Irrelevant thoughts

Tag: self-education

  • How it would be if I were

    How it would be if I were

    I cannot manage to understand why you would want to seem smarter than you are preparing to be.

    If you make an effort, if you read, if you learn…, you simply become, you learn foreign languages, there are a heap of forms through which you can turn yourself from the stance of an ignorant person into the stance of a smart person…, none of us was born smart, we all took the genetic fund and used what we had…, only there is no fast train…, you have to walk the road, to let your brain build new neural connections, that takes time, to get used to the newly assimilated notions, to integrate them into the processes of thinking…, etc…

    The intention to “take photos” with muscles, the way there used to be all sorts of cardboard figures “with muscles”, and there was a hole instead of a face, for each person to put his own face in and have a photo taken…, that is roughly how it looks, in my optics, to try to seem smart…

    And this is very hard, when everyone who finds himself at that point has the clear and entirely undoubting impression that he is smart…

    I met someone who told me, full of importance, that he wants to “invest” in a “kite” — he said it in English; in my language the thing is a zmeu, a paper dragon on a string. I was left perplexed, I asked what kind of investment that is…, I understood that he was masking a personal whim, in the way he put it, inside an “investment”…, as an expression…, that throws him outside the understanding of words, and if there were an area where people know what weight words carry…, he would have been outside, at a great distance from the gate…

    I feel myself the prisoner of these times in which, no matter what I say, it is twisted and interpreted “somehow”, and that is because we have got used to no longer naming things, but to using big words, each for his own reasons, but in general to “taking photos” (with muscles)…

    This society brings us into the comfort zone, where you have everything at the push of a button, you have remote controls, you have half-prepared food…, you no longer hear conversations of the kind “how are you managing with some problem in mathematics”, or “have you read such and such a book”…, all that is spoken is “have you been there?”, or “have you seen that?”, or “have you heard about such a thing (person)?”…, advice is no longer asked for in order to become…, a competition is held in order to seem “superior”, on criteria that are quite childish… (I have been, I have seen, I have heard)

    At some point a phrase was going around on sites (Facebook, for example), “life begins beyond the limit of the comfort zone”…, only there is no one left to understand it, because all around everything is comfort…

    If you do not expose yourself to situations that put you in the stance of going past your limits (the ones from that moment), you will never be more than that…, because you do nothing in that direction…

    And this is actually measured. In the Nordic countries, where evaluations were made on entire generations, intelligence scores kept climbing until those born around the middle of the ’70s, and from then on they came back down to where they had started. The interesting part is that the researchers compared brothers from the same family, in order to take genetics out of the equation…, and they came to the conclusion that both the climb and the fall come from the environment. They were not born weaker. The environment made them so.

    Which is exactly what I was saying at the beginning: no one is born smart, each one takes the genetic fund and does with it what he does…, only now we no longer do anything. We can say that this is how the end begins…, wrapped in warm socks and house slippers with a bit of fur on them…

    From this perspective, you do not even have to do very much in order to step out of the row…, and that is precisely what should give you pause: if the bar is that low, going over it is not a performance…, it is only the beginning of the road, the one without a fast train…

    I have met people past the age of 30 who thought of enrolling in high school, of taking their baccalaureate and of going through university…, and they set out precisely because they had above them superiors of the “comfortable” model, who did not manage very well in real life…

    Some of them enrolled for the baccalaureate four years in a row, until they passed it.

    I admire the people who went back to close a chapter of their life, to the measure of their potential…

    I am not trying to convince you. But if you have a measure of your own, I would like to hear it…

    Further: I realized that I am Grateful

  • The need to underline one’s importance

    The need to underline one’s importance

    Hello, my dear, this thought shared with you has as its support the explanation of the need for importance underlined through attitude and, implicitly, through appearance.

