On School and Greatness

The problem with schools and education is the human becomes exceptional at answering questions, but lacks any of the insight necessary to implement what the question was founded upon. Humans have become skilled in providing answers, but life serves those who develop genuine questions.

Humans have excelled at answering questions, like we can pull one out of our pocket. We have an answer for everything. We know everything, and yet we know nothing.

And that comes from education. Schools prevailing function was to support parents who worked from nine to five, so that way children would have a place to be that was safe, where they would get some form of education. But, school, one, it caters to the slowest student. Nothing wrong with that. The problem is that human beings are completely nuanced and vary in learning styles and in speeds.

So for the student who answers the test quickly, who provides the answer directly, often is maligned and the student who needs a little bit more help often is gonna get the attention necessary. If you answer questions quick in school, they're likely gonna think you're cheating, or they're gonna challenge you because they want you to understand the work, which has some validity.

But the overarching element of school doesn't truly enrich the nuances of each child. It forces them to all think the same. It's an A-B response, you know, if X goes here, then Y goes there and it doesn't challenge, it doesn't create any sort of, intuitive thinking, any critical thinking, as one would say.

Sure, they may say that in words and in definitions, but in actuality, in truth, that does not occur. The human being has been beaten over the head to follow a particular rhythmic question and answer. Life isn't multiple choice. Life isn't A, B, C, or D. Life isn't true or false. There may be some elements there that reflect life, but still it's intellectual. It's not visceral.

You know that there are other planets. In the solar system, but you haven't seen them. You see images, and those images vary by them being drawn, illustrated. You haven't been on a rocket, gone to another planet, and so it takes that experience.

Someone would ask, how are you able to do this? Or how can I do something? Or how can I figure it out? The truest answer would be to begin in figuring that out. It wouldn't be in asking. The asking in many ways is the conditioning, the asking is the brainwashing, because how can I tell somebody how to do something?

The individual themself, their drive, their interest in figuring it out will bring them to where that is available to them. Whether that's an intersection with another, or an opportunity or learning online. That would be the avenue. The avenue wouldn't be, "how do I do this?" It doesn't work. On technical levels, sure. You could tell somebody to take a left to get to the grocery store. You could tell somebody to turn the light on. Absolutely. But with things that are far more, personal, things that are non-technical, things that are driven by one's creativity and intuition, those things, there's no how for that. You ask the how when you don't really wanna know.

I remember my time in college. I struggled. I went to community college the first two years. And I excelled, and then I transferred to the state university. But when I got there, I struggled. I struggled socially, the classrooms were far larger and the teaching was more expansive. The degrees for which I was pursuing, the initial degree was computer science and then the second was fashion design and I landed at communications because my assumption was that it was gonna be hands on and that I would be able to touch the fabrics or design or to, mess around with a module.

But those things didn't occur. There were so many prerequisites. The prerequisites are necessary, but again, I'm talking about the entire structure of education. You're gonna read a lot, you're gonna learn a lot of definitions, and by the time you're ready to play, you're a dictionary.

You don't actually know anything. And that impedes with a person's ability to truly experiment and to play and to create something for which they're wowed by. In many ways it severs the connection between actually exploring. You know, many adults who I meet, speak about their craft if they're in the arts or even in life. They all long for a time when the creativity was fun and they always speak about their youth and the reason why they reflect those times, I can't say explicitly. But from my own experience and that of those who I have worked with is that they're longing for a place where it wasn't about the definition.

They long for a place where it was simply about the creativity and where that creativity took them. It was about that. It was about screw the idea and what it could be. Let's try and figure it out. A return to innocence, a return to just figuring it out.

If a lion pretends that it's not a lion, if it lives a millimeter below its created intent it will suffer. And it will suffer because it isn't doing the thing for what it's designed to do. The natural drive and the interest in whatever I'm doing, and the desire to truly learn hands on has always been bone deep. That's never been a choice.

I went to college for my parents I found the classes and the structures that worked for me, and I graduated after a delayed year or two, but it didn't serve me. None of my career has been dependent on a degree. I've never had a career in the industry. As I noted in my last podcast of being the outsider. My job is usually outside of the mainstream, and that's something that I've come to learn and understand that that's just my wiring.

Everybody's different. Everybody has a different way of learning and wisdom is seeing the pattern behind things. Wisdom is that understanding. And if a person understands that, yo, I don't have that drive, i'm not interested in pursuing things off road, I can't swim those deep waters, then school is an effective option and finding what works for them - that's wise. There's nothing bad about being not driven. There's nothing bad about school. The problem is when you don't know who you are and you enter arenas that are not fit for you, that's gonna create a lot of harm, naturally, because it's not how things work.

Square peg in a circle, it just doesn't work. And we humans are addicted to forcing things because we've been wired that this should go this way and that should go the other way, but, we're far more nuanced than we know we are, and far more unique than we think.

If you've got the drive and you got the heart to swim those deep waters, you don't need school. If you need the structure, if you need that, if those waters bring fear in you, it would be wise not to jump off. It'd be wise to follow the road that you're on. But true learning is not gonna be found in school. There's not an individual alive who went to school and became great.

They were a: largely great before entering school or they were great despite the education, because the purpose of education is to make you mediocre, make you good at answering the question, but you've never developed the insight to examine what the question is built for. And those individuals who think that way are really the revolutionaries, are really the troublemakers, are really the upstarts because they're approaching life from a completely different position. They're examining life outside of the spectacle.

And those individuals have always suffered because the masses, the mainstream, will vilify those individuals for thinking differently. Society will come down on a person. How dare you break the rules? What are you doing? Who told you to do that? Why would you do that?