Unlearning and relearning

Kids lose time in the classroom, but young adults also lose a lot of time unlearning from the wrong lessons learned.

Being always learning is a good thing. We are learning machines and (if our software is well configured) we derive a lot of meaning from growing our knowledge library.

However, something that struck me as odd is how many things I had to erase, re-learn or learn from scratch well into my 20s.

It’s been that way to the point that I have developed the following heuristic: whatever the boomers taught me, the opposite will be true.

The education system taught me to stand in line, to seek comfort, to fit in at all costs and to believe and uphold the system without questioning much.

As I grew up I realized that the only path to success and happiness is in being who you are, seeking discomfort, questioning everything and most definitely not relying in the system.

We have raised an entire generation on wrong values. But it doesn’t stop there.

I’m almost 30. I finished high school and moved out at 17. Even today, the majority of my conscious years have been spent going to school.

Yet I had to learn the basics of health much later in life. And I had to unlearn almost everything that they taught me about such subject.

Unfortunately some damage is irreversible. For example, the body decides where to store fat in the early teenage years, based on your habits. School makes you sit still for hours. It really doesn’t help.

School (to date) teaches the Food Pyramid where bread, rice and cereals are the most foundational echelon. I could be stronger, faster and live longer if they hadn’t done that to me. As I learned about all these atrocities, I started rigorously working out in my mid-twenties and I have reversed much of that damage.

A few months ago a friend from Spain went to an international medical fair abroad. To spice things up at dinner, people from each country would team up and cook something from their country. They ordered Spanish food from a restaurant. Turns out that in their group (two males and one female), no one knew how to cook.

I can relate. I didn’t know how to fry an egg until I lived on my own and I had to. I’m almost 30 and I just learned yesterday about water filtering systems, and the fact that I have been drinking less than ideal water for years.

These are basic facts about life. Health. Nutrition. Fitness. Cooking.

The boomers like to say that these mundane things don’t belong in a classroom. That kids should study bigger topics like “math” and “language” and “physics” to contribute more to society. Well, the education system sucks at that too.

I was 14 when my family almost got kicked out of our apartment. My parents were really overdue in their mortgage payments. I had been working since 12, so I had savings and could save the day. But what followed defined my career for the next decade. I started questioning the whole trust the system rhetoric that everyone seemed to follow. I went down the rabbit hole and read about fiat money, and then Bitcoin.

Piece by piece, my reality was being torn apart. To this day, a month doesn’t go by in which I discover yet another lie.

Science and society advances, and it’s normal that we discover new truths on the way. But discovering new truths is one thing; realizing your whole perception of reality was wrong is a very different one.

There are always exceptions, but in the West, parents have failed their children.

Boomers have forced kids to lose their most precious learning years in schools that resemble prisons, compromising their health, getting brainwashed and killing any creativity.

It’s no wonder that there’s an entire book providing evidence on why boomers are a generation of sociopaths.

It’s not only about the time lost in school, but also about the decades that follow, unlearning and getting frustrated as reality constantly doesn’t match the expectations that were set forth as a kid.