having. Even the history we read about is based off of a recorder’s observations, and some of these accounts may very well have been influenced by politics at that point in time. In all, what you learn and what you are told remains only as what another has told you, a source of knowledge that has passed through generations of conjecture and interpretation to get to you.
In addition, do not even try to get me started on art, music, theater and literature. These are truly the pinnacle of our specie’s ability to create something from nothing, something that both has value and meaning, while at the same time has no value or meaning in all reality, except in how you perceive of it. In fact, my writing here is only an attempt to show my own understanding and beliefs on what I have discovered myself in my lifetime, and in its creation becomes arbitrary in itself.
Does this mean that we are to forsake education, since our learning is only on arbitrary knowledge? Certainly not! The value in our education lies in our survival as a species on this planet. In knowing things about the world from each other, we gain tools to help in maintaining our lives, to then pass down to others so that they may not make the same mistakes that we have made in the past. This continues our existence, and allows us to use what has been “discovered” to make life better for future generations. We use these “truths,” “laws,” and “theories” to fuel innovative experiments, make extraordinary discoveries, and produce novel work for others to enjoy and analyze at their own leisure. By acquainting ourselves with this work, we participate in our own ways to stay informed.
So learn about your field or what else interests you, even if only as a hobby. Enjoy art and music, and discover what is around you in this world. Find the beauty in all cultures and spiritual beliefs that we have preserved and accumulated across the globe. Heed the advice of your elders, and be sure to think about their validity in how you live your life. And above all, become lifelong learners, even if by complete accident, and always in the pursuit of the unknown.
For is that not the hunger that lies within humankind? That is, besides the actual hunger we believe we feel?
