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I tend to tutor people randomly. Siblings mostly, sometimes friends, occasionally strangers. It makes me feel good. I get a pretty strong shot of vicarious triumph when I help them achieve a goal.
And I would always hear the same things from people who struggled.
"I'm just not good at this" I would hear.
"I suck at math" would be pretty common too.
This was never spoken by people whose minds were actually incapable of comprehension. Each and every one of them proved smart enough to perform what they deemed an impossible task. But in order to instill the confidence necessary to make it through the problems, I always had to set them straight, open their minds to the possibility that they were wrong about themselves.
At first it seemed kind of inspirational: "no one is too stupid to accomplish their goals," you know? But after it happened enough times, I started to feel like I was some brain surgeon pulling the same damn tumor out of patient after patient, skull after skull. It was a fucking epidemic of self-doubt so strong it literally affected people's entire life trajectory.
At some point, unrelated to tutoring, I wound up chatting with a stranger who had just walked out of some, "Donald Trump's key to success" kind of conference that had taken place on my campus. (It was like, 2013. I didn't know who Donald Trump was back then.) He asked me a few questions. My answers impressed him, and he called me "smart."
And I hated him instantly.
The second that word came out of his mouth, a wave of distrust and enmity washed over me, and I felt like he was trying to scam me. Mind you, I am a 5'11" 180lb man. It's not like he was practicing pickup on me. It was almost-certainly an attempt at practicing the "networking" skills he picked up from the conference he just attended. And the only reason it didn't play well to his audience was because I hated the word "smart" and hated anyone who believed in the concept.
And then, some years later, I was able to finally articulate it after someone chastised me online for calling my own actions stupid -- for using, as a commenter described it, "an ableist slur." Boy did the pieces click together after that.
This is going to seem crazy, but ladies, gentlemen, esteemed in-betweens: there is so such thing as "stupid." There never was.
The human brain is a miraculous thing. It can literally rewire itself if it needs to. With the right techniques, a brain can even be induced to repair itself after certain kinds of strokes. Meaning if, hypothetically, one were "stupid" then the proper application of societal resources could actually turn that same person smart. Just like how I was able to tutor "bad at math" students into "good at math" students.
Which is probably why Rockefeller and Carnegie were so keen on making everyone believe in the concept. Because what I just described is expensive, and if there's a ceiling on a person's potential (like "stupid"), then that gives society a really good excuse to give up on that person before spending a dime.
"We're already doing all we can for these people." the well-intentioned steel monopolist tells you, "They get every opportunity they need. The reason they struggle so much in this society? They just... aren't that bright. They were just never capable of that much to begin with."
"Stupid" is, in other words, a social Darwinist myth created by billionaires to abdicate responsibility for the poverty they were creating. And if someone expresses a belief in, "stupid" I know I cannot count on them. I hope to someday surround myself with people who despise the word and everything it stands for. Because those are the people I can trust to actually improve the world.
I have a masters degree in materials chemistry and engineering. When people find that out they often say stuff like "I could never understand that" or similar.
I am of the firm belief that I could teach anyone everything I know given enough time and motivation. The thing is, I don't think there's anything special about me that makes me capable of doing what I do, other than thinking chemistry is extremely interesting. I don't have a more capable brain or anything. I'm just a bit of a nerd.
I absolutely agree that way too many people have the misconception that you have to be "special" to do a lot of the things many people find hard. It's all about being interested enough to spend time learning it.
Holy fuck, mega based take ya got there. Social darwinism is a bane to society, deeply rooted in capitalist thought and also loved by fascists for its eugenic undertones. People get fooled that it's somehow "scientific" because it's got darwinism in the name (and because of poor education) when it's nothing but pseudoscience. Same goes for the phrase "survival of the fittest" which is a social darwinist misinterpretation of Darwin's theories.
In a similar vein, I firmly believe that everyone is creative in some way. Most people are just unable to discover what their creative interests might be because of the pressures of (over)work, because art education is so goddamn expensive, and because creative industries are incredibly exclusive and elitist. And limiting creativity severely limits our imagination, making us good little cogs for the machine.
Hell yes to all of this! Any defense of capitalism requires social darwinism.
That is, if you can get someone to comprehend what "capitalism" even is! I am astounded at how difficult it is to communicate the difference between a worker co-op and a privately owned business. To anyone!
It's weird because it seems so obvious to me. It's a difference in how the worker is treated. A difference in the dignity of their work. A whole different social contract.
I don't know what combination of words I need to use to get them to see this! It's so frustrating. How can they so easily understand the difference between a dictatorship and a representative republic, but not be able to extend that logic to how we run businesses? What kind of incredible social programming have robber barons performed on them?
Anyways, rant over for now. I agree that we are hobbled by overwork. I agree that our creativity is forcefully suppressed in order to make us better cogs. I just wish I could figure out how to spread the word.
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I find your comment interesting because you are implying that some people believe being stupid or clever is a permanent unchangeable state. Presumably one is born as either one or the other?
I would say that some ways of thinking are stupid. In particular when one does not challenge one's assumptions. It's possible to build a whole world of stupid on top of bad assumptions. If someone's entire worldview is built in this way - a whole load of bad assumptions held together with poor logic and wishful thinking - I don't think they're even living in the real world any more, they're living in a fantasy land.
Oh, yes. I am fine with the idea that every human -- regardless of their occupation or their results on an IQ test -- can engage in something that could be called "stupidity."
Absolutely everyone makes stupid mistakes. Absolutely everyone holds at least a few stupid beliefs.
But I also think when we encounter those aspects of a person, we can use better words to describe the concept. Words that don't have a social darwinist connotation. Words that no one mistakes for "permanent, unchanging" attributes.
Like: I don't like Trump supporters, but "Trump supporters have an impressive resistance to information that might challenge their worldview" is so much better than "facts don't work on them: Trump supporters can't read."
The former describes a choice these people repeatedly make. The latter is immature name-calling.
And to be honest, my main gripe with conservatism in general isn't even how its proponents handle information. (Everyone has to use heuristics to quickly estimate the reliability of a news article before believing the headline. They take as much issue with our heuristics as we take with theirs.)
My main gripe is that conservatism is a social darwinist philosophy at its core.
"Black people get lower grades. Clearly they have worse access to an environment that facilitates learning. We need to expand access to libraries and safe spaces so we can better foster these children's growth" A progressive might say.
And the conservative will respond: "you had me at 'black people get lower grades.' That says everything there is to say. They just can't compete. Strongest chimp gets the most bananas, you know?" /Shrug/
Giving up on people is practically the bedrock of modern conservatism. I would accuse them of being cruel before I would accuse them of being unable to read. I would accuse them of ignoring information that does not justify their cruelty before I would accuse them of being too stupid to process that information.