Literacy = Learning, Unlearning, Relearning

What is mental conditioning? How can we re-form patterns we perceive?

“The illiterate of the 21st Century are not those who cannot read and write but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.”

― Alvin Toffler, Powershift: Knowledge, Wealth, and Power at the Edge of the 21st Century
That book was written 25 years ago, as Alvin Toffler looked at the Industrial Economy moving to an Information Age/Knowledge Economy. What happens when economic value is created out of knowledge, out of intangible assets? Today, there are no universally accepted standards to measure the value of intangible assets in the same way that we value hard assets, like gold, machinery and real property.
If value is created out of knowledge, does power follow that value creation? That’s what happens with tangible assets. He who has the most property, the most gold or oil, is more likely to have more power to win in a dispute. What is the relationship between knowledge and value? Value to whom? In what context does knowledge have value?
Now, in the 21st Century, what does literacy mean? Who will be the literate?
My students ask: “I don’t want to be trapped in the structures of the past that limit my opportunities. How can I become one of the literates? How will I survive?
My response: “Who are the most passionate learners? Entrepreneurs. What can we learn from their mindset?” How do entrepreneurs feel about what they know and what they don’t know? How do they deal with uncertainty and change?
Our culture places so much emphasis and value on learning, especially established standard content. That is important and enables us to feel we are making progress in life, materially, and psychically. We feel secure, and have a sense of self-worth.
The entrepreneur mindset/lifestyle choice is a constant cycling of aspirations and needs, driven at an ever-increasing pace by a passion for exploring unknowns. This behavior is paradoxical because it seems to be opposed to what most people believe is a “normal human life”, which emphasizes stability, security, relative comfort.
 
Entrepreneurs thrive on chaos and uncertainty. Who would want to live like that? Why? Popular media suggests they are motivated by greed for fame and fortune. The reality is their drive to survive, an unquenchable, relentless pursuit of knowledge. They even welcome and embrace critical feedback because they know they learn little from compliments.  They respect their competitors and are, like Andy Grove, legendary CEO and one of the co-founders of Intel, paranoid – all the time. He even wrote a book titled: “Only the Paranoid Survive”. The success of Intel validates the concept. What is “unlearning and relearning”?
Unlearning is an ever-changing, fluid process of exploration by using different sets of questions about everything we know and value to discover unknowns.
Relearning can be more accurately described as refocused learning. If the focus, assumptions, objectives, and methods remain the same, won’t we learn the same lessons? How can we “relearn” something we believe we already know? When the challenges have changed, how useful is that?
Sounds good - BUT - we resist “unlearning and relearning”, just as we resist many kinds of change. The initial challenge is that our egos hate being torn down, even to be rebuilt.

How do people go through this process?

When and how often is this necessary?

If learning is seen as a process of “connecting the dots”, understanding the relationships between data points (of reality), then unlearning must begin with asking about the data points themselves.

What data points are we observing and paying attention to?

How important and relevant are those data points?

What other data points should we consider?

What data points are there that we might not be aware of?

Next, we can examine the connections, each one, consciously and deliberately. The questions are the same.

What connections are we observing and paying attention to?

How important and relevant are those connections?

What other connections should we consider?

What connections are there that we might not be aware of?

Then, what about our ability to interpret those connections?

What insights do we gain from the connections we believe to be true?

How important and relevant are those insights?

What other ways might we interpret those connections?

Finally, we can “relearn” by observing data points and connections that might have been beyond the scope or even the imagination of our previous mindset. With new data points and new connections, can new interpretations and insights be far behind?
Isn’t this a kind of “mental conditioning”, like physical conditioning? Who wouldn’t want to be more fit to meet new challenges?