Otaku and Instrumental Reason (Draft)

This is the first draft of an essay that I'd like to clean up sometime soon. I am posting it here partly just to motivate myself to edit it, and partly just because I think someone might find it interesting. It is EXTREMELY messy, and I went back and forth and all over the place during the writing process. The point I was initially planning on making exploded into something completely different by the time I was done, and I still have yet to fully synthesize the disparate points I was making. Appended to the end (after another divider line) are some additional notes I took the following morning that I would like to integrate into the finished essay. Good luck if you actually plan to read this; you're going to need it, lol.

This is gonna be my Marx-Zasulich correspondence fr.

Last preface note: These brain dump historical reflection writing activities are a delightful meta-cognitive exercise and I learn so much.

There's a frustration that I have about myself. The most interesting people to me are those who have intense passion and interest in a specific subject and have a lot of accumulated knowledge and experience in that area. For the purposes of this essay, I'll refer to them as "otaku". Of course, otakus don't have to be otaku about anything related to Japanese media like anime, manga, or visual or light novels. There can be train otaku, math otaku, left-com otaku, or anything else you like.

Here's where the frustration comes in. Despite my interest and admiration for these people, I can't help but feel like I'm nothing like them, or that I can't reach their level. My interests are too diffuse and non-commital to actually have extended knowledge about things. I suppose for a while I was an Overwatch otaku, but that feels rather disappointing. Maybe I'm just resenting the fact that I chose a poor thing to care about.

Don't get me wrong, I had a good time with Overwatch. I met a lot of cool people, learned a lot, challenged myself, and was able to feel accomplished plenty of the time. It was compelling to have something I cared about. But that is no longer the case, and hasn't been for some time. I suppose I never really cared about going pro for real, and just enjoyed the process and the experience itself of improving and problem solving in a game with so many variables. And when I got to the point to where it became clear that those around me were primarily motivated by going pro, that was incredibly alienating and confusing for me. That combined with the game's increasingly sparce updates and the community decaying away, it just sort of became less and less compelling over time. Which is a weird thing for me to say because the community was never something I had cared about before getting into teams with more serious players; I had just been enjoying the game and personal improvement, and never cared about the culture or streamers or the latest Contenders match. All of the sudden the social things mattered, and quickly that became the only thing that mattered since that's all anyone cared about. So my interest and passion dwindled over time, and for multiple seasons at the end of Overwatch 1 I just played enough competitive to get barely Grandmaster and maybe cheese out top 500 all roles because it was easy to do without skill and it was all I was capable of. Since Overwatch 2, my interest has not changed really. The game sucks and it is never going to be what made me so passionate all those years ago. So at this point, the main thing I invested time into and might have been an otaku about is mostly just irrelevant in my life.

But more than just wasted time on a hobby, I think the problem goes deeper. You see, from a pretty young age I think I realized school was bullshit, or at least a performance. You do your best not when actually pursuing something you find interesting or compelling, but rather just writing some bullshit and making sure it ticks the boxes on the rubric. It's pretty simple once you make a habit of it and discipline your will and become a docile subject with no internal motivation. Looking back, its incredibly fucking depressing but I can't deny that it is rather efficient. None of that was really a consciously motivated thing or explicit, it was just my understanding of how school worked. You show up and do whatever is asked of you; your personal desires and interests are irrelevant and just get in the way. Which I think can be an effective strategy if you're self consciously engaging in it and keeping some cognitive distance from the situation, but is just dishearteningly ideological when not intentional.

I remember reading a fair bit in elementary school: like kid's fiction novels and stuff like that. But even that was like something heavily heavily encouraged by my parents and about the child they wanted to see. I'm sure it has served me well, but it just feels like a weird thing to look back on. Here are the good hobbies: take your pick. Not much of a choice.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm not sure if I really had passions or interests growing up. Like I have memories of kind of liking certain things: at one point I was really into bugs and their science, and I liked Spider-Man for a while. But those were very surface level and transient interests. Which like, sure, you were a child, give yourself a break there bud, but idk. In middle school I remember being pretty into playing Minecraft in the morning before anyone else woke up, usually around 4 AM. But again it's not like I really dug deep into anything, like learned how to make cool redstone things or design pretty buildings or whatever. I just played on prison servers or something and grinded away.

But again, that was still middle school so maybe it's a bit unfair? At the same time though I remember feeling self-conscious in middle school about the fact that other people knew things I didn't. Like wait, you guys retain the information from classes instead of just submitting an assignment an moving on? Or have your own consistent interests? What's that all about?

As a kid, something else I did was play with and accumulate various toys. I had a ton of Bionicle and Bakugon and Beyblades. This does not neatly fit into the rest of the thesis that all my activities were oriented towards someone else's ends, but I think it's important to clarify that that isn't quite the point I'm trying to make. It's not that there was some totalizing authoritarian presence that prevented me from engaging in anything outside of that paradigm, rather that I had a lot of early experience that created this type of world view and understanding in me, that this was how desire ought to work. Ultimately I think these are fun playthings when I am young, but were pretty unreflective and mostly just a pretty low level of enjoyment (which is fine!). The point is that I did not really become a Bakugon otaku. In this way its a bit like the minecraft discussed later. This isn't really a serious endevour that I'm undertaking, it's just short-term simple immediate pleasure. Connecting the two central points in this post, the ideological approach to desire only really applies to effortful activity that has the latent potential to become something I could be an otaku over. That's when it begins to rear its head and distort my understanding, and so it more or less irrelevant to simple pleasures like this. If I were to start really becoming interested in learning about Beyblades, then I would be confronted with the question "what is the point?" to which I would have no good response. Why are you working so hard? Why do you care? That's what school or learning by other enforcement is for! i think this is why I'm so impressed by self-directed education; I feel I never had the chance to develop the skills on my own, and now that I've begun to experience it I can see how incredibly powerful it is.

Another activity I did was plays. I performed at the community theatre, school theatre, and a private company's youth plays. To be honest I'm not entirely sure to make sense of this. I don't really understand how it got started. I can't imagine I asked given the age at which I started in elementary school. In any event once I started there were a few things that kept me going. One of them was just momentum and continuity. Why am I doing this? Oh, right, because it's just another thing on my list of activities, and becomes just a natural part of life. Of course I will enroll in the next play offered, it is quite literally just not a question. Was I having fun? I don't know, and it's kind of besides the point. What even was fun? How am I supposed to know it when I feel it, if I can't be sure I've ever felt it. And the people around me had every incentive to keep me going doing these things. Speaking specifically about the private company, as this was the bulk of my acting and also the earliest: the director and her family became pretty close with me over time since I had done so many plays. I had a crush on her daughter, and since she was in the plays too, that was a nice extra motivation. The director had the monetary incentive to keep me coming and wanted her daughter to be happy (she liked me too; the whole dynamic was pretty apparent). My mom wanted to feel like she was providing good activities to her child and raising them properly. As long as I didn't protest too loudly the train would just keep on chugging. I'm not saying that anyone in particular imposed this upon me maliciously or blaming anyone, I'm saying I had a flawed worldview when approaching activities and obligations. Theatre got a little weirder when I wasn't in the private company's productions. At the community theatre there were a lot of kids from different schools and the cast size was very large. I didn't really speak to anyone, even those in my grade level at my school. I think this demonstrates very well the problem I'm getting at. I did not personally care about performing intrinsically all that much; I did not enjoy the people I was with or the rehersals, I just did it because that is the thing I was supposed to do. I remember finding it annoying receiving praise or when people would show up to watch me perform.

