Unlearning

“Learn to unlearn.” Benjamin Disraeli. I had a friend named Ray Motsavatge and he was a memory expert. Every week he would memorize the entire current issue and then he would tear up the magazine passing out the pages and members of the audience would call out their page number and he would tell them what the page contained, the particular article, quoting from it and also the advertising on that page. When I asked Ray if he has a problem remembering the pages he startled me when he said, “It is no problem learning them and remembering them but the real problem is being able to forget last weeks magazine.”

Now I have thought this over and I guess that is the problem with all progress. As Disraeli said about, “Unlearning.” Mark Twain once said that it wasn’t what we know that gets us in trouble, it is what we know that just ain’t so. Now days there is so much that I know that just ain’t so and furthermore, just maybe it never was.

References: