Battleangel | Personal

Quite an ugly title. I just had this epiphany a couple of weeks ago. A flashback and so I tried to drift back in my mind, way back to my childhood and primary school and come up with specific ways that socialization molded me, or at least attempted to do so. Socialization is a broad phenomena but I focused mainly on events which seemed nonsensical back than, and remain so to this day. Events that seem utilitarian from the standpoint of society and not so much a survival tactic or even useful for the individual. Eh, whatever, the bottom line is, things I could think of that could be considered pure indoctrination based on what I now know. I came up with three specific events …

• The Calculator I remember not being able to grasp why I couldn’t just use a calculator in math. I do not remember these days with great clarity but I think I had a calculator confiscated once. Doesn’t matter how it played out. To this day it aggravates me. And in the grand scheme of things, I wasted so many good years doing pointless things. In an environment that never suited me. To think what I could have become if I had been free of all those shackles, of which the notion that one should do algebra without the aid of machines is one.
• The Calendar It was among the first things new pupils were told to do, apart from making sure they could read an analogue clock. Everyone was instructed to start using a pocket calendar. So I did. For a couple of months, during which time I noted less and less in that blasted thing. Time. That is what the modern society values above all else. I have never used a calendar since. I have tried, but every time I do it sits there unused. My motto is that if you have so many things to remember that you can’t keep them in your head then maybe you should find something better to do. You’re probably overworked and exploited. Also, if something is worth remembering, then you can probably accomplish this without the small stack of rectangular papers bound together, that we call a calendar.
• The Plagiarism For some reason this is the worst thing you can do when you’re at school. And I’m not talking about a perfect 1:1 copy. No, just the notion that you’re not being totally original. As if it’s possible to be completely original. I remember this play, theater of sort, totally awful but still, and I had just spent hours and hours copying a storybook instead of writing my own story. And the brilliant part was that I never understood the difference. Most other kids did. As I recall it about 90-95% of them anyway.
  Or in another instance, when you have memorized something and try to pass your assignment by reciting the information, because your opinion is that the end result is the same in terms of personal and group learning. When I look back I believe this was my first run-in with intellectual property, even if it was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. And I still haven’t accepted that one.
  Lets not kid ourselves. Mimicking is something natural. It is learning at its finest. It does not contradict school policy as such, at least not the spirit of learning, but it is not desirable based on the economic reality that we live in. Of course, no one told me that back then. Welcome to the real world.

I can see now that I always was a bit difficult. Didn’t just appear out of the blue. The important thing is to see it as an asset.