Another middle school hobby I had was running or track and field. Again, not really sure what was the deal with that. I think I started doing track and cross country before I started dating S, so that can't be it. I never particularly cared about sports in general at all before or since. Though I do remember actually enjoying cross country at some points, and this seemed at least somewhat more of a self-motivated activity. It felt nice to run and it was something I was fairly good at, so it wasn't too humilating and was rather a source of confidence I think. Actually, I was very good for my age. I think I was one of the top 3 runners in our school district, and the other two went to a different school that we mainly met during races. My body was changing with puberty and I think this was a good way for me to exercise those changes and feel good in my body. At least at first this was all pretty enjoyable. I'm not sure if I was just becoming more anxious overall or what, but I was invited to nationals to run and I pretended being sick to avoid it. I think I have a habit of having my hobbies ruined for me once they become externally significant like that. Similar to Overwatch, once being the best became the primary focus, I just didn't care anymore at all. Also, track and field was not very fun for me at all. The runs were too short for me to compete very strongly and I didn't enjoy them. I liked having a consistent pace and running for endurance and these were just too short. I would run the 1600, 800, and 400 meter races. The mile was really the only mildly enjoyable of those three, but we were required to sign up for three by the coaches. Again though, track became just a *thing I did* and wasn't really questioned. Especially once S got involved and did track too, it became not really an option at that point. Also, I got injured and had surgery done, so I became pretty avoidant of athletic things for a while.

The other hobby I can think of from that earlier period of my life was music, but that also wasn't really much of a choice. My parents enrolled me in piano lessons from our neighbor, who owns a company that does music lessons. So I would go over to her house every week and would practice in between, which my parents were keen on making sure I did. This wasn't a choice on my part at all really, and was just something they wanted for some unknown reason. I do remember complaining, especially closer to the end, but mostly it was just treated as another natural fact of life that I had no control over and just had to comply with. When I got to middle school we had to take a music class, and so I chose percussion given my piano background. Again, not really my choice. So as soon as both of those things were no longer required, I dropped them.

One wrinkle in the way I've been presenting the music side of things so far is that I actually chose to do music activities outside of requirements. For example, there was a small ensemble group that met in the mornings before school in middle school, and also jazz band that met after school. However, these are pretty easily explained away by me just wanting to spend time with my girlfriend at the time. And honestly I didn't really have a lot of agency in those choices (or the relationship in general really), so I don't think that quite contradicts what I've been saying. If you had asked me at the time I'm sure I would have told you that they were my choices [1], but I suppose part of the story I'm trying to tell is how systematically deprived I was of any real understanding of personal interest or agency. I would just go along with things that people asked from me. And I say that as if it's exclusively a past tense thing, but I absolutely do it now as well. It's a nice comfortable resting place to return to when I'm interacting socially. I don't think it feels very nice and I find it rather draining to constantly maintain that type of approach, but I'm not sure if I learned any other way. Maybe that's why I am an introvert. Because my model of social interaction is so distorted and confused that it's just safer to be alone.

[1] Actually, I might not have. At the time I very explicitly adopted a relationship philosophy that was about being subservient to your partner. If I could just make her happy, then I would be happy. Maybe that could lead to somewhat acceptable outcomes if both people were committed to it, but my partner absolutely was not and more or less took advantage of that to have me do a lot of things I didn't really want to. It took me a long time to realize this and to recognize it as something negative, and was rather painful overall.

If we want to get psychoanaltical, in the actual psychoanalysis sense, one thing that I think is an interesting through line here is the consistent practice of having a woman in my life determine my activities for me. Crush girl in theatre, and to a much greater extent jazz girlfriend in middle school. Yes, I will do any activity if it makes you happy. This is how I show I care about you, right? This is how I get you to like me? If I just make my personality and activity match what you expect from me, I can't do the wrong thing. Because of the type of relationship my middle school dating experience was, this actually became a pretty big source of anxiety for me. I need to check in with you, I need your approval, I need to not upset you. And this wasn't just me having a weird approach, this was enforced on her side a lot. If I broke from expectation or screwed up in some way I would be met with derision and humiliation. Her approval became my entire goal in life. Or rather, just not disappointing her became my entire goal in life. Every action was a new chance for something to go wrong. My speech, my clothes, my actions were all critiqued constantly. I was never enough. Even after this relationship I had a lot of lingering problems with this.

Another activity I started that had potential for me to become an otaku about was cubing (as in Rubik's Cubes). Something I think that is worth noting is that I developed this hobby after S and I broke up. I think that makes sense given what I've talked about here in terms of anxiety and once that direct influence was gone I could pursue things without so much judgement (although as we will very soon see, the anxiety clearly stuck around in its own internalized way). I was introduced to it by some other people in my class (not like they showed me specifically, they just brought theirs to school and I was impressed). I brought the terrible, old, impossible to turn cube from home that you had to use a full hand to twist and by the end of one solve your wrists hurt into school and started picking up some things. Eventually I learned how to do it myself and ended up purchasing a ton of cubes. it's a bit of an aside but I feel like this is a distinctly upper-middle-class child thing to do. You have a hobby about an item and you just buy a shit ton of them and that like counts as the hobby kind of. Idk, weird. That's not to say I didn't put a lot a lot of hours into practicing and solving and using them; it's just I used like 5 cubes mainly and had about 40 that were just occasional novelties. Anyways, I would bring a cube into school every day and would practice at home. The initial motivation was just fascination with problem solving and figuring it out. It felt really great to complete the solve for the first time, and to be able to consistently do it without the help of written algorithms was very nice. It was also cool to work on improving times I started going to competitions and that was interesting. I think at first it was just like a curiousity thing like oh this is a thing I care about and theres like a convention for it and this is a thing people do. It was just interesting to be in an environment where people had a shared hobby. It's a bit unclear the extent to which I enjoyed actually competing. I certainly was never thinking I wanted to compete to be the best or anything. I think I mostly just liked improving myself and theres always this lingering doubt when you scramble your own cubes that they're not real enough and having it on record is like oh yeah thats a thing. Mostly though I think it was just a way to be like "oh this event is coming up so I have motivation to practice because it's on my mind". Also it was sometimes nice to have time periods to set personal goals, like "I want to have a sub-30 3x3 average by the time of this competition".

