>>55081973then i honestly don't know what you're going on about.
i'm an extremely avid reader. i mostly read nonfiction. my whole life, i've been in educational situations of varying prestige, usually with high achievers. i'm not going to lie to you. some people are a lot smarter than other people, and some people are a lot more educated than others. shiori is not some mensa 160 iq type, she's not the ultra /lit/ type that read the bell jar when she was six and by now sees sylvia plath as patriarchal, she's not the disillusioned socialite heiress who has to always tell people about how she's a high functioning alcoholic even though she's only 19, and cries when she's drunk about nietzche and how much she hates her own wealth, but somehow drinks her way to an economics PhD.
but you know what? when it really counted, all three of these people were close minded retards who could never even fathom entertaining a hobby or an idea or anything outside their bubbles. there were a lot of people like that, some with bubbles so big that for the rest of my life i will not even come close to being as smart or knowledgable about them.
it's sometimes the guy you thought was a moron your freshman year because he asked retarded questions in political philosophy that ends up being the most thoughtful, edified, and even successful person, because they're willing to give things time of day and engage. it always amazed me when the 'smartest people in the room' would immediately go quiet if i ever brought up something out of their wheelhouse, or something they found socially unacceptable like things that were remotely otaku. no matter how smart they are or what their ambitions before college or grad school, they always just ended up being careerist consultants. that's not an awful thing. not all consultants are parasites, and honestly, it's much more than i could ever do. i was bad at school. by the time i left undergrad i was browbeaten and felt like a total fucking retard.
i never felt lonelier than when i had to talk to these kinds of people. they know more things than you, but they don't care about the things you bring them. they genuinely have the most interesting things in the world to say, but they have nothing to say about anything you bring to them, which must mean it's not very interesting.
shiori may not know everything in the world, but it's clear she engages with it with gusto. she has fun living life and thinking about things, and learning new things. the people i've met in life like that, besides actually being fun to be around and grow with, because they're not static intellectual monoliths -- these are the late bloomers who one day end up doing something worth giving a shit about. they bloom late because they've almost always got cognitive bs. but no one ever does anything great if they lose that spark in their heart. shiorin's got that spark. and frankly, i don't think there's anything at all to look down on.
