Brain Food for Pioneering Spirits: How are acting and learning connected? That’s the question we explored in Room #1022 of the Deep Talk Club, under our overarching theme of “Action.” Listen in on the examples that came up and the perspectives that emerged in dialogue…
Note: This session was recorded live in German as part of the Deep Talk Club, so the video above is German-language audio only. What follows is an English translation of the conversation, lightly edited for readability — the back-and-forth between the moderator and participants is preserved, but the original timestamps and speaker names have been left out.
A very good morning to you all. Today we’re talking about acting and learning — how are the two actually connected? As always, you’re warmly invited to bring in your own impulses and thoughts, maybe even concrete examples we can work through together, and then we’ll see which direction today’s room takes as a space for reflection. Quick reminder as always: we’re recording the whole time, so joining means you’re okay with that. And we already have our first hand up — good morning, what are your first thoughts on the topic?
My first thought is actually an announcement: if I’m not in the room later, it means I’ve acted — I’m waiting on a call from a lawyer, and I’ll be politely turning that new knowledge into concrete skills, abilities, and eventually experience.
Good to know, thank you for the update! But what are your actual first thoughts on the topic?
That was genuinely it, I just tacked the other bit on given current events. The real answer would be the same story, minus the lawyer: the connection between acting and learning lets me turn knowledge into concrete new skills and abilities, and through that, into new experience. The precondition, of course, is acting first, then learning — through acting, not recklessly, but acting, I learn. And through learning, and above all through doing, that turns into concrete skill. There’s a great book on exactly this technique, which is also used in schools and in the workplace: new knowledge is called understanding — not just reciting facts, but understanding. And you only arrive at understanding through acting, through hands-on, practice-based engagement. That’s why there’s research showing that when children or teenagers run experiments themselves, actively work on something, that cements the skill — because it’s not just memorising knowledge, it’s applying it.
Wonderful, thank you so much. What I find interesting is that you start with acting — actively working on something in order to learn. What about the other way around: learning first, in order to act?
I’d answer that like a lawyer too — I do enjoy this kind of linguistic play, and how lawyers always manage to open up another perspective, even if I don’t always love it. The lawyer’s answer is: it depends. Of course it makes sense, if I have enough time, to first engage with the process at length, to learn, to weigh things up, does this suit me, do I want to apply it. But sometimes, acting is simply, urgently necessary — say, if I’m a ship’s captain. Best example, since I like working with images: I’m the captain, and someone reports to me on the bridge, “we’ve got serious water ingress.” And it’s not just water coming in, it’s flooding in. Then I don’t have time to think, like a pilot — I have to act immediately. But if I’m on holiday as captain, bored, thinking about my profession, then of course I have room to consider how I’d handle extreme situations, crisis situations, personnel problems — I’d talk it through, exchange experiences, try out a bit of what I’ve learned if I feel like it. And that’s where new skills and abilities develop too. But short answer to your question, since that’s usually how these rooms end up: it’s never simply one or the other, it always depends. Both are right, depending on the situation.
Wonderful, thank you so much. And a quick note — I saw someone else wanted to join and speak, I sent an invite, but it doesn’t seem to have worked. Either try again, or leave and re-enter the room to see if that fixes it — we had some technical hiccups yesterday too, so that might just be it.
Thank you so much. And that means, as we’ve noted in many rooms before, it’s rarely an either-or, it tends to run in both directions. On one hand, acting — becoming active to do something — can itself lead us to learn new things, simply because it becomes more tangible. On the other hand, we can also deliberately learn something first, if we know certain skills are missing to reach a certain goal, so we can consider what we still need, and learn that in order to become capable of acting again.
I see someone’s back in the room — let me send a speaking invite and see if it works, and of course invite everyone else in too, to open up further perspectives. You wanted to add something?
