``` Learn Different™ ================ FUNDAMENTAL GOALS ================= GOAL #1: Decriminalize colloquial language in academia. I mean like, at least as an option. Words like "stuff" and "thing" aren't imprecise, they're abstract. For the holy love of fuck please stop trying to sound smart. "One might expect" is not more precise than "I guess." If you honestly think it is, then like fcuksi... that's okay! I think that opinion thing of yours is wrong and stuff, but fuck it, whatever, you can still play. Education and science and academia and life are all better if we have lots of different ideas and we all have freedom of expression in conveying them. So, um, if you care about any of that: no more banned words. GOAL #2: Don't be culty. Most groups get pretty damn culty real quick. And on that note: Okay, so I may be "founding" this thing, but please don't feel like you have to "respect" me or whatever. I mean, try to be decent to each other of course. But forget about me. I'm not like the "leader" or anything. So if it ever seems like I'm "leading" all this shit by like setting up chairs or a schedule or a coup or whatever, I promise I'm not. I'm just a normal human person who really likes learning stuff. Okay that takes care of that. GOAL #3: Anything that makes education less fucking tiresome. Yes, anything. Even if it kills us. This one really shouldn't be something I decide on the specifics of. We should probably aim for setting up a system that encourages branching and experimentation so you don't have to just listen to me. If too many people were listening to me, this would all get pretty damn culty real quick. Let's not do that. See item #2. MISSION STATEMENT ================= "In appearance it is very powerful but in reality it is nothing to be afraid of; it is a paper tiger... unable to withstand the wind and the rain." ~Some dead guy who made a bunch of other people REALLY dead, and fuck that, that's mean, but leaving that aside this particular dead guy[1] occasionally said some pretty good sentences. But still, don't kill people. People are fun. [Footnote 1: His name was like hair swamp east or something I dunno don't worry about who it was.] We are not a school. We want schools to die. Because we love learning. And we love teaching. And it's time to re-decide what exactly we want these school things to be. We haven't done that in a fucking while, I mean damn. While doing that, we will make so many horrible mistakes and regrettable decisions that it'll blow your mind. That's on purpose. Most of us will probably end up in jail. In any revolution, the first revolutionaries are usually the first to face the guillotine in the new world they helped create. We have to be prepared for the equivalent of that in the currency of witch-hunts and shaming, and accept it before we begin. Hypothetical Reader: ...Why? The world has changed a lot recently. We can't really hope to accomplish the genuine humanization of education in the modern world. Too many things offend people. If we tried to just focus on humanizing education, it would work for awhile, get bigger and more popular, we'd expand until there were several branches (some of which felt a bit culty, some of which didn't), and then inevitably there would start being "scandals" and shit because the organization running it all (or the branches (or some-fucking-innocent-janitor-somewhere who knows)) had been vaguely accused of all sorts of things that sound like corruption or exploitation or abuses of power, but in reality most of it would probably be like 3% actual abuses of power by accident, 95% intentionally breaking known rules in the service of genuine human connection and/or pedagogy or whatever, and 2% sharks who just signed up to eat people. Or something like that, you know what I mean. Hypothetical Reader: ...What? Most of the rules we put in place to ensure "professional" interactions also prevent everyone involved from ever getting to know each other well enough to actually give a shit. Teachers and students and staff and that janitor from earlier and everyone else. That's part of where the dehumanizing feeling of both modern schools and modern corporations comes from. Most of the time when we human folks complain about "big corporations," it's not actually the "corporation" part that's bothering us. It's all goddamn empty interactions, both when you work there and as a customer. And those empty interactions are really just professionalism. It's here in the schools too. (You've been here. You know.) But there's nothing inherently wrong with business, and there's nothing inherently wrong with school. It's all one thing. Professionalism. Bureaucracy. Tedium. Busywork. Make-your-margins-like-this. It's the grand unified gravitational grim reaper that sucked all the life out of every modern institution that has to worry about whether someone somewhere might complain. And in those places -- which is damn near everywhere these days -- any case of actual human connection is structurally required to go on behind the scenes, illicitly, and so it does, because jesus fucking christ the only alternative is suicide, and