Tag Archives: Culture

Rambling Autodidact

Posted by Tim on
Leonardo da Vinci - The Most Famous Autodidact

Leonardo da Vinci - The Most Famous Autodidact

Darn it. I got another ego boost the other day. Although a compliment can make me feel good, I also really try to be humble. I take pride in being that way. (I take pride in being humble? Huh?) But it happened. I’ll try to keep my ego in check, but the compliment inspired me to write this.

“Do you think about things before you say them?” She asked. “Like, do you think them out or, did you go to school for this? Cause you seem to know what you’re talking about.”
“No. I’m not in college.” I responded. “I’m what you’d call a nerd. I just get interested in something and then I learn everything I possibly can about it.”

Being an autodidact is fun, and kind of unusual, it seems. Its a new word for me – “autodidact”. It means someone who is self taught. Someone who has become knowledgable without having a formal education. Hey, that’s me. I have a fancy high school diploma, but that can hardly be described as “education”, much less “formal”. No, most of what I know I’ve learned by myself. I read a lot, I listen a lot, I watch a lot.

When I say “by myself” I don’t mean that I just sit alone at the library and read. I actually don’t go to the library, but I do sit alone and read a lot. But I also gather information from the people around me. I ask questions. I pick people’s brains. If I were to completely cut myself off from everyone I know, forget about my social life, and retreat to being a hermit, I might be able to read more, but I’m not sure I’d learn more. When I argue with people I learn. You can’t argue with a book. (Well, you can, but its kind of pointless.)

The older I get, the more I disagree with people. I’m not disagreeable. I’m not a jerk (at least I don’t think I am). But as we get older, and gain more and more ideas and beliefs we tend to become more separated from other people’s beliefs. No one’s influences are exactly the same, therefore we can’t expect to all have the same beliefs about everything. Someone who reads Noam Chomsky books isn’t going to have the same perspective as someone who reads Thomas Sowell. Someone who follows Joe Weider bodybuilding methods probably isn’t going to “get” someone who is into Mike Mentzer.

The more influences we have, the better we can make decisions about reality. Ironically, the more influences we have, the more original we become, and therefore our decisions will also be more original. Our lives will become more different from each other as we continue to learn and grow. Eh… I’m just rambling. Every once in a while we need a good “rambling post”.

When I Was Your Age…

Posted by Tim on

I’m not old. I might be old to a little kid, but for everyone else – I’m a young guy. That being said, I find myself acting more and more like the cliche old person, saying things like, “You know, in my day…”. But things have changed so much since I was a kid. Everything moves much faster, and changes that normally would have taken generations to take place, now happen within a few years. I’m sad to say that I truly believe I came in on the tail end of kids growing up with any balls.

I mean that in the most pleasant way. I don’t want to sound crude, or turn people off. I really think that’s the best way to put it. Kids don’t have balls anymore. Not only do I witness it, have evidence of it, and can prove it, but I also think I know the cause. As always, things that don’t seem related are. History matters, and everything we’re seeing today – the pussification of kids – started decades ago.

Remember the ’60s? I don’t. I wasn’t there. But I’ve heard about them. It was time when our country was divided. We were divided not only by soldier vs hippie, or black vs white, but also by man vs woman. The whole “stay in the kitchen” thing was no longer popular. Women everywhere were taking off their bras (YAY!) and burning them. Feminism was the new craze.

Now, I’m not a sexist. I don’t believe men are smarter than women, or that women should only perform housework. On the other hand, I do believe that nature is sexist. Men and women have differences besides their underwear. Their emotions, their hormones, the way they think. Men and women can be equal without being the same. But not everyone sees things this way. In fact, over time the character traits of men have been shunned, looked down on, and in schools they’re being taught against.

What exactly is going on? Well, little boys are forced to take classes where they sew quilts. Now, I have nothing against a boy who wants to sew, but let’s be real here. Boys don’t want to sew. They’re boys. Don’t treat them like girls! Boys like to run, jump, wrestle, play sports, and be physical. Girls like to talk, gossip, play house, and look at boys. Obviously these are generalizations, but the point is that boys and girls are NOT the same, and they shouldn’t be treated the same.

