A Thinker Sees His Own Actions As Experiments And Questions — As Attempts To Find Out Something. Success

“I walk along a street and see in the faces of the passersby not the expression they really have but the expression they would have for me if they knew about my life and how I am, if I carried, transparent in my gestures and my face, the ridiculous, timid abnormality of my soul.”

—

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

I find myself opposed to the view of knowledge as a passive copy of reality.

- Jean Piaget 1896-1980

How do we learn things? The answers to this age-old question have been examined and analysed by many scientists. There are plenty of prominent theories explaining cognitive development and helping us to understand the foundation of knowledge.

One of the most prominent answers to the question has come from a Swiss psychologist, Jean Piaget.

The legacy of Jean Piaget to the world of early childhood education is that he fundamentally altered the view of how a child learns. And a teacher, he believed, was more than a transmitter of knowledge she was also an essential observer and guide to helping children build their own knowledge.

As a university graduate, Swiss-born Piaget got a routine job in Paris standardising Binet-Simon IQ tests, where the emphasis was on children getting the right answers. Piaget observed that many children of the same ages gave the same kinds of incorrect answers. What could be learned from this?

Piaget interviewed many hundreds of children and concluded that children who are allowed to make mistakes often go on to discover their errors and correct them, or find new solutions. In this process, children build their own way of learning. From children’s errors, teachers can obtain insights into the child’s view of the world and can tell where guidance is needed. They can provide appropriate materials, ask encouraging questions, and allow the child to construct his own knowledge.

Piaget’s continued interactions with young children became part of his life-long research. After reading about a child who thought that the sun and moon followed him wherever he went, Piaget wanted to find out if all young children had a similar belief. He found that many did indeed believe this. Piaget went on to explore children’s countless “why” questions, such as, “Why is the sun round?” or “Why is grass green?” He concluded that children do not think like adults. Their thought processes have their own distinct order and special logic. Children are not “empty vessels to be filled with knowledge” (as traditional pedagogical theory had it). They are “active builders of knowledge-little scientists who construct their own theories of the world.”

Piaget’s Four Stages of Development

Sensorimotor Stage: Approximately 0 - 2 Infants gain their earliest understanding of the immediate world through their senses and through their own actions, beginning with simple reflexes, such as sucking and grasping.

Preoperational Stage: Approximately 2 - 6 Young children can use symbols for objects, such as numbers to express quantity and words such as mama, doggie, hat and ball to represent real people and objects.

Concrete Operations: Approximately 6 - 11 School-age children can perform concrete mental operations with symbols-using numbers to add or subtract and organizing objects by their qualities, such as size or color.

Formal Operations: Approximately 11 - adult Normally developing early adolescents are able to think and reason abstractly, to solve theoretical problems, and answer hypothetical questions.

Albert Einstein once called Piaget’s discoveries of cognitive development as, “so simple only a genius could have thought of it”. As the above shows, Piaget’s theory was born out of observations of children, especially as they were conducting play. When he was analysing the results of the intelligence test, he noticed that young children provide qualitatively different answers to older children.

This suggested to Piaget that younger children are not dumber, since this would be a quantitative position – an older child is smarter with more experience. Instead, the children simply answered differently because they thought of things differently.

At the heart of Piaget’s theory then is the idea that children are born with a basic mental structure, which provides the structure for future learning and knowledge. He saw development as a progressive reorganisation of these mental processes. This came about due to biological maturation, as well as environmental experience.

We are essentially constructing a world around us in which we try to align things that we already know and what we suddenly discover. Through the process, a child develops knowledge and intelligence, which helps him or her to reason and think independently.

For Piaget his work was never just for a closeted coterie of scholars and researcher but had real world application. Piaget was able to put his work in a wider context of importance. He said, “only education is capable of saving our societies from possible collapse, whether violent, or gradual”. Piaget’s theory centres on the idea that children, as little scientists, need to explore, interact with, and experiment in order to gain the information they need to understand their world.

Bonds are burdensome.

They are what makes life worth living,

albeit the feeling of burdening someone else with your own emotions or lack thereof obliges you to take a step back or running away on a 180 degree path in comparison to the one you’re on at that moment.

You begin craving that loneliness that picked at your heart every night,the one that made you cry your own blood since tears did not hurt enough.

I want to turn back in time,or keep being the myself i knew before giving out pieces of it to others.

Opening up is not much of a good decision sometimes,or easy to accomplish either.

Everything just hurts.

It’s overwhelming.

It’s flooding my well.

Oh wait—

how long has it been since my well last had a shape?

