No this is not a rant. This is a solid, logical, scientific explanation. Heck, this should probably be better than that meagre, measly attempt I made at writing a scientfic research paper.
I can’t study. I’m not sure whether doctors have found a technical name for it or whether it’s a disease - but I’m sure a lot of people are afflicted by this. So, one day I sat down and thought about this affliction of mine and how to overcome it. And then it struck me …
I cannot overcome this. This was how I was meant to be.
The key lies in Evolution. Evolution is the process of change in all forms of life over generations. Human beings are supposedly evolved from Chimpanzees ((Wood B, Richmond BG (July 2000). “Human evolution: taxonomy and paleobiology”. J. Anat. 197 ( Pt 1): 19–60.doi:10.1046/j.1469-7580.2000.19710019.x. PMID 10999270)).
So, the first man was probably an improved, better looking version of the Gorilla ((Kinda like this . I mean he’s at least better in the looks department - I actually think I’ve seen someone like him.
He fundamentally could do a lot of things Gorillas could never do or Gorillas did very badly. It meant that our greater than greatest Grandfather could fundamentally forage, hunt and move around. Later on, he developed the skills of hunting, farming and so on.
A typical user case would be - a hunter with a stone club or bow &arrow. He moves in a group of highly co-ordinated pack of hunters who track their prey before killing it. In such a scenario - a hunter would have probably had the following traits.
- sharp senses of hearing and sight
- ability to move quickly and quietly
- awareness of his surroundings
- a mind which was far superior to they prey they were tracking down
- the same mind - which could do rapid calculations in real time to narrow down the position of a target
- amazing reflexes which meant the difference between life and death
Now, the same set of skills are today required somewhere else today
- Movement is important and learning to do it effectively will keep you alive.
- Knowing the maps and developing reflexes - which is when you find your self aiming at targets you didn’t even consciously register
- an idea of the weapon’s accuracy and where you should be aiming when you want to hit something.
- Being patient and remaining calm during gameplay is important to keep yourself from making stupid mistakes such as taking it personal and attempting revenge, or going commando on an impossible situation.
This same skill-set is required for playing First Person Shooters ((How to hone FPS skills)) - a
thing which I’m reasonably good at .
Wiki states:
First person shooters involve an avatar, one or more ranged weapons, and a varying number of enemies. Because they take place in a 3D environment, these games tend to be somewhat more realistic than 2D shooter games, and have more accurate representations of gravity, lighting, sound and collisions.
And my parents wonder why I play Counter strike all the time ? Come on, I’m evolutionarily born for this stuff :D
Every individual is supplied with hereditary material in the form of genes that are received from their parents; then, passed on to their offspring. This has happened on for nearly 2.5 Million years - back when the first human-like Homo rudolfensis came into existence.
Hence, for over 2.5 million years my mind has been evolutionarily honed to do rapid calculations under high pressure life or death situations and then execute them with an unerring accuracy. This was filtered down over a thousand years of ruthless genetic selection.
Every single cell in my body hence is made for this one unerring purpose - to hunt, to survive - and not to sit in a place and cram useless statistical data.
Modern Day schooling was started in 1950’s. The slightly altered Missionary school model ((Under the British rule in India, Christian missionaries from England, USA and other countries established missionary and boarding schools throughout the country. These schools marked the beginning of modern schooling in India and the syllabus and calendar they followed became the benchmark for schools in modern India)), which is the prevalent education system today, has a typical syllabus which includes Language(s), Mathematics, Science - Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Geography, History, General Knowledge, Information Technology / Computer Science etc. So, the current education system in which I’m expected to excel in order to have a good life has been in existence for barely about 50 years.
My evolutionary preparation for schooling simply does not count for anything in the long time that my more primordial instincts have been honed evolutionarily. Fact is,
Time we’ve been hunting = 2,500,000 years
Time we’ve been farming = 10,000 years
Time we’ve gone to schools = 50 years
And people still wonder why everybody plays Farmville and Counterstrike - It’s evolution dude ! Have you never wondered how a game as dumb as Farmville became social network’s most popular application, with over 62 million active users and over 24.6 million Facebook application fans (( That’s 10 percent of Facebook Users - whichimplies 10% of 500 million active users which is 10% of the World’s Population - which means 1% of the World’s Population actively play Farmville )).
Further analysis of the activities that are prevalent in the online community today further validates my point. The activities that enjoy wide audiences are either tools of communication or tools which portrays the user actively perform an activity eg. Farming, Fighting. Both which define the edge we humans have over other animals. This is the reason why we’ve huge followings for MMORPG games (( World of Warcraft, a popular MMORPG, had over 12 million subscribers as of October, 2010 )) .
As per Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection, my evolutionary mechanism rejects simply sitting at a particular place mugging up a series of useless facts.
It discourages studying and encourages the activities I was evolutionarily built for like playing CounterStrike ;)
My mind was simply not made to do transcendental ((A transcendental number is a (possibly complex) number that is not the root of any integer polynomial, meaning that it is not an algebraic number of any degree.)) integrals or write down the benefits of cloud computing. My mind was not made to store absolutely useless data about abstractions that I’m never going to see or use. All of the facts I’m supposed to learn are absolutely useless as far as my evolutionary part is concerned. As a result of which my body and brain reject the act of studying.
See Mom, I always told you I never did anything wrong :P
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