It's a bit unclear why I lost interest in cubing, though I don't think it a coincidence that my last competition was days before high school started. The old group of kids that were into it all sort of moved on by that point, and even though I would still bring cubes in, it was a lot more socially discouraged by both peers and faculty. It was just a very different environment and things felt a lot more vulnerable in a certain way. To give an example, I used to make videos about cubing and post them to YouTube. Cube unboxings, solve times, tutorials, etc. I even made a little logo thing with my initials for the channel and made little transparent stickers to put on my cubes. One day in high school, a classmate found the channel. They laughed at it and I didn't like that, so I literally just deleted my channel right there in class, lol. Lots of anxiety and insecurity clearly. Although it was certainly a hobby I had for a while, I never became an otaku about it really. I wasn't dedicated to grinding out a world record or even learning the absolute optimal solving algorithms. I still liked solving casually in my free time, and continue to do so to this day. In this way it's a bit of an outlier in terms of my activities. I did a thing mostly for the internal gratification and it seems like is not nearly as hindered by the instrumental-intrinsic distinction. I attribute this mostly to accident, and not any development in my understanding. The hobby itself lended itself nicely to this approach with implicit goals, and there wasn't a lot of external pressure to perform in a particular way. My parents had no expectation that I would become a pro cuber, and were content to just support a hobby. It just happened to be a hobby with a lot of depth that lent itself to goal oriented progression while being playful seeming enough to not take seriously as having any instrumental good as a primary aim.

Something I'd like to note is the development in my thinking about things. In elementary school it was "Why would I expend effort to learn this thing? That's what school is for!" (which was not a literal explicit thought process but more the best way to explain my behavior and approach to avoiding being an otaku). But after that I think it increasingly developed into me enjoying a hobby or interest until it became clear that there was some goal in mind, and then becoming disgusted and disinterested immediately. I think this prefigured my vulgar rejection later. For example, I liked running cross country for a lot of reasons: nice for my body, nice to feel good at a thing, etc. That also can include other goals even like trying to get a better race time. But when it became a nationals thing I immediately lost interest, and I think that was the major event that made me shift to having a bad taste in my mouth when thinking about cross country, and subsequently dropping out.

In high school my parents pushed very had for me to get a job. So at 14 I began working at a resturaunt near where we lived. I started extremely anxious, but over time began to enjoy the people I was with. This was a weird thing for me. I did not really care about the money, and never bought anything anyways. From a young age my parents and specifically father had emphasized "financial literacy," which mainly meant abstaining from any spending. Using money had a very dirty association in my mind for the longest time, and it still feels wasteful and gross to even purchase food for myself. But back to work, this again became an activity that was just expected from me and that I had no real choice over. Every weekend I would work 10-15 hours, and this was sort of just naturalized. Similar to basically all my relationships at the time, it was one of subordination. I wanted to please my bosses, managers, co-workers, whomever. Everyone was older than me and bossed me around and I worked extremely hard. I mastered multiple kitchen roles and helped out wherever I could, and went above and beyond what was required constantly. At the time I don't think I really thought much of it; that was just what people wanted out of me, so that's what I did.

A massive shift took place by the time I reached high school in terms of my personality. I used to be a pretty boisterous person. I would speak up in class, tell a lot of jokes, and just generally be a pretty loud and snarky person overall. There's a lot I could try to unpack psychologically about why I felt that need and it would undoubtably involve patriarchy to a significant extent, but to be honest I don't know if I've done the work yet to figure that all out. Regardless, I became a pretty anxious person after S. That being said, I think my more lively personality stuck around for freshman year, but the largest change happened between freshman and sophomore year of high school. I went to a youth retreat thing for Young Life, which is like some Christian organization thing my parents had me attend every week. Basically they did a bunch of goofy social activities and then had a bible study or a powerpoint about god or something. I didn't really know anyone too closely at the weekly meetings. They were all people around my age, but were in a different clique than I was. Or rather, they had a clique and I didn't really fit in much of anywhere. But they were definitely the "popular kids" type of thing. I was kind of friends with one of the boys that was a bit softer than most of the other popular boys, and he hung out with the girls mostly. I certainly didn't fit in with the jocks type of crowd or popular girls, and so he was the closest thing I had to a person I knew. Most of the time though, he just hung out with the popular girls and I just sorta sat on the sidelines watching people do things, or awkwardly participating in activities even though I didn't fit in well at all. The leaders definitely noticed and chatted with me a bunch when I was alone, but there's nothing you could really do to help. They didn't really like me, I didn't really like them, I didn't really like the activities. But of course not attending was not even an option, because not going means not having bible indoctrination which means hell so that's just a thing I had to do because my parents would not budge. Anyway Young Life had this summer camp that my parents made me attend. But when I say "camp" I mean it very loosely. They own this massive area called Timber Wolf Lake and it has a ton of dorms, shops, dining halls, zip lines, basketball courts, volleyball sand pits, like its very bougie. Anyway that's all well and good I suppose but I had no friends and didn't particularly care for any of the activities. Since all the athlete type popular people were there it wasn't very fun to do, plus I was still wary of athletic things due to my previous surgery. It was definitely an event that only really worked if you had friends. There was plenty of structured activities like places I was supposed to be at certain times, but when I didn't I was kinda just awkwardly lost and bored. I don't think I had a smart phone at this point, and even then I think they took them away so it's not like I could just hide away and watch YouTube or something. It was a pretty alienating experience. And thats not to mention the more explicitly miserable aspects. Dorming with other boys was awful and I hated it. I was so uncomfortable. They were loud and mean and I was extremely out of place. I would just kind of watch them most of the time. I didn't participate, and it's not like I could go anywhere since that's where I had to be for the time slots it was required. I don't really know if I was bullied or anything. I know they made fun of me, and I know they talked about me behind my back, or sometimes directly in front of me and acted like I wasn't there. I've kinda just blocked most of it out I think.

As an aside, I should also mention that church was another one of my activities that was determined for me by my parents. Every week we would go and there would be no questioning or challenging it. It was just what we did, and my input was irrelevant.

Upon returning from that trip I think a lot changed for me. I did not realize this fact for a long time but recently my mother reminded me of this trip and a lot of things clicked into place. After that point I became an extremely reserved and introverted person. The anxiety heightened a lot. I think before it was a more passive thing that would happen to me as I went about my everyday activities, but afterwards it became much more active. I would participate and speak up as little as possible, and would be very withdrawn. The anxiety became recursive, that is, I would have anxiety about the potential for anxiety and would avoid activities. I became pretty depressed. I still had to go to school, church, and work. I had a girlfriend and group of friends, but these were picked up during early freshman year and were just going on momentum. Don't get me wrong, I'm generalizing a lot here and covering a pretty vast swath of time from sophomore to senior year. I had plenty of positive experiences with the people in my life, even people at work. It's not so much that I wasn't social or successfully isolated; I basically had to be social for the majority of my waking hours. I would just be withdrawn within those interactions, especially in public. I'm pretty sure this is the time when my fascination with one-on-one interaction began. Large social groups were incredibly anxiety inducing and mediated interaction so much that it was very uncomfortable, and by comparison talking one-to-one was a relief.

