I think the goal of attempting to learn things is to “internalize” the information. I think there are sort of classical depictions and statements we make about people who are “really smart” that often send a kind of unhelpful and unrealistic example in how their knowledge may be used.
Take an obvious example of hearing someone got a perfect score on their SAT. There's a few things we can say about this immediately. This person could have studied SAT books for years. You could question the reliability and purpose of standardized tests in general. This score says nothing of their interpersonal skills nor does it predict success. But, say in advertising a new season of Survivor, you bet that one of the contestants will be smiling as they relate how smart they are in achieving “perfection,” prompting you to wonder how far it will take them in the game.
Another example may be someone telling you their IQ. I've never scored more than a few points above average on every test I've taken in school or online. It's part of the reason I get so frustrated when I don't see people understanding something and call them lazy. I don't have special powers, you're probably just being a lazy asshole. The one or two people I've ever engaged with who leaned rather heavily on explaining how high their IQs were, destroyed nearly every one of their relationships and made the kind of mistakes of overly-enthusiastic or sympathetic teenagers.
It's the kind of “internalized wisdom” that old people like to claim. It often goes unchecked. They've been married and re-married and have the kind of sage advice that, unfortunately, mirrors a Buzzfeed listicle. They've worked themselves into an early grave and get to be cited in books talking about the top things they regret as they're dying. They've experienced every boy band, pyramid scheme, sense of fashion, and global catastrophe. And it's not to say that this experience can't prove to be invaluable.
Further, I think this experience kind of has natural plateaus. You start college and begin to look down on the youthful aloof experience of the kids you want to forget you were recently sharing hallways with. You go to grad school or graduate and shift your priorities to maybe starting a marriage or career and then proudly dismiss the drunken debauchery you're still shaking puke off your shoe from. You hit 30 and get to don the cultural sensibilities of a “mature adult” who didn't yet see the forest for the trees as some new work project or life struggle “really teaches you” what it is to “be an adult.” Before long you're feeling too old and trapping yourself in a handful of anecdotes and references that glorify and obscure. You make a little nest of your experiences that will cradle you unto death.
The problem, because there's always a problem, is that it is very hard to keep things under a microscope. It's why we give that work to grad students. It's why the particular people with particular bugs up their ass to learn something or fix something get 10 page spreads as we marvel at their “genius” ideas to simply keep working after everyone goes to bed and expand on work done over the last 30 years in their field. We don't want to believe we're capable of the same thing because then we're just inviting guilt, pressure, and responsibility. It is at this point where I wish most people would pause.
Knowing your potential, and speaking like you're an authority because you have reassuring beliefs about your potential, are two dramatically different things. Take “the good guy with the gun” who will talk for days about how reasonable and obvious it is that we put guns everywhere for a threat that's never put into context. He knows he'd stop a killer and could never be the first one shot unexpectedly. He also won't shoot an innocent person, the cops who arrive will know he's not the shooter, and has the wherewithal to power through peak adrenaline.
But war-like chest-beating rhetoric is the kind of “internalized knowledge” one gets from the sounding chamber of gun culture. It's a hodgepodge of misrepresented statistics from conservative blogs and you hop from anecdotal lilypad to anecdotal lilypad. Hell, it's the sounding chamber of American foreign policy. There's nothing like being part of a genocidal culture to dull you to the language and justifications of what we do to “lesser” nations. Or take the religious position. How fluidly do people speak for God? How much authority do they wield in service to gaining sympathy or money? How much easier does the medicine of war and self-righteous indignation go down when He's on your side?
I think about this when I consider why I bother reading or trying to learn. As I said, I'm what I'd consider “exceedingly average” as far as brain capacity. I just give myself time. I try to learn from those Buzzfeed-esc lists and “profoundly depressing” admissions from old people. What I internalize isn't a bunch of direct quotes and endless citations. I try to pick up on habits. I try to recognize explanatory style. I try to identify hiccups in translating what's been said and put a voice to the folly of talking “at” people who've maybe never been in a position to call themselves wrong.
It speaks to why I write and encourage others to do so. My last blog is me talking about being sad. I get a link to “Let Me Google That For You,” I guess suggesting that I wouldn't have considered that I'm depressed. I think it's important to share things like that if you honestly believe that, but a more explicit reading would show that I called my sadness enviable. I said you can only achieve it when you already have it all.
But say I wasn't a writer. Say I was afraid of defending my disposition or of your judgments. What if something was creeping in and I never got a chance to explore it? This is the kind of circus ride I imagine a lot of people go through. I've certainly watched in play out in former friends' lives as they transition from college to adulthood. This is why when I read blogs or search “rants” it's like high school rough drafts of something really profound...one day. At the same time I'm getting derided as “sophomoric” by such high-society mucking about in the same online forum waters.
For me to write, literally anything can be regarded as “necessary and useful.” It's when 3 or 4 different subjects or hardly-overlapping books prompt a weird thought or opening line that I can digress. I'm not curing cancer. The words will always mean more to me than to you. At the same time, I don't try to let my words carry anymore water than they're worth. When I spent 8 hours a day reading or writing or arguing about religion and science, yeah, I'd get a particularly shitty bite to what I was saying because I really knew my shit. Today, it's to hard to say what the bullshit arguments have evolved into and I don't have the patience or naivety to believe screaming at ideologues does any good.
You have to know where your usefulness stops. You have to practice humility. I can get away with writing a drunk and disconnected thing here in a way I wouldn't try to sell or pass off as worthy of a book. The Zen of an Angry White Male, riveting. You should derive pride from grasping your context, not just abusing it for sermons. You should be able to relate how or why your perspective has changed, and ask if when it's done so, was it worth it. Did you mine something to teach? Did you arouse or cost yourself an opportunity? And are you brave enough to allow things to be tentative?
I feel like I run out of things to say because I'm only frequently reminded. I don't operate like a 24 hour news cycle that needs to be “outraged” and constantly “slamming” my opinionated fist. Think about that when you're reading articles about Trump or Cruz. How much time are you spending giving their lies, hatred, and despicable characters' attention? What is that doing to you? What more do you think you need to learn from their perspectives but a habit of looking for better ones? But we don't ask it of ourselves. We don't even try. No one's even telling us we don't try! And we wouldn't believe them if they did.
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