Although I chase intelligence like other people chase [insert your own target here], there are many domains in which learning is a significant struggle for me. It is relatively simple to attempt to speak or think intelligently in small bursts such as those I produce here; but my facility with this may be misleading, because to be honest, I often find it difficult to outgrow my own habits, expectations, inertia and bias. To learn; actively, creatively. To surpass my expectations or remake my habits.

My fb acquaintance Andrea Kuszewski recently posed before her presentation at gSummit with a slide that reads (in part): “Learn to fetishize the pain of struggling through learning something new”. This is an idea that almost every autodidact is familiar with and one I myself find to be an excellent reminder. And I need to be reminded; for I too, forget this aspect of the learning path, particularly when under stress or when I feel emotionally challenged.

Thinking about this opportunity inspired me to realize that many of us already fetishize pain, but in ways that inhibit our development. And some of us even feel compelled to such behavior. The inclination toward self-harming has become almost endemic in our modern culture. Could such behavior be understood to be a misapplication of the capacity to fetishize suffering that eager autodidacts ordinarily develop (to varying degrees) in relation to the difficulties of study, retention, integration and demonstration of expertise? I think there’s a relationship here.

It appears that it might not be terribly difficult to redirect this misguided expression of pseudo-masochism, and that such redirections could have prodigious results. That we might ourselves learn how to work in a similar fashion with most or all of our own challenges is also an exciting idea.

The capacity to redirect such already-established behavioral momentums is revolutionary, and I believe in the power and demonstrable applicability of this idea; not only in the domains related to educating ourselves and reformulating our intelligence, but also in those that are far murkier and more difficult: our personal and relational development as men and woman, as animals, as human beings and even as cultures.

I consider the challenges we face in the silent inward struggles, the crucibles in which our personhood is forged and tried. The truly confusing places where we often have our deepest pain. If we can fetishize the pain of working more directly and honestly with these feelings and experiences, instead of avoiding or hyperbolizing them, we can enter and explore them. We can develop awareness and understanding of their sources and implications. We will begin to learn to read the signals rather than simply react to them. In this sense our deepest fears and agonies can themselves become ways of transformation within us.

They must become such ways.