Catalysts for Change
Ian's Mission: Understanding why the most brilliant people are the worst learners in the modern world and how to transform that reality.
Eliminating neurotoxins and treating chronic inflammation
- A few dozen doctors in the United States treat Biotoxin Illness (also known as Chronic Inflammatory Response Syndrome) using what's called the Shoemaker Protocol, pioneered by Dr. Ritchie Shoemaker.
- Because these doctors are so sought after, they have astronomical fees, take no insurance, and are too busy to follow patients closely who don't advocate for themselves.
- The Shoemaker Protocol involves a multi-step process that boils down to the following principles: Remove yourself from the source of environmental toxins, Remove toxins from your body that your immune system can't metabolize, Correct any hormonal imbalances caused by continued exposure to neurotoxins.
1-on-1 Learning Development
- People's subconscious script--their perceptual filter for what they're conscious of--always involves a blindspot: themselves. Without conscious effort, humans are predisposed to behaving as if their subjective reality is the objective reality.
- Learning thus requires intimate understanding of the self: how it operates in the world, what emotional triggers might distort its perception, a constant awareness of a reality beyond its perception, its specific cognitive makeup and resulting expectations based on its experience of the world over time, and an ability to navigate tendencies toward defensive behavior around learning.
- 1-on-1 learning experts (tutors, coaches, therapists, etc.) bring self-awareness to the learning process, helping others learn how they learn and recognize when they're engaging in non-learning behaviors.
- These professionals act as a mirror that can recognize the gaps in their clients' consciousness and use techniques like stories and Socratic Questioning to keep their clients present long enough to recognize, understand, and integrate new frameworks of understanding the world around them.
Mindfulness
- With neurotoxins at bay and enough awareness to recognize when the self is not present, meditation can be used to enhance the duration and quality of one's consciousness.
- Through daily practice, one can build resilience in the face of discomfort, tragedy, or challenge and use these potential stressors as the basis of authentic learning, rather than falling prey to defense mechanisms again.
- Over time, your ability to remain present and conscious expands such that acceptance of the present moment and learning become integrated into your waking life.
- People who make this transformation report feeling happier and leading more fulfilled lives.
Technology
- Memory: The internet and mobile technology is acting as a collective a transactive memory source. Instead of storing specific information, our brains simply need to remember the source of that information, freeing up the mind for more higher ordered thinking tasks.
- Perception: Instead of reinforcing conformity because of internet's current role as a source for pleasure-seeking behavior and self-promotion, it has the potential to help humans pursuing distinct interests to establish seamless communication and learn from each other. Meanwhile, our perceptual capacities have been expanded or rehabilitated through technologies like…
- Sight: Expanded light spectrum through radars, Magnification (microscopes and telescopes) glasses/lenses bionic eyes
- Hearing: Hearing aids, Sound frequency meters
- Touch: Seismograph, Artificial skin
- Smell/Taste: bionic tongue, bionic nose
- Processing: Enhancements to processing
- Data processing of current computers
- Machine learning algorithms
- Neural network systems
- Output: Enhancements to our production capacities
- Assembly line production
- Insights into optimal human development and organization
- Advances in fossil fuel and sustainable energy extraction, storage, and delivery.
