On Becoming a Super - Part 12: Super Education
March 11, 2020

     Superheroes self-educate.  They are autodidacts.  And there is little excuse not to do and be so in a world that features the Internet – although a public library is still a good option too (and you can generally access the Internet there).  Most of us in the so-called "developed world" have access to more information through the miniature computer we carry in our pockets (still anachronistically called a "phone") than has been stored in many of the world's libraries combined. 

    This is no small achievement by humankind, that we now have this thing that can so easily connect us with knowledge and with each other.  Undoubtedly, like any tool, it can be wielded for foolish or malevolent purposes.  It can be used to mislead and divide to at least the same degree as it can be used to illuminate us and bring us together.  But that is just to say that the Internet, for all its promise and potential, is not a direct doorway to wisdom, which I will provisionally define here as knowledge that is activated within a moral framework centered on widespread and sustained human flourishing.

    To access, acquire, and experience wisdom, we still need teachers.  We still need those who have gone out ahead of us on a wisdom-seeking journey, and who can, by virtue of that journey, mediate between us and the raw information and knowledge available to us, on the Internet or elsewhere.  Teachers are translators, in other words – that is, people who help us transform the raw information and knowledge at our fingertips into wisdom.  And fortunately for us, the Internet gives us ready access to many excellent teachers.  YouTube is a veritable gold mine for good teachers, as are the many apps available on our "phones" for podcasts, TED talks, and smart written reporting, instruction, and analysis. 

    This is, in fact, what it means to self-educate: to find yourself a set of master teachers.  Before the Internet, the options for putting yourself under the tutelage of such teachers were limited to finding living ones, or reading books.  Both of these are still great options, of course, and I highly recommend using both on your journey toward wisdom.  But now we have more options.  So if you have any interest at all in learning to convert the information and knowledge at your fingertips into actual wisdom, go find some teachers.  They're out there.