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As American students are preparing to return to the classroom during a pandemic–in flagrant disregard of everything ranging from our scientific understanding to matters of good taste–we keep hearing from politicians how essential education is.
Of course, if they actually believed the words coming out of their mouth, you’d expect them to be a little more consistent with their treatment of teachers throughout their legislative voting records.
But while they’re pantomiming concern for our students’ education, I thought I’d take the opportunity to share some lessons you won’t hear about in the classroom. And the reason you won’t hear any of these in the classroom is because of incentives. That’s our first lesson.
Incentives Override Character
Most of the time, people are driven by two things:
- The structure of incentives in their environment
- Satisfying their own ego
If you have a passing interest in philosophy or religion, you might be familiar with the “free will” debates: Do humans have free will? It wouldn’t really matter if they did; most people will make choices based on those two factors, rather than any deep or intrinsic quality to their character.
The reason why this matters is, a lot of the bullshit adults put kids through is intended to instill certain character attributes, like grit, determination, honesty, and integrity. But the simple fact is, most adults don’t possess these qualities themselves–they’ve just accumulated the delusion that they have them. (Ask your friends how many of their upstanding, law-abiding parents hit the bong on weekends in states where marijuana isn’t legal yet, and you’ll see what I mean.)
Instead of participating in publicly accepted hazing rituals also known as extra-curricular activities, students would be better off learning the two ways to escape from the psychological tarpit that leads to poor decisions and upholding the socioeconomic status quo as if it was something worth preserving.
How to Be Better
The first escape hatch is to overcome one’s ego. There are a lot of different schools of thought about how to do this, but the most obvious example is the practice of Buddhism. Ask a Buddhist for some insight in how to accomplish this, because I certainly don’t have the answers on this one.
The other way out is to choose different incentives. This is more honest and practical for most people than expecting them to become less self-centered. Instead of desiring the same things (wealth, prestige, power), focus first on the bottom two slices of the hierarchy of needs, and then once those are met, pin your self-actualization to something downright strange. I’ll give you an example.
Incentives: The Usual Suspects
Your average American is conditioned from a young age to graduate from high school and go to college so they can secure stable employment and start a family. Not all of them follow this track, but it’s a typical expectation that gets communicated throughout the public school system’s cultural indoctrination of our youth.
Along the way, a student’s incentive structure is “outperform their peers on standardized tests to get into more prestigious colleges” then “outperform their peers to graduate higher in your classes to get a stable, well-paying job” then “outperform their coworkers to ensure job security when the downsizing hammer comes down on your department”. Competition, competition, competition. Uninspiring.
Y’know what you don’t see a whole lot? Students who aim to graduate in the bottom 10% of their class because they’re spending their college years helping others succeed and forming lifelong friendships. It might sound ridiculous, but a lot of those can yield long-term business relationships that can be spun into a successful career as an independent consultant–thereby freeing you from the “rat race” that leads to so much depression, burn-out, and failed marriages because one or both partners is working so damn much.
Get creative with your incentives. You get to decide what motivates you (beyond a threshold of what’s determined through genetics and epigenetics, anyway). So why choose the same high-demand, low-supply incentives everyone else chooses? Where’s the fun in that?
I say it’s okay to be weird. And this isn’t my own incentives speaking. I gain nothing by strangers being less self-conscious and insecure about this, since I’m already surrounded by friends who are (in their own way) just as weird as I am.
And if you’re afraid of being ostracized and losing yourself in the process of embracing your weirdness, at least that will be instrumental in overcoming your own ego.
On Kindness and Weakness
Going back to my previous hypothetical example of a student aspiring to be in the bottom 10% of their graduating class (because they’re focused on helping their low-performing peers achieve higher than they otherwise would), anyone who attempts this in earnest will likely find themselves with both a greater understanding of the subject matter and greatly improved communication skills.
To another student with a purely competitive mindset aiming for the top 10% and a “perfect” 4.0 GPA, the behavior of our hypothetical nonconformist might seem like weakness. They might call them an underachiever (or some modern euphemism that may or may not also be a dog-whistle meme for something racist).
