I picked up this term from Timothy Ferriss' book "The 4-hour workweek."
Obviously he didn't invent the concept. His succinct pitch for "selective ignorance" as a sort-of personal philosophy has been captured by many. My encounters include Sherlock telling Watson he didn't need to know things like the fact the Earth revolves around the Sun, because his memory is like a hard drive and he doesn't see the point in keeping in filled with irrelevant information.
In and after H.S. I was very disturbed by how quickly I forgot course material. Even though I'd gotten great grades in AP Calc, in only a couple months when peers would ask for help on their homework although the problem sets looked familiar I could not conceive how to solve them. When I confessed this concern to a friend's mom, she told me not to worry. She said the brain remembers what it needs. Basically, use it or lose. So if you didn't have it anymore it didn't matter because it wasn't useful to you (immediately so anyways).
When I read A Teenagers Guide to Liberation- something like the philosophy of unschooling, and autonomous education, I was amazed by the possibilities. I didn't have to follow a standard curriculum. Typical public school classes didn't necessarily teach all necessary information, they didn't even necessarily teach how to think let alone how to teach myself.
But slowly I became overwhelmed. I was supposed to explore what interested me? But the library is so huge. And sometimes my interests are based on my experiences thus far. And past experiences seem pretty arbitrary. It seemed like I needed to go out and explore different life experiences. But there are so many of those too. Overwhelmed by choice and paralyzed. and depressed. and i creeped forward slowly, looking for routine, meaning, joy, and peace. Routine to save me from whims, (bad ideas), lethargy, and fatigue (lack of motivation). Meaning to motivate me, and distinguish between my choices, assign them value. Joy to not fall to pieces (although obviously physically that was unlikely to literally happen). Peace to save me, save me from myself, my hatred, my sadness, my confusion, my despair.
And then it college I was reminded of this dilemma of choice reading Annie Dillard's The Writer's Life. "Careful what you read, because what you read is what you'll write. Careful what you learn, because what you learn is what you'll know."
Again, it seemed like my experiences, my knowledge, my worldview, my life, was up to arbitrary decisions made by me. That scares me, again, basically to the point of paralysis.
His writing has a fuck-the-odds-and-succeed-at-life kind of tone, and my grouchy side surrendered to his compelling arguments and humor. . . . draft in progress
