I had an interesting conversation with someone in the comment section of one of my diaries in this particular series about how we tend to fixate on every aspect of a particular subject.
I find myself doing this quite a bit with almost everything I come across. Just today when I was searching for a couple of songs on youtube I actually ended up looking up info on the bands who performed said songs, "Something About You" by Level 42 and "What's On Your Mind (Pure Energy)" by Information Society. Interesting bands, to be sure.
I also found myself doing this with the Three Kingdoms and Sengoku periods in history after playing a few games based on works from those periods. I was also an avid Legend of the Five Rings player when I was younger, but I doubt I'd be able to keep up now because I haven't played in almost a decade. Needless to say I found myself quite immersed in the source material, often for months at a time.
The problem is that while most people might marvel at encyclopedic knowledge of something like Star Trek (guilty), not many people have the same respect for the same level of knowledge of things like Chinese or Japanese humanities, especially their earliest novels like Luo Guanzhong's Three Kingdoms and Water Margin. Wu Jingzi's satire The Scholars is actually pretty relevant considering the current quagmire known as congress. I still have an unabridged copy of the Tale of Genji I've yet to read. Musashi's Five Rings is also a good read, though it would seem it's become a treatise for businessmen. I've got a few other books based around martial arts and philosophy but for the sake of the diary and the reader I'll leave it at that.
I actually managed to apply this ability to an extent in my college years in my math, humanities and programming classes. My humanities professor thought I could teach eastern humanities somewhere, but I simply told him I'm just a student, not an expert. Still, that didn't stop the interesting conversations we had.
It was also kind of nice to help people out who had trouble with programming, and this is pretty common as programming is a tough skill to pick up. It can be very precise at times. And, being a programmer I've gotta keep up with the changes, so naturally I've got more than a few programming books in my library also.
Even after college I've picked up many skills "on the fly", such as ironing and pressing clothes for work.
Still, thanks to pop culture our quirks and ticks are seen as little more than what's termed as "Cocktail Party Syndrome". I for one am not a party person. Hell, most of the time in situations like that I'm quick to find a 'safe place' away from all the noise and over stimulation.
It's that kind of thinking that keeps the rest of the world from taking us seriously. We can do a lot of things for a lot of people if we're given the chance. It's my hope that more folks will realize that as awareness spreads, so to speak.
See you around,
Homer