With this general approach, it's pretty easy to see how my primary activity could become Overwatch. I could do it alone in my room and on my own terms. Video games are numbing like that so it made avoiding pain nice and easy, and social situations are much less prevalant. I would never speak on the mic despite my role on tank. I would still be very nervous when other people spoke at me, but typing was fine enough. I didn't like being yelled at though and remember many times being very humiliated and embarrassed.

By the time junior year rolled around I was very invested in Overwatch, and was starting to join teams and play for them. Also around this time I developed some odd eating habits that were eventually diagnosed as anorexia. My girlfriend encouraged me to talk to my parents right away about the changes I had noticed when I brought it up to her, and my parents were extremely concerned. I think at this point our relationship was very poor. The depression really came out during my hours at home, and I think there was a lot of pent up frustration about how I had been treated and controlled, but I didn't have all the understanding to explain it to them even if I had understood it myself and even if I wanted to communicate that. The anorexia itself was probably fairly related to those feelings to a significant degree. We were forced to eat dinner tonight as a family, and despite being a picky eater there was a big expectation that you eat the food that was prepared. The whole "you don't have to eat this meal now, but you can't eat anything else until its finished, even if that means heating it up for breakfast tomorrow" type thing. I remember fighting several times over that and coming to tears. That combined with the general feeling of being constantly controlled led me to want to get some of that control back. Not eating dinner made it possible to make my disatisfaction clear to my parents and sometimes avoid them altogether. Over time not eating became an increasingly helpful tool at avoiding discomfort. Not eating lunch made it possible not to feel uncomfortable, vulnerable, and anxious socially at school. The disorder took on a life of its own and the depression and anxiety all fed into one another. Restricting all meals became common just so that I could feel the pain of being empty. At least that's the main type of story therapists I went to wanted to tell. They really wanted to emphasize the lack of control bits as the origin point. Which is not irrelevant by any means, but I think it's more complex than that. I feel like there were a lot of different strands that came together and resulted in that behavior. It's really difficult to pinpoint what was an original contributing factor versus what was something that emerged through the process. For example, I'm rather unsure to what extent weight and body image concerns were initial motivating factors, but they certainly became so after. I am sure that I didn't care about weight before, but I absolutely came to care about it once restricting began. Once I was diagnosed, the diagnosis itself became a motivating factor that kept compelling things forward. I had verifiable proof that I was fucked up! My pain is validated! I know for a fact that was at least partially my motivation for getting "inpatient care" (prison for neurodivergents). I have a serious issue, see! I wasn't just one of your average mentally ill people, I had the record to demonstrate my superiority! Anyway it's a very tangled mess and I have no clue.

To bring it back to the point, because of my mental and eating problems and my parents concern, I was constantly being taken out of school to visit therapists, dieticians, and other doctors. I had a team of four for most of junior and senior year. I suppose that was one of my main extra-curriculors. But even with all that going on, I wasn't like a anorexia otaku. I didn't count calories, I didn't weigh myself every day, I didn't learn about strats to maximize weight loss or come up with plans. I did find ED Tumblr and noticed the cute little things like goal weight and ultimate goal weight in people's bios. But even then it's not like I got super involved in pro-ana groups or something, I just liked looking at depressing pictures and posts and being shown thinspo, or even just in general people talking about eating disorders. I know for a fact that I saw probably just about as much recovery oriented posting as I did pro-ana stuff. I never posted myself. I have never really been a person to contribute on social media; I mostly just observe.

Some other activities I picked up during this time period was listening to music and drawing. Now, "listening to music" isn't really a hobby, but I was kind of exploring a genre type thing. I was exposed to metalcore and nu-metal through someone at work playing music during their shifts, and the vibes were quite conducive to edge depressed me. Things like Bring Me the Horizon, Five Finger Death Punch, Slipknot, My Chemical Romance, Pierce the Veil, stuff like that. But again even with this I wasn't really a metal otaku or anything, even within the niche. I didn't keep up with the personal lives of band members or learn music theory stuff or even any of the instruments they would use or genre conventions. Drawing was mostly just being inspired by depression images and wanting to make some myself, which is honestly probably the most admirable pseudo-hobby I had. But even then I did it fairly rarely, never really worked on the craft in any systemic way, and lots of what I did was just trying to replicate images I found online. Just a tactile thing to do while dwelling in sadness I suppose, which again is pretty admirable as an activity I think. But my typical practice was not only to replicate a reference image, but to apply a grid to an image and then draw my copy on gridded paper. Like ok yes it makes prettier outcome because you can focus one cell at a time but I'm not really developing anything there. Which again, totally fine, I don't want to be too hard on this activity in particular because I think it was important and good and effective AND IMPORTANTLY it is an independent interest I developed without it being enforced on me. That being said, I never really followed through with this or developed it into any skill; never an art otaku. Which I think is a good thing because when my parents found out I would draw they would try to be like supportive/affirmative and would encourage me to pursue further, but that simply was not the point. Earlier in my childhood they had me go to an art tutor as well. This wasn't for a terribly long period but yeah that was another external thing. And external in a double sense too: when I finished a piece the reaction was like ":o woah this is so good let's hang it up", so at my parents house there are now multiple framed works of me drawing C3PO or a bionicle or whatever, and there's even a dragon hanging up at my father's work hallway. Which I mean is one way of being supportive but again its emphasizing the outcome rather than the process. Whether it be school or drawing or theatre or whatever there was always a more or less explicit teleology: you are doing this activity for a certain outcome. You are producing art to be shown off, you are practicing a piano piece in order to perform at a recital, you are going to rehersal to put on a great performance for the audience. There was a strong instrumental teleology to everything I was doing. That the activity itself could be enjoyable was not acknowledged or downplayed severely.

An anecdote comes to mind now that I'm putting this in words. I once learned how to play a certain romantic song on the piano for G just because I liked the song and thought it was a cool thing to express myself. But I had no real framework for understanding why I would do the activity other than some externalizable outcome for others. I need something demonstrable to show that I worked on a thing, that's the whole point right? (I also think with this in mind it's a lot easier to see how I would be motivated to get inpatient care as validation). So I decided that I should perform it for G as like a gift or something. When it came time to do it, I got incredibly anxious and it caused a lot of frustration for both me and her. I'm not sure how long it took for me to be coaxed into actually performing, but I did it and she really liked it if I recall correctly, but I feel like that's not really the point. I didn't go into the activity looking to produce some outcome, I just wanted to learn a thing and put my feelings into a project. That doesn't mean that anyone else has to see the project, and the showing it off was not fulfilling at all.

Another example of this is with the art that I was mentioning. When I made my own drawings I ended up creating a small little private instagram page where I would publish what I made. People in my grade found out about it by either me telling them or them seeing that I was drawing, and I accepted a few people's follow requests even beyond my standard close friend circle. In some ways it was like a demonstration of suffering: look how sad I am! But also I think that there was an element of social validation mediated the whole endevour after that point. My activity was only real when externally recognized. (I really need to read Lacan).

