cross-posted from: https://lemmit.online/post/1006130
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The original was posted on /r/aboringdystopia by /u/Last_Salad_5080 on 2023-10-03 14:21:04.
this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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A Boring Dystopia
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Yep.
This reminds me of how often people mistake skill for "natural talent".
"Natural talent" exists, but someone without any particular natural talent who still has spent thousands of hours doing a thing is going to run circles around someone with "natural talent" who never put time and effort into practicing.
And I think when that skill is "reading", people don't power through the moments when their brain rebels, gets frustrated, or gets tired. So they hit that block, and don't push through to overcome it. They go do something else...but they go do something else every single time. So a block that would be frustrating but minor in the big scheme of things gets codified in one's mental image of themselves.
And once you have this idea that you are or are not something--that conception can turn into a huge mountain to overcome.
(As an aside, our parents have huge influence on if we think we "are" or "are not" something. It's very worth it when you think you "can't" do something to go back and look at your life and check if that voice in your head is yours, or if it's the internalized voice of a parent who didn't know what the fuck they were talking about!)
(Both people who were belittled as "stupid" and those who were constantly called "smart" can end up kinda "malfunctioning" later on, thinking they can't do something. The ones called stupid think they can't do something because "they're dumb", while the one called smart has been conditioned to fear not being 100% perfect, so they don't even start because minor, genuinely trivial failures loom as large as the destruction of the entire earth in their minds!)
I definitely feel that, especially when you see people define themselves as "readers" or "not readers". There's no way that there isn't a book out there for every person, but we aren't always great at connecting kids with what actually motivates them to read and reflect. The Grapes of Wrath is an incredible and ever-relevant book, but there's no way I could've appreciated it as such in high school. I know the same is true for many others because it was notorious for being a drag at my school. It just takes time to develop the critical reading skills and life experience that make you appreciate something like that, and not everyone has that by 6th grade or even graduation. I just don't know how you go about continuing that education.