Thinking Beyond

At the time my formal education was OK, there were little ups and little downs but I just kept on keeping on. Now I look back and see a waste of a lot of time. I did not succeed in education, I was not effective in the system and it provided little for me outside and after that system. The system still operates for purposes other than education and providing for the children and the country. Bright kids could do secondary school in a year, others are so not catered for, twenty years would not be enough. Why was never answered, why am I being taught this, why now, there was no explanation, there was no relevance. My luck though is that I started to teach myself; ask questions and find the answers. I have had a go at things not just accepted the formal system. The skill people most often do not practice is thinking, they act on guesswork, they start the sentence 'I just thought....' when it's clear they did not do any thinking what so ever. This juxtaposition between speech and action and then justification was apparent to me early on. It undermined much credibility adults had. This book is a self help to thinking. It is not 'the system's' textbook it covers a gaping whole within it. I have spent a lot of time looking at the Chinese tradition at the same time looking at science. My sport science background allied to Chinese martial arts are all about what works and what does not, success and failure and eliminating false belief and unhelpful actions. They are two approaches that highlight how to succeed and fail. They are talking about the same thing from two different perspectives. This book is a starting point for thinking. A guide I never had but which contains a lot of directions for thinking that are not within, or are poorly explained within the formal system. Each chapter could be a book and each sentence a chapter. It is a book of clues for further research. I have tried to bring the Eastern and Western traditions together as an introduction to both, but also bringing them together under the theme of being more effective. The principles of science and the knowledge and its theories are essential in the modern world, but the Eastern principles that pervade its societies and world view are useful and contain truth that can be used with science, to improve understanding. The difference between Eastern and Western traditions and the similarities illuminate. A Chinese saying talks of roots and branches. This book has the roots that can be branched out, but roots and branches have principles and concepts of how they grow, hopefully these are included. Once understood, many problems become familiar and related to others rather than millions of problems and millions of tools. Principles and concepts become multifunctional and simplify the world to make it more survivable.