home / contact / Established on 9/1/2007 --- Please send us suggestions for sites to add to this list -- and suggestions on how we might improve the site / Tell your friends about this site: we have no ad budget and depend on happy visitors to spread the word. Please report dead links and errors / Martin R. Carbone / 5123 Don Rodolfo Drive / Carlsbad, CA 92010 / Telephone: 760-603-1910 / FAX: 760-603-1930 / Website <<http://www.alphabeticalist.com>>

Alphabeticalist Topics --- A / B / C / D / E / F / G / H / I / J-K / L / M / N / O / P / Q / R / S / T / U-V / W / X-Y-Z

Is it not true that humans developed language, walking upright, toolmaking, polite social interaction and everything else of importance before there were any written or spoken rules? Everyone must have learned from watching and copying others. Those skills of watching and copying must be built-in (hard-wired) and must be important.

The rules could only have come later, when astute people noticed patterns and told others about those patterns. “Look, Og, when you want to take the skin off a snake -- it is best to slit the thing lengthwise first, from here to here.”

This was a valuable thing and it meant that copying could be done faster and more efficiently: rule makers were revered for their wisdom.

But then things started going wrong: (A) everyone who wanted to raise their status starting making rules about everything, (B) learning the rules started to take on way more importance than learning the task at hand -- skinning the snake and (C) some of the “rules” were made by fools and they were completely wrong: the people who followed those rules suffered.

This has developed to the point where most of us think that rules for everything were developed before the things were done in the first place. That can’t be true. Reading should be looked at in that light. Reading must have been done by those who wanted to read before there were rules for reading. We are able to read without consciously knowing rules.

This is not to say there are no natural rules. There are, and each of us learns and internalizes those rules on our own: subconsciously. This is the most logical explanation for how children learn to handle spoken language so magnificently. They can make up sentences and express ideas they have never heard; using words they have heard, but have not consciously learned -- all without knowing about the rules which are written in books.

We have to help those among us who have a hard time learning how to do something as easily as others. We have to teach them. We have to teach them by understanding, by setting an example, by suggesting various proven ways to learn, by inspiring.

It is counterproductive to teach these people by first telling them the rules in great detail. We must relax. We must let nature take its course. We must introduce the rules slowly. We must rely on the student’s natural ability to do the task and develop his or her rules internally. Learning the rules is often more difficult than doing the task.

We are all guilty of “rule making”. If we clearly see, or think we clearly see, how something is done: the rules underlying some act, we feel compelled to tell others about our discovery; thus making up rules. I am doing that right now. And nobody should take me seriously without putting their common sense in gear.

Take all rules in small doses: don't swallow them whole.

Martin R. Carbone / martycarbone@yahoo.com / 760-603-1910 / 5123 Don Rodolfo Drive / Carlsbad, CA 92010

I have waived the copyright for this material: it is yours to reproduce at will in any form. (MRC)