I am starting my seventieth trip around the sun. I was diagnosed as ADHD/Gifted at the age of ten in 1965. I was assigned an IQ. I will not give a number because I have issues with the simple notion of IQ. It is above average in many ways, but below average in some. Each of us is an individual genetically. Our brains are all different.
My hyperactivity is mostly mental, some physical. I excelled in things I could focus on. This wasn't always schoolwork. I have a natural mechanical inclination. I am a very visual learner. I hyper focused on flying model airplanes. At fifteen I was building my own designs.
I nearly did not graduate from high school. The school system that diagnosed me was not the same one I transferred to at fourteen. The new school district appears to have dismissed the records from the poorer district I came from. I believe I was treated better in the small town system.
I would get a degree in engineering nearly twenty years after graduating from high school. Early on I got some small factory jobs. There was a lot to making things that drew my focus. I learned more and more elaborate skills. By the time I transferred to attend a State University full time at the age of thirty five I had risen toward master toolmaker/machinist.
My rise in the machine tool trade was a rocky road. I was resented by weaker workers who accused me of showing off. I was learning the skills faster and would not slow down. It caused a lot of coworkers to try and slow me down. Some were successful.
I had a rocky road through engineering. Two of those positions were traumatizing. One was a situation where I was designing machinery that was to be fabricated by people who lacked the required skills. They were resistant to being taught by me. Some were not learning it fast enough.
I was bullied from below.
Not one of them knew how to read the drawings I made. They made a lot of mistakes. I was there three years. I should have started looking at six weeks. I stayed because the work was fun and interesting. What left the floor were Dr. Seussian abstracts that only worked after fighting to get them to correct their mistakes.
If you are designing machines with moving parts the distance and location of axles is important. They didn't understand this, or they would ask another designer, who happened to be a bully and knew less than I did. He did teach me a couple of software hacks. I taught him more. He used one of the things I taught him to screw me. I had designed an asymmetrical frame. The drawings were done on computer so that making a mirror image takes a small number of commands. I showed him a command that saved him a lot of time and effort in mirror imaging my drawings and replacing the real ones on the shop floor.
A disgruntled coworker told me a lot of what this person was doing just before he quit. He was another designer. We clashed in personality but respected each other's work.
It was a construction project involving a large theme park in Florida. The work was done in Burbank CA.
After that I stayed in the San Fernando Valley through two more jobs. The second of those is one of the more traumatic in my life. It involved commercial/corporate corruption and fraud. Three years that I should have left immediately. The signs were blatant to me on my first day. I made a decision that I should have seen would be bad for my mental health.
I stayed.
Three years again. Some of my best work. I got hyper focused on teaching vocational education, Computer Aided Design, at ITT Technical Institute. I was very innovative in my approach. I was teaching them to be hunters. I did not simply follow the script to teach making digital pictures. I taught about the lower level command logic, and how I used that deeper knowledge to automate the process. In other words how to make the machine do the hard work.
They did not appreciate it. My job description was, in their eyes, retention of student money in the form of government aid and predatory student loans. They aggressively marketed to students with special needs. They had no intention of providing special assistance. I was not told of it, I found out after a new student told me he looked forward to me helping with his dyslexia. I had been there for about a year and was puzzled by some students struggle with what was, to me, fairly simple geometry.
I now consider myself to be well versed in the nature of dyslexia. Self Taught. I myself am very low on the dyslexic spectrum.
They were defunded and shut down in 2016, thirteen years after I was fired for encouraging students to complain about quality. The two experiences described above left me with PTSD.
Just want to send fellow-feeling that high creativity is not accommodated in conventional authority sociology. What's odd for me is that I also have strong practical/engineering instincts expressed but not rewarded except in socially trivial settings. I dismantled and fixed a fishing reel quite young, and I still (after so long!) remember my Mom trivializing my accomplishment. Professional organizer said "Well, you can pack!." (50 years later.) Pace off a whole acre within a foot. Estimate this, level that, align grain in cabinetry wood....(Lady who was ready to show off being mad at the contractor was NOT happy with me turning the panel over...) My own boss in Public Defender's office, when I reported in with yet another unlikely acquittal, said: "Congratulations. You're doing great, but nobody understands your interpretation of the Law." (Except the jury! He didn't get that part.) So PTSD is a thousand small cuts of disrespect. Here's respect to you, friend.
Every good idea doesn't have to be monetized. The true tragedy of our healthcare system isn't just financial ruin, but the millions who have died prematurely due to our inhumane, profit-driven, patchwork system. Capitalism's influence on our worldview often robs us of the freedom to truly appreciate each other and the world. It's crucial to remember that individual freedom is a fundamental right, not a luxury to be sacrificed for profit.
