Environmental Factors in Information Acquisition and Use (or, the difference between how you learn something and how you use and communicate it)

Some things today have reminded me of something I thought of in the past- that how you learn something might affect the way you (or your ability to) communicate or use it. Particularly with the concern that if the extent and way in which you learn something differs dramatically from the extent and way in which people in your environment communicate, you may find yourself hindered in your ability to communicate what you've learned to others and possibly be hindered to some extent in your normal prior capacity for communication to the extent that what you learn (differently) affects the way you handle other things- including what was previous handled in a way as to be readily communicable to others. A simple example might be vocabulary- if you learn, say, literature and it has a dramatic affect on your vocabulary, and you also don't sufficiently develop the ability to communicate what you've learned outside of that developed vocabulary, then you become hindered in your ability to communicate what you've learned to others; and if that dramatic affect on your vocabulary extends beyond what you're learning in literature to other areas (including the ones that before were readily communicable) then you may lose some of your capacity which you had prior because you're using vocabulary that others aren't familiar with.

I was reminded of this because of a friend saying how someone who is successful at something isn't necessarily able to communicate the means to that achievement, except perhaps to refer them to their life circumstances and experiences which lead to it, but, of course, those are already different from another's own. The other thing that contributed to reminding me of this is what I read today in Howard Gardner's "Frames of Mind", which looked at the relationship between one's psychological development and the cultural environment in which that development takes place. For example, he talks about general cognitive capacities such as logical development which are universal (occurring across all cultures), and others which aren't universal such as reading, and how there are differences of development between those in a culture that values, and in many ways depends on, the use of reading and those in a culture that doesn't. This reminded me of a thought I had before about losing touch, to some extent, with others to the extent that aspects of your development differ from those who you then communicate with. Of course, to the extent that these differences can be translated into an understandable form of communication from one to the other, then exercising that capacity would be useful in preventing some of those communication issues.

I think communication is just one consideration of concern between the use of something in an environment significantly different than the environment in which it was learned. A simple example might be something like self defense- to the extent that the learning environmental factors are much different than the environmental factors of its use then one may be hindered by those differences; for example- if I mostly train in fighting technique but the conditions of use in a self-defense scenario are significantly different- such as, the difference of state of mind being that of strategy execution in one and being that of fear and excitement in the other, then the decision-making considerations differ to some extent. In the former one may be thinking of the best move in the moment, in the latter one may be assessing the risk factor and whether to even fight or attempt to flee, etc., not to mention the differences of perception and emotion they're experiencing. Rory Miller discusses these types of issues in "Facing Violence". To further analyze, there seems to be quite a difference, at least socially speaking, if you learn something within a social context related to its use versus learning it in a way that differs significantly from its use (and this difference goes for the communication of it as well); but this also has limitations- some things aren't advisable to learn in the context of their use such as the self-defense example, but the training environment could be modified to better address the environment of use and thus reduce aspects of the difference between the two.

I guess what I take away from this thought is at least the awareness of one's environment in general (how it affects your capacities and experiences, as well as those of others; this is the type of stuff Howard Gardner discusses) and the diversity of individuals' personal environments that affect their experiences from which they're interacting with the broader cultural environment. With this awareness, then, one may come from a better position of understanding for the benefit of communication and social interaction (that uptight man might be an off-duty cop who has developed a sensitivity to potential risks and the value of being aware). The same way one might assess the physical environment in considering what to wear, what activities are an option, etc., one's cultural environment may have comparable implications. I'm not arguing for relativism or subjectivism, but am saying that cultural conditions are objective factors that affect decision making and experiences, which brings me to one more point, something I briefly discussed with a different friend- the dynamic between choosing one's environment and changing one's environment. I think it's a point of wisdom in deciding between the two, but it can be worth being aware of the dynamic between one's capacity to choose which environment they'll be in and one's capacity to affect the environment they're in.

To summarize, I brushed across a few aspects of this topic, which I would distinguish as: the effects of development on communication (particularly difficulties of communication that occur when communicating something learned in a context different than that within which one is attempting to communicate in; the vocabulary example was offered, and the possible solution of maintaining a translational capacity between the two), difficulties in application of something one learns in an environment different from the one in which it was learned (self-defense example), and differences of opportunity to develop, as well as differences of opportunity to apply one's development, in relation to environmental differences (mentioning of individual environmental differences and analogy of physical environment affecting activity options being related to cultural environment affecting one's options of application of their development).