Your Writing Sucks.

I'd really love to come across somebody who would just come right up to me and say: "I write better than you, man!" That would put the jolts in my juices! I would be like "Pal, how well do you FIGHT!???"

Naw, I wouldn't be like that at all. I would be like, GIVE ME YOUR MATERIAL!! IT IS FOR MY EYES

That would be awesome. And I don't understand why nobody has yet done it? People don't seem shy about telling me that I write better than they do. What can I do with that? "Thanks!" But nobody ever comes across with the reverse assertion, and I'm practically begging for it. Practically begging to be taken down a peg. Is it just that people don't brag like that?

WELL THEY SHOULD!

The fact that they don't betrays a real problem with our nation's priorities. And by "our nation", I include the various other nations who would be somewhat rankled to be lumped in with ours, but who let's face it, are running all of their go-to cultural apps on pretty much the same OS platform. I don't think any of us really instills in our peoples the requisite amount of brag about one's scholastic facility - not in any of the various "school-larnin'" tricks and skills! And this is why we fail. This is why we are the WORST-EDUCATED SOCIETY EVER IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE. If that statement is wrong, blame my educators; I never did care for history. Or statistics. They could have made me care, had they been sufficiently brilliant.

Oh, I hate to blame the educational system, but the problem is once again: right square in our schools. This lack of brag all starts there. We need to find some way to get kids to prize these talents, to primp and preen themselves upon them in a competitive way, just amongst themselves, daily and instinctively - just as they do with athleticism, romance, money, video games or so many other things! Why in hell should they NOT brag about scholastic aptitude? So many other things of far less importance are touted to the hilt - by those with anything to tout. Have the scholastically apt nothing to tout?

Oh, sure, sure, up in their little study groups, meeting up in the school library, they may let loose with a hushed "boo yah - yer FACE" or two. But you don't see jocks, socialites, rich kids doing that. Damn if they're going to hush themselves up in public and only flaunt their stuff to each other in little esoteric cliques of mutual enthusiasts. No. They flaunt it to the world. They know they have something important to be competitive about, and they flaunt it IN YOUR FACE. Athleticism, social and romantic success, and money - these things are important, and worth bragging about anyplace.

The ability to think is not. Not important. Not worth bragging about. Because you don't brag. Q.E. mother fucking D. This insecurity about the worth of study or intelligence is the only reason you don't see the brag. It isn't because schoolsmart kids are more mature! Get real: within their narrow cliques of enthusiasts, they brag to each other in code, and they reassure each other: "we're better than the morons. Our narrow concerns are better than the vulgar concerns of the mob."

Bullshit, Horatio. Because the mob would eat your smart stuff up if you'd brag and strut about it a bit. You're not better: you're just a wuss, and the mob can tell full well that you don't think you've got anything to show 'em. Anything worth showing them. Because you're better than them? No. Touchdown kings are better than the mob. Dollar champs are better than the mob. Sex symbols are better than the mob. You're just pretentious and kidding yourself, and you're not as smart as you pretend to be either. 30-50% of the mob is smarter than you, and you have nothing to show them.

Picture a world where anyone who wants to can be better than the mob, and lionized by the mob, based on proving it and flaunting smarts. Where smarts and learning are worth bragging about. Don't say the mob can't appreciate such things, that it exceeds their capabilities - the mob appreciates a WINNER, they don't give a crap about the incomprehensible game plan diagram or underlying facts! The mob can't catch a touchdown pass, any more than they can solve Fermat's Ding-Dong, but they love to see somebody run it dowwwwwwn to the other guy in a convincing and breathtaking way. How many people who watched the "apple" scene in Good Will Hunting were all like, "HAHA! YEAH! Matt Damon was SO RIGHT in his historical analysis!"

No. Please. Don't be a moron. People were like "HAHA! YEAH! Matt Damon made the other guy look like a DORK!" Incapable of comprehending - please. They took it 100% as granted that he STUFFED that guy, with strong basis. They don't need comprehension - just one look at the other guy's face! He got RULED. Comprehension means zap. It's competition that puts butts in seats and hearts in throats, and scholastics has just as much potential as anything in those stakes - if you thought it was worth bragging about. Potential for a grandstanding showoff to put on a great show? Hell yeah. Or potential for that same hot-dogger to CRASH, BURN AND FUMBLE? Even more entertaining! There are risks, and there is excitement, when there is something worth risking: pride in what you do and know. Showing the other (or the world) who boss is. The world of smarts has plenty there to ante up, and it's nothing the mob can't comprehend - the mob will eat it up, if only you would be so kind as to "brang it."

It's time that smarts got brang. It's time to take it to it. It's time to level up.

If our nation is going to rise up and take its place among the kinds of places I'd like to see it become, where stuff like this happens - then all kids need to straighten up their spines a bit, hold their heads proud and get a glint in their eye to match the chip on their shoulder where it counts. Every kid with the least propensity for athletics is encouraged to strut, and to playfully test themselves against their peers. Every kid with a propensity for academic flair ought to be encouraged to do the same. Every kid ought to be encouraged to have a strong sense of pride in their powers of performance - as whatever level they possess! - such that reading, writing, art, mathematics, history and every other higher subject - until erudition in general becomes fodder and grist with which to clobber and/or dethrone one's rivals in the pecking order!

THINK WHAT IT WOULD MEAN TO THEM, if kids actually gave a shit! Bragging is an evil, some say, but it's a bellwether as well. Because when something is cool to give a shit about...that's when you start to see some brag. The kids would really take to it, if the teachers would do their job, and get 'em to care.

"You call that a syllogism, Bernadette?"

"NICE MATH, BRIAN."

"Okay, you can't claim to be ambidextrous with penmanship like that. I'd say both hands are off."

"Buddy, I could drop a sonnet on you that will have you writing your own elegy!!"

It has to start at that kid brag level, one-upmanship. But once you can instill that hey-this-too-is-brag-worthy perception across the student body, the admiration for that, next thing you know you're breeding superstars out of people who might never otherwise have signed up.