We need to start believing more in the common good and less about how to become financially successful. Must we have a patent on every good idea, every new medication? Maybe many evangelicals are ready to settle for a dictator who promises to make the country a Christian nation because of the suffering we see all the time due to the cutthroat attitude required within the Capitalist system to do better than merely survive. They're ready to give another system a chance. They're gullible enough or frustrated enough that they want to believe in somebody other than the leaders we believed in who betrayed us for the past 40 years. Most people are ready for a significant change, even a dictatorship, as foolish as that sounds. But didn't the majority, including our leaders, believe in the "trickle-down" con? We should have had the beginnings of a positive change with Bernie Sanders as our President four years ago. He is still as animated, energetic, and determined to make the world a better [place for working people as he was four years ago. And quit advocating for the middle class and perpetuating the class system that divides all of us who aren't part of the top fraction of a percent.
So, what does that have to do with hunters in a farmer's world? People are born with different temperaments that parents and society need to mold into civilized personalities without removing that which makes them individuals with their particular talents. Some see that as a child's spirit that shouldn't be doused with the requirement that they "fit in." Society has always had people with ideas about making life easier or more enjoyable. Probably throughout most of human history, they just shared their ideas, or other people copied their easier, more efficient ways of working or more fun ways to decorate their surroundings or celebrate.
When did we decide that every person's labor, health, education, leisure, all objects, and ideas must be owned by somebody or a corporation? I saw a podcast about the beginning of capitalism, when land, labor, and money were commodified, destroying an island's ecosystem. Enslaved people were imported, and cash was borrowed to grow and sell sugar cane. Since then, about 1450, we have commodified everything and are using up the whole earth.
Children in school have intrinsic value because they are human, whether at some future date, their labor, ideas, or value as consumers will add to someone's profit higher up the food chain. They have a right to be individuals, think their thoughts, and be content with their young lives. Pressuring them to achieve and conform takes away their freedom to experience the world in their own way. I worry about my grandchildren having enough freedom and time to explore the world in their own way.
If Maslow overlooked the need to feel alive, as Thom contends, did Maslowbe address it in his idea of self-actualization?" Only it isn't a higher-order need, as he believed, but a more fundamental need beginning in early childhood that evolves according to the child's temperament. Some children must satisfy their curiosity or interact with others at inopportune times, even if it causes them to be considered odd and disciplined. Is it a disorder, or is it like a flower growing in the wrong place so the outstanding flower is regarded as a weed?
Good to see this, very good.
I am starting my seventieth trip around the sun. I was diagnosed as ADHD/Gifted at the age of ten in 1965. I was assigned an IQ. I will not give a number because I have issues with the simple notion of IQ. It is above average in many ways, but below average in some. Each of us is an individual genetically. Our brains are all different.
My hyperactivity is mostly mental, some physical. I excelled in things I could focus on. This wasn't always schoolwork. I have a natural mechanical inclination. I am a very visual learner. I hyper focused on flying model airplanes. At fifteen I was building my own designs.
I nearly did not graduate from high school. The school system that diagnosed me was not the same one I transferred to at fourteen. The new school district appears to have dismissed the records from the poorer district I came from. I believe I was treated better in the small town system.
I would get a degree in engineering nearly twenty years after graduating from high school. Early on I got some small factory jobs. There was a lot to making things that drew my focus. I learned more and more elaborate skills. By the time I transferred to attend a State University full time at the age of thirty five I had risen toward master toolmaker/machinist.
My rise in the machine tool trade was a rocky road. I was resented by weaker workers who accused me of showing off. I was learning the skills faster and would not slow down. It caused a lot of coworkers to try and slow me down. Some were successful.
I had a rocky road through engineering. Two of those positions were traumatizing. One was a situation where I was designing machinery that was to be fabricated by people who lacked the required skills. They were resistant to being taught by me. Some were not learning it fast enough.
I was bullied from below.
Not one of them knew how to read the drawings I made. They made a lot of mistakes. I was there three years. I should have started looking at six weeks. I stayed because the work was fun and interesting. What left the floor were Dr. Seussian abstracts that only worked after fighting to get them to correct their mistakes.
If you are designing machines with moving parts the distance and location of axles is important. They didn't understand this, or they would ask another designer, who happened to be a bully and knew less than I did. He did teach me a couple of software hacks. I taught him more. He used one of the things I taught him to screw me. I had designed an asymmetrical frame. The drawings were done on computer so that making a mirror image takes a small number of commands. I showed him a command that saved him a lot of time and effort in mirror imaging my drawings and replacing the real ones on the shop floor.
A disgruntled coworker told me a lot of what this person was doing just before he quit. He was another designer. We clashed in personality but respected each other's work.
It was a construction project involving a large theme park in Florida. The work was done in Burbank CA.
