Why listicles are bad at explaining a topic.
I am not a fan of listicles. If you do not know listicles are type of articles which gives you list of things. In Magical Mindful living I have few listicles. Majority are essay type articles. If you do a google search today for any topic, you will come across most likely listicle article. This is because they are good for google crawlers, or the bots which index a site. Now these are technical and I am sure you are not interested in this crap. So the point is listicles are good for machines but not humans. I can explain you why.
Fundamentals of brain function in learning.
For this we have to look at blooms taxonomy. And I am going to explain this with a little analogy.
First steps
Imagine a kid learning colors, you show him green color and let him repeat "green". You point him a tree and make him repeat "tree". Now he has two isolated facts in his/her brain. And the brain does an amazing thing next.
Second step -interconnectedness.
The brain puts green and tree together. And identify it as a "green tree". And sometimes you never teach a kid a tree is green. But everyone knows right? That is because our brains have remarkable ability in higher order thinking as blooms taxonomy suggests. Identifying interconnectedness of the words, or observing pattersn is the highest form of any learning. When we were kids this is natural. But when we become adults, things have diverted so much from each other it is hard to see interconnectedness. We just think it is lineir. Infact every expert on their own field has seen this connectivity. Even Einstein (science). Even Thich Nhat Hanh (religion). Even Dr Seuss (art).
All religions art and science are branches of the same tree - Albert Einstein.
Lessons learned from this. As you can see listicles are bad in that matter to properly show you connectivity in ideas. Infact these are written in the opposite direction. Sometimes obvious¹ connections between the ideas are lost when you try to put them in a listicle. Once they become isolated facts there would be no use. The value of it will be lost. What is the point knowing "green" is green and a "tree" is a tree. Unless you know trees are green. In fact now when we see or hear the word "tree" there are so many things which comes to our mind because the facts are interconnected like a web.
The other more significant fact of note is the same as above. Think about what we agrgued but this time in a different angle.
"Once things become isolated facts, they lose all their value"
If you want me to summarise this entire blog of 340 articles I would say the above. It gives you profound wisdom to everything around you. And that would be fundamental nature of things when you look at it from mindfulness. That is the secret of finding happiness in the world like a kid. For a kid nothing is valueble, he would break your TV and drop your iPhone in water. While you cry about it, he would laugh seeing bubbles in water. If you would let he would do it again.
I am not asking you to drop your valuables in the sea, like Rose did in Titanic. In fact you should question me on this now, why we should lose our values. And I would answer.
Its because it is the truth.
Because it matters to know the truth.
As even if we keep our values hidden in our hearts, secretly we are going to lose them anyway when life reach its zero.
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