The Self-Styled Scholar

Take a step back.

Are you looking at a mobile screen? Using a screen reader? Perhaps you’re using a machine translator or an AI to understand these sentences.

I find that interesting.

But I also find it concerning, and deeply fulfilling.

As children, at least where I’m from, we don’t have the luxury of diving into cultures immediately. In America, culture gets explained to us. More and more, with the current political climate (barring whatever you think of it), we’re losing touch with a native human interface.

I say this because somewhere my heart feels gutted.

I’ve learned that a lot of culture is social, and not the embodiment of a neutral worldview I took it to be when younger.

Our teachers taught us simultaneously that Western ideals should be prized (slightly above others), while going out of their way to make room for new curriculum detailing the lives of ordinary–and those not so–from far off places.

I didn’t realize it fully consciously as an elementary schooler, but in learning about these other worlds, I felt more at home in my imagined versions of Thailand, France, Russia, Uruguay, or obscure islets than I did in my classroom with people who looked like me, largely spoke the same language, and most importantly, really never had to question where they belonged.

They were always right here. And “right here” was probably where they’d always be.

Maybe they’d move to another coast, or down south. They’d hear a different accent. They’d get into trouble.

When life did get hard, it hit them bad. So they’d start or join movements that they didn’t really believe in just to reconcile the trauma of being accepted.

What I’ve realized, no matter how I’ve tried to find solace in logic, studying, precision, or jumping ahead, there are constants in life. I don’t have a name for them all yet. But here are a few.

1. Your parents have lived longer, and they probably know more.
   However, the values I got taught everywhere are outdated. Mores and codes shift faster than ever with tech, and I feel like the only constant in a world where the adults once promised there would always be something of that. Yes, they do know a lot, but I think even they didn’t predict how fast computing and science could shape the world.
   • I never really thought my parents were horrible, but I was the type of child that was very insistent on figuring things out myself–that child grew into a stubborn adult.
2. Everyone has a form of developing at their own pace, and you can’t control it. In fact, it’s unethical often to do that, because you don’t hold keys to their agency or authority over their Self.
   • I used to try to plan outcomes, to try to subtly influence. But this only led to worry. This is what led to my initial obsession with personality types and wanting to know “the ultimate rules to reality.” I was coherent, but not too sane.
3. Culture wars will always exist, and you can’t fight them. Some people will choose a side, and you can support them either way, but much like them, you are developing, and you have a say–and a choice.

To wrap this up, I’ll say this: I’m not mad at the world for putting me on the edges. I’m not even angry at what people do.

If any anger remains, it’s at why they do it.

In the United States, we have a reactionary culture based on “cancelling,” “rage protesting,” and hive minds that can seize and seethe if separate hives sense another isn’t behaving according to “hive code” (something subjective at best).

(Sorry Eugene, it doesn’t work like that. Or maybe it does, just not in the way you think.)

And maybe it’s true individuals are the only strongholds of consistency in their own lives. They are, after all, the only people that live with themselves day to day, even if they might not be fully aware of themselves. Or even if they’re largely molded by others and socially-coded.

True neutrality and truth will never be revealed to human minds, I guess. And the world I once thought was simple, generous, and positively-inclined is…

Just a rock.

With people.

Who fight. Occasionally they won’t beat on each other with a big branch or set nasty traps.

Can they change? I’m not holding my breath.

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Images by David Foodphototasty + Wednesday (2022) Netflix series.