    The person who needs to underline their position through an outfit of the shirt, jacket and dress-trousers kind — and this does not refer to the position that requires etiquette, or to the meetings that come with it, it refers to everyday life…, that person dresses that way as if in armour, because they are afraid, and they have as a shield of presence… their clothes. It is the same with the model of car that wants to impose…

    And so as not to be misunderstood…, I am not talking about being well-groomed. Anyone can be well-groomed, in any way. The difference is not in the garment, it is in constancy…, if you dress the same way every day, whatever that way may be, you are showing who you are…, if your outfit rises exactly when you need to impose yourself, then you have not dressed, you have armed yourself…

    There is one more test, and it is simpler…, the well-groomed man can bear a crease, a stain, a worn shoe…, it does not bring him down…, armour can bear nothing, because any crease is a crack in the shield…

    In another order of ideas there would be one more thing, which has nothing to do with the cut…: where the person’s attention is. The one who is at ease is busy with something — with what he is working on, with the one he is talking to…, the starchy one is busy with the way he is seen. It shows in the hands…, whoever straightens his jacket, adjusts his knot, pulls at his cuff…, that one is keeping watch over his armour…, whoever is at ease forgets that he is wearing anything. It shows in the sleeves…, a rolled-up sleeve means the garment has been fitted to the man…, whoever stays all day exactly as the garment came out of the shop has fitted himself to the garment. And it shows at the throat…, the knot tight at the throat is the only piece that really tightens…, whoever wears it out of obligation undoes it the moment the obligation ends…, whoever wears it as a shield stays buttoned up until evening…

    Nothing of what I have said so far can be bought…

    I would conclude with an aspect that seems to me the best joke armour plays on itself: the suit put on in order to impose has a manufacturing defect…, from three steps away it does not say “look, an important man”, it says “look, a man who was told how to dress”…, that is, exactly the opposite of what you wanted. Whoever chooses, it shows that he chose. Whoever arms himself, looks like a uniform…

    I know a man who walks in every day on people who do not know him, who have no reason to listen to him, and from whom he must nevertheless obtain something…, he is, if you like, in a permanent attack…, and he goes about in jeans and a shirt, and in winter with a thick coat over them.

    And I know a university professor, whom I met once coming from a course with foreign students, in a suit. I did not recognize him at first…, I told him he looked as if somebody had sent him out dressed like that…, and that if he had also put on the tie, one could no longer tell whether he was giving the lecture or bringing the coffee at the break. He was offended, naturally…

    He explained to me that he wanted to be protocolary with the foreign students. I told him that the value is not in the etiquette, but in the way you approach them, in how you teach, in how simply you explain…, and I asked him how he thinks anyone is going to take part interactively when the man at the lectern walks in dressed as if for a board meeting…

    But the question worth asking is a different one, and a shorter one: who was the suit for? He had nobody to convince. He taught, and he was also the one who gave the grade. Power he already had, all of it. The other one, who has to convince from zero at every door, does not feel the need for a jacket…, he, who had nobody to convince, felt it…

    That is the difference, and it is not in the garment: it is in the need. Armour appears exactly where there is no need of it, because it does not protect you from the others…, it protects you from yourself…

    The same thing I could say when people use “precious” words, not because they are familiar with them, but because they feel the need to underline their value…, and this is evident from the context seen as a whole: for the most part they talk like sailors and only very rarely use words (terms) that throw you off balance when they come out of those persons…, if they were constant in decent expression, with metaphors, with “rare” words, that would be their particularity…, but when they use them in moments when they want to impose themselves, or feel cornered…, then it is defence disguised as attack (elevated)…, the elevated is simulated…, in order to build a “safety” distance…

    And to be honest to the end…, I laughed back then, and only much later did I see that my joke was also a way of placing myself above…, that is, exactly the thing I was reproaching him with. My armour is not bought in a shop, but that does not make it any less armour…

    A man’s worth is not in what he wears, nor in what position he holds, nor in how many listen to him because they are obliged to…, it is in how much he is able to educate himself, regardless of circumstances. That is not visible from three steps away…, and it cannot be borrowed from anywhere…

    I am not trying to convince you. But if you have a measure of your own, I would like to hear it…

    Further: Mercantilism