Speaking of Americans apparently believing that learning supposedly "impractical" stuff would be a worthless use of one's time, because, supposedly, such efforts will never benefit one financially, it is funny that so many Americans will watch sports and will watch television shows such as sit-coms in spite of the very fact not only that almost none of them will ever earn money from such passive pastimes but that they would realize they likely never will.
And, yet, such pastimes are considered entirely worthy uses of one's time, while, apparently, many deem learning so-called "impractical" knowledge to be the opposite of worthy and the opposite of worthwhile?
I love learning foreign languages out of curiosity and sometimes get asked why I need so many languages and what for. Those people sound as puzzled and judgemental as if I was, I don't know, taking 10 jumpers on a 2-day trip. They expect me to justify myself for spending my time on 'useless' learning.
My sister dances for a hobby, but people don't ask her what she needs so many different types of dance for.
I could ask them what they're watching that TV show of theirs for.
I studied in Germany a long time ago (I am American) for just a few months, as an extra semester at the end of college.
Before I went, I knew someone who couldn’t understand why someone would do such a thing and who thought there was something wrong with that.
A professor I knew told me then there is nothing wrong with either studying in Germany or wanting to learn German, also, any more than anything would be wrong with someone learning to play the piano and developing such a skill and talent even if one will not be seeking to make a musical career.
(Interestingly, as far as learning foreign languages go, there were some Germans in Germany who could not understand why some American students there would want to learn German, in the first place, unless we would have had German ancestry.
But, other than the other Americans, too, that I knew in my short time in Germany, though, the young Germans over there were friendly, and, in fact, were the nicest people to me.)
Things are only unrelated at the surface. Underneath, subjects and disciplines are flimsy costumes we put on to knowledge so we can be lazy and call it quits after “mastering” one tiny sliver of it. The Da Vinci model is what used to be normal, now people barely have a hobby let alone a mastered craft, let alone multiple!
Abraham Lincoln's father is supposed to have not appreciated his own son's efforts to learn, when Abe was growing up, and supposedly Abraham Lincoln's father had told someone: "Abe might make something of himself, yet, if he'd forget this 'education' thing" (I'm paraphrasing, perhaps).
And A. Lincoln is supposed to have studied such things as Euclidean geometry and, I believe, to have read Shakespeare and the Bible, all of which I doubt not had been much because he had cultivated his curiosity and also had appreciated learning whatever he could manage to.
And perhaps the future President Lincoln might have had little idea how at least some of such studies and readings would become practical for him.
His geometry studies, for example, might possibly account for his use of the logical-type thinking that he had employed in at least his early speeches (if not also for his later speeches, too; I'm still reading his earlier ones, so far).
I also believe Lincoln had gotten his reference to divided houses being unable to stand from a quotation of Jesus Christ in the Bible.
Any irrelevant knowledge is relevant if it can make you sound smart at parties.
Speaking of Americans apparently believing that learning supposedly "impractical" stuff would be a worthless use of one's time, because, supposedly, such efforts will never benefit one financially, it is funny that so many Americans will watch sports and will watch television shows such as sit-coms in spite of the very fact not only that almost none of them will ever earn money from such passive pastimes but that they would realize they likely never will.
And, yet, such pastimes are considered entirely worthy uses of one's time, while, apparently, many deem learning so-called "impractical" knowledge to be the opposite of worthy and the opposite of worthwhile?
I love learning foreign languages out of curiosity and sometimes get asked why I need so many languages and what for. Those people sound as puzzled and judgemental as if I was, I don't know, taking 10 jumpers on a 2-day trip. They expect me to justify myself for spending my time on 'useless' learning.
My sister dances for a hobby, but people don't ask her what she needs so many different types of dance for.
I could ask them what they're watching that TV show of theirs for.
I studied in Germany a long time ago (I am American) for just a few months, as an extra semester at the end of college.
Before I went, I knew someone who couldn’t understand why someone would do such a thing and who thought there was something wrong with that.
A professor I knew told me then there is nothing wrong with either studying in Germany or wanting to learn German, also, any more than anything would be wrong with someone learning to play the piano and developing such a skill and talent even if one will not be seeking to make a musical career.
(Interestingly, as far as learning foreign languages go, there were some Germans in Germany who could not understand why some American students there would want to learn German, in the first place, unless we would have had German ancestry.
But, other than the other Americans, too, that I knew in my short time in Germany, though, the young Germans over there were friendly, and, in fact, were the nicest people to me.)
Things are only unrelated at the surface. Underneath, subjects and disciplines are flimsy costumes we put on to knowledge so we can be lazy and call it quits after “mastering” one tiny sliver of it. The Da Vinci model is what used to be normal, now people barely have a hobby let alone a mastered craft, let alone multiple!
Abraham Lincoln's father is supposed to have not appreciated his own son's efforts to learn, when Abe was growing up, and supposedly Abraham Lincoln's father had told someone: "Abe might make something of himself, yet, if he'd forget this 'education' thing" (I'm paraphrasing, perhaps).
And A. Lincoln is supposed to have studied such things as Euclidean geometry and, I believe, to have read Shakespeare and the Bible, all of which I doubt not had been much because he had cultivated his curiosity and also had appreciated learning whatever he could manage to.
And perhaps the future President Lincoln might have had little idea how at least some of such studies and readings would become practical for him.
His geometry studies, for example, might possibly account for his use of the logical-type thinking that he had employed in at least his early speeches (if not also for his later speeches, too; I'm still reading his earlier ones, so far).
I also believe Lincoln had gotten his reference to divided houses being unable to stand from a quotation of Jesus Christ in the Bible.
I love this!