“Well, you have to think about investing in your future. You want to focus on courses where you can best capitalize on your investment. You have to look at the market, and the demand, and how you can best use your education to exploit that demand,” he instructed.
I found this concept repulsive. I felt that exploitation was bad and sacrificing the present for the future even worse. I wasn’t interested in money; I found it a distraction from the important things in life: equality, integrity and truth.
Today, I vividly understand and appreciate that grandpa was giving sound advice. I have never used my degrees in philosophy and psychology for anything practical, and consequently have only been hired for jobs requiring a high school education, if that. Not only do these types of job not pay as much, performing them means certain others are likely to assume I’m a moron. On the contrary, I have almost always had jobs that I enjoyed and currently make enough money to save a couple hundred dollars every month. I never took out student loans and currently don’t have debt of any sort: no car payments, mortgage payments or credit card bills. That makes my net worth more than most Americans. I am not owned by money.
The most prominent distraction related to money is excess. A few years ago, I decided to move and knew I couldn’t take my beloved 1993 Toyota pickup with me. I had just stupidly paid $2400 to rebuild the engine. I put out an ad asking $1000 and got a call. It went like this:
“Hello?”
“I’m calling about the truck for sale?”
“Yes, I still have it.”
“It has a 5-speed manual transmission?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“And it says here in the ad it doesn’t have anything automatic, by which I assume you mean windows and locks, but obviously it has things like power steering.”
“No, it does not have power steering.”
“Does it have a CD player or just a tape deck?”
“Neither. It doesn’t even have a radio. Just a hole in the middle of the dashboard.”
“A/C?”
“No, but you can crank down the windows”
“How’s the condition of the body?”
“It’s okay. There’s a fair amount of rust and the back bumper’s missing, but the tailgate works.”
“So basically, all you have is a manual engine in a shell.”
“Yes. It runs great. I’m not sure what else you’d need.”
He hung up.
I don’t know whether you can purchase love, but I am certain you can’t buy contentment. Capitalism calls contentment a lack of ambition, and I do agree that people are far too eager to be as lazy as possible. But instead of lauding satisfaction, Americans like to impress others with their things. Absurdly, people actually do seem to be impressed by the things of others. I’m much more impressed by humility, but this is so antithetical to Western culture the declaration comes across as coy.
Humility is important because it makes learning possible. Most people don’t like to learn because it requires overcoming the reality that one doesn’t already know everything. Learning, by definition, requires confronting the unknown, which is a major stressor. Accepting the reality of one’s personal shortcomings can be profoundly affective, evoking anything from frustration to physical pain. Most would rather persist in being wrong than endure the experience of learning. “I love you” is simple to say compared to “I don’t know” or “I was wrong.” Most would rather lie, invent or insist upon untruth than concede ignorance or guilt. People don’t even want to hear “I don’t know,” and assume being able to spew placating bullshit is a demonstration of competence.
When I was in college, I figured out that the most successful method for getting good grades on multiple choice tests was to choose the answer that best reflected the values and opinions of the teacher. This reveals something fascinating about what a multiple choice test teaches. Knowing the answer is less important than telling another what they want to hear. Towards that end, we become experts at things like understanding accepted norms and reading body language. These are indeed important survival skills to learn, but also develops a dependence upon external validation. The overriding concern of most is not how to excel, but how to convince others they are excellent. In the end, people don’t generally care whether they’re wrong- they just don’t want to get called out for it. Honesty is considered mean, imprudent and rude.
We usually expect to be right. In situations where we lack confidence in our competence, we tend to defer to whoever seems to have the most confidence in their opinion. This bizarrely includes situations where “right” in an objective sense does not even exist. While still in high school, I had a conversation with an adult who had expressed her dislike for the philosophy class she had been required to take in college. She didn’t understand why the professor toyed with the class by asking them questions instead of just giving them the answers. This would actually be funny if it wasn’t so depressing. I’ve had arguments with religious fans who insist there must be a god because otherwise nobody would have all the answers. People don’t want accuracy, they want answers.