But is attaining greater mastery of your chosen field and better skills at explaining topics to non-experts really a form of weakness? This is yet another crack in the armor of the bullshit indoctrination that our society likes to subject us all to, but our education system should aspire to counteract every chance it gets.
Most people confuse kindness for weakness, and the worst of us choose to exploit weakness for their own selfish gain. However, this tendency is in itself exploitable: It makes assholes predictable to the point of being tiresome.
If you choose to be kind in the areas where you’re the strongest, this will do two things: First, it will completely fuck over the plots of the terrible. And second, it will make life a little more pleasant for the rest of us.
I call that a win-win.
If you take nothing else away from this blog, remember this: The purest expression of integrity, personal conviction, and resilience is through kindness, empathy, and compassion.
Anyone who doesn’t understand this is trying too hard to be macho, to deflect from their own deep-seated insecurities. It almost makes you wonder what their incentives are.
Ignorance and Stupidity
Ignorance gets a bad rap. It’s perfectly acceptable to not know something, even if it’s something everyone else knows. As long as you’re aware of your own ignorance and actively seeking the knowledge you lack, there’s nothing to be ashamed about.
On the other hand, willful ignorance–where you don’t know something, and don’t want to know it–is a form of stupidity. But being stupid isn’t the same thing as being ignorant.
Stupidity (for lack of a better term) doesn’t usually stem from a lack of knowledge. Consequently, you can’t inform someone into being less stupid. Careless? Sure. But stupid? Not a chance.
Stupidity–or at least the American brand of stupidity we’re all too familiar with especially from four years with Donald Trump as president–stems from believing in things that are untrue rather than not knowing.
Therefore, the correct word for people who support a Trump presidency in 2020 isn’t “ignorant”. Instead, these people fall into two camps that have distinct words to describe them: Bigoted and spiteful. (And if you don’t think that’s true, try sitting down to watch the news with one of them in a relaxed environment and watch how long it takes them to say something racist, homophobic, or otherwise hateful. You won’t need the patience of a saint to observe results, although it might help with escaping the encounter with your blood pressure at a healthy level.)
When discussing stupidity, it’s tempting for writers to point to obvious examples like anti-vaxxers or the Flat Earth Society and insist, “This is what stupidity looks like.” But this does a lot of harm. Focusing on extreme and obvious examples trains your mental heuristics to expect stupidity to be broadly or generally obvious. It isn’t. Stupidity is subtle, pernicious, and ubiquitous.
A specific example: Any gay person that supports the so-called “LGB Alliance” is stupid because they’re being manipulated into attacking transgender people by right-wing jerk-offs who want to create a wedge in the LGBT community in order to divide and conquer us and ultimately deprive us of our civil rights. It’s also stupid because it stems from beliefs that have been thoroughly debunked by science.
Stupidity ultimately comes from two main sources:
- Authority figures and institutions
- Our brains’ tendency to invent and believe stories
Sometimes, possibly as a result of trauma, our cognitive storytellers decide to distrust official sources even if they’re not associated with political power. This is why stupid people believe stupid conspiracy theories: Anyone who could disprove it is perceived to be part of the conspiracy.
Rather than fall for these trappings, a much more reasonable position is to default to a mild distrust and to judge sources of information on their own merits. Make them earn your trust.
But this requires effort, so nobody does this consistently. Still, you can get a lot of mileage out of limiting your media consumption to unbiased and pro-science publications.
Why These Lessons Matter
Anyone capable of reading and comprehending the lessons I’m sharing today will find themselves more capable of resisting the trappings of modern American society.
If enough of us do this, we can pull the rug out from under the feet of the wealthy business interests that continue to make the American education system terrible (through lobbying and/or monopolies on textbook publishing). Ideally, this would especially harm these companies’ soulless advertising and marketing efforts by rendering them less effective. Good riddance to bad garbage.
https://soatok.blog/2020/08/21/a-few-missing-lessons-from-american-education/
#America #AmericanEducation #education #ignorance #incentives #kindness #lessons #Politics #Society #stupidity #weakness
As America prepares for record-breaking infection statistics on a daily basis, many of us are looking at other countries safely reopening and wondering, “Why can’t we have nice things?”
