It all starts here. The blank slate stares back at me. The ideas lie stalemate in my head. "What can I write?" I could do one episode where I discuss how humanity is slowly entering a repetitive state of denial of law, or I could write a list about all the daily struggles I have as a college student. I cannot do either. This blank slate expects more than a series of rambling thoughts and confessions. I can write about what is familiar or I can write about something foreign. Foreign is always the best option for learning. Let's start with Hawaii.
Ahh, yes. The glorious oceans of Hawaii... In Hawaii, there are some people who can navigate the vast ocean by the feel of the currents on their fingertips and the sun's position in the sky. They can travel from island to island without worrying about losing their position on a map or whether they should consult a compass of whether they are heading east or west. I met a man like this who could tell the location of the island by the birds in the sky or the tides in the water. These brilliant navigators understand the complex mathematics of the natural world without using a single calculation. They don't have to face the blank slate in the middle of mathematics class. They don't have to stare at a bunch of numbers, variables, divisions, exponents, logarithms, and roots. They could just work it out without staring at this blank slate.
In college, we read about ancient societies who are built off the backbone of agriculture. They developed large cities with population of thousands, hundred thousands, and eventually millions. They never had to go to school and learn to read and write. Most importantly they have not stared at this blank slate. They didn't have to be thousands of dollars to understand that you can make money off of the product you create. We, now, can create a whole world off the backbone of a blank slate. We divide the ideals of this world from the realities. We give those ideals priority over that which is only temporal. We ultimately define life and its meaning by using a few choice words to describe our theories and hypotheses. We don't just dip our fingers in the water or plant thousands of seeds to learn. We submerge ourselves into that water and plant a giant seed within ourselves. We learn by seeing the world as a blank slate. A blank slate that we fill with words, calculations, chemical equations, theories, and testaments. We enter an inescapable contract with this world. "Fill me," it may say and we must do its will. Now, I filled my slate with the testament of the inescapable contract.
