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On how to de-compartmentalize

A course I recently finished taught me something fundamental. It taught me how to learn: when you read a chapter every word of it every sentence and every page should relate, it should also relate to whatever you have known and add fundamentally to your understanding and you should be able to carry with you a summarized abstract form of the chapter.

If you don’t do this you compartmentalize your chapter like you compartmentalize people (see my post on Compartmentalization) and so the chapter stands on its own in your mind not relating to much else.

So the trick to “de-compartmentalizing” the chapter is to work as hard as possible, to think as much as you can about that chapter while you are reading it, till the point where you cannot make any furthur deductions from the chapter.

The same applies to de-compartmentalizing with career, socializing, being alert of your surroundings. Every thing in your life should relate to everything else that you know to the degree that you are capable of. People sometimes say that things are not making sense to them. Such problems should be worked out in this very fashion: bear all your understanding to solve that problem. This is by the way also what “enlightenment” is as described by Immanuel Kant in his essay.

(My post On Enlightenment by Immanuel Kant talks about this)

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