I wanted to say thank you again — you once told me in a personal conversation, we’re all in situations sometimes, private or professional, that we don’t love, and you asked me: what are the lessons learned? That’s the most painful and honest moment I have to negotiate with myself, because when my partner’s gone, when my job’s gone, when I’m in a situation I really don’t like, it’s sometimes hard to look in the mirror and ask, who’s actually responsible for this? It’s easy to say, it’s because of this or that, and I’m being treated unfairly. But ultimately, we often end up in situations because our own crisis management wasn’t good enough, because we could have seen the signs, because we didn’t act sooner, because we hoped things would get better on their own. And if you’re genuinely, brutally honest with yourself, and accept that, at least in large part, the situation you’re in isn’t just bad luck — that you didn’t act, or acted, or acted wrongly — and then take responsibility for that, that would be my second important point about acting and learning: taking responsibility, and acting and learning.
Wonderful, thank you so much. And it looks like the connection’s working now — good morning to you!
Good morning!
Sounds great, we can hear you.
Wonderful. These past few days I hadn’t managed to join, I wasn’t even sure if you’d kept going, and this morning I thought, let me just check if you’re there — and it worked right away. I’d like to build on what was just said — that’s really something I know from my own clients too. When people are developing, they don’t come to me because they have no problems, and looking at what happened, what’s my own responsibility in it, or even — non-action is a fascinating topic too — what didn’t I do that let things get this far?
Sorry, there’s a construction worker knocking on my door, let me mute for a second.
All good, wonderful. Just a quick note here — we will look at non-action specifically, though not today. Tomorrow we continue with acting and education, and then we’ll look concretely at this aspect of acting through non-action. So let’s set that aside a little today and really focus on acting and learning, and in two days when we pick non-action back up, we can make those connections.
Would you like to build on that, or is there another thought you want to bring in?
Sorry, needed to press the button. I was still stuck, mentally, on that personal responsibility piece — because I notice in myself, I always feel more comfortable when I have nothing to do with a situation. And it’s very human to look for someone to blame. Generally, across my whole life, I’ve noticed that acting and learning requires a certain openness for me, because acting and learning means new experiences. And new experiences mean change. And we’ve said ourselves in this room, that’s the contradiction: I act and learn and get new experiences, but I don’t actually want new experiences, because new experiences are change, and I resist change — that’s already a contradiction in itself that needs overcoming. And that’s where openness comes in for me. And I’ll happily repeat something you always say: whatever I do in my life, I always ask, what’s in it for me? And once I’ve answered that question, then I engage with acting and learning.
Wonderful, thank you so much for bringing in that aspect of change too. We’d said before that every change is essentially underpinned by a learning process. And we can also ask ourselves how much this whole thing has to do with a process of understanding. Is it not the case that when I do certain things, I also enter into a process of understanding — provided there’s a corresponding reflection, and you mentioned lessons learned earlier, that we need to distinguish between conscious and unconscious here. So on one hand I might learn things without even noticing, simply through acting. And on the other hand I can quite consciously pick up on aspects, to enter that process of understanding deliberately, reflect on it, analyse it, and extract lessons learned in a targeted way. And is that even necessary — or does unconscious learning already initiate change, or acting that results from it, even though I did it unconsciously? Maybe we can look more closely at conscious versus unconscious here — do you have any thoughts on that?
What I’ve observed in my personal circle is: when people are meant to move into acting and learning, you first have to open a door in their mind and say, the way you’ve acted so far wasn’t wrong. I’ve noticed that a lot of people, when they have to say, okay, maybe I could have acted differently there — not wrong, just differently — they feel like everything they’ve done up to that point, professionally and personally, is being called into question. And being able to accept that, seeing it as a chance rather than a conflict — like what was said yesterday about generations, I don’t have a conflict, I have an opportunity to act and react differently going forward, to get new results — that requires openness. Without openness, there’s no point engaging with anything, because these feelings run so strong. And that admission doesn’t start with someone telling you, you did everything wrong, or you could have done it better — it starts with someone realising for themselves, okay, I notice I want to change something, I don’t feel comfortable. That’s always the simplest question: do you feel comfortable? If someone says, everything’s fine, I’m happy, I’m glad for you, let’s have a coffee and talk about the weather, there’s nothing to solve. But if someone doesn’t feel comfortable, then I think it’s wise to at least try something new, because then I’ve learned for myself that I’m suddenly no longer a victim, no longer the poor person things happen to, someone who’s been wronged — instead, I’m acting. And it’s actually completely secondary whether that action leads to a different outcome, because even if it doesn’t, I’ve actively contributed to changing something, instead of sitting on my hands watching what happens to me.
