I’m sorry! I haven’t managed to stick to my schedule at all… but I haven’t given up. The fact this site is online at all is kind of a miracle, I suppose, but the best I can do is stick with it and try to iron some kinks out. I’ve been struggling with processing the immense deluge of news into a coherent whole (if I’ll even be capable of that), which has proved to be somewhat time-consuming—it’s fundamentally a matter of separating the wheat from the chaff, but when you aren’t sure what is wheat and what is chaff, it becomes a bit overwhelming. That being said I feel like I made some strides today, and I’ll try to write a little something until the end of Sunday in order to at the very least have a start. (I don’t really count the half-baked attempt already up).
Besides that, I’ve been somewhat “possessed by the demon of drawing”, so to speak. To tell a long story short, I’ve been experimenting in the last few months with ways of learning and what actually means to learn something. This led me to attempt to learn a new language through some, shall we say, unorthodox means, as well as solidifying my understanding of guitar (which I have quite decently learned by myself, if I may leave modesty aside for a moment). Thus I set upon learning how to draw, something I’ve wanted to do for many, many years. After getting myself a copy of The Keys to Drawing, by Bert Dodson, I set upon this task. And unexpectedly, I found myself unable to stop drawing.
Not literally, I mean, like in a sort of Twilight Zone setup, but drawing started to take over so much of my thinking that it drastically overshadowed everything else, including this site. I can’t really explain what happened. Maybe the (many years old) repressed desire to draw resurfacing so explosively ended up having some powerful effects upon myself. But leaving aside my personality and failed ambitions from my younger years, I’ve come to realize that starting to learn something that you have forever believed you were incapable of learning, maybe from someone else’s criticism, or maybe from internal self-critique, is one of the most powerful experiences one can have. It proves, beyond any questioning, that “yes, you too are capable of this.” Which is heartening, because it means that if you can learn that thing which you so firmly believed yourself incapable of doing, then the same probably goes for everything else as well. Too dumb for math? Maybe you’ve just been hit over the head with some such nonsense during schoolyears (as is well known, very formative years for the human being…) and thus decided to give up. I’m fairly convinced that (though it may vary in degree of effort, given some people do seem to have particular affinities for certain subjects) anyone can learn anything. And why not? All things that have ever been done were done by human hands; and if you’re human as well, why wouldn’t you be (in theory) able to do the same? It may take a long time, sure, but taking a long time and being impossible are very different things.
I’ve become quite passionate about this. Not just for myself—though I have indeed been loving to learn new things—but for other people as well. I’ve become quite annoyed when I hear people say “ah, I can’t do that, I’m not smart enough” without even really trying. I mean, it’s perfectly understandable given their life circumstances, but it just makes me wanna scream “yes! yes you are! you’re just as smart as anyone else! don’t trick yourself into thinking otherwise!” Of course, this leaves aside material circumstances: namely, time in which to study something, which in neoliberal capitalist hell is indeed very scarce, and even when available we find ourselves, quite sensibly, incapable of mustering the energy to engage in learning anything new. But I feel like making clear to as many people as possible: yes, you are capable of learning anything you want. If you’ve always dreamed of learning something, there is nothing in your constitution which impedes you (barring obviously certain disabilities, which even then one would be surprised with the ways disabled people find to circumvent their own limitations). You too are smart.
I understand this message kinda skirts close to TEDx hell “just believe and you’ll be capable” and this bothers me immensely. But it bothers me even more to see good people beaten over by life to the point of thinking that what they are is simply all there is to be. That they are fundamentally, essentially, incapable of anything else. Material circumstances limit a whole lot; they make or break so, so much. But they do not decide your capabilities. That was decided when you were born a human being—by doing so, you were born capable of doing anything a human can. Don’t let neoliberal ghouls and eugenicist scum tell you otherwise. Proletarians aren’t dumber than the bourgeois; manual workers aren’t dumber than intellectual workers. (And obviously, to the point of not needing to be mentioned, women aren’t dumber than men nor are people of any race any dumber than any other race.) To believe that is already to capitulate to the basic pretense of capitalism: that some are fit to rule, and others merely fit to serve. Who decides that? The ones on top, of course. Always. Don’t let others decide what you’re capable of. And if you need proof? Find something you always wanted to know and decide to learn it. It can be as small as some random factoids about dinosaurs, or maybe even a new language or new skill. All you need is a decent book (sometimes even bad books work as well), which is to say, somewhere where the knowledge is stored, some time to dedicate, and the belief that sooner or later you’ll get there. Maybe it’ll take a day, maybe a year. That is of little consequence. The point is merely to know that yes, you too are capable of learning, for you too are an animal capable of learning. No more, and no less.