Hindsight is 20/20, though. Here we are. After all of our sensitivity training, our boy bashing, and our political correctness, what do we have? Kids are wimps. Tag is no longer allowed because it’s too violent. Keeping score in a sports game isn’t allowed because it makes winners and losers, and the losers might feel bad. What a joke! Back in my day we had dodgeball, kickball, soccer, and tetherball. (Remember tetherball? I loved tetherball!) But not any more. Kids today need to be sheltered and safe, away from the dark world looking to do them harm.

The truth is that the world isn’t going to change for these kids, and eventually they’ll get into the real world, not do well in a job interview and guess what – they’ll lose. They won’t get the job. Oh, poor baby! Life is tough.

But the wussification of kids has more dire consequences. I argue that because kids are so sensitive, lives are being lost. Back in my day we got into arguments, shouting matches, and fights. It was fine. There was a fight, and the next day we went back to school like normal. Nowadays kids get into a fight and the next day they come to school with a gun. What the hell?!?!

Bullying is normal. It happens with kids, and it happens in the real world. Protecting kids from bullying and conflicts doesn’t teach them to deal with it. In fact, it teaches them how not to deal with it. They build up anger every day until they explode – literally in some cases. What ever happened to popping someone in the nose when they pissed you off? Well, that was too extreme. So what have we replaced it with? Gunning down your classmates with a .22 pistol.

Yeah, I’m talking about the shooting in Ohio. What’s up with these kids? Shooting their classmates in the back? I mean, in the first place you ought to have the balls to just fight him with your fists. And if you’re going to gun him down, at least be a man about it and look him in the eye. Don’t shoot him in the back! Kids these days don’t even know how to do a proper execution!

Everything has changed, and it’s not changing for the better. We’ve replaced widespread minor violence, with less common deadly violence. Are these kids lives worth some other kids’ false sense of self esteem? When we make our children into wimps, are we doing them any kind of service, or are we setting them up for failure and disappointment?

I Don’t Want No Books

Posted by Tim on

Bookstores only restock their shelves every so often it seems. Used bookstores especially, because they don’t order stock based on customer demand – they buy it as it comes in. This can be a real problem when you’re trying to find used books that are not only no longer in print, but are also books that are held onto by readers. It’s for this reason that I will travel far out of my way to visit a bookstore that might offer something the local stores don’t have.

I live about 20 minutes away from Milwaukee, the “big city” of Wisconsin. It’s not our capital, but it’s big. It’s got the fancy interchange highway system, tall buildings, and plenty of light pollution, as you’d expect from any metropolitan area. It also has poor people. A lot of them. And what goes along with poor? – Uneducated. Milwaukee is also the most segregated city in America, which means that black neighborhoods really are black neighborhoods. White people and black people don’t mix much. We’re not a racist city; it’s just the way things have worked out.

It just so happens that the bookstore that I went to today was in a poorer black community. I had mixed feelings about what I was going to find there. On one hand I hadn’t been to this store, so I didn’t know what they would have to offer. I’d already picked through the stores in my own corner of Wisconsin, and I was eager to find someplace that hadn’t been ransacked by a bookworm of my variety (which is a rare variety, by the way). On the other hand, I wasn’t getting my hopes up. This was a pretty poor area, which usually means uneducated. What kind of books are they going to have? Coloring books?

Turns out that this really worked out in my favor. While I assumed that the selection of books would be bad because of the community the store was in, it turned out that the selection of books was good – also because of the community the store was in. People still came in to sell books (including the kinds of books I like), but people weren’t coming in to buy the books (at least the ones I like). So, while the store had plenty of stuff to offer, no one in that community was buying the books I was after. I had plenty to choose from! I managed to find a few Thomas Sowell books, a Malcolm Gladwell book, and some of the works of F.A. Hayek. All of this stuff is hard to come by at my local bookstore.

After I had picked out a few selections I decided to look through the jazz records they had for sale. While I was thumbing through them, a black couple walked past and the woman said to the man, “I don’t want no books. Let’s stay up here.” She was referring to staying in the music/DVD section, instead of moving back into the “book” section. I just thought to myself – are you kidding me? Here you have a store full of great literature on virtually every topic imaginable, and you “don’t want no books”?

This, unfortunately, is probably pretty typical of customer behavior at that store. While it’s a shame that people don’t take the opportunity to educate themselves (because clearly public education has failed them), in the end it helps me. “I don’t want no books.” Fine! More for me!