I am educated in the Humanities,a kind of new age English major that championed the nobilities of the Human Spirit. Now Im graduated and I can't stomach as much as I could. That is to say as has been said before " one of the great paradoxes of education is that we begin to become critical of the system in which we are being eduacated." I want to hold true to my values believing that the point of it all is being of maximum service to _ _ _ and my fellow man but I have to do it on my terms.
Here is what I find myself looking down the barrel of: getting a job at a meager salery in a government or corporation that is already established. I would rise through the company slowly pay my dues, maybe go to UW nightschool for a masters or more in whatever field I am pursuing. I'd get healthcare, a good salery friends, a title that I could repeat to people when they asked me what it is that "I do" and a home and a car etc etc etc.
The trade off is simply too great, Adults, no matter how well educated they tell you they are insist on repeating highschool antics. There are popular people, dorks under achievers and the lot, all of whom will be talked about by the workers in whatever corporation it is that I find myself in. Here we see what it is that coined the term "office politics". Thats code for: "pandering to human insecurities". I'm not above pandering and schuking an jiving but I wanna do it for something I built.
Do I go for the secure route, most of the reasons for which boil down to fear, no matter how rational or sane it sounds if you say it out loud. Its no measure of sanity to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. I see this in other writers and youth, this contempt for those who couldnt go it alone, who couldnt carve something out that allows them to lead with their strengths, to utilize who it is they are rather than what they are told to be or what they show aptitude in. As I will be in Dutch Harbour and the berring sea fall and possibly winter people ask me " arent you scared, the waves the nature of the work?" Not to be even more grandiose than I have displayed already but. You got to be willing to die to fish in Alaska commercially but there is something much more terrifying than drowning in the cold, alone: Living the career life, thinking we have control over our lives. Whats more terifying than dieing is thinking a career or the security it brings could possibly secure what goes on in my head. were all getting ready to die, to go out, some of us Know this others will wake up much closer to the end than the begining and realize that the only thing in between them and the shrieking nothingness is... the security of their shit. I'm ranting now.
Point being some folks need to be given a job, others are capable of ceating one for themselves.., if they can differ the feeling of security on both the superficial and esthetic level but also the deeper, "whats the point" level. Ille carve my piece out, those given can have their shit taken as they are seeing in this economic crisis. which sheds light on one of my favorite things Both destiny's kisses and its dope-slaps illustrate an individual person's basic personal powerlessness over the really meaningful events in his life: i.e. almost nothing important that ever happens to you happens because you engineer it. Destiny has no beeper; destiny always leans trenchcoated out of an alley with some sort of Psst that you usually can't even hear because you're in such a rush to or from something important you've tried to engineer.
People go to scool for freedome not security, at some point Fear got them twisted between the two.The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.Because here's something else that's weird but true: in the day-to day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And the compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of god or spiritual-type thing to worship -- be it JC or Allah, bet it YHWH or the Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles -- is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you. On one level, we all know this stuff already. It's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, epigrams, parables; the skeleton of every great story. The whole trick is keeping the truth up front in daily consciousness.
There's a paradox in the United states of, the people who get really powerful jobs tend to go to the top schools. Often times in these schools they study the liberal arts, philosophy,Humanities etc. and its all very much about the nobility of the human spirit and broadening the mind and from here you go to a specialized school to learn how to sue people or to figure out how to get people to buy a certain type of SUV. Now there are things (among the top, my paycheck) that I don't like about my JOB but I love that I get to use everything iv'e ever learned or think about...daily. This goes a long way considering that sometimes its lonely or unsuccessful work and I remember this when I start to complain: I know that in America there is a very specific class , the upper and middle class, who had parents that could afford to send them to very good schools and received excellent education and are working in jobs that are extremely financially rewarding but have nothing to do with what they were persuasively taught was important and worth while. I never thought of it in those terms but it is a paradox.
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