That makes me wonder though: does the intention always have to be change? Don’t I also learn through acting, without necessarily intending to change or to learn something? How does that work?
Yes, of course I learn without intending to — if I touched a hot stove twice as a kid, I won’t do it a third time. I won’t think about it, it just happens completely unconsciously.
I wasn’t quite sure if you were still speaking there, since it took a moment for the mic icon to switch off — I assume you needed a second to gather your thought.
Right, exactly that example with the stove — it shows that it isn’t always conscious learning, in the sense of having to reflect on it. Acting, and the experience that comes with it, can itself become a learning factor: if I’ve touched the stove several times and realised it hurts, then in the next moment I simply stop doing it. And this is a really interesting angle too, because we’re talking about experience — through acting, through the experience made, comes learning. And now, things can also be learned that aren’t necessarily helpful. Which means it might take a certain sharpening of awareness to look more closely and consider how I might overlay past experiences with new ones. That gets really fascinating too.
Would you like to follow up on that?
I completely agree with that. Reflection is hugely important there — questioning and re-questioning, always. Let me bring in an example, not directly about learning, but bear with me. I’m not allowed to give tax advice, but I always look at what task an expert actually has when I talk to one. And it only just became clear to me: when I talk to a tax advisor, their job is to say, I’ll help you save money. Which is great — if we buy a new car, we save money, oh, you can write that off. What I’ve learned, though, is to always question what intention the expert actually has. Their task is to help me save tax this year, or maybe over three years. But that’s not the same as an investment — whether I have more money in the bank after six years, whether I’ve actually grown my wealth. A tax advisor isn’t a wealth-builder, they’re a tax-saver. That’s why it’s so important to always reflect. It doesn’t mean the tax advisor’s advice, or anyone else’s, is bad — I just always have to think about what my actual goals are, where I want to end up, what I want at the end of the day. If I say, I don’t mind paying taxes, that’s just part of it, that’s completely fine too. But I also have moral and ethical considerations — we’ve talked about acting, morality and the environment before — where I simply resist replacing something that still works perfectly well just to save on tax, because it genuinely pains me to throw away a phone that’s three years old if it still works. My phones last five to six years. That’s maybe not perfectly on topic, but that’s what I mean by reflection — always questioning what I actually want. And that’s something we’ve had again and again in these rooms: bringing meaningful acting and learning into alignment with our own ethical and moral values. And sometimes that results in a different way of acting — but it has to fit for us, not for other people.
Wonderful, thank you so much. You’re back — I’ll give you the chance to bring in what you originally wanted to say in a moment. And again, an open invitation to everyone else too, not just to listen, but to join in and open up different perspectives — the more examples and perspectives we have, the richer this gets, so we can pick up as many angles as possible and see how they interconnect. Let’s try again — let’s see if it works this time.
Your mic still seems to be off for us — we can’t hear you right now. If you’re trying to speak, check your mic, or maybe try leaving and rejoining the room.
I’ll bring up the Italy example again in the meantime. Sometimes I act, and sometimes I have to learn, otherwise I can’t act at all — there was a situation where I couldn’t get a parking ticket in Italy because I hadn’t understood the machine wanted my licence plate number. If I hadn’t learned that in the moment, it would have blocked me from parking anywhere afterward too, because I’d never have managed to get a ticket. So sometimes we’re forced to learn and then act, whether we want to or not.
Wonderful, and that’s also a nice example to draw out the distinction here. We can learn in the moment of acting, and we can also plan to learn first and then move into acting, or the reverse. And that’s a really important aspect too — even with planned learning, I can choose to go into acting first, try it out, and see what I can learn from that. Or the other way around: I learn first, and then translate it into action, to see whether it works, what I still can’t do, and refine it from there. Which is different again from doing it unplanned, in the moment, the way you just described with the parking ticket — figuring out on the spot what to do, how to handle it, who to ask. That’s more of an initially unplanned form of acting and learning.
