There are several good anecdotes and altruisms about this. One of my favorites is the one about the government official who visits a professor. The professor pours the man some tea; and when the tea reaches the top of the cup, the professor just keeps on pouring.
"It's full! No more will go in," the official blurts out.
"So it is," the professor observed. "How can you learn when your cup is already full? Come back to me when your cup is empty."
Wayne Dyer provided one of my favorite altruisms. He tells how we elevate ignorance to the level of cultural icon.
"The truth is the truth until an institution get ahold of it; then it becomes a lie because the institution becomes more important than the truth." - Wayne Dyer
Religions, governments, and corporations use this device to keep us in line to do their will. A religion erects icons and buildings honoring a person as the one true God (our culture now capitalizes the word "God"), while that same person teaches us to stop worshiping gods (icons). The government preserves the peace by conducting unceasing war. Corporations provide only what brings the greatest profit – including addictive sugar – and neglect what brings the greatest good.
People believe human beings are mechanical beings – bones wearing muscle suits – while science shows we are energy beings with a physical aspect.
Many of our fundamental, modern assumptions are wrong; and perhaps the greatest challenge to human existence is our comfort with the idea that we know certain things. Yet, we are beginning to see a shift in human consciousness from a violent adolescent civilization. We are becoming conscious that we individuals are integrated with everything and everyone around us. Each of us is not a body, but 50 trillion cells working in cooperation. We are not nations, but 7 billion humans caring for one another.
"In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the
expert’s there are few." – Shunryu Suzuki-roshi
"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who
cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn." – Alvin
Toffler
"When any real progress is made, we unlearn and learn anew
what we thought we knew before." – Henry David Thoreau
"Knowledge is learning something every day. Wisdom is letting
something go every day." – Zen Proverb