A Philosophical Thought For Friday: All Things With No Teacher

A Philosophical Thought For Friday: All Things With No Teacher [To be read whilst listening to “Quicksand” by David Bowie] Renowned 16th-17th century Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi retired to the mountains after winning more than 60 duels, and taught himself the arts, including painting and writing. In his 'Book of Five Rings' he talked about learning 'all things with no teacher'. Whilst that idea seems like a different vibe from the 'hallmark greeting card philosophy' on social media about the paramount importance of collaborating and playing nice with others, Musashi was pointing to the idea that if you get to the real essence of things - how things work, how to think about things, how to still the ego and preconceptions and really listen and notice things - you can go a long way in any discipline. This is similar to the idea, which someone once told me Plato espoused, but I have never found, that skills are like a triangle. There are lots of practical skills at the bottom of the triangle, like knowing how to build a brick wall, write a program in Python, or manage a team, but there are more and more 'meta' skills as you traverse up the triangle to its point at the top, like understanding how to listen, how to think, how to learn, how to learn how to learn etc. The idea here is that a person who develops high levels of skill near the top of the triangle can very quickly come up to speed on any skill at the bottom of the triangle when necessary. Also riffing on Musashi's perspective, we can use the metaphor of a hologram. Each piece of a hologram contains the whole of the content the hologram is displaying, since the picture has to be visible from all angles. This metaphorically implies that a great deal of what you need to know to do any task well is kind of visible in every other task, if you know how to look. For this reason, despite being scientifically inclined, I am not that interested in astronomy, the study of outer space. It's just geography to me. I am more interested in us plumbing the equally infinite depths of our inner space. Including, but not limited to AI's role in that. (Phew - I managed to mention AI. As everyone knows, every message in 2025 more than 100 characters long must have a reference to AI in it.) Happy weekend. #unask #unthink #unlearn Leigh McMullen