Would you like to add to that?
What comes to mind is belief systems, as an entrepreneur, when we have to learn. We’re often told, if you’re building a business, you need a website, you need presentation materials, you need business cards and so on. And it’s worth questioning how useful that actually is for the outcome. What’s my actual goal as an entrepreneur? I want to earn money. I want to be able to live off the service I offer. And sure, those things are helpful and useful — having a website, having business cards, and so on. But the question I asked myself when starting my business, and you’ve said this too, is: do I spend half a year or a year developing a logo and a website, or do I earn money in that first year, and think about those things over a cup of coffee, in the sun, on holiday?
Wonderful, and that point about belief systems is worth picking up too. How does it actually work — is there a limitation on learning, in the context of acting, caused by certain belief systems, where I might not even be able to discover certain things? If two people take the same action, is it conceivable that one learns something completely different from the other?
Absolutely. And here’s a painful realisation for me — I’ve always said, we see what we want to see. I’d now add: we hear what we want to hear, and we read what we want to read. That’s exactly why I’m waiting for that call from a lawyer — because I know I see, emotionally, what I want to see. That doesn’t have to match reality, and a court ruling has nothing to do with justice, it’s about the interpretation of laws and so on. I’ve learned that painfully, in my own circle of friends — it’s important to ask an actual expert for an assessment, because ultimately, when a dispute, private or professional, ends up in court, the court doesn’t decide based on whether someone is a nice, kind person, whether their morals and ethics are sound, or what they’ve done in the past — only on a legal basis, on the meaning and interpretation of words and terms. And anyone who’s unfortunately dealt with a lawyer, even one who helped them, knows it’s never a pleasant situation. These days I don’t trust Dr. Google anymore either, because I’ve noticed, whether medical or legal, on Google I naturally read what I want to read — and that gives me either good or bad feelings about it.
Thank you so much. Let’s bring in one more voice — good morning!
Good morning to you and everyone in the room. My head’s spinning a little right now, because I think there’s a parallel to a topic we’ve had before under this overarching theme — the connection between thinking and acting. And you threw in another term a few minutes ago that fits this context too: understanding. But if I try to really stay with today’s title, learning and acting, that really calls for answering: how are they connected, does one require the other, and vice versa? Meaning: can I act without thinking, or without learning — or is there also learning that’s completely detached from any connection to acting? And I think, as with many topics here, it comes down to definition — specifically what we mean by learning and understanding. From a process-based view, learning, for me, is bound to there being some initial trigger, some occasion, some phenomenon, some perception that turns the learner into a learner. I don’t wake up in the morning and simply decide, now I’m going to learn — there has to be a reason for it. And now, if I can put this a little provocatively: for me, a connection to acting — what was described earlier, coming to acting first and then triggering the learning process — isn’t a given. Because for me, a learning process can also happen purely through observation, without any goal-directed doing — which is what acting is — being intended or carried out at all. I simply observe, and take in what learning, at its linguistic root, from ancient times, actually means: becoming knowing. And I draw that distinction because acting involves a different kind of competence, in my view — action competence. That’s based, absolutely agreed, largely on experiential knowledge as a result of learning processes, but it’s a different kind of competence — the competence of being able to apply knowledge, versus the competence of learning, as I see it, which is being able to acquire knowledge. That’s it from me for now — thanks for listening.
Wonderful, thank you so much. And someone else is waiting too — let me bring them in, and then we can draw the cross-connections. Good morning!
Good morning, can you hear me?
Yes, we can hear you.
