Perspective Elevation – Purpose-Based Learning

There are 3 levels of studying or learning about a subject:

• School/job – we have to know certain stuff to pass a test (company reports, new industry techniques, math homework)

• Self-teaching – we want to learn about a subject (non-fiction, news, person/biography) to have more factual knowledge about it, and potentially to use that knowledge in a specific or broad context (grow plants, fix your own car)

• Purpose – we want to learn about a subject because it elevates our perspective. Insights often come naturally after intense study, and we tend to actively try to apply the knowledge in situational context to make sense of it. It is this and possibly an extension of this practice that leads to or promotes perspective elevation from study.

There is a certain modality to maintain awareness of in the mind, that what we are studying can be applied from a new base level of knowledge. A richer integration into our current knowledge (or as always, what we think we know) as part of practical usage in society/life. I think we only haphazardly use this modality when we are studying in the context of actively adding to what we already know, because we need the information for a reason – again, purpose driven. By projecting what we study in as much of a broader context or sense as we can, or as often as we can, I think we more likely stimulate this modality to effectively broaden our perspective.

Almost everything, of at least some relative useful value, to be learned, has some value in the world or it would not exist to begin with, Soemone wouldn’t have thought of it, thought it through, developed it into somethign closer to a “known” whether through thinking/testing/tinkering whatever it may be. Whether it has use value in a specific context or a multi-use broader, adaptable context is really up to us. We may intentionally learn something for specific context based use, and down the line realize how it comes in handy for other situations as well, or in a more “in principle” sort of way. But by consciously attempting to find those more principled realizations now, it can assist in effectively transforming our perspetive to one that is more developed than before.

If most people don’t study much after their formal schooling is over (at most 1-5 books a year), and when they do, its mostly a fiction novel (nothing wrong with that) or to learn some usefully consequential fact or narrow-context understanding, for a job, some home related situation or even personal interest, then how much are we limiting our perspectives if we aren’t A. reading more, and B. reading for more than just pleasure, limited-conetext purpose, but actually trying to purposefully raise our perspective?

As an example, sure, to read a broad reach newspaper like the Economist can keep you informed of wider global-context issues, but if we don’t activate this perspective shifting modality, much of what we learn will go one ear and out the other. Little of it will be assimilated into our present knowledge, for lack of perceived use value. So it comes down to generating this use value consciously, to create more connections to whatever mental mechanisms are behind perspetive alteration, to stimulate the enriching of our perspective.

Active reading, or hyper reflection if you will. The more actively we reflect on what we study, try to see how it interactts and interrelates to other stuff we know or can imagine, and the more topics we study, the more synergism we’ll experience toward perspective elevation.

I see some content out there about active reading but it seems mostly based on mechanical aspects of information organization such as mind maps or taking notes. This is more rote than I’m describing. It can learn to perspective alteration with repeated exposures, but I believe we can actively access this modality to generate this alteration ourselves.

Perspective alteration through study is something I believe we all know as far as learning new material, by considering its use value, I am simply explaining it in a different way, to hopefully make more people aware of it, remind myself how important it is, and help us save time by remembering and using more of what we learn for our own benefit of wasting less time re-learning, making mistakes, and doing more.

tl;dr – The difference between studying or learning something because we either feel we have to, or even if we want, to, and because of a higher purpose to elevate our perspective or shift our consciousness.