The channels of the knowledge

Cape Town in February can be stifling. Now we have tipped into March and today there is a welcome drizzle to cool us all down. I chose today to wash my car which i saw as some sort of celebration of the falling rain. I don´t know why so don´t ask 🙂

While I waited for the car to be washed, I put on my headphones. Podcasts, music and news all set to feed into my ears at 1.75 times the normal speed. It struck me how different this is from two other channels of knowledge – reading or a discussion. Is it better to read, to listen or to talk in dialogue?

Reading for me is a battle. I am torn between Kindles, books, classics, modern trash, websites, magazines, social media. It all scraps for my attention.

Perhaps the first two channels (reading and listening) are necessary foundations to really engage in the third channel (dialogue) in any meaningful way. Famously Plato used the Socratic method where ideas are shaped through dialogue. The questions and interactions were supposed to uncover knowledge. My children are taught how to listen and how to read at school, but I am not certain they are taught what a meaningful dialogue looks like, nor are they taught what the preconditions are for dialogue to occur.

Socratic dialogue is not something that is easy or convenient to create in the busy-ness of everyday life. My wife is not interested in longform investigations into abstract ideas. But, listening to a podcast might be the best option to incorporate dialogue into your life – to hear it done well by others. Of course it depends on the podcast you choose, but I believe this is one of the biggest strengths of the format – it allows for longform, uncensored dialogue to occur.

Happy Tuesday, Chimps.

100 Poets

How many poems have you read in your life? If you’re like me, the number is fewer than you’d like. The mental effort required to open a book of poetry with no guidance or context is significant. Enter “100 Poets” by John Carey.

This anthology lets you skim over famous poets and absorb some of their best work, providing context and knowledge at the same time. It still requires effort to dive in, but it’s a much friendlier approach than a cold, hard book of poetry with nobody to introduce you or explain what’s going on.

I started sending portions of the book to my family via voice messages. I would read out sections with poetry as a way of forcing myself to read and engage. Then I stopped for a while, but I plan to pick it back up because it was such a great way to engage with poetry – out loud.

Obviously, I would prefer to be a literature student again and dive into the words for hours on end. But I don’t have hours on end, I have minutes on end, so this book is the next best thing.

Hifi and science

On an anecdotal level, hifi music often overwhelms everything else I am doing. When I hear a song that I like, on equipment that i like, nothing else really matters. I am happy and absorbed, and ensconced in the sound.

On an evolutionary level, why do we humans enjoy music? Why do we dance? What is it about certain sounds that makes me feel like i do? What is the evolutionary function of music? Are these feelings and effects all just neural impulses? If so, to what end?

Luckily I am not the first person to think about these things. I have just come across a book that I hope will help me answer some of these questions, or at least explore some of these ideas.