That carefree selfishness is gone now, subordinated to the war effort. And so soon after the last war, too.
-The first shots of the last war came on 29 November 2007. I was a schoolstudent at the University in Santa Cruz. Coming into that quarter, I had been excited to take the famous "Introduction to Feminisms" course, only to find, as the quarter wore on, that it seemed to be taught in a dialect of English I could not speak. The texts and the professor kept describing features of Society as _oppression_ as if simply to condemn them. I agreed with the condemnation, of course, but I couldn't understand it as _knowledge_ and could not produce such sentences in my own voice; I wanted an explanation of how the oppression _worked_.
+The first shots of the last war came on 29 November 2007. I was a schoolstudent at the University in Santa Cruz. Coming into that quarter, I had been excited to take the famous "Introduction to Feminisms" course, only to find, as the quarter wore on, that it seemed to be taught in a dialect of English that I could not speak. The texts and the professor kept describing features of Society as _oppression_ as if simply to condemn them. I agreed with the condemnation, of course, but I could not understand it as _knowledge_ and could not produce such sentences in my own voice; I wanted an explanation of how the oppression _worked_.
My subsequent difficulty in writing the required papers for that course weighed on my soul. The failure to live up to expectations would have been shameful for any course, but as a _male_ squandering the privilege of being allowed to take "Introduction to Feminisms", it was simply unbearable. Unable to reach the prescribed word count for the final paper, I had a hysterical nervous breakdown at the end of the quarter, crying and screaming for hours, "I betrayed them; I betrayed them." (The professor and the T.A., who were kind and deserved better than to have to teach a male who _couldn't write_.)
+Ironically, in the inferno of shame over having betrayed my mandate to the University, my attitude towards school flipped practically overnight. I had never been the most _diligent_ student, but I had mostly accepted the duty of getting an "education": I didn't always do my homework, but when I didn't, I at least felt guilty about it. But suddenly, the difference between schooling-as-education and actual _learning_ became distinct. I had _always_ been a voracious reader; for years, I had been filling little pocket notebooks with my own thoughts—clearly, school itself couldn't take credit for everything I knew. I took a leave of absence from the University and went back to my (previously, "summer") job at the supermarket, with the intention of being an explicit autodidact. I had always learned from books "in passing", in my "free time", but now I would give it my
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[TODO: description of my college purgatory (being in school, while constantly denouncing it in an ideological), but keep it brief because the readership doesn't care about autobiography ... link to math_page_1.jpg
the trauma of having no function other than to obey; that's why actual work didn't feel oppressive
]
-I hated the social role of "student" and the whole diseased culture of institutional servitude. I despised the way everyone, including and especially the other "students", talked about their lives and the world in terms of classes and teachers and degrees and grades, rather than talking about the _subject matter_.
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-I wanted it to be _normal_ for boasts of acheivement to take the form of "I proved this theorem and thereby attained _deep insight into the true structure of mathematical reality_", rather than "I got an 'A' on the test."
+I hated the social role of "student" and the whole diseased culture of institutional servitude. I despised the way everyone, including and especially the other "students", talked about their lives and the world in terms of classes and teachers and degrees and grades, rather than talking about the _subject matter_. I wanted it to be _normal_ for boasts of acheivement to take the form of "I proved this theorem and thereby attained _deep insight into the true structure of mathematical reality_", rather than "I got an 'A' on the test."
(Where, sure, it makes sense to take a test occasionally in order to verify that one isn't self-deceiving about the depth of one's insight into the true structure of mathematical reality, or in order to provide some amount of third-party-legible _evidence about_ the depth of one's insight into the true structure of mathematical reality—but the test score itself isn't the _point_.)
I hated the fact that, if it weren't for my desperate efforts to start intellectual conversations with anyone and everyone, people would assume I was one of _them_. Being perceived that way by Society _hurt_. I was frequently moved to rage or tears just getting through the day in that dehumanizing environment.
-That part of my life is behind me now—not because I won my ideological war against institutionalized schooling, but because I _escaped_ to a different world where that war is no longer relevant. My autodidactic romance had already included some amount of computer programming, and taking a [9-week web development bootcamp](https://www.appacademy.io/) leveled up my skills and self-confidence far enough for me to easily find a well-paying software development job. (The code bootcamp didn't feel dysfunctional and oppressive in the way that school did, precisely _because_ no one cares if you graduated from code bootcamp; it was very clear that the focus was on acquiring skill at the craft, rather than obeying the dictates of an Authority.) So I went on to live happily—if not ever after, then at least for a brief, beautiful moment from 2014 to mid-2016.
+That part of my life is behind me now—not because I won my ideological war against institutionalized schooling, but because I _escaped_ to a different world where that war is no longer relevant. My autodidactic romance had already included some amount of computer programming, and taking a [9-week web development bootcamp](https://www.appacademy.io/) leveled up my skills and self-confidence far enough for me to easily find a well-paying software development job. (As with the supermarket, the code bootcamp didn't feel dysfunctional and oppressive in the way that school did, precisely _because_ no one cares if you graduated from code bootcamp; it was very clear that the focus was on acquiring skill at the craft, rather than obeying the dictates of an Authority.) So I went on to live happily—if not ever after, then at least for a brief, beautiful moment from 2014 to mid-2016.
But that was just my good fortune. There are others who weren't so lucky, who are still suffering in mind-slavery under Authority in the world of schools I left behind. [TODO: transition sentences ...]
projects / Ultimately_Untrue_Thought.git / blobdiff