Purposeful Persistent Perception
Public Domain
Developing Learner's Mind requires an openness to and a curiosity about the world around you. Curiosity is manifested by a willingness to pay attention to what exploration uncovers followed by the cultivation of perception through which you really start to listen and learn.
Below is a transcript of the podcast that I call Purposeful Persistent Perception.
“This season we’re exploring how to develop a series of dispositions that lead to Learner’s Mind. In the last podcast I developed the essential element of attention. Attention is the first manifestation of curiosity and curiosity is the essential starting point for all learning.
The root problem for most adult learners is that they no longer manifest the curiosity which universally characterizes preschoolers. Preschoolers are curious about all sorts of things all day long. Their curiosity manifests itself in a seemingly endless torrent of “how” and “why” questions as well as in their tendency to wander off as they explore their physical environment.
The loss of curiosity comes as efficiency becomes the dominant life paradigm. Parents can hasten the withering of curiosity by over scheduling their child. Many children no longer have open-ended play time in which to explore. Even leisure is crammed with scheduled swimming lessons, soccer or baseball leagues, ballet, music lessons, and a host of other enrichment activities. Educators choke curiosity by an emphasis on mindless memorization and their “one right answer” obsession. The batch processing approach of most education is wildly successful at squelching curiosity by the upper elementary or middle school years in all but a handful of students. The result is a loss of motivation to learn. Learning becomes a joyless assembly line job in an educational factory for far too many children.
Adults manage the education of children, so it is perhaps inevitable that the educational and enrichment spheres of childhood reflect adult perspectives. Adults as a group are not characterized by curiosity that leads to exploration.
Adults are characterized by an emphasis on efficiency within a time management framework. The emphasis on efficiency leads directly to another “E.” Exploitation is the term cognitive neuroscientists use. The word carries significant moral baggage pointing at a throw-away culture. That is not the intended meaning. Exploitation here means mining or farming the knowledge that you already have in order to get the maximum value out of it. Exploitation says, “You don’t need to go on an uncertain quest after additional knowledge. You probably already know what you need to know; you just need to pull it out of your memory and put it to use.”
As I developed in the previous podcast, adults tend to think that exploration is too unpredictable. They are already stressed out by a constant barrage of information, so their brain filters it out or files it as factoids.
Attention involves a willingness to entertain ideas outside my knowledge or experience. Adults tend to focus on farming their existing plot, while children are interested in what lies outside the current boundaries (which leads to exploration). Adults still need to farm for the sake of efficiency (and food on the table), but there is much potential for growth that is overlooked if the focus is simply on efficient farming.
As an analogy suppose that you inherited a large tract of land, much of which you’ve never explored because the day-to-day demands of farming are so intense. It may be that the land that has been cultivated for generations is not the best part of your property for growing your current crops. You may be able to grow your current crops better in another location or grow different crops if you got out of the grind from time to time to explore options. Some of these options might also come up if you saw what other farmers are doing.
Appropriate stewardship of our lives points us to wisdom as “the principal thing.” Wisdom is sometimes defined as the best means to the best end. In our farming analogy prematurely closing off exploration in preference for efficiency in farming (so-called exploitation) means I’ll almost surely fail to find the best means and I might not even be laboring for the best end.
Purposeful periodic opening of myself to new ideas is what exploration looks like for an adult.
I intentionally cultivate curiosity and I’m rewarded periodically as I encounter new ideas and undiscovered aspects of God’s creation. Curiosity is being deliberate in paying attention.
Here are a few ways to encourage your growth in the exploratory paradigm:
Vacations
Short leisurely walks/hikes and really paying attention
Substantive talking to friends (and careful listening)
Meeting and talking to new people
Reading books/magazines/blogs that may challenge my current views
Asking good questions about contrasting points of view and assumptions
Resisting over scheduling
Cultivating a hobby (and resisting making it a performance arena)
None of this is to say that I accept the new ideas and perspectives at face value. Discernment is crucial. However, failing to really hear and understand new ideas by prematurely turning off the channel is fatal to growth and the attainment of wisdom.
I’m getting a little ahead of myself here so that you can see where this is headed. Let me back up and fill in a few gaps. I’ve said that curiosity is the humility to acknowledge that there is more to learn than I can possibly manage in a lifetime. I need to open myself to knowledge I don’t currently possess, so I create some space in my efficient life for purposeful exploration. When I explore, I encounter aspects of God’s universe including their reflection in human ideas and I give them my attention. At this point I need to move to Perception.
