What If We’re Not Learning - We’re Remembering?

You know how, when you're building IKEA furniture, you sometimes end up with extra pieces... but it still works fine?

That’s how I see learning. And maybe even life.

Some people follow every step in the manual because that’s what they’re told to do. Others just feel their way through... skipping what seems unnecessary, recognising how it all fits together. It’s not reckless. It’s intuitive. The result still stands. Sometimes, it even stands better.

To me, that kind of intuition points to something deeper... something panpsychism tries to explain.

What Panpsychism Has to Do With Flat-Pack Furniture

Panpsychism is the idea that consciousness isn't something we gain, but something already embedded in everything. Not just in humans or animals... but in matter itself.

There are different branches of panpsychism, but at its core, it suggests that consciousness is a basic feature of reality.

If that’s true, then learning isn’t about acquiring something external. It’s about tuning into what’s already there.

Maybe education isn’t the act of adding knowledge, but of simply recognising it.

That changes everything.

Just as the parts of the furniture were always there, waiting to be assembled, maybe the patterns of the world are already inside us... waiting to be remembered.

When You "Guess" Right, It’s Not Guessing

People often say things like, “You just guessed and got lucky.” But is it really guessing when you're following a pattern you can feel? When the outcome isn’t a surprise but a resonance?

It’s not guesswork... it’s sense-making.

It’s the difference between memorising someone else’s instructions and trusting the intelligence already inside you... the part that knows how the pieces go.

Why School Might Have Felt Off to You

If panpsychism is true... if consciousness is fundamental... then traditional education, with its rigid instructions and segmented subjects, might feel not just boring... but deeply irrelevant.

Maybe you’ve felt that.

Imagine you’re learning about the American Civil War. A traditional class might ask you to memorise dates, battles, and names. But your intuition might pull you toward something else: the emotional currents of the time... the way fear, greed, and the pursuit of freedom shaped how people connected.

What school calls “learning,” you might experience as a distraction... something pulling you away from your own raw, unfiltered connection to the world.

Many educational systems are built on the idea that knowledge is a list of facts to be memorised. But if you’re already tuned into how things connect, breaking reality into disjointed bits might feel like learning in reverse.

Knowledge as Resonance, Not Memorisation

What if intelligence isn’t about absorbing information... but about remembering a pattern already inside you?

Panpsychism offers a framework where consciousness isn’t acquired, but recognised. And if that's true, then instinct, pattern recognition, and even “gut feelings” aren’t mysterious... they’re just forms of deep knowing.

Maybe we don’t learn like machines. Maybe we remember like instruments... resonating with something we’ve always been a part of.