What happens if you make a cut at any point of recording tape? A disruption of the magnetic medium and a total loss of information. When a cut happens, it just makes the severed parts of the tape irrevalant, resulting in a waste of energy, time and resources.

Even though time is abstract, it is limited. Energy and resources always come at a cost.

Currently, we are conditioned to learn in a straight line—a rigid, structured path. This is much like trying to force information onto a single, long recording tape. No matter how long that tape is, a single cut is enough to make one section inaccessible from another.

Take an example: a teacher calls your name and asks you to define a phenomenon. You begin: “[Name of the phenomenon] is defined as…” followed by a brief description.. You perfected the line through memorization. But when you move to the next or an unexpected question — a small pause — you forget it all. This is the cut that I’m talking about.

What we can derive from the above is:

1. You are blindly following the template rather than the idea.
2. You have placed all the stakes on a single word or “entry point”.
3. You spent too much energy on getting the name right instead of the concept.
4. You are copy-pasting academic writing from a textbook when you should be explaining the idea simply.

To move past the fragility of the ‘cut,’ we must stop treating our minds as storage devices and start treating them as processors. The true test of knowledge isn’t the ability to replay a textbook verbatim, but the ability to explain a concept when the script is taken away. Only then does learning become a permanent resource rather than a temporary recording.

to be continued….

part of Knowledge, Interrupted series.