What is happening around me?

What am I?

INTJs doomed by design?

stlsrr submitted: Hello, Harsh title i know, but its the best to describe what im about to express.  Its not long ago i found out about my INTJ character, though to my surprise it explained a lot!  The way i acted and reacted to specific situations, my love for solitude,  not much talking etc… you probably are aware of these things. But its the first time I was justified by knowing that. The reason was  simply, that when you are the ONLY one to act differently (not akward) and EVERY single person you know to judge  you and turn against what you are you begin to doubt your self and your ways. Though that is very painful  thing to do because deep in you you know you are acting in a “correct” way that asides morality and happines of your self. INTJs love to have it rough, indeed we adore challenge, but this is something way different.  Despite i dont wish to write about me self rather to express my ideas i have to say that my life the past few years been … lets just say not to pretty.  Both my actions and my luck costed me and made me lose a lot.  Thought that’s one of my biggest debates as an INTJ.  Did i brought it upon my self or just people behaviors did? In other words cant an INTJ ever avoid this presure about their “inner be”   I havent met any other INTJ , the closest i got is an ENTJ ( a Godsent gift!!!) , and because of that i havent the slightest idea  how other INTJs deal with their lives.  Me , as an INTJ tend to have most of the characterists that make a person of that temperament to be jugded as wierd, loner, sarcastic, selfish and many more, but i Never let that to take me down.  There were many times i trully wanted to give in my nature and be sarcastic, snobbish, through my ingenius ways i could be extremly evil and revengeful. But i withhold my self. Due to my  evolved  sensing and feeling  I wanted to like people, to respect, appreciate and accept them for what they are. I was by their side in their darkest hours, i was always looking for the goodness in them… 

I’m not sure if that was a mistake but defently people never apreciated the efford  and value i gave em.   I never asked and gotten nothing in return rather a cold and unfair behavior by them.  I dont know what caused that and i dont know who to blame, but i all  know is that it made me more cold and less expressive. After two years of extreme conditions i was tired to withhold over and over again and again…  I wasnt aware of how i could reacted through a very negative perspective on life.  Long story short very outraging. I started to defend my self againt others will to change me.  Are INTJs so … violent as in terms of self preservation ? That time i figured that not only people were afraid of me and started to respect me but as well i met my capabilities, something that made me afraid of living through a negative side. So my points out of all the above are:  Do INTJs have it rough in their lives? and if so how should they react? Respect towrds others? Or their selves?  ( I believe both isnt an acceptable anwser as we are people of edges, the is no shades of grey in our lives, just black and white)  Should an INTJ show compassion and patience for what  people are or simply people brought it to them selves (Our reaction to their actions)?  For the same as we INTJs want to be accepted as we are ,  i believe we should show some but… im out of alternatives, they just dont accept us.  And as the title suggest are INTJs doomed by design?  How can a person thats destined to see and fix mistakes to ever find peace and happiness in such a flawed world?   Thanks for reading and thanks for any kind of reply. 

“it was a cry / meant for no one / but the moon—”

— Sujata Bhatt, from “The Langur Coloured Night”, Collected Poems

This mere chaotic peace between wanting to be the greatest and wanting to rot in the room all alone for the rest of eternity.

“Losing your appetite because you’re sad is the worst feeling ever.”

—

02/03/2021

It’s not me.

It wasn’t me being so out of it that everything seemed dull.

There was and there is a reason.

No overthinking ended up being futile insofar as it became a starting point for a new series of events.

Things started making sense as some behaviors connected themselves with words spoken by the people in question.

Incongruent actions were carried out by people who are no more coherent themselves.

It’s okay as much as it will not worsen.

I will not just bear with it and that is a given.

———————————————————————

My world has yet to change.

What has fundamentally morphed is only myself,albeit I have to carry on like this for a while longer.

I must work on myself without trying to find distractions,whether they force themselves in my life or I let them in willingly.

It all depends on my capability of consciously making the decisions which are waiting in line and have been for a while.

I think it’s one thing to be born a pessimist and have heartbreaking experiences that confirm your doubts.

I think it’s a second thing to be born a realist and have heartbreaking experiences that hurt, but not in ways that aren’t foreseen.

I think the it’s a much different thing to be born an optimist and to have heartbreaking experiences that tear down your hope and alter your expectations.

I think the pessimist comes out, not much different, but with better understanding of the world and its cruel sentences.

I think the realist comes out a little different, with cosmic changes in strength and compassion.

I think the optimist, most of the time, is broken into an entirely new human being.