After that I stayed in the San Fernando Valley through two more jobs. The second of those is one of the more traumatic in my life. It involved commercial/corporate corruption and fraud. Three years that I should have left immediately. The signs were blatant to me on my first day. I made a decision that I should have seen would be bad for my mental health.
I stayed.
Three years again. Some of my best work. I got hyper focused on teaching vocational education, Computer Aided Design, at ITT Technical Institute. I was very innovative in my approach. I was teaching them to be hunters. I did not simply follow the script to teach making digital pictures. I taught about the lower level command logic, and how I used that deeper knowledge to automate the process. In other words how to make the machine do the hard work.
They did not appreciate it. My job description was, in their eyes, retention of student money in the form of government aid and predatory student loans. They aggressively marketed to students with special needs. They had no intention of providing special assistance. I was not told of it, I found out after a new student told me he looked forward to me helping with his dyslexia. I had been there for about a year and was puzzled by some students struggle with what was, to me, fairly simple geometry.
I now consider myself to be well versed in the nature of dyslexia. Self Taught. I myself am very low on the dyslexic spectrum.
They were defunded and shut down in 2016, thirteen years after I was fired for encouraging students to complain about quality. The two experiences described above left me with PTSD.
Just want to send fellow-feeling that high creativity is not accommodated in conventional authority sociology. What's odd for me is that I also have strong practical/engineering instincts expressed but not rewarded except in socially trivial settings. I dismantled and fixed a fishing reel quite young, and I still (after so long!) remember my Mom trivializing my accomplishment. Professional organizer said "Well, you can pack!." (50 years later.) Pace off a whole acre within a foot. Estimate this, level that, align grain in cabinetry wood....(Lady who was ready to show off being mad at the contractor was NOT happy with me turning the panel over...) My own boss in Public Defender's office, when I reported in with yet another unlikely acquittal, said: "Congratulations. You're doing great, but nobody understands your interpretation of the Law." (Except the jury! He didn't get that part.) So PTSD is a thousand small cuts of disrespect. Here's respect to you, friend.
Every good idea doesn't have to be monetized. The true tragedy of our healthcare system isn't just financial ruin, but the millions who have died prematurely due to our inhumane, profit-driven, patchwork system. Capitalism's influence on our worldview often robs us of the freedom to truly appreciate each other and the world. It's crucial to remember that individual freedom is a fundamental right, not a luxury to be sacrificed for profit.
We need to start believing more in the common good and less about how to become financially successful. Must we have a patent on every good idea, every new medication? Maybe many evangelicals are ready to settle for a dictator who promises to make the country a Christian nation because of the suffering we see all the time due to the cutthroat attitude required within the Capitalist system to do better than merely survive. They're ready to give another system a chance. They're gullible enough or frustrated enough that they want to believe in somebody other than the leaders we believed in who betrayed us for the past 40 years. Most people are ready for a significant change, even a dictatorship, as foolish as that sounds. But didn't the majority, including our leaders, believe in the "trickle-down" con? We should have had the beginnings of a positive change with Bernie Sanders as our President four years ago. He is still as animated, energetic, and determined to make the world a better [place for working people as he was four years ago. And quit advocating for the middle class and perpetuating the class system that divides all of us who aren't part of the top fraction of a percent.
So, what does that have to do with hunters in a farmer's world? People are born with different temperaments that parents and society need to mold into civilized personalities without removing that which makes them individuals with their particular talents. Some see that as a child's spirit that shouldn't be doused with the requirement that they "fit in." Society has always had people with ideas about making life easier or more enjoyable. Probably throughout most of human history, they just shared their ideas, or other people copied their easier, more efficient ways of working or more fun ways to decorate their surroundings or celebrate.
When did we decide that every person's labor, health, education, leisure, all objects, and ideas must be owned by somebody or a corporation? I saw a podcast about the beginning of capitalism, when land, labor, and money were commodified, destroying an island's ecosystem. Enslaved people were imported, and cash was borrowed to grow and sell sugar cane. Since then, about 1450, we have commodified everything and are using up the whole earth.
Children in school have intrinsic value because they are human, whether at some future date, their labor, ideas, or value as consumers will add to someone's profit higher up the food chain. They have a right to be individuals, think their thoughts, and be content with their young lives. Pressuring them to achieve and conform takes away their freedom to experience the world in their own way. I worry about my grandchildren having enough freedom and time to explore the world in their own way.
If Maslow overlooked the need to feel alive, as Thom contends, did Maslowbe address it in his idea of self-actualization?" Only it isn't a higher-order need, as he believed, but a more fundamental need beginning in early childhood that evolves according to the child's temperament. Some children must satisfy their curiosity or interact with others at inopportune times, even if it causes them to be considered odd and disciplined. Is it a disorder, or is it like a flower growing in the wrong place so the outstanding flower is regarded as a weed?