I think the thesis statment I'm trying to get at is that throughout my life I feel as if I have engaged in a lot of activities without being mindful of the intrinsic enjoyment I could get out of them, and not even having the right cognitive understanding to express this desire or what was going wrong. Every passion had to have a goal, and that goal was typically someone elses rather than my own. The goal could not be the enjoyment itself along the way. I am not asserting that only non-instrumental goals have value, or that goals themselves are insidious. Rather, I think the instrumental-intrinsic distinction is not very clear or central in the first place, but by only having cognitive access to one pole of a constructed division is incredibly harmful, particularly when the ends are not decided by me. And to be extra clear, I don't think there's some pure "me" that can desire things in an unmediated way devoid of the context of my circumstances and social relations that has been distorted by other people meddling in my "my" affairs. Rather, I was denied from having any volitional role whatever, and not only were external pressures consistently exerted to mold my actions in specific ways, but the structure of my internal desires was fostered in such a way as to produce a being that could only adopt other's ends as their own.

All of this is to say that I'm rather alienated from my personal history. I have a hard time seeing my past as "me" in any significant sense. I feel like only recently, maybe within the past two years (less than that) have I really begun even having more real personal desires. There were definitely prefigurations and there was some gradual development over time, but there were also some revolutions. Going to college, particularly the semester before anyone in my grade, was formative at separating me from the dependance on others. Driving there myself and taking responsibility for my own schedule was important. Moving out to live on my own was a big step and allowed for the conditions of more self-development. But really the massive change happened when G and I broke up. Everything else was extremely minor compared to that. I could no longer have someone be the focal point of my desires, there was no option.

Now, the reaction to this was not fantastic. I heavily pulled away from my parents and was very edgy and grumpy. Honestly I don't feel too bad about that part, particularly because I think a lot of their actions were oppressive and a, if not the, major causal factor in me having these problems. However, it's definitely not some moral condemnation. They didn't "deserve" being treated that way or something. And given their upbringing or whatever, blah blah. In any case I'm not too interested in assigned blame or responsiblity like that. The more unfortunate reaction was the self-destructive behavior. But this was pretty cool tbh, I just wish I had a better ability to understand what the problem was and wasn't so confused. Insert rant about adultism and epistemic injustice here. Honestly though, the primary regrettable reaction to this was how I treated G. And it was pretty clearly a reaction looking back retrospectively. I've been denied the ability to make my own desires? Alright fine, I'll just become a selfish asshole now. Not great. And yes there are plenty of good selfishnesses but throughout high school and college I instantiated an extremely vulgar form of it that was not anything close to that. I was bitter, mean, inconsiderate, aggressive, ungrateful, just a lot of horrible things. And it was extremely gendered. That's not to say we didn't have plenty of good times, or that it wasn't a valuable relationship. But a lot of my behavior was actually just abusive and cruel. I took advantage of her kindness and care and spat in her face. Although this is just one aspect of the relationship of which there were many, this is not self-flagellation or anything that should be obscured or downplayed. I did reform over time and become less repugnant to be around, but reform can only take things so far. Breaking up allowed me to really recognize, sit with, and reflect upon my behavior and re-evaluate more or less my entire approach to life. I no longer could have her shoulder so many of my burdens, both emotional and practical, and had to actually make choices for myself. This is why I put the time table at about two years. While there were still holdovers from my youth at points where I simply accepted her ends as my own, that played an almost inconsequential role in the relationship for the last three or four years out of the four and a half duration. The main issue was my vulgar negation of that approach, and that could only be overcome by a split.

And even then, it was not as if everything happened all at once. Even before ending the relationship, G and I had tried taking a substantial break. That was a complex experience that maybe one day I will make another blog post about (oh yeah, just now the scope of the post is getting out of hand, whereas I have been completely focused thus far, lol). That taught me a few things and helped some reform, but as mentioned previously, reform was not nearly sufficient. Post-breakup I would even say that progress was extremely limited (I have discomfort about using the word "progress" due to its implied teleology and structure, but I trust the reader will forgive my usage as shorthand for some change which I regard as positive). When we broke up in February, G proposed an agreement that we would not contact one another for one year. I haggled this down to the turn of the new year for some reason. What an asshole lol. Super not cool thing to do. But anyways I waited until January and then messaged her (Also wait fuck I just just now realized I'm such an idiot. If you knew it was fucked to haggle that date why did you proceed in reaching out at the haggled date instead of waiting until the one year mark?? lol, idiot. that would have been minimally decent of you). But yea until that date so so much of my life was oriented around it. I frequently had it on my mind, and even when I wasn't explicitly thinking about it, it was structuring my approach to life. That is pretty vague but I'm not sure how else to get at the idea. All I can really say is there was a noticable difference after I reached out and she said she wasn't interested in talking (she was kind about it). Even though for that year I was growing and learning a lot, it was all done within the shadow of the relationship and the forthcoming reconnection. Perhaps it was necessary for that time, I'm not sure. I don't know how else it would have happened, and in retrospect I am unbelievably grateful for the restriction, but it is notable how much more I improved and grew after that date was passed. In the months leading up to January I was feeling rather stuck; before I had been making lots of growth and progress personally with anxiety and confidence and recognizing fault and improving myself and my understanding of how I interact with the world and what I wanted that to look like. And then the progress just sort of petered out. It felt like I hit a wall, and only after January was I actually able to break through. My immediate emotions at the time were filled with incredible anguish. Right away I referred to it as if it was a second breakup, and I stand by that interpretation today. I had a lot invested in that choice and had spent a lot of mental and emotional energy leading up to that moment. In some way the progress I had been making had been conceptualized as progress *for her*. But now the person that was supposed to validate and make that progress real could not fulfill that function, so now the progress I had made could not be interpreted that way. I think the immediate intuition is to say "ah yes, now the progress you made was *for yourself*. But I think that's incorrect, and I'm glad that is not how I have conceptualized it. Rather, it was just progress that occured, and I regard it positively. I will remind the reader of my misgivings about the term progress, and say that they are simply positively regarded changes. I think this very non-mystified interpretation has been and continues to be extremely beneficial to my "progress". In fact, at that point its barely an interpretation at all, as it explicitly refers to the fact that it is a retrospective evaluation that is done at a particular time. The actions have no intrinsic meaning or teleology in themselves, and are only recognized as fitting into a larger narrative at the moment of interpretation.

Right now, that is my approach to the attempted overcoming of the instrumental-intrinsic divide. It is, of course, greatly imperfect and is met with all sorts of real conflicts and new challenges to navigate (how do I approach participating wage labor? how do I approach a relationship where the other person has a structured interpretation that clashes with my own? how do I approach my relationship with my parents given our history, especially during such a tumultuous period of life for me? etc). It is primarily useful for understanding domains that I have a lot of control over, like interpretations of my individual actions. And while that is limited, it is incredibly significant to me and it has taken a lot of time to get there. Now, even when I am confronted with confounding social situations, I do not feel that I am at such a loss of understanding, as I am not trapped within the narrow and limited interpretive framework I had previously.