Great, you can hear me! I was on a short break at the bakery and wanted to say something about what was just said — I agree with pretty much all of it. He’s clearly someone who reflects a lot. Let’s go back to our teenage years — do they, when it comes to something new, do they think it through, or are they simply a bit more physically ready to just dive in and start? Take the example I always use: whenever I have a computer problem, an issue with some program, and I look over my daughter’s shoulder, all she really does is take a few risks and just try things. I always think, oh no, you’re doing that wrong, when she clicks something. And I think, figuratively, that’s a lot of what happens: do I take the step or not? They just take the step, see that it works, and learn from it. So I’m a little doubtful whether it’s always fully conscious, or whether a lot of it is actually unconscious — with some level of awareness, sure, but not the awareness of “I am now learning something,” more just trying it and learning from that, partly unconsciously. That’s my take — I’m going to keep jogging now, switching back to listener mode. Thanks, bye!
Wonderful, thank you so much. So we have two components here: on one hand, simply acting and doing without overthinking it, and automatically gathering experience through doing, which favours learning. And on the other hand, the aspect just raised — learning certain things purely through observation, without acting at all. Which makes me wonder: how have we actually defined acting? Is observing itself a form of acting?
Would you like to follow up on that?
I have a question actually. You started your point with, is there learning detached from a connection to acting? My question, my train of thought, is: why would there need to be a connection to acting at all? If I’ve learned something, if my parents taught me to respect older people, then I’ve learned that, I have that knowledge. But nowhere does it say I actually have to apply that knowledge. Maybe I just don’t grow into that in the way my parents intended, and I don’t stand up when an older person sits across from me on the subway, because I have the knowledge but don’t apply it. In that case I would have learned it, and my question is: learned knowledge doesn’t actually obligate us to apply it. And yet we’ve learned it, we don’t apply the knowledge, we don’t act — and by doing that, we’re still acting, because not acting is itself a form of acting.
Thank you — would you like to follow up on that?
Gladly, because that’s beautifully put — that’s exactly the distinction, for me, that you’re pointing to: that this kind of learning is intentionless, meaning it doesn’t need a purpose attached to it. The only purpose you could nitpick your way into is “learning for the sake of learning.” And yes, that’s actually the essential difference from acting, for me. As I said at the start, it comes down to how we define the terms. If I define acting as a conscious doing, a conscious steering of my behaviour toward a purpose, toward some intended outcome, then there’s an intention behind it — a means-to-an-end relationship. Acting, in order to achieve this or that purpose. And my position is that one form of learning doesn’t need that intention at all — it simply results from the underlying, and here we’re back at human selfhood and being, becoming knowing, without thinking about how to apply it. And from my own experience, I can say there are certain areas where I consciously learned — connecting facts, accumulating them, making them available, linking them together — where if you’d asked me, what will you do with that, my answer would have been, nothing concrete, I just know it now. And that, for me, is the decisive point between these two terms, learning and acting: the purpose-relatedness. Thank you.
I find that genuinely fascinating, and I’m completely with you on it — let me pick up one more point in this context. If learning can indeed be intentionless, that also means, even when it’s not deliberate, not consciously done — and we absolutely have settings where this gets really interesting, formats where someone is, in quotation marks, pushed into some measure, where there’s an involuntary quality to it. Say, someone becomes unemployed and the job centre says, please attend this or that retraining programme, and the person doesn’t really want to, but is now obligated to participate, because otherwise there are consequences threatened, like reduced benefits. So we have people sitting in a setting where there’s essentially involuntariness — where the willingness to learn something isn’t really there, or at least the intention isn’t — and the question is, on one hand, how do you create voluntariness? And on the other hand, if we take it out of this regulated setting, there are plenty of contexts where we might not move with any real intention to learn, but the framework itself can still lead to, and even purposefully drive, that learning aspect, even if the participant in that space isn’t actually pursuing that intention themselves. Take social media platforms as another example, to make it a bit clearer — where we scroll through posts, read them, there are various discussions happening, plenty of commenting in one direction or another, and there could well be some kind of steering happening there too, from whoever, to enable learning in a particular direction. And I find it fascinating to look at this from that angle of control — what does it actually mean, looked at from a steering perspective?
Would you like to follow up on that?
