I’ve been a little busy between school and trying to fix the podcast that John broke, so instead of trying to come up with some cat macro like John would, I’m going to introduce you to a word that amused me greatly when I learned it: Anamnesis.
Anamnesis is a concept from the Platonic dialogues, which was used as an explanation of why seeking knowledge is at all practical. The conflict, you see, is this: If you don’t know Truth, you can’t know it when you hear it. If you do, you shouldn’t need to hear it, right?
So Plato came up with a shorthand for the idea that our souls have more information than we do. What I really like, though, is the way Kelly Myers phrased it in Metanoia and the Transformation of Opportunity: “Anamnesis, then, is a recovery of innate knowledge.”
Hell, I don’t know. Maybe I’m the only person who has ever experienced that sensation. But I don’t think so. So I share this word with you. Because it might just brighten your day, and today seems like a good day for that kind of thing.
Hmmm. This makes me think of the fact that it is easier to condition some behaviors (ie teach some lessons) over others.
Back when the behaviorists were in the big time, they made it a point to prove that Babies didn’t have an inherent fear of snakes say, and that a ‘fearful’ response could be conditioned to anything (like fluffy bunnies). What’s more interesting to me though, is that even though there wasn’t an INHERENT fear of snakes, it was still EASIER to condition a fear of snakes as opposed to condition a fear of something humans aren’t normally afraid of (ie bunnies).
Which, I think, suggests that there is certain information/beliefs we are hard wired to learn over others.
As such, perhaps the feeling of Anamnesis is not ‘recovering innate knowledge’ so much as it is ‘acquiring knowledge that your physiological inheritance predisposes you to acquire.’ Which makes me wonder about what knowledge we (as a species) are predisposed to learn and what knowledge we are so genetically disinclined to learn, perhaps up to the point that no one has exceeded this hurdle.
Which is both scary and wonderful…
Wait, wait; dangit now I need to end in an insult. Ok, I didn’t break crap! Your aversion to wearing a headset like a normal human being lowered the audio fidelity of your words to what their content warranted, thus making the recording of your voice unintelligible.