'Unlearn' - a much-used word today. It is fashionable today to say that there is much for one to unlearn, before one learns something new. So is learning like a ziplock on a dress that one drags down in a flash, wriggles out of and discards?
Only yesterday, a good friend said that one could only learn, not unlearn. I agree.
One can unlearn only as much as one can ungrow, unborn or undie oneself. Like these other processes, real learning too is an irreversible process, too deeply and integrally embedded in one's self to be detached at will.
Learning is not only growth and development, it is also a kind of experience, that shapes our selfhood and decides who we are and what we think. Newly learnt knowledge anchors itself to existing knowledge and transmutes itself into new understanding.
It is not a thing of the flesh, but a matter of the spirit: elusive, intangible, unquantifiable...
At best, we can learn to set aside a way of thinking or doing that we have been following, and learn and take to a new way.
Learning is too entrenched, too enmeshed, too well-blended a part of the self to be given up at will. Learning determines our persona, our self-hood, our very identity.
Let us not try to unlearn. Let us not try to quantify 'unlearning' or evaluate whether we have successfully 'unlearnt'! Let us not even think of unlearning.
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