What you see if you type “COVID-19 statistics” into a search engine. Data sourced from Wikipedia.
Of course, everyone has their favorite target to blame for this catastrophe. Democrats blame Republicans. Republicans blame Democrats.
I’m not interested in blame. Regardless of who takes the blame in the end, the responsibility for fixing this problem is shared among everyone. Instead, I’m more interested in answering the “Why?” question.
Why Did Things Get This Bad?
Art by circuitslime.
There are a lot of popular theories–many of them politically useful–about why the COVID-19 crisis is particularly bad in the United States.
A Failure of Trump’s Leadership?
Let’s get this one out of the way:Was the current hellscape we found ourselves in a direct consequence of Donald J Trump’s failure to ethically and responsibly use his power as President of the United States in the best interest of the people?
https://www.youtube.com/embed/svrxYLvJYto?feature=oembed
“It’ll miraculously go away in April!” – Morons
It’s certain that Trump has totally failed at leadership, but I don’t think that’s a satisfactory explanation for the current crisis.https://www.youtube.com/embed/s9vzT-0hchw?feature=oembed
That is not to say that Trump is without fault! Just that the problem is bigger than one idiot in a three piece suit.
Challenges Due to Scale?
A lot of the countries that performed better at responding to COVID-19 had smaller populations and occupied smaller land masses than the United States. Is that a reasonable explanation for why the USA suffers?Per-capita analyses and samples from other countries with similar populations and occupied surface area would be consistent with the USA if that was the reason. This problem is mostly uniquely American.
Are the Protesters at Fault?
COVID-19 has an incubation period of up to two weeks.The first signs of an uptick in COVID-19 infections was visible early into the nationwide Black Lives Matter protests, which implicates an earlier cause. The most likely one was the Memorial Day weekend celebrations that took place before George Floyd’s murder sparked widespread outrage.
Indeed, a further analysis did not show an uptick of COVID-19 infections even 4 weeks into the nationwide protests (which is two incubation periods).
Instead, the sharp spike in COVID-19 infections–factoring in the incubation period–coincided with states reopening their bars and restaurants. (Especially Florida.)
Why Things Are So Bad Today
The problem that America faces is the same one we’ve been faced with for many decades: Rampant Anti-Intellectualism.https://www.youtube.com/embed/bZnBL2dFgyI?feature=oembed
American anti-intellectualism is the juxtaposition of proud ignorance and conspiracy theories.
Let me ask all you female mask wearing ASSHOLES… are you ready to put a burka on next?That mask is NOT about your safety…. it's about MIND CONTROL
The only reason I know masks are worthless is because Andrew Cuomo keeps telling EVERYONE to wear one
Stick it up your ass!
— 🇺🇸🍺TRUMP WON🍺🇺🇸 (@PISDI94_96) June 30, 2020
Tweet is also archived in case it gets deleted.
Anti-intellectualism takes many forms:Every single time y'all tell me you're not ready to submit a talk on a subject you've been researching for months, I want you to think about "I don't actually ride in Ubers" internet-commentator guy. pic.twitter.com/aK2LAcFtzb— Lesley Carhart (@hacks4pancakes) July 1, 2020
People are so willing to die on the hill of their ignorance that even literally dying doesn’t deter them from campaigning for self-destruction.
RIGHT NOW: Dozens are marching in Sanford chanting “My body. My choice.” They are protesting after a mask order went into place in Seminole County today. pic.twitter.com/kMT7EebDKN— Stephanie Buffamonte (@StephBuffamonte) July 1, 2020
The reason that things are so bad in the United States of America boils down to the following:
- Too many Americans are proud to be ignorant, and in many cases, argue in support of “my ignorance is just as good as your facts”.
- Too many Americans are susceptible to bullshit conspiracy theories.
- Too many Americans are so selfish and short-sighted that they’d rather go to bars and waste money they don’t have on alcohol and shallow conversation than save the lives of the people they profess to love and care about.
- Conservative politics and media is a death cult that literally turned “wearing a mask to stop COVID-19” into a culture war issue.
- The people I’ve described in points 1-4 vote in every election, to make sure someone representing their bullshit has a seat at the political table.
