Book 109 - A Year of Magical Learning

Reflection Title: I’ve Never Felt Dumber in My Life…it was AWESOME!

Book – Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity by Judith Butler

Book Description: One of the most talked-about scholarly works of the past fifty years, Judith Butler’s Gender Trouble is as celebrated as it is controversial. Arguing that traditional feminism is wrong to look to a natural, 'essential' notion of the female, or indeed of sex or gender, Butler starts by questioning the category 'woman' and continues in this vein with examinations of 'the masculine' and 'the feminine'. Best known however, but also most often misinterpreted, is Butler's concept of gender as a reiterated social performance rather than the expression of a prior reality. Thrilling and provocative, few other academic works have roused passions to the same extent.

Reflection:

I’ve now officially consumed close to 200 books in the past 2 years of my life. These books have been 95% nonfiction and hit on some pretty complex topics like math, science, human nature, natural history, psychology, grief, spirituality, love, death, and happiness. I feel like if can get through books like Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (twice), Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker, and The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins without my brain melting from feeling like I can’t keep up…I should be able to confidently tackle most any topic out there at this point.

Then I met Gender Trouble by Judith Butler!!!!

A good friend of mine mentioned at a recent get together that this book was one that had greatly impacted his life and that he had learned a ton from when he read it. Well, that was music to my ears of course. I’m always on the hunt for the next great book and I love recommendations like this from people I care about. So, I took the plunge into the deep end not knowing what I’d find.

What I found is that I have never felt dumber in my entire life, and I LOVED EVERY MINUTE OF IT!

This book made those other three I mentioned above seem like child’s play. I can’t tell you how many times I had to stop and google words that I had never even heard of in my entire life and didn’t even know existed. Words like phallogocentrism, ontological, metaphysics, epistemological, etc. It was more than every other book I’ve ever read combined and then multiplied by 10. My poor wife, Felicia, had to hear me constantly running downstairs from my office to complain that I’m so frustrated by this book because I literally can’t understand any of it. I was lost the whole time! I could barely keep up and struggled all the way until the end.

So why did I love it so much then? I loved it because it is everything that this year of magical learning journey is about at the end of the day. This journey is about exploring, living, and deepening my core values. Gender Trouble was a unique adventure for me because it helped me to tap into a particular core value of mine that most books I read never seem to push. That value is Humility.  

I have humility on my core values list to always remind myself that I don’t know anything and to strive to keep that beginner’s mind as much as I possibly can in all that I do. It is tough to remember that sometimes and make it a part of your everyday life. The more you learn, grow, and refine your thoughts…the more you can start to believe you know a thing or 2 about this world. We are all human at the end of the day, and it is hard to remind yourself that you are still an idiot. My goal in life is to learn for the sake of learning, not learning to know. I can’t think of a more humbling slap in the face reminder that I still don’t know anything in this world than a book like Gender Trouble.

Thank you Bryan for the recommendation and reminder that I still have so much to learn about this world. I look forward to talking about this with you and hopefully you can help me make some sense of it from your perspective.

Question: When was the last time you reminded yourself that you still don’t know anything!

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - Gender Trouble

YOML Bookstore - Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity by Judith Butler