You’ve drifted a bit from the original trigger point just now, but hopefully it still fits — because at the start you set off a really important trigger point for me, one I consider essential for distinguishing between a learning process and acting, and the associated — not competencies I need for it, but the preconditions I need. I know I might be opening a very big door here, but the essential point for me is the free availability of my own will. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no one who can knowingly, willingly forbid, influence, or determine what I choose to learn. But there are institutions, norms, laws, obligations, ties, that limit me in my acting. And for me, purely from that connection — this self-determination, this autonomy over steering one’s own will, “I want to learn this” — that’s a fundamentally different statement from “I want to act like this and that.” The restrictions on the latter are, in my view, clearly more severe and more lasting. The degree of freedom in the former is, in my view, essentially unlimited. Thank you.
What I find interesting is that you brought in this notion of wanting — what I want to learn. Because especially when we talk about non-intentional learning, I might not even be aware that I want to learn something specific, and yet, from the context, regardless of whether it’s an obligatory context or one I move through entirely voluntarily, I might learn something that was never intended at all. What do you think about that?
I think the door just keeps opening further here, into conscious versus unconscious. And what actually is the unconscious? Because that unconscious has to have some kind of foundation too. Even if we don’t perceive it cognitively, don’t logically process and categorise it, it’s still, without pinning myself down to exact terminology, a behavioural pattern, a repertoire, a reservoir we draw from. And that reservoir, in my view, is essentially determined, or composed, by two things: on one hand, our state of knowledge and our emotions, and on the second level, importantly, that so-called experiential knowledge, which gets deposited, more or less unconsciously, through repeated, constant repetition, and the reinforcement of feedback from the results of that repetition. You can’t even think about it consciously anymore — it’s reactive, it just kicks in whenever needed. And in that sense, it’s actually itself the result of a learning process that took place at some point, namely realising, whenever I’ve done something a certain way, it’s worked out well for me, so I store that. I don’t need to think about it anymore. Thank you.
Wonderful, thank you so much. Would you like to follow up before I try reconnecting with our other participant?
No, I don’t want to add to that, but I see she’s got a mic now — I just wanted to say, on acting and learning, I noticed the whole time we were talking, her microphone icon wasn’t showing red. I’m looking forward to hearing from her now, and I see the mic icon now, so hopefully it works.
Wonderful, let’s try it.
Good morning again. That was interesting — at some point I noticed something got reloaded technically, because the display kept flickering, and I couldn’t unmute myself, the “unmute yourself” button just wasn’t clickable. So I’ve been switching back and forth this whole time, but no worries. Let me jump in: on one hand, I think, just as we say we can’t not communicate, we also can’t not learn — even involuntarily. That’s obviously a huge topic. Do I want to? I’ve taught in mandatory settings before, and of course people can refuse, in a sense. It’s possible I do something unwillingly but still do it. But it’s also possible I try to resist — and even then, I’ve tried to open doors in a different way. Meaning, they’ve taken something away from that experience. Maybe not what they were supposed to take away, but they take something. From every situation, you learn something. And I think we simply can’t prevent that. How intensely, whether we reflect on it afterward, whether we ever get into doing, into acting, so that we actually apply it — that’s a different question. And even when acting, when we try something and it fails, we learn from that too. That’s why I think we can’t not learn. And the other thing, mentioned earlier, that learning for the sake of learning, or knowledge for the sake of knowledge, is also tied to a character trait, a kind of motivation. There are people who accumulate knowledge purely because they find knowledge fascinating — it’s not intended for implementation at all. Implementation is for other people to do. You see this in people who are very visionary, we all know someone like this, incredibly visionary, but never gets anything onto the road, because that’s implementation. Doesn’t have to be that way, but it can be an aspect of it. Which also means, in that case, learning doesn’t have the goal of acting, but it still has a purpose — because I learn out of joy, because it energises me, because my motivation is simply to accumulate knowledge. Thank you.
I find that a fascinating thesis. I’m curious what the others think — is it even possible not to learn? Or am I always learning something, even if it’s not what I actually intended to learn? What do you two think?