It’s far too tempting to scapegoat the sitting President–especially when they’re as terrible as Donald J Trump. But if you do that, you’re ignoring the reason that he’s in the oval office to begin with.
Willful Ignorance Kills
I’ve talked about this before, when I used to write on Medium:
- https://medium.com/@soatok/american-ignorance-in-2020-c72c78d11dbb
- https://medium.com/@soatok/dear-furries-bullshit-and-misinformation-will-hurt-you-4a6f531d62bd
The sole cause for the situation we’re in is the same anti-intellectualism that Isaac Asimov complained about back in 1980.
Even if you want to solely blame Donald Trump, about 40% of Americans currently approve of his presidency (archive).
How to Escape This Hellscape
Art by Swizz.
The only way to get out of the mess we’re in today is to stop tolerating ignorance and bullshit in your daily life. (Yes, this means you too, furry fandom! It’s not “all fun and games” anymore.)
That means, at a minimum:
- Not spreading the Myers-Brigg personality test bullshit
- Not giving the anti-LGBTQIA+ bigots at Chick-Fil-A any money
- Listening to experts (this means: SCIENTISTS, not talk show hosts or politicians)
- Being willing to admit “I don’t know” and then being curious enough to seek the truth
- Stop reading or financially supporting biased news media
Even if we manage to get out of the current COVID-19 hellscape without addressing these flaws, the next catastrophe will hit us just as hard.
Can People’s Minds Be Changed?
No. I don’t think most of the willfully ignorant assholes currently living in America that favor Trump’s presidency today are willing and capable of redemption.There will be exceptions, and we should remain open to the possibility of some people coming around, but in general most of these jerks will dig their heels in when pressured.
Instead, we’re going to have to wait for them to die off naturally.
What we can do in the meantime is promote better education for the American kids.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/ILQepXUhJ98?feature=oembed
A nation of enlightened free-thinkers fully capable of critical thought would be a good thing (even if Carlin thinks it will never happen). And we can get there, eventually.
All it takes is everyone deciding to be humble and actually verify what other people tell them (n.b. by referencing reputable sources).
It might not make a difference today, but in 10 or 20 years, a consistent effort to enable younger Americans to become smarter, wiser, and more empathetic than their parents and grandparents will change the political landscape of our country–and maybe even the world–for the better.
Art by Khia
Of course, the Powers That Be know that, which is why we see bullshit like this keep happening during a pandemic:
With a stroke of his veto pen, Gov. Ron DeSantis wiped out the entire $29.4 million budget for a suite of online education services that have become critical to students and faculty during the Covid-19 outbreak https://t.co/6PMop4SIPv— POLITICO (@politico) June 30, 2020
Remember, DeSantis is the governor of the state whose COVID-19 infections-per-day graph looks like this:
You can see a clear data pattern with Florida's COVID-19 with a lull each Sunday. I've computed the baseline for this week (Sunday's numbers) and the last two weeks' increase relative to Sunday. We're easily on track to hit 10,000 new cases Friday-ish, maybe even higher. pic.twitter.com/8pnXF5uEwR— 💙💛 "Dog Boy" Nex' 💙💛 (@NexJql) July 1, 2020
It won’t be easy. Bullshit is everywhere. But it’s doable.
Addendum: A Carnival of Stupid
In case you still had any doubt about the potent lethality of American anti-intellectualism, look no further than this story:Florida teen dies after conspiracy theorist mom takes her to church ‘COVID party’ and tries to treat her with Trump-approved drug: report – https://t.co/Bw3SMVitxx— Jeffrey Levin 🇺🇦 (@jilevin) July 6, 2020
We have to demand better of ourselves before we can demand better of others. But damn if the bar isn’t really, really low to begin with.
I believe someday we'll open up textbooks and find this screenshot under the definition of "cognitive dissonance". pic.twitter.com/n535Obq6SB— 🦊 Ennex is trying this again! 🦊 (@EnnexTheFox) July 7, 2020
The White House Press Secretary on Trump's push to reopen schools: "The science should not stand in the way of this."
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) July 16, 2020
https://soatok.blog/2020/07/02/how-and-why-america-was-hit-so-hard-by-covid-19/
