People have become sadly apt to let their minds rot in modern times. But in all fairness, this is because they simply don’t know how to stimulate themselves intellectually. To do so, we must make an honest effort to energize our own minds. Questions need to be asked, but more often than not, people would rather be lectured to and accept a spoon-fed education. Such is not truly an education, without being able to bandy about concepts and ideas, as otherwise you simply become a database, in which the ideas aren’t actually alive; over the years, all of your so-called education just becomes a collection of some things you used to know. Too many people casually accept what they hear and read as truth; the more our culture becomes geared towards being entertained with shovel-ware and formulaic nonsense, the rarer the truly inquisitive types will be.

The problem with “hitting the books,” as is so often demanded of denizens in the educational sphere, is the act of filling your head with the contents of tomes is not proper education. Books can indeed be wonderful repositories of great ideas; but, then again, many books are garbage. In so many of them, there is nothing at all profound, especially those which contain nothing but facts and figures, which sometimes even become obsolete with the mere passage of time. Ideas and broader concepts mentioned within tomes that then expound upon the deeper reaches of understanding are things only which through thoughtful discussion can truly be understood and actually learned.

In my college years, I did encounter a handful of interesting discussions; unfortunately, they weren’t incredibly productive conversations. But, it still felt good to see a number of students throwing their ideas into a public forum to see how well they stand up; sadly, many times they fell flat, leaving me to ponder them further in the silence of my own self-imposed exile, as my peers turned to drink and drug to pass the time. It is good to see some undertaking the duty to practice our right to free speech, but when people are afraid their words will fall flat, fearing that they will sound “dumb,” they are often proven correct in that most people are just waiting for that night’s party to come sooner than later.

As it took me a few years to realize, the trick to sparking intelligent discourse isn’t to overwhelm others with the fruits of superior intellect; rather, the key is to throw reasonable hypotheses out into the fray. If said hypotheses turn out to be unreasonable, then questions should be asked to guide those prove to be inquisitive minds towards the truth. The trouble is, most people base their understanding of the universe and what they believe to be truth on what are actually gossip and rumors told by those they consider wiser than them. What I’ve learned is that showing intelligence isn’t what makes the difference; you must manifest it in some useful fashion that gets the attention of others in a productive way.

The other major thing I’ve learned in my years since university is that dumbing yourself down for the sake of others is also completely unproductive. The better plan is to be clear and concise with your ideas while keeping the full weight of the concepts, simply breaking them down into more easily digestible chunks. It isn’t enough to know that things need to change, call for these changes to occur, then wait around for these changes to actually happen. I feel this is the downfall of academic types such as myself in general, that the weight of our words will be enough to bring forth the change. 

Unfortunately, most of the time, you must be the one to take action, and that doesn’t mean blabbing all over your blog or putting it into a book that you hope sells and is read by the right people, also known as decision makers. This is where I’ve failed most; whenever I tried to get out there and effect change with my words, I wasn’t only shot down, but shunned, and eventually forced into social media exile. The biggest mistake I ever made was allowing this exile enacted by narcissistic fools and misguided sheep to prevent me from sharing my innermost thoughts and the wisdom I’ve gained from years of being on the outside looking in.

It began to alarm me even as I climbed the rungs of higher education that the actual quality of said education not only doesn’t increase, but instead stagnates. I could write a crap paper, put in some semi-cliche phrases and rhetoric, add perhaps a little bit of my actual thought process and produce a grade A paper. Wow, I should’ve just bought an Easy Button from Staples. Realizing how easy it was to throw together something someone wanted to read and be entertained by, I spent much of my adult life writing articles about popular trading card games, as well as whoever paid me money to craft an article for their website. I neglected the notes for pieces that I felt actually needed to be written, since I was always told that I’d have to dumb down my writing style even further to ever be promised a job in the professional – with air-quotes – writing community.

Still, even as I kept most of my intelligent musings to myself, I continued to read heavily. I had a friend who urged me to keep asking questions of those that wrote these things, and I was rather surprised to learn he often received quite a few positive responses. Why I never undertook this practice, I don’t really know, and I feel that perhaps I could’ve emerged as a serious writer much earlier in life. Now that this friend and I no longer communicate, I find myself thinking perhaps he was right about at least that practice. After all, if you don’t know the answer, ask more questions. You might be surprised who just might write you back; after all, those of us inquisitive enough to undertake such correspondence seem to have an obsession with educating ourselves at any cost.

As you grow older, it becomes ever clearer that the answers you most desperately seek are in no textbook. I’ve said that myself within my academic papers, only to be scolded with the remark: you’re required to use textual evidence. I’d have to go and find a sentence, just to quote it so I could say what I wanted in the paper. I found this practice completely unnecessary and quite unnerving. I couldn’t be honest with myself if it was somehow necessary to include someone else’s words just to prove my own point. Why were those words better than my own? Were there actually better ways of expressing what was said? Or, were the requirements of the assignment so demanding of that quote being in there simply to make my own opinion worth less or even entirely worthless? 

If college taught me anything at all, it’s that it ends up being entirely worthless. I learned nothing in those four years that helped me overcome a series of seemingly insurmountable challenges that would’ve turned most people to ingesting fatal amounts of drug, alcoholic beverage, or both. What these hard knocks inevitably taught me is to remind people that no one is useless; if you help people to realize their worth, they will often return the favor. 

Anyone can leave their mark on history, not simply by marking their territory, but out of the kindness of their own hearts. Sadly, it seems most people decide to have a similar relationship with other people to what Rover has with his favorite tree. I’ve come to realize that most people simply don’t know any better, and it’s up to those of us who recognize the shortcomings of our poor excuse for educational systems to overcompensate.

I decided that becoming a professor was only detrimental to my actual goal, teaching people to just let the words flow. Most people don’t think of themselves as writers, but thanks to the wonders of speech to text software, authors have emerged above the rabble to say some really interesting stuff. When people set themselves a goal of writing down what’s important to them, many of them are surprised with what ideas they can come up with, and even more surprised when they discover someone had those same ideas years ago. In the 21st century, we don’t have many of the profound thinkers that we’ve had in the last three or four centuries. At least, we don’t hear about them much, but they must exist, relegated to a sort of intellectual exile much as I had imposed upon me, and I never fought back.

Yet, I cling to the reality that sanity remains within our world to some degree; you just have to find it, cultivate it, and hang onto it. Immerse yourself in reason, the thoughts of the great thinkers of all ages. Expand your mind with thought-provoking debates and the correspondence between great minds. Don’t just work with the facts and figures that modern big data shoves down our throats; these are often used against us in creating algorithms that pigeonhole us with what we’re supposed to watch, listen to, and even do.  

Don’t just read stories about the life of historical figures. Go out there and read what they read or even what they might have written; it’s not that hard to find these things! What you come across may prove challenging to read at first. But, if you keep digging, it’s very rewarding to realize that in the end, most ideas have been around for many centuries; they just never became mainstream, despite many of these people being famous for other reasons.

Educating yourself through your own curiosity is much more rewarding than taking assignments that you otherwise couldn’t care less about. In the process of taking on your own academic journey, you’ll find that all human beings are much more alike than we are different. We’re all unique individuals, yes, but we’re all human, and we all have things we think about. Our humanity and our ability to reason are what bind us. 

We can’t let humanity continue on this destructive course – agape must return, love for humanity, desire to do Good, acting for the General Welfare so clearly stated in the Preamble of the United States Constitution. Let’s all do something for the Common Good. That all starts with asking questions, and even if we never find the answers we seek, at least we can better ourselves, and hopefully others, along the way.

~ Amelia Desertsong