Tabula Rasa, anyone?

It's probably safe to ignore the following praragraphs. I'm in a blabbering mood again.


Tabula Rasa. Clean Slate. John Locke was the one who had thought up the concept, which had suggested that minds were blank at birth, and were programmed with data only through experience and observations.

I was thinking about this philosophy while observing people around me. It would seem that peoples’ experiences shape the way they turn out to a great extent. For example, people of a region have a tendency to think alike because they share a similar pool of experience. The external influences introduced into a region are also likely to create a group of “deviants” or “heretics” who have different views from the rest of the community.

Now, taking Berkeley’s philosophy (that things that are perceived actually exist) into account, how would such a group form should there be no such external factors? Lacking the knowledge of the existence of external schools of thought, opposing schools are formed due to the opposition to what is taught or learned in the existing environment.

Hence, I think it is more of a matter of belief that shapes people. Learning can’t really be forced. One has to believe what one is taught before one can actually learn it. Even if it is say…some terrible subject like mathematics, one has to believe in it at some level in order to apply it. I, for one, do not believe in most formulae, so I do poorly in mathematics. Neat excuse. =p

That’s also part of the reason why the national indoctrination program called Civics is not something that’s churning out generation after generation of fanatical patriots.