Undoing Some Damage From Public School And Some Shitty Colleges

There's a lot to unpack here so I'll go bit by bit.

THE UNHELPFUL INDOCTRINATION

• Failure bad!!! Ooohhh!!! No. In a controlled setting where failure doesn't cause harm beyond expenditure of resources and/or time, failure is great. It means you're actually attempting something. It means you're learning. In fact you can consider any expenditure of resources or funds you "lost" on a failure to be your tuition because that is exactly what it is.
• There Are Smart People And There Are Dumb People. I mean... there are rich people and there are poor people, and statistically speaking people from rich backgrounds who live in great zip codes tend to have had better quality of education and less abuse from shitty teachers in public schools. So before you immediately assume that someone who isn't thinking straight is "dumb," maybe take a closer look at all the other things going on before going straight for the unscientific, correlation versus causation logical fallacy. Secondly, consider this: maybe someone does have a mental handicap, maybe they do have issues with things like cognition, memory, or some other thing. Is the solution to create a caste system then, or to teach them how to brain build so they can overcome those handicaps, or possibly to learn to adapt to them and problem solve and think better? Jeez.
• We Can Teach Without Understanding Science - no. You can't. You literally can't teach anything without understanding science and logic. It is not possible. If you think so then you suck at teaching. Otherwise you are literally being proud of being the blind leading the blind, and proud of not understanding how to discern the truth with the best method we have available to us as a species, and teaching other people how to handicap themselves like you.
• Obey authority and don't be original and don't think for yourself and that makes you ethical. I mean, so did Eichmann...
• 5/20/23 Hyperspecialization is the way. Become a specialist in one super tiny field, and don't you dare think about doing more than that or being more than that. Once you figure out where you fit in, and your niche in life, that will be your life and it will be perfect for you. I mean... can you imagine what would have happened if someone had forced Leonardo da Vinci to believe that shit? And frankly if he could do all that he did without burning out or going nuts, then so can you. In fact there's a historical precedent for a lot of people in the Renaissance learning a lot of different things and then doing them all well, hence the term "renaissance woman" or "renaissance man." There is also a historical precedent in this country for most of the people who lived here in the past. The DIY ethic used to literally be a way of life here. In the Native American community you'll sometimes hear people refer to the OIT, the Old Indian Trick for doing things; if you happen to be Native American then you have a gold mine of information you can ask relatives/friends about because that DIY knowledge is priceless (I mean but you probably already know that). In everyone else's community, you'll often find (if you look back far enough on the family tree) people living a way of life best classified as Pioneer person (woman, man, etc.); lots of DIY for everything imaginable from building a house to farming to crafts and folklore and songs because that's just how you survived back then. Hyperspecialization in any given field is a modern invention, and frankly, it just doesn't work that well for the individual. But it certainly makes you dependent on authority.

RESULTANT BELIEFS THAT ARE BEST YEETED INTO THE SUN

• I Failed Because I Dropped Out / Was Held Back / Am Failing A Course - and what are you learning that you'll actually use in real life, ever? Yeah. I thought so. Just because public school and many colleges are a scam does not make you a failure if you can't force yourself to learn whatever weirdness they're "teaching" in the shitty way they're presenting the material. On top of the enforced cognitive dissonance that you know you're actually unpaid slave labor and serving a prison sentence for a crime you did not commit, but have no choice in attending this shit. Consider alternatives such as GED, homeschool, self-study, night school, and online college. And if there are no alternatives? Consider getting rid of this entire child slave labor system (that is public school, guys) and joining me in this effort.
• Learning sucks - I really hope you recover from this. It took me about a decade, and a lot of people I know never have. How to recover from this? See the pep talk and be patient with gradually reintroducing things into your life that you actually want to learn
• Authority is to be feared, respected, and always considered "an authority." Hahahahahahaha. I think this one dies on its own the older you get and the more you see of how lame the idiots are that are trying to power trip without having any real reason to be in a position of authority. Hard workers and the best and the brightest sometimes (rarely) rise to the top. Mostly, so does scum.
• 5/23/23 It's not good to do this: Whatever you’re doing anyway, do your best to make it as fun as possible. Life is too short not to. - Honestly I have all these vivid memories of certain people forcing me to stop having fun, doing anything differently than anyone else, or even having original thoughts at work and at school when it wasn’t harming the productivity, the people, or the process… guys, that stifles originality, innovation and productivity. It's a foolish thing to teach anyone let alone to try to embody. You wanna know why American manufacturing lost out to overseas economic powerhouses? You’re looking at the reason. I say after successfully investing in stocks for a while, American-based ones ;)
• 5/23/23 You have to focus hard and work hard 100% or more than you're capable of, all the time, or you are just half-assing it and wasting time. You know what? There is a happy middle ground between burning out and learning less than you'd like to, and it's different for everyone. So is how you learn. Finding what works for you in terms of how you learn and how much learning you can cram between your ears and into your notes is its own learning curve. In fact I'd even go so far as to say that the only real failure in education is if you burn out so hard that you decide to never learn again, which is what the American public school system sometimes does to you (and let's hope it's changing/changed). And here's something else: it's not your fault. But... now that you know that's a thing, I would like to suggest you fight back and learn to like learning again because I am convinced it's human nature to love learning. After all, what do you think playground play is, rote memorization? That's learning too. Plus, like, quality of life... learning's a big deal for that
• If I don't work all the time I'm worthless - This one can literally kill you. Get therapy.
• Have Other People Tell You What To Do With Your Life - This only staves off the eventual existential crisis and the quintessential quarter-life, midlife, and retirement-age crises. This tripe is often incorporated into people's lives in order to brainwash them so someone else can benefit. Or for the sake of some madness such as Communism, which is a great way to make an entire population both go insane and get run by the most evil among them in short order (and it's either intentionally or unintentionally by design, see Hindsight Is 2022 for details). But in the end analysis, no one else is you and no one knows who you really are or what you want - except for you.
• I suck / self-sacrificial victim mindset - yeah, there's no way around this one. Get therapy. It's not helpful to you or anyone to have shitty self esteem. It helps no one to have boundary issues and issues saying no and defending yourself. You can't pour from an empty cup, you can't help anyone swim if you're drowning, and self love is not the same as narcissism; it is essential for your survival. If it makes you feel any better pretty much the entire generation of Millenials knows what it's like to get belittled til self esteem implodes thanks to legions of wannabe dictators in public school; you are not alone. Not even close.

Big Brain Time

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