Perception is a noun. The OED defines it as “The process of becoming aware or conscious of a thing or things in general;” Perception involves an action. The verb to perceive means “To apprehend with the mind.” (OED)
I’m using perceive in a low-level sense of becoming aware or conscious of. I’m not yet talking about being perceptive which means to have keen insight. In my basic baby-step approach to developing Learner’s Mind we’re a way off from been insightful—but we will get there this season!
There are substantial rewards even at this basic stage, however! Note the effect of perception in these quotes:
“It’s the type of film that leaves the trajectory of your day inarguably changed—colors a little brighter, feelings a bit rawer, reflections a bit heavier.” [review of the film “Fire of Love” in The Week, July 29, 2022, p. 28] No recommendation implied.
“Even in this broken and diminished world, [photographer Robert] Adams is saying [through his photographs], it is possible—no, it is imperative—to exult and sing.” [Review of “American Silence: The Photographs of Robert Adams” National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC in The Week, July 29, 2022, p. 26] No recommendation implied.
Here’s another example from a reporter who observed the actions of the director of horticulture for Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, in Boothbay:
“It was the pattern in that individual floret [of the tiny toad lily] that captured his attention, so he had zeroed in.
“Nature’s stained glass,” he commented. . .
His way of observing is often focused on what he calls “the greatness in small scenes.”
Each small moment quietly reminds us not to rush on to the next garden chore, or get distracted by the showy, obvious stuff. Instead: Slow down and really look.””
If you are prone to deadly practicality, you may think the perceiving of the beauty a toad lily floret not that significant; not that worthy of interrupting your workflow. Remember that all of Creation is communication. It is communication in search of a relationship. God is calling worshippers. Not worshippers of the creation itself but worship of the one by whom all things were made. Without Him was not anything made that has been made.
The hymn writer shows us where perception of the natural world takes us:
1 This is my Father's world,
And to my listening ears
All nature sings, and round me rings
The music of the spheres.
This is my Father's world:
I rest me in the thought
Of rocks and trees, of skies and seas--
His hand the wonders wrought.2 This is my Father's world:
The birds their carols raise,
The morning light, the lily white,
Declare their Maker's praise.
This is my Father's world:
He shines in all that's fair;
In the rustling grass I hear Him pass,
He speaks to me everywhere.
We are embedded in a curriculum ordained by our Creator to produce worshippers and then to enrich the lives of those worshippers. Listen to Solomon in
Proverbs 6: (NASB)
6 Go to the ant, you lazy one,
Observe its ways and be wise,
7 Which, having no chief,
Officer, or ruler,
8 Prepares its food in the summer
And gathers its provision in the harvest.
9 How long will you lie down, you lazy one?
When will you arise from your sleep?
10 “A little sleep, a little slumber,
A little folding of the hands to rest,”
11 Then your poverty will come in like a drifter,
And your need like an armed man.
Here is Solomon again in
Proverbs 26:1-3 (ESV)
1 Like snow in summer or rain in harvest,
so honor is not fitting for a fool.
2 Like a sparrow in its flitting, like a swallow in its flying,
a curse that is causeless does not alight.
3 A whip for the horse, a bridle for the donkey,
and a rod for the back of fools.
Near the end of Proverbs in Ch. 30 (ESV), Solomon (the wisest man who ever lived except Jesus Christ) is overwhelmed with what he sees:
18 Three things are too wonderful for me;
four I do not understand:
19 the way of an eagle in the sky,
the way of a serpent on a rock,
the way of a ship on the high seas,
and the way of a man with a virgin.
Theologian Richard Mouw in his short book, He Shines in All That’s Fair, goes so far as to say, “There is good reason to believe that the Lord is gratified by glowing sunsets and ocean waves breaking on a rocky coastline and a cherry tree in bloom and the speed of a leopard on the chase.”
This is not mere rhetorical flourish. It is not hyperbole or human excess. Lest there be any doubt, God Himself extols in lavish and adoring terms His creation in Job chapters 38-41. 4 chapters!!
Through a series of pointed questions and concrete examples in the biological and physical worlds God communicates to Job. Job is stunned into silence. Job recognizes that he was out of line and spoke out of profound ignorance.
3 I have uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.
…
5 I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,
but now my eye sees you; [perceives you]
6 therefore I despise myself, [for my ignorance and unbelief] and repent in dust and ashes.”
We’ve got a lot to learn as well. Fortunately, God is the consummate teacher, and He knows our frame. I encourage you to explore His world and His written word regularly.”