Clearly, this post ended taking a far different direction than I anticipated. I thought I was going to talk about my frustration with not being enough of an otaku, and that I feel like I have so much catching up to do relative to others I admire due in part to the fact that I have only started pursuing things that I am passionate about relatively recently. But I realize now I couldn't make that point without talking about the development of what passions have meant for me and the changes that occured in the structure of my passions. After working through getting the above parts written and the correlative processing, it makes a lot more sense to me why I feel that I have only recently been in the right space to pursue things.

To be clear though, I am not saying that this specific mental model was the exclusive thing "holding me back" or whatever. If I wanted to as a kid I could have learned a bunch more about minecraft modding after installing a few and become a software otaku or something lol. At any point plenty of contingent things could have happened to where I would be really passionate about a thing and I could have become very knowledgable and/or skilled in that area. But I do think it is reasonable to say that that activity is much more challenging when the model you have is so distorted. School is for completing assignments and getting grades, piano is for pleasing parents, jazz is for S, etc. These are the areas of life in which I expend effort, and if I complete these obligations then life will sort itself out. Rather, there is no "life" outside those things. Everything else is recovery or preparation. There is no consideration of broader internal fulfillment beyond avoiding the displeasure of those around you and the immediate transient pleasure of playing a video game. This was adressed earlier in the section on childhood toys.

Something that is a valid question is "why feel the need to be an otaku?" After all, just because it is something you find admirable in others doesn't mean that you have to dedicate yourself to something in that way, particularly if you find otaku in a variety of different areas to be interesting. The first thing I'd like to say is that the otaku I admire actually tend to have a great deal of variety actually, and that makes the problem worse. I have some friends that are math otaku but also computer hardware otaku and skilled with programming, while also being extremely reflective about politics and social theory. Other people are super familiar with classic literature and can speak and read in like seven languages and are incredibly well read and can explain their ideas really clearly. Other people I admire are actual otaku otaku, while also being linux/FOSS otaku, plus knowing a bunch about a particular video game, plus having a wealth of knowledge about biology/physics, plus being music otaku (like producing, critiquing and having the proper requisite knowledge to do so), plus having internalized a lot of interesting political/social theory books and integrated them into discussion, plus cardistry otaku, plus [specific YouTuber] otaku, plus like a billion other little things. It's just so impressive and I hear that they started working on things that they know a lot about when they were young and it's like "ah fuck :/". I'm not saying it's impossible to learn new things now or that it's too late or something, clearly not, it's just a lot easier when you have a head start yknow? And more years of experience just living in the space. It just feels like wow look at these cool people I wish I had something like that.

And then the very obvious response is: "you literally do you dolt". Like throughout this piece it's pretty apparent that I keep downplaying certain things that are fairly clearly otaku things, or at least what meet the bar from any outside perspective, which is what I'm doing to the people I admire most of the time too! Like I know a bunch about Overwatch or solving cubes or political theory. I could very reasonably be called a radical realism otaku. Maybe it's just imposter syndrome or something? But it's like aaaa reee I know enough that I know I don't know shit and I feel bad :(. Something that I think contributes a great deal to this problem is that while other people talk about their understanding of a thing, I tend to keep quiet. I just like to sit and absorb and experience a great deal of worry expressing myself about something, particularly around people I respect. It's just the entire time I know I'm like one or two questions off from being totally stumped or not knowledgable about a thing and it's like "eh why bother someone else probably knows it better than I do and I'll just make a fool of myself". But that's very clearly silly lmao. It depends on the context for starters: sure, I might not want to write an academic paper on radical realism or try to start a YouTube channel talking about it without being more well read (some arbitrary point that will never be reached because you can always read more). But like you're plenty knowledgable enough to explain it to someone you're just casually chatting with given the topic is appropriate. And the other thing is, speaking about what understanding you do have is sososososososo important for so many reasons. You help yourself understand the content better by explaining it to others and have to make sure you really have the fundamentals down, and even if the other person doesn't catch you or call you out or something you can realize yourself "oh hm if they asked x I don't know what I'd say," and that can help you know what to research further. Communicating is also just very good in general about things you care about; it's incredibly difficult to have relationships outside of talking about the things you care about. If you spend all of your time doing a thing, but then refuse to talk about the thing because you're so terrified you'll make a mistake, there's not much left of a personality at that point to engage with, lol. And it's not like I don't know these things, it's just sometimes challenging to recognize when it's appropriate to go off on your random tangent interest, and there's no gaurentee that they will care at all.

And part of it has to do with the subject matter that I am interested in right. Like I care about political theory. That is unbelievably broad, especially if you take such a wide view of politics as I do. There's no possible way I could have all the requisite historical, cultural, anthropological, sociological, linguistic, philosophical, etc. background, particularly not at my age. When you're listening to people talk or write about something, chances are that that is basically a summary of everything they know about the subject. In academia this is frequently different of course, but it depends. Like if a political theorist is drawing from anthropoligical data, chances are that is some of the little anthropology they actually know. Just because it is relevant doesn't imply they know literally everything, especially because they picked the framing of what was relevant! Of course if you see a Kant scholar write a paper on Kant though, they will obviously know more than what is contained just there. I think this is mainly applicable in more casual conversations of people I'm impressed by. Especially once you interact with them over time, you tend to see that they bring up the same concepts of anecdotes or data points that they have really internalized as important. Which of course is completely fine! That's how people work. It's more of a me problem to expect myself to overcome that and know everything about everything. I can't simultaneously do everything and that's just a little scary. Making choices about how to spend my time, energy, and attention is just a big task sometimes. It would be super cool to be philosophy and politics and history god, but theres gonna be some tradeoff there and learning how to fix the latest thing you broke on Linux. And also, not everything I do has to be oriented around some demonstrable skill set or knowledge. I feel like there's a lot of internalized capitalist values of productivity hiding right beneath the surface of a lot of these fears. Sometimes it's just okay to enjoy things. Even throughout writing this piece I was like "ugh I wouldn't want to be some cubing hardware otaku that sounds awful", so idk. I think I just also have some interest problems where I'm bad at contextualizing information which might be useful. The best example I have of this is with anime studios and staff. It would be very useful if I would familiarize myself with them and their work and could follow along and know how to properly contextualize a show with its authors, its genre history, the references it makes, and what sources it is drawing from. But that's like, a lot of information! Even for one show. But the thing that you realize after becoming an otaku in one area is that actually it only seems that way from the outside. Things seem way way more daunting than they are, and it's really alright. If you just get started a little bit lots of things will begin to click together. I think I just need to keep that in mind and allow myself to look into things more rather than writing it off as too complicated right away.

