Tariq Ramadan – To Learn podcast #1 Looking at the World
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Hello.
Peace be with you.
I'm starting a series of podcast. We are
in June 2019
now, and what I want to do is
to address some issues, contemporary issues. And these
could be,
philosophical issues, social issues, political issues, about education,
about environment, about whatever. What is important for
me is just to try to get a
sense of,
in which way we can change our perspective,
address issues in a new way,
because we are facing contemporary,
challenges today to think about
important topics in a way which is helping
us
to deepen our understanding,
to get a better knowledge of what we
have to do,
in our societies today.
So from time to time, I hope it
will be once a week, I will try
to
address one issue.
Today, I want to address the issue of
learning, to learn,
to,
learn and in which way we have to
face,
our contemporary world,
trying to deepen our understanding of what it
means to learn today.
And let us start with something which is
a simple definition of learning. Learning is to
get knowledge,
to acquire knowledge, and it has to do
with us
getting some knowledge to try to have a
better understanding
of the world around us, not only of
the world around us, also of ourselves. So
it's
getting knowledge about our own self, about the
people who are living with us, the first
social environment that we have, and then the
the society and the environment,
as a whole. So to get knowledge, it's
one of the dimensions which is so important
in learning. And then it has also to
do with educating ourselves, to form ourselves in
a way where,
by getting this knowledge we are changing, we
are
having a better understanding of the world around
us. And this knowledge, it's important
in the way we understand ourselves, in the
way we understand the others, the way we
understand the environment.
So this process
to get knowledge, to form, educate ourselves has
also to do with transforming ourselves. Yes, we
are still the same, but our understanding of
the world is changing
as much as our
way of looking at the world is changing.
So it's a two way process here that
we are getting. So
dedicating ourselves,
transforming
ourselves
is the basic
dimension, the basic elements that are helping us
to learn.
Unfortunately,
in our contemporary societies and the consumer societies,
many things are lost in the process.
In the traditional societies, to get knowledge also
had to do with rights that we were
going through in order to become an adult,
to become somebody
within the society. And it was not only
knowledge that were useful
socially in the way that we are
interacting with your fellow human beings.
In the consumer societies today,
and the school systems are very much following
this,
in the foot steps of the whole philosophy
that is behind,
what do we have and what do we
acknowledge in the way that we have to
deal with the system is that there are
2
things, 2,
processes
that are here to reduce the very meaning
of learning. The first one is quantification.
At the end of the year in the
school system,
we need to know how
much you know,
the quantity of what you know, and then
this is evaluate. You are going to get
a mark on this.
And this way of looking at knowledge,
it's a problem. It's as if,
we need to to know, to quantify the
knowledge, and to put a mark on this.
And the second dimension that we have when
it comes to knowledge is to prioritize,
to have a kind of hierarchy
that is set to know what are the
disciplines
that are more important than others. And you
will see that the disciplines are very much,
having with your memory and your
mind, your intellect.
It has to do with mathematics,
languages, and if you look at them, it
also has to do with have to do
has to do with,
the way you deal with the world and
the way you are going to control,
to communicate,
to get a sense of,
to master the world,
and
in the way how this is going to
be useful for you in your social interaction
and then
to pass your
year, to be able to go from 1
year to another, these are the
disciplines where you are going to be
evaluated.
Well, what about
aesthetics?
What about arts? What about other knowledges that
are not so useful
in the way you are coming to get
control,
to be able to communicate or to master
your surrounding
environment?
That's the problem that we have today. So
this way of dealing
with knowledge,
it's
influenced
by the consumer society in a way that
we need to quantify, we need to prioritize,
we need to know what are the disciplines
that are more
important than others. And if you are not
in this
picture, if you don't fit this picture, you
are going to fail.
What we need to do is to resist
this reduction
of the learning process, of what it means
to learn in our society,
today.
And first, if we want to reconcile ourself
with
learning,
it's important to say, okay. What do I
need
to be able to learn? 1st is to
be open.
It's to open your mind. It's to have
an open
mind, meaning that you are open to everything
around you in order to get more knowledge.
And this means
even what is perceived as useless,
you need to find
its utility,
its usefulness for you. So
your intellect should be open, but not only
your senses,
your feelings. It's, this is also something which
is so important. Your ears, your eyes,
your body. It's get your body has a
a knowledge. Your body has a memory. So
it's important to be open to everything,
as to your relationship with your world around
you and your heart. To open your heart,
meaning that there is knowledge, there is a
learning process in the way you love, in
the way you you you you you support,
in the way even you hate, in the
way you are connected to the round, the
world around you. That's also something which is
important to be open
with your mind, with your heart, with your
senses, and your feelings. This is important.
What is also important is not to look
at things only through,
the prism of
its or their function in your life. So
if it's useful, if I can do something
with them, it means that I have to
learn about them. No. There are you know,
when you look at a tree,
you have to learn from the tree, you
have to learn from the sky, you have
to learn from the sun, you have to
learn from people,
from pass bys that are not directly useful
for you. And even with your mother and
your father, not to look at them only
as my mother or my father. As human
beings first, they are before being or having
a function for you. That's also something which
is to take
a step back and to look at things
as the way they are before
the way they are going to have a
utility
of being useful in our
life.