then whenever said human connections are discovered it's always de facto assumed to be abuse. And I'm not saying abuse has never happened since the dawn of goddamn time blah-blah-disclaimer. But there's really not even a discussion anymore about how to trade-off one kind of bad against another, and the current situation is pretty fucking bad... Still with me? Good. Let's go a bit further. Here's an example from some dead people who learned a somewhat similar lesson a couple decades back and then died because of time: Prohibition in the 1920s outlawed alcohol, only to see alcohol become the center of organized crime. And the entire time, people still drank. Now to be sure, there were probably fewer deaths from drunk driving. And that's good. Why? Because dying is bad. So, prohibition: better or worse on net balance? Undefined answer. Depends on which area of life you look at. In the case of the 1920s, outlawing alcohol seems to have made things worse overall, though honestly that's just an arbitrary judgment call. And now that alcohol is legal, people still die because of it. Or more generally, prohibiting a thing almost never prevents it. It just tends to shift the location of the problems it causes from one area of life to somewhere else, and that "somewhere else" is usually less visible. Further, a holy-metric-fucking-lot of problems in life have that same abstract form. The perfect is the enemy of the good. Always. And so, against that background, here's the point: We've been alive for awhile, we humans. We've already tried the approach of making rule after rule to try to prevent every kind of imaginable problem. The data is in, and we know exactly what happens: the whole system where we're all supposed to spend our lives -- everything from early education to academia to the jobs we get after -- all just ends up suffocating in tedium and mediocrity and professionalism and bureaucracy, and after awhile, most of us just kinda wanna die. So, if you want to keep doing that: that's fine. We would just try to make our own school, but you won't let it be fun. You already made too many rules for that "world" thing of yours. We've tried it. Don't like it. Your world is no fun. So y'know what? We're just gonna say fuck it, we're terrorists. We don't have any rules. Except don't hurt anyone. And no stealing. And for fuck's sake try not to complain just because someone else doesn't have all the same exact preferences and opinions as you. That last one's more of a friendly suggestion than a rule. Other than that: have at it. And if that doesn't sound like enough rules or whatever and you find yourself thinking "harumph there's no way this'll work," and that [list-of-bad-things] is bound to happen because [reasons], allow us to refresh your memory: we're terrorists! We don't care if bad things happen to us. It's better than living in that clinical-depression-commercial of world you all built. Our priorities are learning and teaching each other stuff, and doing it all in a way where we're allowed to treat each other like actual human people. Now... In order to have the freedom to redefine education, the most important thing of all is that We Do Not Call Ourselves A School. We do anything else. If you create your own Learn Different cell, you're free to call it whatever you want. We're a coffee shop. A methodone clinic. An erotic accessory marketing firm. We're a halfway house for recovering alcoholics, and we fall off the wagon, every night around 10. We're no one. We know nothing. And you'll learn a fucking LOT. We're anything that prevents you from thinking we're a school. We'll accept any legal or moral identity, except what we actually came here to do, and we do this so you cannot impose on us the same regulations you used to choke the life out of formal education. We will encourage the spreading of rumors about us. We're neonazis. We're pedophiles. We fuck animals and the dead. We're a bunch of jewish cats wearing stolen human skin. But inside, we're anything except what they say... We're fight club. But this is a different kind of fight. We're honestly not all that different from a school. We just Learn Different.™ And we learn so much fucking better than you. Got a problem? Come arrest us! We're terrorists, bitch. We're happy to go to jail. It's part of our culture. And making martyrs out of us is just gonna inspire more folks to join. So we're happy to use your tax dollars as our advertising dollars if you wanna send the feds to haul us off to the pokey. But until then, we'll try our best to treat everyone decent, and we'll make lots of nice big stupid mistakes along the way. But while we do, we sure as hell won't be doing any terror. You in the schools are already doing that part just fine. Terror is fucking boring. Learning is way more fun. We don't have one vision for this, and it would be doomed if we did. More important than any of the specific things above is that branches must retain the freedom to be weird. Experiment. Try shit. Whatever you want. See what works. But pause -- remember -- the modern world is dumb. It's full of yelling -- oh my fucking god the yelling -- just