JUST PATIENT.
Especially Philosophy, Physics, and Media Studies.
You take it one sentence at a time and don’t go on until you understand that sentence. Look up any words you don’t understand*. Sometimes reading it aloud helps. If it takes 50 times before you understand it, then so be it.
Don’t feel bad if it takes a long time to get it, this is hard stuff.
The first time I read A Brief History Of Time by Steven Hawking, I could only muster about five pages at a time- and then I’d have to take a nap for an hour or two.
Understanding Media took a year to finish, because every few paragraphs some concept would blow my mind so much I’d have to put the book down and ponder for a few hours or a couple weeks.
Essentially your brain is like a muscle, the more you use it the stronger it gets, and the less you do the more it weakens & atrophies. BUT no matter how weak a muscle gets it can always be strengthened through continued exercise. SO ANY LACK OF FORMAL EDUCATION IS NO EXCUSE.
You don’t HAVE to go to a gym to get buff (although it helps to have all those cool machines in one place, along with a bunch of experts/enthusiasts on fitness and health), you just have to commit to spending time every day exercising your body.
And you don’t HAVE to go to a fancy University to get educated, you just have to commit to spending time every day exercising your mind by reading long complex texts and studying big ideas that hurt to get your brain around.
I think it was Confucius who said “It doesn’t matter how slow you go, as long as you don’t stop.” It was him or Lao Tzu, between the two of them they said EVERYTHING. Literally.
Sometime I’ll the story about why I know this for a fact.
*which is MUCH easier to do now that you don’t need a 20 pound Unabridged Dictionary. Juuuuust sayin’ 🙂