Then we’re back at the question of definition, like I said before. We’d need to agree, is learning really what I… well, learning can be knowledge. We have conscious knowledge, unconscious knowledge, and things we’ve learned. And that’s the interesting question — do we apply the knowledge or not? The knowledge is there. Now you could say, I have knowledge and I haven’t applied it. And then someone could say, well, did you actually learn anything from that, or not? I have the knowledge, and that’s a distinction for me, because knowledge and learning — as our friend always says, it gets very hair-splitting for me. Knowledge and learning: the knowledge I have, I’ve stored it. If learning is the storing of knowledge, then the knowledge is in my head. But whether it actually gets applied, and how, that’s a completely different topic.
Thank you so much. What do you think about that?
I think the statement that we can’t learn holds, if it’s tied to acting. Because every act of acting results in a change of status — you used that term earlier — a change in behaviour, which has an effect and comes back to us, more or less visibly, as feedback, whenever we act. Even if we’re only acting for our own sake, with no contact with anyone else, we’re constantly giving ourselves feedback as we act: you’re on the right track, you’re acting rightly, or you’re acting wrongly and need to change. In that sense, in connection with acting, I’d agree that it’s a constant, iterative process — and maybe importantly, a mutually reinforcing process, because our options for acting also change through learning. What was raised earlier, that’s the second point for me — I’ll borrow your catchphrase, it depends. The second thing: if someone claims we can’t not learn, I ask myself how that squares with what I said earlier, about the will. That’s a genuine question for me, not a statement — I don’t want to rule it out, but it’s a door that’s just been opened, one I really need to think through, because it would mean my will isn’t sufficient to learn, in the most basic sense of learning’s definition — becoming knowing. And that brings us to the point you raised earlier, that stance of refusal, of not wanting to learn. And that’s the grey area, for me, right now — sorry, my knowledge is limited there, or my reflection hasn’t gone far enough yet, but I can say, I don’t have an answer for that one. Thanks for listening.
Let me pick up an aspect from brain research here too, something we’ve touched on before, and parts of it already came up today. It was rightly pointed out earlier that learning doesn’t simply happen because you will it — it’s a stimulus that comes from outside. Learning processes happen because a stimulus, transmitted through hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, and touch, gets carried through. When we have a stimulus from outside, that sensory perception gets converted, in the next step, into electrical impulses and passed on to the relevant brain areas. And in doing so, we’d noted, they pass through three memory stores: ultra-short-term memory, working memory, and long-term memory. And we’d said that especially in ultra-short-term memory, within 0.5 to 2 seconds, a decision gets made — that’s where the encoding happens, sorry, it’s a bit noisy in the background, someone’s honking, you can hear it with the window open. So the initial encoding happens in ultra-short-term memory, then we have consolidation in working memory, and retrieval — the ability to remember, recognition — in long-term memory. Which means, at the moment these stimuli are transmitted and converted, the information first gets evaluated, to some degree, in ultra-short-term memory: interesting, uninteresting, exciting, do I want this, boring, new, whatever it might be. And based on that, it’s decided whether it even gets passed on further. And in being passed on, it moves into the next stage, being cross-checked against experience — the units of information get compared against long-term memory, to see whether there’s something to connect to. And if there is a connection point, then I can actually do something with that information, and it gets passed back and forth between these working stores. Now, we do have situations, whether wanted or not, where we get stimuli from outside that don’t seem interesting to us. And we’d noted there are two reasons that bring us into change, or into acting: one is, does it threaten my existence — that’s the first question. The second question is, what use is it to me? And if I don’t recognise any use, I won’t move into acting. So we’ve already factored that acting-aspect in, at least partly. And on the other hand, this very mechanism already decides whether this information gets passed on at all or not. Which means, according to this model, according to this insight from brain research, I can quite reasonably say — not learning is indeed possible. I don’t know what you two think — maybe you’d like to weigh in.