Tests are sometimes graded on a curve in order to measure what you have learned relative to your peers. I was always considered one of the smartest kids throughout school, so I knew the goal of curved tests for a lot of others was to get as good a score as me. Therefore, as I took these tests, I would intentionally mark wrong answers. Then, just before turning it in, I would go through and change those answers to the correct ones. I would score well on these tests not necessarily because I was the smartest, but because others thought I was smatter than them and were therefore cheating off me.
People often think of learning in competitive terms- you only have to know enough to stay ahead of those around you. People read overviews of topics they know nothing about to impress at parties. This results in a lot of specific superficial knowledge but often lacks learning sophisticated enough to be prudently and effectively applied. The result of only having ever read the Cliffs Notes on a work is it seemingly justifies you to smugly ridicule those who actually read the source material and should therefore be experts but obviously aren’t smart enough to understand it. The easiest trick for staying ahead of others is not simply through growth but by restricting the progress of others. This is accomplished in many ways, including sabotage, propaganda and belittling. Making others believe that they are inferior is a powerful force, but it can only go so far. The confidence gained by believing others are inferior, on the other hand, knows no limits.
The people I despise most are those with a sense of entitlement. People claim they get paid a higher wage because they work harder. On the contrary, people get paid a higher wage so that they don’t have to work as hard. If you think blue collar work is beneath you, what does that say about your opinion of those who do the job? It should tell you that you’re an asshole, and if you can’t figure that out, you’re also a dumb ass. The person who works should always be revered by those he is doing the work for, and even moreso by those profiting from the work. Telling another to do something and then wondering why they can’t perform to your expectations without being able or willing to perform and teach that task yourself is unacceptable. Pondering hypotheticals is much easier than dealing with realities. If there was as much getting done as there was talk about how things should be done this world would be a much better place.
I assume most are familiar with the story of the sword in the stone, from the King Arthur legend. Whoever could pull the sword out of the stone would become king. Thus, men traveled from around the world to try. This is a great allegory revealing man’s bias toward egocentrically assuming they are singularly destined for great things. (Maybe a few women tried too, but for the most part they, do to their culture, would assume they had no chance.) Certainly the strongest men assumed they had the best chance. Logic sees no reason why physical strength would qualify one for political savvy, and yet we still tend to perceive physical prowess as an indicator of leadership. All you need to do to remove the sword is apply force greater than the resistance, right? Everything is easy in theory.
In the early 20th Century, prominent behaviorist psychologists such as John B.Watson and B.F. Skinner stated that you can completely control the actions of others, as what people do are a reaction to the information received by their environment. Behaviorism teaches that actions are learned as a result of being manipulated by reinforcement and punishment. This concept has been adapted by governments, advertisers, employers and whoever else feels they can use it to gain power and money. A fundamental premise of Behaviorism is that internal thoughts are irrelevant, but in reality that is only accurate if internal thoughts are kept to a minimum, and the best way to do this is by distracting us from having them. Think about it, people. Think. About. It.
Perceiving education as a form of manipulation makes many suspicious of both the educated and exposure to information. Those possessing knowledge are considered uppity and snobbish. It’s rebelliously hip to be dumb. “We don’t need no education.” This is exactly what those selling want you to buy. Learning is antithetical to a consumer-driven society, which relies upon the masses to continue purchasing. Toward that end, they must be continually made aware of things they need. This entails encouraging material dependence and discouraging self-sufficiency. I am constantly surprised how quickly others want to purchase replacements instead of fixing and maintaining what they have. Others will say they don’t have the time or patience. These are the same people who can’t understand why others trying to fix things are taking so long.
Education is considered a luxury of the affluent, but that downplays the significant education and discipline required to excel at things like hunting, farming, cooking, constructing and sewing. These skills are tied to actual instead of theoretical results. You can’t chalk up a bad harvest to having been misunderstood. Well, unless you introduce religion, which is mankind’s ultimate invention for eschewing responsibility. I don’t have a problem with religion; I have a problem with people who insist that what someone else told them to believe or what they want to believe is the only thing that everyone needs to learn.