Anyway, I think I am running out of energy and ability to write. I ended with some pretty normie tier advice but sometimes tbh that's what you need because you're having normie tier problems. This is a mess of a writing post though. I might post the rough draft and then edit it into something more sensible and then post that too. I feel very good overall though. This medium is very good for me I think. In a way it's doing what I'm talking about, just getting myself to talk about things. It's not so much a subject matter I know about in a factual domain but more kind of a therapy session or something. In any case, it is rather enjoyable and is a helpful tool at clarifying my thinking. I do have to get better at recognizing that more things are worth talking about though, lol. Usually I will only record a diary or write about something if I have a big idea like this, and if getting my whole thoughts on the topic out takes 10k+ words then maybe I should be more willing to write on a topic beforehand. Also like I have plenty of opinions and evaluations of things I see online, but don't usually spend a ton of time clarifying my thoughts. Even if its just a tweet or something, I could easily write a complete blog post about it. I think one of the main takeaways from the piece is that I frequently underestimate and undervalue myself and what I have to say. Writing in longer form like this really helps me recognize the things I do have to say and is extremely fulfilling, and it would be cool to keep it up. ^-^

12/16/2022 07:39

Thesis 1: I am not an otaku enough, and am self-conscious about this. Compared to others and especially those I admire, I feel behind.

Modified Thesis 1: I am an otaku about some things, but these are in limited domains that I don't feel are very impressive or interesting to me or anyone else anymore.

Thesis 2: My model for what my desires were supposed to look like was significantly deficient. I adopted the goals of people around me that I wanted to please, and thought this was how I should pursue activities. I thought that my activities only had value when validated by the instrumental standards of others. I did not feel like I could engage in activities for the enjoyment of the action itself, excluding activities that were generally thought of as only being able to pursued for simple pleasure.Over time I felt uncomfortable because of this, but did not know how to point to the cause. The state of unknowing and disorientation is unpleasant as well, and contributed to the pain I felt. I reacted in different ways over time: in middle school I started to drop activities altogether when there was any hint of instrumental orientation, and in later high school I developed a vulgar selfishness. I feel that now I am in a decent place where I have been able to mostly untangle myself from this worldview (when I am at my most clear-headed), and so it makes sense that I can now retrospectively analyze my history.

Thesis 1: I am not an otaku enough, and am self-conscious about this. Compared to others and especially those I admire, I feel behind. Modified Thesis 1: I am an otaku about some things, but these are in limited domains that I don't feel are very impressive or interesting to me or anyone else anymore. There is a great risk this assessment is greatly informed by productivist point of view, but I still think there is an issue considering I have moved on and no longer care about the things I used to. Historically I haven't been good at contextualizing my activities and learning deeper things about them. There is an element of being uninterested because a "learning is for school" type of thing, but I don't know it just seems more like disinterest? But that doesn't quite capture it becuase I am interested if it was presented to me, I just don't actively seek it out. But it doesn't seem like I am simply overwhelmed and don't know where to start, I just don't look into it. Maybe it's because I've had a certain mindset from my youth that's like "I don't care *who* is behind a thing". I think this a very neoliberal thing. Like history doesn't matter, culture doesn't matter, borders don't matter, individuals don't matter, all that matters is the finished product. Which like there are potentially some elements of that that are appropriable if you hardcore twist and reinterpret them ("don't be suceptible to Great Man thinking"), but that's not really how they present themselves. I think this is part of why I was so taken by Geuss' contextualism: recognizing that the history and context is vital for finding and creating and understanding any meaning whatsoever. It's very important and I recognize it as such, but my actions haven't caught up with that understanding even now. It's still rather unfortunate that I didn't do it historically for any of my interests. I think a good example of this is Overwatch. For the longest time, I didn't look into the developers or know anything about them, and I still don't think I've read any of the comics they released over the years. I literally just hyperfixated on the balance of the game and depersonalized and decontextualized everything. The closest I got was watching developer updates on the YouTube channel. I picked up "soldier is gay" through osmosis and friends I had, but especially before I had Twitter I just was totally uncaring about any of that stuff. And to be honest I'm not sure if I can blame me. I don't know if I would say I'm better off now for knowing things like that about the game, but maybe that's just because of the choice of hobby? Like for anime it seems rather important for comprehending what is going on to have basic knowledge about the hero's journey or the history of the creators or things like that. Also though for Overwatch it was a fairly unhealthy thing to decontextualize everything because it meant I treated balance changes as just a fact of life and tried to optimize within them. Which is a good strategy if your only goal is to improve at the game, but extremely deficient for any broader understanding. And it's different from what some pros do where they have that greater context and understanding, and then intentionally choose to pretend like they forget about it because it is outside of their hands.

Something I forgot to mention yesterday that helps make sense of the timeline is that I got a personal desktop going into high school. I no longer had to use the shared family laptop and was able to start playing games on my own. I also got pretty into watching let's plays of YouTubers as well. I think this helps explain the crowding out of other activities, like cubing. As well as setting the stage for more depression-isolation things to come.

It is interesting to note that even during my vulgar selfishness stage I would still do a lot of the activities that were not "my own", as they did genuinely seem beyond my control. The big example that comes to mind is work. It was just treated as a sort of natural fact, and the fact that a lot of adults were telling me that it was important I do something was enough for me to do it. Obviously my bosses had an interest in me coming in, particularly given how long I had worked there and how hard I worked. My coworkers also had an interest in me coming in often because it would lessen the load on them. My parents had a certain idea of what a good child would do and this was extremely important for that model. I think my story is interesting to contrast with my brother. He pushed back a lot more with things like this throughout our childhood. He started working at the same resturaunt after a lot of pressure and quit very soon after and hated it. I think the interesting thing is that he allowed himself to feel that hate and discomfort and acted on it. Part of the main point I'm trying to get at is that I don't feel like I had that throughout my youth. Things were just treated as natrual facts, like a hurricane or a tornado. It doesn't matter if you don't like it, you just have to stoicly deal with the situation. It's easier if you just accept it and power through and become a docile body that can be used for someone elses aims. It reminds me a lot of abuse victims just trying to do what their abuser says and trying to please them in order to try to get the pain to stop. But what's different is that on some level I just sort of didn't allow myself to feel the pain at all. I was completely out of touch with how I was feeling about anything; it's almost as if I didn't have any tools for evaluation whatsoever. This is why in some sense I have deep respect for people I've interacted with that just follow their immediate desires and feelings. (Insert bit about Dionysian play here). But actually, like whether it be J or the guy I met on bumble or whatever, those types of people that actually feel things and act on them are just very admirable to me in a certain sense. I think that interest is a lot less viscerally gripping and impressive than it used to be for me, but I still maintain that positive evaluation a lot. Another example from my brother is him putting off getting his driver's license. I enrolled in all the classes and attended everything even when I was pretty grouchy and in a rough place. It was just something that had to be done, no questions. My brother has delayed and pushed back and rejected for over 3 years now. And on some level while I recognize that the motivations for why he's doing that are maybe not the best, I admire the aspect that can assert his own desires. Of course, my parents hate it. I think they see him and he sees himself as the sort of screw up younger child that couldn't live up to the expectations and standard I set. Which fucking sucks and I hate that. It was really weird growing up because my parents would have harsh and strict rules for me, and by the time my brother reached the same age they would take a more flexible approach. I don't really know what to attribute that to, but I don't think it's an uncommon phenomenon for parents with multiple children. Something I've also noticed a lot with the people I'm talking about here that are able to follow their immediate desires is that they are deeply ashamed of this part of themselves and feel that it is disgusting and wrong and bad. Whereas I guess I see it more as a problem of the institutions around people that demand that kind of behavior. That's obviously easy for me to say when I'm achieving success within those institutions' standards and evaluating from sufficient distance. The shame and guilt are ideological secretions at individuating and morally condemning people. Succumbing to that shame and guilt is a sign of weakness I think, and not something to be proud of when I do it.

