Optimize Yourself, Optimize Your Tribe

One initiative every family should pursue with vigor is education. Much of the evil in the world can trace its source to ignorance in one form or another. On a simple level, ignorance of YHWH’s laws leads people to do many things which are hurtful of themselves, others, or their environment. On another level, ignorance of efficiency techniques and processes lead many people to waste their lives away on a few tasks when they could have achieved many tasks without any more effort.

What is education? There are many viewpoints. Let’s define education as the process of optimizing ourselves and others to maximize our ability to be productive in every endeavor we pursue. Productivity is not just something we do for a boss or company in exchange for money. It is also what we do for ourselves, our family and friends when we have projects to accomplish. We can achieve our goals quickly or slowly, and often the difference is simply knowing a better way or having a better tool. Sometimes it is a matter of knowing which goals have the most meaning and knowing which goals to triage.

However you define it, education must belong first to the tribal leaders so they can impart knowledge to everyone else. Each tribe will have its own culture which will influence the focus of its educational content and processes. There will also be important subjects which no tribe should neglect. Within the context of tribalism, the proper place for primary instruction is in the home. As children grow older they may wish to apprentice outside their home in fields which are not their family’s specialty. The following principles are not confined to the education of children. They also affect the optimization of the entire tribe, including extended family members.

Intelligence

The steps of self-optimization are incremental and can be performed in any order. I suggest the first step might be to maximize one’s native intelligence, for it is the building block of all learning. This includes thinking ability as well as the perception of reality. It includes the ability to make paradigm shifts when our current paradigm is false or ineffective.

I highly recommend the website of Steve Pavlina. He has made a career out of optimizing himself and showing others how to do the same. He has over 700 articles on his website. I’ve read them all, and it was a real growth experience. Among other things, he shares his time management techniques which allowed him to get a bachelor’s degree in three semesters. He writes a lot about adopting different paradigms. Some of it is very challenging.

One way to increase your intelligence is to take IQ tests and solve puzzles. Both can be found at such sites as Puzz.com. Meffert’s has physical puzzles for sale that will help you stay mentally sharp. My Brain Trainer has many exercises designed to boost your mental abilities. Just as a muscle only becomes stronger when pushed beyond its normal daily requirements, the brain works the same way. To increase your intelligence, you must continually place greater demands on your mental function. New puzzles are a great way to exercise the mental muscles, but be careful not to get stuck doing the same type of puzzles over and over, as this will have diminishing returns.

Learning Skills

Assuming native intelligence, the next step is to develop the skills of learning. Many people get through four years of high school, and even four years of college, without retaining anything because they don’t know how to learn effectively. They may read the materials day and night, pass the tests, and then forget everything they learned. Obviously, one of the fundamental skills of learning is memory. The memory can be developed. There are tricks for remembering long strings of items. Besides tricks, there are basic principles of brain function and memory. Long-term memory forms during REM sleep. Interrupt your REM cycles and your memory will suffer. Nutrition plays a role in brain function. Low blood sugars impact memorization negatively.

Once you are sure you can retain information, you must start acquiring it. This will invariably involve reading skills. Ironically, learning to read faster and skim materials has the effect of increasing comprehension and retention, not decreasing it. A great article about speed reading can be found here: Speed Reading. A different system that has gotten great reviews is Photoreading. You can choose to read many books in the time it would normally take to read one, or read one book in much less time and free up the remainder for other endeavors.

Written communication is also essential. It is the other half of your interface with knowledge. Accuracy of grammar, spelling, and style can be learned from appropriate manuals. Creative writing can be developed through practice. There are also ways to write and type faster. For instance, the Dvorak keyboard layout places all the most commonly used letters in the English language in the home row of the keyboard. For handwriting, there is an easy to learn shorthand system called The Handywrite System. This allows the user to keep up with dictation, as in a lecture setting.

Knowing how to use reference materials is an essential learning skill. Conversion tables are cool. Encyclopedias, dictionaries, directories, all can be found in general subjects or with as much specialization as desired.

Software can be used for learning, reading, and writing. Open source software is economical, and in many cases is comparable or even superior to software that costs money. One of my favorites is the OpenOffice suite. Also, Mozilla Firefox. I use AVG free antivirus to keep my computer germ-free. The Online Bible is a great Bible software package. I’ve never seen any commercial Bible software that can beat it. Gimp is a powerful program for working with computer images. Freemind is a truly remarkable outlining and brainstorming program. Once you explore its capabilities, you’ll be amazed at all the things it can do for you. One that I’ve found recently but have not fully explored is Wikidpad. It looks promising. It allows you to link documents together on your computer similar to the wiki model. All of this software is free and of excellent quality. All of it can be used to enhance learning and communication.

General Education

Once the general skill of learning is acquired, the question becomes “what should be learned?” And the answer is, “Everything.” Learn religion and spirituality because if we don’t connect with YHWH, then all our other endeavors are in vain. Learn history and biography, as they will help us to avoid repeating other people’s mistakes. Learn the sciences, mathematics, and engineering. They will help to design new processes and devices for improving the efficiency of the tribe. Learn language arts because mis-communications are one of the leading causes of arguments and fights. Business and economics are vital to the well-being of the tribe. The more you learn, the more your creativity can be maximized. Creativity is largely the combining of known things in new ways to produce new and unknown ideas.

Certainly technical skills related to the tribe’s occupation (or individual occupations within the tribe) should be continually improved over the lifetime of the tribe and its individuals. The tribe can develop its own “trade secrets” to enable it to create more value at a faster rate and thus increase its trade ratios and thereby improve its standard of living. Individuals can increase their own technical abilities in order to raise their own hourly wages.

All of these subjects can be learned from textbooks. Many of them can also be learned from hands-on experience. By far the best way to learn anything is to teach it to someone else. Therefore, the leaders of the tribe who educate the younger members should develop greater depth and breadth of knowledge than anybody else in the tribe.

Finally, here is a list of some of my favorite sources of free books and resources to start a personal library. Use at your own risk, and your mileage may vary:

Free Books
How Stuff Works
Wikibooks
Project Gutenberg
Online Books
Information Unlimited

Conclusion

Education and optimization of the tribe are indispensible to the well-being and even survival of the tribe. It influences our ability to create value for others, a prerequisite for enjoying the benefits of trade. It is required for making good sound decisions. Some decisions have far-reaching and long-term effects on the members of a tribe. Education and optimization also relate to the ability of the tribe to reach goals efficiently. The importance of these principles and initiatives cannot be overstated. They will make or break a tribe. Knowledge is truly power. No matter what the tribe’s goals or vocation, the ability to find and process information will place the value of the tribe’s activities at a premium. The pursuit of knowledge cannot be ignored.