My boyfriend, an enthusiast of all things sports, has always held a lack of respect for self-proclaimed super-fans whose opinions seem as though they are repeatedly recorded and spit-fired from the latest SportsCenter episode.
The wiser of these followers take time to dig deeper into the tweets of their most-trusted reporter. He constantly stresses that people should learn sports by watching sports. Duh, right? But instead of watching 162 games 9 innings through, we turn to our MLB app for the updates. Instead of watching endless college film, we start our rookie fantasy player because the Ian Rapoport’s and Stephen A.’s of the world tell us to.
Nassim Taleb’s The Black Swan, a book I recently read (not the Natalie Portman ballerina kind), is one of those slow and painful reads. You despise the process and the microscopic script full of unnecessarily ornamental language until you’re viewing it in retrospect and think dammit, that book changed me. And here we are. You can quote that for a review, Taleb. He has defined a name for people that fall to this concept:
“Bildungsphilister: a philistine with cosmetic, nongenuine culture. Nietzsche used this term to refer to the dogma-prone newspaper reader and opera lover with cosmetic exposure to culture and shallow depth. I extend it to the buzzword-using researcher in nonexperimental fields who lacks in imagination, curiosity, erudition, and culture and is closely centered on his ideas, on his ‘discipline.’”
Sigh. IN OTHER WORDS the majority of the population with minimal exposure to culture who gather their knowledge from people who have bottled and contorted it to be sold to them and to appeal to their interests. Exhale. As a whole, we have fallen to this lackluster way of discovering the world. In sports, it may be a type of person, but in life, this is the norm.
Some present this idea questioning conspiracy or motives of the government, ad agencies, media, etc. but why don’t we question it from our end? Let’s ask ourselves, to what extent are our beliefs and views simply a product of the opinions around us? Let’s question where our “imagination, curiosity, and erudition” for the world has gone.
Ask me my opinion on immigration or gun control. Ask me what I think about vegetarianism and animal rights. I’ll tell you the same thing, I don’t know. People are often so afraid of the unknown that they scrounge to find evidence for a particular belief and cling to it for dear life as if a revision to their belief is indicative to a revision of the meaning of their very existence. But maybe a lack of knowledge isn’t what’s ‘wrong’ so to speak. Maybe what’s so wrong is a lack of drive to find out.
Coming out of undergraduate school, people act as if you’ve achieved some higher level of intelligence by earning a degree. Congratulations, you know the ins-and-outs of the DSM-5 and how to calculate Debt-Equity ratio; here’s a certificate for your time and money! However, it is not a sense of fulfillment I felt receiving my degree. It is a hunger for the unknown. A desire to know the world, not in the way that a textbook can tell you. Not in the way that you can learn about from NBC or CNN or your parents.
When Aaron Rodgers became the starting quarterback for the Green Bay Packers in 2008 I went to Lambeau Field to decide how I felt about him, not to my TV set. He's won a SuperBowl and I've had my braces removed since then, but I’m leaving for the same reason and you should too. In my case, I’m picking up my life and dropping it across the ocean for a while. I’m getting away to learn marketing and economics and psychology and philosophy and life from none other than the world itself in its own raw form.
I’m not telling you to pick up and move across the world, but just get away. Turn off your TV and radio, ignore the reporters and politicians and maybe even the opinions of your elders a little bit (sorry mom and dad). Leave by exploring what’s outside your bedroom door with an open mind. Don’t turn your head to things that go against what you know, find joy in encountering them. Be willing to let discovery influence you, even when its uncomfortable. Challenge yourself to view the world through unpolluted lenses before you form thoughts on greenhouse gases. Ba-boom-Ch. But seriously. Get out there and live.
*I would like to take this time to thank everyone that encouraged me to go against the current in order to go after this dream and, in particular, my parents and grandfather for providing me with the tools and support to achieve it.*