Also something I want to clarify is that some of the activities themselves that people are coerced to do might be fine on their own: it can be good to learn to drive, it can be good to read a lot, it can be good to learn how to play the piano. But the final result is not the only thing that matters, and is not the only thing that is learned in the process. The pedagogy is extremely important and the social relations enforcing that pedagogy as the only option, and even that the skill has to be learned at all. This quickly becomes complicated in a system where there is not many options. Driving is an essential skill in the type of society we have because of the way our infrastructure is set up. The only way to get a driver's license legitimately is through a specific method, and there is a great deal of cultural significance placed on the ability to perform properly. I am not denying the fact that a lot of these skills are "valuable" or important for the type of society we have, but that this fact is a fact is a more resentable part of our social order.

even now I am intensely self-conscious about the fact that I do not have enough historical context and knowledge about the history of philosophy or the history of political theory. I need to know more and read more but also greatly lack historical context of the individual writers, and to some extent I feel like this is pretty blamable on the way philosophy/political theory is taught in universities, or at least my university. Firstly, the history is not emphasized whatsoever. Maybe if you're lucky you'll get little soundbites of "Kant was a response to Hume", but nothing really substantial. And secondly, there is an attempt to be "neutral" when historicizing. This is another reason why I think Geuss' work is so important to me. It is critically essential to understand politically what a writer is doing beyond just the propositional truths you can glean from their work. Lastly and connected to this, authors are taught by taking small small exerpts from large volumes of work and then presented for their most central ideas. This is a horrendous model for understanding any thinker. The movements and moments are extremely important, and what you might see as dry and gray material is actually incredibly important for understanding them as a thinker. Whether or not a thinker is actually worth treating in what way is also not considered. So yeah, classes are terrible for learning this stuff so you have to do it on your own and seek it out on your own time. But that is HARD because you literally don't know what to look for. Meeting with more well-read people with that historical background and more knowledge could be so cool and its just completely wasted.

A big contributor to me lacking in the proper context/background for my interests is the relatively introverted nature I had/have. I'm very not interested in getting involved in larger movements/communities. The one counter-example I can think of is cubing? Like attending competitions and events. But that was pretty short lived. Actually I think its probably an issue with how my personality developed post-high school. Before then with doing plays and things I was somewhat involved in a community at the private theatre as well, and even if my main motivation was doing things for S, I still think there was some level of community in ensemble and jazz band. Certainly during and after high school that wasn't much of a thing though. The closest thing during that time was ED Tumblr lol. Maybe the issue was just that going out and meeting people in real life was intimidating and I would need to coordinate with my parents, and that combined with not being able to use the internet properly just sorta left me alone. Though I also think its interesting that I didn't really consider contributing myself even when I did eventually join social media. I just lurk a lot, reblog/tweet things I like, and mostly talk to myself. Hell, I've requested my data for Twitter and Discord before and the vast majority of the messages I've ever sent are just talking to myself in private channels or completely locked accounts. And when I do engage with others my preference is extremely oriented around just speaking one on one without others around. The amount of messages I have sent in group servers is vanishly small. I think I might be too close and living through things currently to have enough cognitive distance to really understand that. But the broader point I'm trying to make I think is clear enough: a lot of learning is done through community, and the social significance different ideas and movements have. It's one thing to read someone's characterization of a movement, it's another thing to see Twitter MLs say comically misguided things all the time. Propositionally the knowledge might be the same, but the way that knowledge is emobided and understood phenomenologiacally is worlds apart. Politics Twitter has been my really only exposure to knowledge like this, and after being around a while I'm quite aware of its limitations, but I do think its extremely important to have people to engage with that are similar enough to you in terms of interests to actually engage with your ideas and interests and things. Like when I was into cubing I had a friend that I would hang out with a bunch but I actually don't think I liked their personality at all lol. It was just really important to have someone to be around that liked the same things as me. And more recently meeting people like K have been just massively important, though thats not tied to any one interest area and more existential affinity. Even after recognizing this importance though, I have a hard time seeing this as as changing for me. My interests are fairly niche, so it would probably be best to find people online rather than in person. And even then it feels weird to actually earnestly engage with the people I meet along the way rather than just observe. Like I have discord servers of people that would call me a friend and that I could communicate in, and I even keep up with the chat messages. Every day or so I'll scroll through and see what they've been up to, and will just never post. That doesn't bother me that I do that really, but clearly it doesn't establish the type of dynamic I've been talking about.

The other thing I did in elementary school was sports. My parents put me in baseball, soccer, and basketball. The basketball was this weird Christian cult organization thing with a bunch of weird stars and shit I don't even know; it was called "Upward Sports" if you want to look them up and get the vibe. But yeah, sports were never really my thing they were just something I did because I was put in them. I never watched sports or cared about them, and neither did my parents really. My dad watched football mostly as a social activity to do with other guys I think, but that was about it. It was confusing and humiliating a lot because I didn't understand the rules. I remember a particular time when I ran past second base because I had just learned that you could run past first base no problem and that was frustrating and confusing and embarrassing. But for the most part I don't really think I evaluated any of this at all really. Again, they were just natural features of my world that I did without any real input on my end.

One way of phrasing the problem is that I have issues with well integrated and well rounded knowledge. I have tended to focus on one specific aspect of the things I am interested in, or at least have not had a sufficient grasp on the totality of a hobby and its many ways to approach it. While this is likely fairly common, I think that frequently people are worse off for it, although of course that is contextual and it would be entirely unreasonable to demand that for every single activity someone engaged in, and even unreasonable to demand for all of their consistent hobbies. I also think the way I approach institutionalized knowledge furthers this problem for me. I tend to approach things with some ironic detachment, recognizing that I'm just doing this activity for a grade and having that in mind while I'm learning. So even when I do get some historical contextualization in philosophy class there is a tendency to just narrowly understand just as much as I need to understand the basics of the thinker we are engaging with, and then learn just enough of those basics in order to write a shitty paper on it. Which is obviously a totally backwards way to approach genuine understanding, but is pragmatically quite effective at doing what I need in the moment. I don't think it's unreasonable either: school sucks and I don't want to learn what you think is relevant about a thinker that you choose on your time frame. But yeah, I perform the bare minimum to get the grades I need to pursue my other nested needs (I need to learn about the history of Hume in order to understand Kant in order to understand him enough to write a paper in order to get a good grade in the class in order to meet the degree requirements for my major in order to get a diploma in order to get a job in order to get money in order to... etc). Rather than focus on what might actually be the most important part of the entire thing (historical contextualization) I use it instrumentally and leave it by the wayside as I progress towards my other goals.