line by line life and cherry tomato view of knowledge and learning how to learn

Growing up involves not simply discovering the self or falling in love with what you love to do but also exorcising the demons of "good advice" that invariably come your way. People often give free advice with these words, 'Well, you can take my advice for what it is worth,' or 'This is probably worth what you are paying for it,' and so we are encouraged to think that the words thrown our direction by others are not worth much. But often they are worth something, and maybe even more than the advice received from the pricey "professionals" we consult. Invariably, however, we take into our souls advice that is wrong, even if well-meant. It is wrong not because it is ultimately or metaphysically wrong; it simply might not be right for us. How do you determine what is good advice for you, advice that "fits" your peculiar nature, that liberates rather than thralls? I don't know of a general answer to this question, but I can tell you my story.

Two Demons Exorcised

Two pieces of advice ringing in my ears for years and relating to learning or approaching the world were: "Get the big picture" and "Learn how to learn." I think I picked up the latter in college or grad school when someone convinced the educational establishment (and therefore the popular culture) that the goal of education was to "learn how to learn." I don't think I ever really knew what that meant, but I think it was a subtle way for bad teachers to excuse themselves for not imparting an identifiable content in their classes. I heard the other piece of advice during my working life as people tried to emphasize to me that what they needed were memos that described a complex problem in a few words so that the assigning attorney or the supervisor could have a "snapshot" of the whole. Thus, emphasis was placed on ability to wade through lots of material and reduce it to a few pithy and hard-hitting points. I actually believe that this skill is important and is one that takes a lot of time to learn to do well. But once you learn how to do that, is that all there is? Spending your life summarizing things? Or "learning how to learn," whatever that might mean?

I never had much sympathy with the "learning how to learn" approach both because I never knew what the phrase meant and I thought it was a huge copout for people with bad memories. They told you to learn how to learn because they couldn't remember anything of importance to say at that moment. They would spend time denigrating "rote memorization," not because they had memorized a lot and thought about it a while and decided to discard this mode of learning, but because they simply didn't either have the self-discipline or mind to learn things. So, by the time I was 25 I was deaf to pleas to "learn how to learn," while it took me longer to discover that "giving the big picture," while helpful, only made me able to summarize everything (and everyone) I met. Actually, I became very good at this kind of summary, and some of my writing on this site might bear witness to this skill.

Yet, after I finished summarizing everything in cogent prose I realized that my soul was still empty. It was then that I realized, or rediscovered, that the life that was most important for me, the life that nourished me, the life that led to my own understanding of life, was one that read texts very slowly, that stopped after every sentence to ask what was going on, to try to discern what the author was doing at every twist and turn. It is what I have come to call the "line-by-line life." And, I love it.

Characterizing/Illustrating the Life

In the last few months I have written extensively on three "classic" texts: the Book of Job, Shakespeare's Macbeth and, now, Plato's Republic. In "preparation" for writing on these great works I decided to do lots of secondary reading, a sort of intellectual reconnaisance, to see how others spied out the land. I found myself becoming quite weary as I tried to understand some of them and as I attempted to see how they argued. Certainly people have good insights, but I felt like I was going through a landfill looking for something precious. Often you will find something, but you are in six feet of garbage by the time of your "Eureka!" experience. To my chagrin, I began to feel as if these supposedly "great" classics were a burden to me, as I was trying to hold in my mind people's approaches to these works as well as the works themselves. I became tired and almost withdrew from the study.

But then I said something to myself. Why not just go line by line until you get it? Why not simply start at the beginning and work through all, or many, permutations of meaning that meet you along the way as you begin to enter into the play of the language? I know Hebrew and Greek, German, Spanish, Italian, and several other languages (and am not bad in English), so I decided that this is what I would do. I would read the text in English, line by line, consult the original language when appropriate, and then begin to see how the flow of the text opened for me. As I did this, the world exploded with meaning. Not only did I get caught up in the nuances or possible meanings of each sentence, but I began to see how interpretive questions of the author as a whole began to spring from the text. I also discovered that the text began to suggest that I ask even broader questions about life itself, questions that I might not have framed so precisely if I just tried to get the "big picture" of the text. Another way to describe this process is the "cherry tomato" view of knowledge. It simply explodes when you bite into it.

Conclusion

I think the best illustrations of this method can be seen by reading some of those essays, especially the Republic Outline essays on my Jurisprudence page. I would like to conclude, however, with a caveat, a sort of "don't do this at home" warning to you. I really can't say that this method of learning, though it refreshes me and seems to give me insights into so many things, is "practical" for most people. If you tried to do it when reading a legal decision, you might never get through the court's recitation of facts. You simply might just want to keep imagining what the person's life was like who breached the contract or committed the tort. So, if everyone did what I suggested our society might just come to a grinding halt as people would greet each other with, "What do you think Plato meant by the true falsehood in 382a?" or "Aren't you just caught up in 'trammel' in Macbeth 1.7.3?" But, maybe we might also see the world differently, too. As a matter of fact, I know we would.

1276