@Keith – thanks for your clarifications… you always seem to make my work sound better than it did before you comment. much appreciated.

@Scott hello there. I’m not saying that people don’t learn. I’m saying that whether you are reading a book, or talking to me, or reading a blog post, you are still working with people. Learning stuff on your own in a library is still a social interaction. Remembering what someone told you and practicing it over and over again, is still social.

I’m not advocating an oligarchy of the autodidacts. That’s what i consider the ‘dangerous’ reading.

As for what you took particular worry about, and have called ‘hand waving’, it’s possible that the addition of the word ‘just’ before ‘happens’ would make my meaning clearer. You’ll note Scott that in the next paragraph, the EXPLANATORY PARAGRAPH, this sentence appears
“At each point we are structured in the work (written in a book, sung in a song, spoken in a web session) of others that constantly tests our own connections and further complexifies our understanding.”
The ‘we’ there is meant to signal the individual ‘person’, who is then connecting and further testing their OWN connections inside the complexity.

Hyperbole requires intent. I did not intend it. This is the way I’ve always blogged, and I appreciate your feedback i the ways in which what I wrote can be misinterpreted. Sorry to drive you nuts… but my writing does seem to do that to people.