Autodidact

Autodidact - a self taught person. For me it's feeding your childlike curiosity on your own, in your daily life, all the time. When gaining new knowledge is craved by a person, life can be so much more enjoyable and satisfying. Literally every situation can be an opportunity to find something new out about the world. One only needs to choose to live their life always gathering new data through observation, experimentation and analyzation of things, people and situations that are around them.
Dropping trash off at the dump can be turned into an opportunity to find out all sorts of curious things like "what happens to my trash/recycling after I dump it?". Simply chatting up professionals everywhere you go is an excellent way to learn during ordinary circumstances. When buying a cup of coffee or tea one can ask something about the process of steeping tea, or how an espresso machine works, or whether or not the employee feels like they are making enough to cover living expenses comfortably. Sometimes people wonder how their neighbors business is fairing financially, 'Is his business bringing him good money or is he working crazy hours and still living check to check?' Questions like that retrieve information about how well that particular society treats it's average man. Which leads one into subjects like politics, history, cultural anthropology, psychology, ethics etc. Because these subjects are deliciously interesting and knowledge about them can enhance quality of life, more people ought to be living more commonly in a curious state of mind.

Among the most helpless, dependent of all infants is the human baby. In order to survive they must learn about their world and how to function in it. This is probably why human babies seem to come pre-programmed with a natural, very persistent characteristic of curiosity.

Unfortunately, man kind has invented a system that squashes our natural instinct to learn: compulsory education. All kids start out hungry to find out "what?" and "why?", but this goes away for many of them after years of nearly 40 hour weeks during which they have to sit down, shut up and be told what facts to memorize. They eventually learn that learning isn't fun, it's something mandatory, that doesn't apply to real life. So they learn to get good grades to fill a requirement, not from internal motivation to find out new things.

Too many kids and adults are uninterested in gaining new knowledge. Too many people have a moment in which they may wonder while folding a piece of paper, 'How are trees turned into paper?' but are satisfied to just dismiss the question rather than pursue the answer. Those that actually do google "how paper made" or take a tour of a paper mill or rent a documentary about it do themselves and humanity a favor. It is a fulfilling lifestyle for the individual and is beneficial for humanity because the more thinking people we have on this planet the more likely we are to create societies that work in healthy, happy ways.

For some reason as a kid, adolescent, and a very young adult, school was repugnant to me. I blew school off as much as I could get away with. I blew about 20 grand (of my parents money) going to an expensive University when I didn't have a subject that I wanted to pursue or something I wanted to learn how to do. It wasn't until I dropped out of college and went on a school detox for a while that I started to find my love for learning again. It came back with much gusto. All of my twenties have been spent enjoying the freedom to pursue a subject when I become fascinated with it. A lot of times these subjects are ones that we definitely went over in school but I find that I have zero recollection of the subjects I was taught- even the stuff that I put hours of studying into. It's sometimes frustrating to have to go back and learn the basics that I should already know but things we learn by arbitrary need in a classroom are not truly internalized. It's the knowledge we pick up while motivated by our own desire, and while living in the real world that we can really hang on to.
In this blog I hope to discuss some of those subjects and hope someone will be curious enough to read and discuss here.

-Bonnie

From the Editor

Here is a vague idea of what to expect from this blog. Regular, quick, easy to digest, entertaining, fascinating, thought provoking reads. Philosophies on a variety of current issues in our world, in our cultures. These philosophies are unique because they come from the mind of a human who has little formal education and very poor formal education at that, who is really just a self taught, free thinking*, always learning sort of person.

-Alder

-editor for Free Philosopher

* not necessarily referring to the group of people known as "free thinkers"