When we question knowledge — something we think we know — we are not only asking that knowledge to re-answer the questions it has already been asked.

We require the knowledge to answer questions it has not yet considered, from one or multiple additional angles of inquiry.

This requires a sort of intellectual getting up and walking around, looking at a matter from many sides, that feels deeply unnatural to many minds who have grown accustomed to looking at life from one point, one angle, framed in one perspective. This is how I like to understand the term “peripatetic” thinking.

To look at a matter from many angles creates a view on the matter qualitatively different from any one particular angle. It is analogous to common sense, the 6th sense of reality that arises from the convergence of the 5 senses. Looking at it from the angle of multiple angles peripatesis would be the 7th sense.

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Why listen to someone else? Because that’s our best access to peripatesis.

Is everyone equally worth listening to? No. Some people are intellectual couch potatoes, and their opinions are garbled echos of whatever words have bounced into their ears. This is very painful to admit. I would love to believe everyone has something to teach. This is likely true in a sense, but triage has little patience for such sentiments.

The people most worth listening to are the ones who have strained their 7th sense, and consequently have something to teach.

Teachers are learners.

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Teachers walk. Echos talk.