Tripping the Learning Curve
Deborah Venable
01/04/11
As
we bid this year a fond good-bye and welcome a fresh slate New Year, perhaps we
should look at resolutions that embrace achievable results from realistic
efforts instead of falling back on the usual pie in the sky, “wouldn’t it be
nice” attitude most folks take when daring to make resolutions at all. The upcoming year, as an interim election
year, is probably far more important than 2012 will prove to be simply because
if conservatives play their cards right, the path toward salvation and
improvement of our floundering self-governing experiment will be cast in
concrete long before the election of 2012.
If we resolve to trip the learning curve as informed voters instead of
lottery playing hope and changers, that will be the case.
It
has been said that never before have American voters been as informed and
involved in the political process as they are today. I don’t know whether we should believe that to be true or hope
that it isn’t.
If
it were true just two years ago, we would be immeasurably better off today than
we are, but only if we were still on the same page as our Founders. Therein lies the current American
dilemma. Conservatives are not hard to
understand. We simply believe that our
Founders had the important things right.
Individual rights form the cornerstone of self-governance, and no
government can ever grant them, but it can surely take them away. So, truly informed voters in a
self-governing society would naturally choose to conserve the cornerstone of
successful self-governance.
But,
information has been corrupted.
Education has been bungled to say the least. It is very safe to say that most Americans alive today are
totally ignorant of much of our history, even though “higher” education has
been stressed and achieved at a higher rate than ever before. I don’t like to think of today’s society as
a bunch of highly educated ignoramuses, but it is becoming increasingly true. Conserving a heritage of educating from a
common sense approach that refuses to merely credential educators or graduates
based on strictly compartmentalized instruction is essential if we are to
survive. Information must be studied
for its accuracy and challenged for its applicability to individual freedom.
The
learning curve that I am talking about is something that few adults even think
about in terms of their self-governing and social responsibilities. Once a person reaches adulthood, with or
without his accepted higher learning academic credentials in hand, he may
decide that he has “learned” all he needs to know. He has had mandatory education shoved down his throat for so many
years that he feels justified in just the “doing” without any further thought
to learning how or what needs doing.
This may be fine for the everyday aspects of a vocation or whatever puts
food on the table, but it is an extremely dangerous attitude for a society that
expects to protect and secure individual rights for themselves or their
progeny.
Human
beings should never stop learning.
The
learning curve to be reckoned with involves the human ability to learn rapidly
at first introduction to something new while retaining a large percentage of
information, but as one digs into a deeper understanding of the subject matter,
the curve can literally flatten out and allow much to slip beyond
retention. It becomes increasingly
important to make an extra effort against these plateaus of learning. When this effort is rewarded, it is a
beautiful thing.
Let’s
take an example that everyone should be able to relate to in one respect or
another. Looking at the last twenty to
twenty-five years, when the computer age literally consumed the greater portion
of society, those of us who have clear memories of what life was like before
the computer age, and how we ourselves adapted to the seemingly overnight
changes, may remember a certain reluctance to “give in” to the fact of our
ignorance – thus the necessity of extra effort to learn how to use computers.
I
remember how quickly I went from an attitude of being intimidated by the on/off
switch of a computer to a driving need to understand what made it work. I was not merely satisfied with using
computers to make complicated tasks easier.
I insisted on learning the whole concept of machine computing. I quickly learned to write code that would
tell the computer what I wanted it to do and invented new ways to utilize this
fascinating machine to accomplish things I’d never dreamed of. My husband and I built very successful,
ground floor businesses building and selling computer systems and products
associated with them. I became the
company software and customer service expert, and even branched out into the
brand new field of digital photo restoration.
As the internet was taking hold, I was learning how to make use of it to
do the things I wanted most to do.
We
made and lost several fortunes in those tumultuous few years, and enjoyed every
minute of it all. When modernized
operating systems took much of the nuts and bolts trouble shooting out of the
hands of ground floor computer types like we had been, we tired of the constant struggle to keep up
with everything. We moved across the
country, away from the rat race of the silicone valley and retired to a quieter
life.
It
was during this whole time that I became more interested than ever before in
learning more specifics about the exceptionalism of this country and commenting
on it. The computer made all this so
much easier than ever before. I had
been a writer back when the typewriter was king, and a researcher when a good
library was the only way to go. Now,
everything was literally at my fingertips in my own home! Mistakes on the typewritten page never had
to be made, and “white out” became a thing of the past – all because I gave in
and tripped the learning curve, bravely had my way with the on/off switch, and
turned on the computer. Now I could
sing the praises of my free country and sound the warning bell of her pitfalls.
Freedom
to be individualists is what drives the American society to the top of the
heap, and if more and more people will endeavor to learn why this is so, we can
save this exceptional country.
Salvation will not come from university classrooms overrun with socialist
professors, nor collective government bureaucracies hell bent on progressive,
secularist theory taking over in every community. It will not come from a newly elected Congress that forgets just
who employs it. Salvation will come
from individuals who are not afraid to trip the learning curve and do the hard
work of staying on top of what goes on in the country and letting as many
people as they can know about it.
Salvation
will come when we learn what it means to be the “one nation under God” that we
are, and when we insist that He gets the credit He deserves for having
sustained us longer than any other self-governing society in the history of
man.
The
only resolution that we need make this year is to honor the fact that we were
“created” with unalienable rights which are entirely up to us to protect!