I was watching this video by Odysseas [‘How To Become A Digital Renaissance Man’](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUf9dJE8W9c) where he outlines four elements that spurred the renaissance and four elements today that may be the foundation of a similar flourishing today. However, I don’t agree that the modern day renaissance man is the same as the modern day digital creator. Can they overlap sometimes? Of course, but that doesn’t mean they are the same thing. I also, don’t agree that the playing field has equalized. The rural poor may have some access but between subscriptions, copyright protections, paywalls, enshittification, and institutions, it is extremely hard to have access to anything. And whille I agree that universities appear more and more useless that isn’t because our access to education has improved but because institutions have essentially rebranded themselves as job training centers with a dash of prestige, instead of places to study for studying’s sake. Universities today are more like expensive handbags or sports cars. You go to one, not to learn, but to have that little line on your resume that says you went there. But the education isn’t there anymore… Those of us who care enough to attempt an education are digging up historical course lists, reading old books, and trying to recreate an education anywhere we can. And it’s not getting us anywhere, we can’t get a job from it. No one cares if you taught yourself Latin at 3am or between shifts. No one cares if you taught yourself history, philosophy, or literature. Because those aren’t things they can exploit. That’s what makes them valuable to us as individuals. It’s that little piece of us we wrest from the vestiges of time and the gruling mind numbing body and soul sapping exhaustion of constant work. The people we put up on a pedestal today as great achievers, polyglots, polymaths etc. they stole, they borrowed, they burned the midnight oil memorizing oratory or reading books they could never afford to buy. They mastered their fields, they couldn’t find work, they worked multiple shifts, they wrote novels from shitty hotel rooms because they had to and they didn’t do it alone. They formed societies from Tolkien’s Inklings to Agatha Christie’s Detection Club to Virginia Wolf’s Bloomsbury Group. Salon’s popped up, the Blue Stockings Society rose to allow for the informal education of women etc. To be a renaissance person, a polyglot, a polymath, a naturalist etc. was to rebel against the systems that said you weren’t allowed to learn, to rise above your so-called class, to be free. Sometimes we’re punished for that. But we’re still fighting that fight today and no amount up picking oneself up by their bootstraps, grinding, or selling ai generated e-courses is going to get anyone anywhere. Because in the end, that’s not freedom, it’s another link in our societal chain that says, ‘stay in your place’. And I for one – will not. *This piece was written before the transition to Ellipsus Emboss. It was written entirely in Obsidian.*