look at it all, everyone's so offended all the time, so in order to be able to do anything at all without being immediately drowned in a sea of angry witch-hunts and hateful shaming, we need to establish some basic things about what it means to be human, because these days, it seems like most humans have forgotten. FUNDAMENTAL TRUTHS ================== Any list that calls itself fundamental truths is probably gonna have a lot of stuff on it that's wrong. Especially if the list calls itself that in all capital letters. Those ones are the worst. This list is almost certainly gonna be a really good example of the first truth, thus making the first truth less true... or more true... Either way, any list that calls itself fundamental truths in all capital letters had better make sure to violate its own first truth as soon as possible. Just for, like, humility and stuff. Pretty sure we just did that. Okay, down to business. Everybody is lonely, in one way or another. Everybody is really fucking weird inside. Probably in lots of ways they're embarrassed about. Stop shaming people for all the unmentionable things they like and think and want. You have your weird unmentionable stuff too. And if you don't: fuck you you're boring. It's okay to be boring though. We still love you. Or at least I do. Your hair looks nice today. Have you been working out? Got any plans this weekend? How about a date? We can be boring together! Don't worry, I'll pay. Oh, and here's my number by the way. Work for you? Me too. Okay, see ya soon... Whoever they are, they're probably not oppressing you. I mean christ, go have some drinks together or something. Real oppression is a thing though. There are lots of kinds of it. Many kinds of real oppression don't have names. The kinds with names are just easier to yell about. Somewhere in the past decade, there stopped being any relationship between how bad a thing is and how loud people are yelling about it. Not sure when that happened, but it's definitely a thing. Sometimes people end up yelling about stuff that's actually bad though, but like half of that is by accident. When you think of the worst people you can possibly think of, if you then go and learn about them, you'll find that about half of them turn out to be kinda cute and not that different from you. Do it. It's actually really fun. Same thing for groups of people instead of just individuals. Go find the worst ones you can. You'll notice the thing again where about half of them aren't so bad. If you don't notice it at first, keep trying. It's there. Let's agree to call the above two things "the game," just for brevity. We can think of a better name for it later. "Monsters of all kinds shall be destroyed." ~Some dead guy who clearly never played the game, and who was surprisingly bald, in spite of his name. You'd probably be surprised how addictive the game is. The Boogey Man is just kinda lonely and he never hurts anyone except that one time, and you guys actually both have pretty similar taste in music and dudes. If you wanna test your game skills, two fun test cases are Nazis and NAMBLA. You don't have to meet anyone in person if you don't want to. Just read stuff, and try really hard to understand. Start with whichever one bothers you most. Humans don't seem to play the game very often. It's easy to seem like you're really good at the game by just saying everything's okay. That's not the game. That's cheating. It's okay though, you can still play. You can be on my team. Where are the other team members? Well, there aren't any. Before you got here, it was just me. We're probably gonna lose, but whatever. Here. I'll let you borrow my hat. When you're playing the game, it's okay to keep disapproving of stuff. Especially stuff like violence and making-people-do-stuff-that-they-don't-wanna-do. Those things are bad. Unless someone really wants you to do those things to them. Then it's fine. Just make really sure you didn't mis-hear. And remember to choose a safeword. Safewords are great. No matter what safeword you choose, the phrase "I forget the safeword" is always an acceptable safeword too. When you think of the best groups you can think of, probably at least a lot of your favorite ones really suck. That principle applies to this group too, if anyone ever decides it's their favorite. That'll probably never happen, but still. Sometimes, people start new groups, instead of of just joining one. Once you get at least kinda good at the game, any groups you might decide to start after that will probably end up being way fucking better than they would've been otherwise. There are very few exceptions to this rule, if any. You can make rules for your group if you want. For example, if you wanted to make an education thing that's like a school but not a school, and your particular school-thing was gonna take place in, like... I dunno... a tent (just making this up here, roll with it), then you might want to make a rule about alternating who has to set-up the tent. That's a good rule. Probably not a tent though. Shit gets windy sometimes. Try not to make too many rules though. It sucks all the fun out of