Riding the Escalator to Nowhere

Learning vs Being

I have spent the entirety of my adult life studying the human situation. When I was in college, I never really had a degree or a job in mind, so I took every social science class I could. Over the last few years, I have read, searched, written, reflected, and watched countless documentaries. I even took my long overdue first trip outside of the States. While I can claim to know a good deal more information than a lot of people around me, I cannot say that it has been altogether useful to me. Often times it is quite the opposite. I can think of a good number of people who explore life less frequently, read less, know less, strive for less, who lead lives that are a great deal richer than mine, and I do not mean that in a monetary sense. It's not even jealously really; just a thought that maybe, in my pursuit of knowledge and self improvement, I have lost part of my ability to connect and communicate with people. I am all for mindless fun, but so few care to speak of worldly things, higher ideals. Nietzsche stared too long into the abyss and lost his mind, and I worry that I might be heading down that path. There is a direct conflict between longing to know more and be better and running the risk of losing the ability to be somewhat normal, to have the warmth of human connection.

In my studies and in my trial and error living, I have learned to treat people with kindness, sometimes more so than they might deserve, and to not weigh them down with my problems. In doing so, if I'm honest, I come off as particularly weak, because as our spines tell us, the world will take from us if we let it. Still, I lose nothing on account of being kind to people. Nothing, except respect. Don't get me wrong; I take great joy in being able to look at myself in the mirror and know that I am good, that I directly harm no one, that I have what some would call a religious or monk-like quality to me, that I give to my friends more than I receive, but in trying to only project my positive side and by almost never sharing my problems with others (paired with what I mentioned above), many of those I was close to have drifted away. Part of it could be because, whether we know it or not, we tend to like people as much for their flaws as for their merits. Some of the few people I am close to are as defective as they are wonderful, and without their flaws, I know I would not be as drawn to them. I have my darker side, but it is not often that I show people the wolf in me. Duality exists in all things, but perhaps I have been presenting too much yang and not enough yin. I save the darker side for when I am alone or for when I write. Even in daily life, I typically respond to the things that annoy me either with humor or with a stoic demeanor. A change would likely not go too well. My job, for example, is one in which I am surrounded by discontent sort of lot. I cater to the periphery and tend to their vices, and in seeming good natured, I have always been something of an outsider. If a wolf who has never growled suddenly bites someone, those around him might not know how to react, even if the wolf had previously told them that he did in fact have teeth for gnashing.

I tried to Google search “Intelligence/Disconnection” but after typing “Intelligence D” this article came up. While I am not a huge fan of Cracked, this one was pretty good. Don't get me wrong. I don't consider myself to be super smart of anything; I'm just a dumb person who tries harder than most.

Don't get so caught up in your ideal self that you forget who you are, for better or worse. There's a danger in trying to be better when it gets to the point that one cannot share his better self with others. Better to be flawed and companionate than perfect and alone (not that I am anywhere near perfect). Worse still is to be flawed and alone.

Knowledge vs Skill

For all of the things I know, I do not have any useful skills. For a while, I thought that writing was a skill, but no; it's simply a means of communicating, and once something is written, it's done. I even write better than I can speak. Writing is simply a display of what you know. While I do think that everything is a skill (as in, one has to do anything repeatedly to be good at it), I guess in this sense, I am speaking of what we call trades or crafts. I can typically express myself clearly, but I can't fix a car, build anything, play an instrument (well), fix plumbing, cook a complex meal, survive in the wilderness, you name it. If all of our skilled workers died tomorrow, or the apocalypse hit, I could not keep the world turning. I would be helpless. Since my pursuit of knowledge only serves to show me how little I know or have any hope of knowing, I may shift my focus to a skill. At least then I will have something to show for my efforts.

This article applies. I actually like the whole site. Interesting stuff.

(Edit - 4:15pm - someone I know posted another good Cracked article. I liked it quite a bit.) 

Learn lots, but make sure you can also do, create, contribute.