The basic principles of learning

Thinking of making a response on a writer’s group forum, to a fresh asking of the old question of what is the effect of people watching such things as grisly WWII documentaries and Star Wars brutality, I have gathered what seems to me to be the basic principles of learning. It also applies to some of the posts re education I have made in recent times.

Compiling what seems to me to be the five basic principles of learning:

1. The protoplasmic moving toward that which nourishes, and away from that which causes pain.
2. The basic educational process: “Monkey see monkey do.” Watch me write on the blackboard, then write the same on your paper. Watch me pounce on him, so you know how to do the same.
3. “Those who do not learn from the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.”
4. “Half the solution of a problem is first the full and correct description of the problem.”
5. And “People are ruled not by force but by their imagination.” This principle is also used abusively from schoolyard bullies to world dictator wannabes.

- We as writers also seek to rule the imagination of the reader, if only for a little while. As do movie producers. And as do spin-masters of politics, business, advertising, and the news media. We as writers hope to make it more fun and interesting; but the arena is the same, that of the imagination.