being in a group. Remember back during that first time we tried making a world? With the schools and the jobs where you couldn't do anything? That was because of too many rules. Keep that in mind so we don't have to do all this shit over again. If someone dies, that's a good time to think about whether you want to make a new rule. You're not required to though. Sometimes, people just die. Y'know, like from alligators and stuff. Or cancer. Plus, if we had to make a new rule every time someone dies we'd pretty quickly end up in the same mess as before. So instead of making up rules every time someone dies, how about instead maybe focus on how you can like, I dunno, "be decent" to each other. And that "you" includes me. If I'm ever not being decent to you: kill me. Please don't forget the part about not making too many rules. Yes, I know it's tempting. But still. When starting a group (if you ever decide to), try really hard not to get all culty once people start hearing about you and liking you and joining. It's not clear that that's ever been done before. At least not really. If your group involves a concept like "joining," you're probably already doing it wrong. If you're in a group type thing, and someone does something you don't like, no shaming and outcasting. (No, not even when they do that thing you just thought of.) Let laws handle extreme cases. And yes, I know, the laws of pretty much any country you pick are like super fucking broke-ass and imperfect and dumb, but we can all work on that later. For now, we're not trying to be a utopia. If this doesn't work in a world with super broke-ass laws, it's never gonna work anywhere. Cuz that's everywhere. So let the imperfect laws take care of like, murder. But for dealing with everyday violations of whatever your group's rules are -- in most cases -- calm down, it's probably fine. Just try to remember what you learned from the game. Of course, the game's not always enough. Sometimes a group might need to ask someone to leave. But, if that ever happens, for fuck's sake do your best to minimize the shame and isolation involved in doing so. Maybe try to introduce them to another group that's okay with the thing you guys weren't okay with. There's probably a LOT of those.[1] If you can do that well, hi-five, you're a leader. And you probably don't suck at it. At least not as much as leaders usually do. Leaders almost usually suck. If there's no established group that's okay with the thing yet... well... honestly I'm not sure what to do in that case. I feel like that's sort of the fatal flaw in all of this. Any ideas? We'll need to figure something out eventually. That feels like the last step in all this somehow. Not sure how many steps there are, so let's call the undefined solution to this problem... I dunno... the Nth step. Wait, that sounds too much like that thing with the people who used to drink but now they don't. How about instead we call it the Nth Stair? Okay, that's better. We'll decide what the hell it is eventually. Nothing happens in order. Sunlight however is the best disinfectant. Hopefully that'll make sense by the morning. Everything that will happen already has. Th(u+i)s may*(1|not) have already happened. All your conspiracy theories about this are true. 0 of your conspiracy theories about all the other stuff in life are true. They're all false. Yes all of them. All of them. All. Except some. Learn Different. Make mistakes. Try not to be a dick. Be very reluctant to let yourself think someone else is a dick. Maybe you just think about things different. Haven't we covered this? For instance, it wasn't sexist to use the word dick there just because only half of people have dicks. It's just fun to say dick. I think it's the hard consonants. (And that wasn't a joke, but it easily could've been.) Anyways, whatever, you know what I mean. Stop saying every sentence is bad for some reason. When you complain about people's sentences too much, eventually it just creates terrorists. Citation: this. No words are off limits. There are no exceptions to this rule. Nigger Cunt Jew Faggot Trannie Cheater Daughterfucker Pedophile Zoophile She's-just-not-that-into-you Lonely Grandma Rape Rejection Capitalism Communism Marx Marks Drug Addiction Clawmarks Stretchmarks Apathy Yes Nose Sweaty Palms Nervous Twitchy Crush Acceptance Playing Biting Fucking Cuddling Kissing Sleeping Love. Or more succinctly: All words cause feelings. Certain words cause strong feelings. Don't micromanage. Word freedom is good. Grammar serves style, not the other way around. Or more verbosely: Regardless of the language or the goal of an utterance, syntax and semantics are always slave to pragmatics. Also, um, if any parts of the above were like total shit and/or just didn't make any sense, please tentatively don't hate me and understand that I have no idea what I'm doing. That said, hopefully the above things will make more sense eventually. And by "hopefully," I mean: I absolutely swear to everything, they will. No you're weird. I like that about you. Metacommentary solves everything. Love ya weirdo. Let's learn. Sincerely, ~The Founder, I guess. ```