[482] Know-It-All

Knowledge makes you smug. I should qualify that. Knowledge makes you smug in the face of idiots.

My prevailing problem is never really knowing how to cope with knowledge. As far as “first world problems” go, I think I have that shit on lock. I have nothing but time to learn about the world and its failings or otherwise. I can take in the whole of media culture, then spend uninterrupted weeks digesting the reporting about things that “matter more.”

For all of his “pop psychology” kind of take on the world, one thing I appreciate that I learned from Malcolm Gladwell was the idea of the “maven.” The information specialist or broker. The person who connects people via what they know. I think if I have a place in the world it would be adopting this kind of title and seeing where it goes.

I immediately feel cheap. Like I had an idea of what to talk about and then the last paragraph just punched me in the balls or something.

I'm worried that the world doesn't consist of people who “deserve it.” I think it'd be awesome to have like cool good looking mixed kids, for example. This idea violently slams into my general ideas about life in general and what I'd want to bestow to my kids. A sick planet sucking on a neoliberal teat is not a choice I want to make for someone else.

And so consider “deserving it.” I've said plainly before that I don't think my life has to particularly mean anything. To then make the leap that others should find it in themselves to “earn it” and cut out a place for themselves and their offspring is superficially contradictory. I think when you look into your own existence you find the rub. I'm writing, for example. I'm working and acting and choosing to try and engage with the “faceless masses” who tell me drunkenly in secret they appreciate what I do. Whether you want to call what I'm doing “deserving it” or not, if you're looking for a measure of what should count, “meaning something to someone else” seems as good a metric as any other.

My opinion aside of what I should or could mean, the idea that I'm of consequence matters independent of my small selfishness. I think this starts to resonate louder and louder as people get older, but I don't think it can be overstated, the nature of selfish behavior.

It's what to do when you learn! Where do you take it? I think of the myriad industries I think are totally corrupt or bullshit that people make fine lives out of and derive paychecks and pride to their heart's content. My thought, is anyone really under the impression I only consider myself in terms of the amount of movies or TV I can watch? My knowledge betrays my willingness or patience to play along. I'll take the random pill; we're all dying anyway after all, some of us with a few more nights out and expensive electronics than others.

It kills me that I'm happy to work in spite of my knowledge as well. I have no beef with working with my hands or doing manual labor. I just don't want to do it with things on my mind I know need to be fixed. There's always something that needs to be fixed that requires thinkers. I disagree with the idea that “manning up” and leveraging your ignorance against your muscles is a good thing.

Maybe more about me being smug. I'm so smug, I think I can create my own job related to information brokering. I think I can read and map and make phone calls in a way that builds a future I've literally never read about. And I'm tentatively confident in my ability. It's rather quiet. It's wildly speculative. And yet, my perspective of people and my capacity outweighs my concern for failure literally every time I think about it. I suppose the real question is whether one should begin to respect or consider the opinions of people who don't operate the same way.

It's really hard for me to find conflicting evidence. I have the suspicion that often when people talk to me they sort of...”give up.” I don't make emotional appeals. I don't berate them. I just sort of bring up personal angles or macro-level contentions or even nihilistic and fatalistic sentiments that leave them very begrudgingly agreeing with me. I think it's an extension of the “you should be a lawyer” comments I used to get as a child.

I think this gets in the way of “getting better.” I think I want more argument and disagreement, but I don't have people who spend the time to refute how I got somewhere. This works against me. I can live in relative comfort and have genuinely no existential worries for long periods of time, but I can feel wrong and can't find anyone to tell me why. I'm dealing with people who “get by.” I talk with people who adorn the behavior and habits of cliché quasi-power groups. I'm stuck with the “frustrated smart-types” who struggle to be as pragmatic as the next guy.

It sort of boils down to a question of “why learn?” For me, the answer is to shit on people. I like being smarter than you. I'm not saying I don't have friends who are becoming doctors. I'm saying I like to have perspective. I like diminishing my voice to such a small platform that by the time I have something to say, the suggestion is that it's worth a damn. I want to organize “my” information. I want to turn it into stories. I want to take the endless frustration I have with fake ass frontin' bitches and use it to create a world in which they can profligate around the individuals I really want to see the future. For better or...it's for worse, I feel this is the nature of the game.

It's a devious and mysterious mind that would force you to not only delineate but carry out the unstated rules of an existential game to a nondescript end. Given we only exist as a matter of perception, let's just lean on the idea that I'm fooling myself in woefully encumbered and indulgent ways.