And
it means, as the the the French philosopher
Berson was saying in the relationship that you
have with things, don't look at things in
the way you are going to use them,
but try to
sympathize
with them. To have a kind of to
enter into a relationship of sympathy.
Sympathy,
more than only I'm going to control, I'm
going to master. And it has to do
with the relationship with the world, which is,
okay,
I'm open not only my mind, but I'm
open my being
in order to be to connect with the
beings around me,
and to sympathize with them in a way
which is
deeper,
which is more profound
as to my relationship, which is not only
connected with my rationality
but with my whole being.
And this also has to do with the
the concentric
cycles that the circles that you have
around you. I start with myself.
It's to be attentive and to be to
be full of attention, awareness
as to the way you are with your
own self, with the way you are with
your environment, with the people you love,
with your neighbor, with nature.
This also has to do with the dimension,
which is so important
in the way we are starting,
and we are equipped
in a way to learn.
To be equipped to learn
also
means that,
you have a specific state of mind. You
change your glasses and the way you look
at the world.
And one
dimension here, which which is so important, is
to reconcile
ourselves
with curiosity.
Curiosity means to look at the world and
say, okay, I can get knowledge from almost
everything. If I am a teacher, even my
students is going to teach me. If I'm
a father or a mother, even my kids
are going to teach me. If I look
at the world around me,
the trees, the nature,
as it is going to teach me something.
So to be to to have this sense
of curiosity, to to be, as I said,
open, but to look for something. There are
secrets around you that we have to look
for, that we have to get to understand,
that we need to be, and this is
also a dimension which is important, full of
attention.
Be aware. Look at the world. Don't don't
neglect the details.
Because in the ordinary
details,
there
are extraordinary
extraordinary
secrets.
So so it's also this dimension, and this
is not going to be evaluating the school
system. You're not going to be marred on
this. You are going just this is between
you and you. This is between you and
your own journey in life
that is going to help you.
And the more you know, the more you
have a sense that you don't know. And
this is what the philosopher
Socrates was saying. I know that I know
nothing. And that's it. You enter
and you just try to get you enter
the
world of knowledge and just
you realize that what you know is nothing
compared to what you don't know. And this
sense of humility is part of something which,
is
resisting arrogance,
resisting,
this kind of intellectual arrogance to enter into
learning
as
a process
of,
education towards humility.
And, of course, when you get some knowledge,
it's important for yourself
to organize
the knowledge that you have. And the worst
thing with the knowledge is chaotic knowledge, is
not only that,
knowledge is not going to be useful for
yourself, but it's counterproductive
because you have no personal organization. So so
the way you have this knowledge as to
yourself, it's it's a cumulative process that you
have to organize for yourself,
and you decide. It's not going to be
an order, say, because this is the priority
for you. Memory is more important than feeling.
Intellectual knowledge is more important than spiritual knowledge,
or we can mark intellectual knowledge, we cannot
mark
knowledge that is coming
from your feelings, from your
aesthetics, from your spirituality.
You decide for yourself how you want to
organize this. So it's a it's a personal
process here, and it has to do with
your own autonomy. It's the way you look
at yourself, and you liberate yourself from systems
that are imposing onto you the priority and
the hierarchy
that is the only way to be someone
respected in our society. And that's,
that's that's the the wrong way of dealing
with it. That's a consumer
way of dealing with with knowledge, and that's
wrong. That's the the the that's completely counterproductive.
And it means also that the value of
things is going to be changing,
in the way you look at them. So
so,
value is what you think has a value
for your own
education, for your own,
journey,
and you have to give value to almost
everything. As I said, the details,
things that that are apparently useless, give
usefulness
to useless
things or apparent useless things. So this is
the transformation
of your own way of looking at the
world. It starts with you, and it starts
with the way you look at
the world around you and even the people
around you, because at the end of the
day, that's something which is important. We end
up giving value to people because they are
useful within the society.
We bow
before the kings and the presidents, and we
neglect the poor, because the poor or the
migrants are the non documented people. They are
nothing. They have no utility
for us. And even within the society, they
are not going to vote. So
forget about them. That's the opposite of the
true learning process I'm talking about right now.
And to end this first
discussion here, it means that the learning process
has to do with the way you you
talk to yourself
and you start talking to yourself. You start
to,
get a sense of who you are and
what do you who you want to be
and which role do you want to play
within the society,
resisting the consumer
approach
to try to get
a sense of what are the true values,
and what do I want to learn, and
why should I
diminish
the knowledge that has to do with beauty,
which has to do with art, which has
to do with love. Yes. You're not going
to mark me on the way I love,
on the way I look, on the way
I interact with people. But this is it.
I want to learn more and more in
these fields because this
these fields are going to help me to
be a better human being and to learn
more, to deepen
my knowledge, to deepen
my understanding,
and to deepen
my
humanity
in the way I look
to the world and the way also I
look to nature, because the best teacher around
me,
it's also the natural order. It's
it's teaching me so much, so I have
to
reconnect with this and to get a sense
of who I want to be.
That's it for now.
Remember,
to tell the people you love, that you
love them. Life is fragile. We are not
so much in this life, and we need
to know that,
love
is at the center of
the learning process.
Peace be with you and talk to you
next time.