I’d like to pick up on that point — my knowledge isn’t sufficient. I have a current example I just imagined: say we’re on the phone, and I genuinely want to cook myself something this afternoon — the desire is really there. Then you tell me how to make wonderful, delicious spaghetti, and you explain everything. And now I can connect to that. Then you tell me, the food, or rather not spaghetti, has to be pureed, cooked, boiled. If I don’t have a coach standing next to me showing me how, then, even though I genuinely have the will to do it, I really want to cook something — the knowledge won’t be enough. I won’t manage it. I do move into acting — I have to act, again and again, because I might be missing instruction, missing someone looking over my shoulder while I act, to explain the terminology, to support me. But the knowledge you gave me, the recipe for those delicious noodles, your favourite dish, wouldn’t help me at all. And the will wouldn’t help me either, to recreate your favourite meal by one o’clock today, because I simply don’t understand enough of it — I wouldn’t even understand the words, their definitions, their meaning, and the instructions behind each one. So it wouldn’t be a lack of knowledge or interest — the knowledge simply wouldn’t be enough to move into acting.
Thank you so much. What do you think?
Following your explanation, the pendulum is clearly swinging, for me, toward rejecting the claim that we can’t learn — thanks to your explanation from brain research. And that there’s some kind of learning limiter, or learning inhibitor, that exists, maybe has to exist, especially regarding the distinction between associative and cognitive brain areas. And I’m now even more inclined to support this thesis — if you look at the learning process in its classical definition, it very often includes this practising, this training, this checking of what’s been learned, whether I’ve really — and here’s that term you brought up half an hour ago — whether I’ve actually understood it too. And, hopefully to round this off, given what you just explained, there does seem to be a decision point in our brain, a gate, a branching point — a decision fork. Is this dangerous for me? On the other hand, is it useful to me? And based on that, deciding, no, it’s not dangerous, but it’s also not useful, so, stop learning. So I’m leaning in that direction now. Thank you.
Wonderful, thank you so much. Let me see if I can bring you back in, and with an eye on the time, we’re heading toward our closing round. So, over to you, to bring in your thoughts, and then maybe share what your highlight was for today’s room, or what you’d like to underline.
Let me try, since I missed a chunk again — I couldn’t hear anything for a while. I did provoke a little, because when we talk about learning in this circle, we often mean that deep kind of knowledge, capability and so on. I’d say, we can’t not learn. And then there are also things, as described, that I didn’t quite catch in full, but I’m familiar with it — there’s experiential knowledge too, or I experience something, and if it triggers my brain sufficiently, I retain it. That’s also why I said it can be involuntary — someone might accidentally learn something, or even bring home a positive, learned experience that moves them into acting. But it’s not the case that if someone absolutely refuses, you can force them to learn what they’re supposed to learn. What did I take away, or what’s my highlight? I find the facets that open up in this discussion, these new fields, super fascinating. And I’d simply say, I’m looking forward to more. Thanks for listening.
Wonderful, thank you so much.
As always, my heartfelt thanks to everyone who contributed, and to everyone listening in the room. I think, as so often, a highly complex but always illuminating topic — everything associated with learning, tied to change, is really nothing other than our development over the course of our lives. And I still hold onto this: learning, for me, is two things. It’s conditio sine qua non for our entire life — because if we don’t change, our environment changes anyway, and if we stand still, at some point we find ourselves outside that environment. And the second thing is that this connection specifically between learning and acting, which you opened up, is genuinely essential, also as a teaching-and-learning mandate for everyone working in upbringing, in education, in the education system. Because it’s a strong argument, for me, to be able to say and hold onto: our acting, all of our acting, is essentially, if not exclusively, shaped by learning. And what you are is how you act. Thanks for listening, and have a good day, everyone.
Wonderful, thank you so much.
Being together with you all every morning is, for me, both my acting and my brain-jogging — my participation always leaves me with a great feeling, and something learned. Thank you, and have a great day.
Wonderful, thank you so much. I’m already looking forward to tomorrow’s room — we’ll be talking about acting and education, taking it up a level, so to speak, from learning to education, and looking at those connections. How are acting and education connected? That’s the question we’ll explore, and I’m looking forward to the different perspectives and aspects we can pick up tomorrow, so we can go deeper, exchange more, and hold onto new insights together. With that, you’re all very warmly invited to join again tomorrow morning at 8am. Take care — until then. Ciao.