Learning does not have to happen in a structured setting with somebody telling you what they think you should know. The priorities of education should include respecting life, diversity, beauty, logic and languages. I cannot fathom why fostering tolerance in an environment of peers is not touted. Our group-based education system lends itself perfectly toward promoting an appreciation and empathy for others in unfamiliar circumstances but, inexplicably, human interaction is generally regarded as beyond the bounds of the academic curriculum. I personally think America’s current system spends far too much time teaching us who to be impressed by, and firmly believe any education system that does not place utmost importance on teaching its students how to survive is a failure. Even worse is an education system that does not ignite and foster in its students the desire to learn and work.
It is vogue to discuss that people have different types of intelligences, but that is usually interpreted in public perception as a hierarchy of intelligences mostly paralleling our social hierarchy. I contest that notion wholeheartedly. Allow me an attempt to demonstrate using the following illustration:
The question is: Assuming the yellow apparatus is a three-dimensional screw, which direction (clockwise or counter-clockwise) do you turn the red handle in order to lower the blue lift and connect it with the green platform? To some, this may look like the type of thing that would be on an IQ test. I am interested in whether you chose: A) Don’t know, don’t care, B) I’ll just guess, because I have a 50% chance of getting it right, C) I’m not sure, but give me a few minutes to try and figure it out, or D) I know fairly quickly. My hypotheses are: of the four options, the least chosen will be C and those who choose D are more likely to be manual laborers. People such as car mechanics, construction workers and plumbers deal with this type of problem-solving all the time. I did, after all, design the illustration on an adjustable (Crescent) wrench. I have another hypothesis: after receiving that information, many are more likely to try and discern the solution, because they will suddenly assume it is easier than they did when they thought it was an IQ test puzzle. It doesn’t take a genius to work a wrench, right? Well, perhaps it doesn’t take a genius to master logic puzzles, either.
Learning takes effort. People vary in which things to learn are more intuitive as well as the scope of their learning potential, but without effort, potential remains dormant. Repetition and practice are great ways to learn, but do not necessarily lead to an improvement in knowledge or execution of a task. People are constantly stating how many years they’ve been doing a job as if it’s understood that none of that time was wasted. There is no limit to how many times the same mistake can be repeated. A stubborn refusal to change is a sign of ignorance rather than insight. A better assessment of wisdom can be found in how long a person has devoted to learning and improving. We learn from our mistakes only as long as we confront them.
People consistently think that their reasons for not being able to do things are perfectly reasonable while being appalled by the excuses of others. We are constantly searching for someone else to be able to blame. People think that others should do the things they don’t want to, and don’t understand why those others don’t appreciate the opportunity they’ve been generously granted. A local newsletter column writer explained that she has her husband put gas in the car because she doesn’t like the smell of gasoline on her hands. This only makes sense if her husband does like the smell of gasoline on his hands. Everyone, including those reading this, thinks they’re the exception and not the rule. Just this morning, a co-worker, referring to a discussion in the background, exclaimed, “Bitch, bitch, bitch- that’s all anybody freakin’ does around here!” That’s not ironic at all.
The truth about learning can be ascertained with a few questions: Have you studied any topics in the past to the point that you are now confident they’ll never need revisited by you? Do you tend to think things are common sense? Do you tend to think they best way to do things is the way they’ve always been done? Do you tend to think all opinions contrary to your own are ignorant and absurd? If you answered “yes” to any of those questions, there is a high probability that you resist learning. If you are now instantly qualifying or changing your answer or have immediately decided that that test was bogus, you almost certainly resist learning. I myself often resist learning and need to remind myself of its importance on a daily basis.
People don’t like chaos. We don’t want to believe it exists or be exposed to it. We demand for answers to be concrete and eternal. Towards that end, we become dependent on maintaining ignorance and denial. Our desire for control overwhelms us to the degree of being outraged by the sight of anything that does not belong to us, like bugs and stray hairs. We harden our reclusive, protective shells in which everything makes sense. When camping in nice weather, why use a tent? People fear exposure. Even while sleeping in the dark, we want to be able to have a divider between ourselves and reality.
“When I look back on all that I’ve seen, the one thing I see is that I haven’t truly seen anything.” - Socrates
