25-26 Aug 2010
I woke up around 3:00 PM and took 2 piracetam and choline, and again at 9:00 PM and 3:00 AM. Last night, I had a dream about a very large tornado passing by our house. I've had plenty of dreams like this before, because tornadoes are fucking awesome, right? This time was different, though. It was very vivid, with a kind of clarity and strength of color that's usually absent from my dreams. Then it actually hit the house and started ripping it apart while I was still huddled inside. This wasn't even bad. It was incredible.
I've been in a good mood recently, and I almost feel as if I'm more "together" in a sense. It could just be placebo, though. My family was painting the bathroom today, which is adjacent to my room. Normally the smell of paint would give me terrible headaches and nausea, but this time I barely even noticed it. I recorded a video today, and it seemed like I could more easily focus on editing it, which is usually pretty tedious. A viewer recommended that I read Gödel, Escher, Bach and I Am a Strange Loop, so I'm going to try and make some headway on those.
Today someone suggested that I make a video about why I'm not in college, but I felt that would be uninteresting and pointless. I do get a lot of people asking me what school I go to, what I'm majoring in, and so on, but I usually don't bother explaining. Saying "I'm not interested" seems like it would be a foreign and incomprehensible statement to the people who ask me this. Strictly speaking, I am interested as in mildly curious, just not enough to bother actually doing it to see what it's like. I don't have the money for it (see: $100 college fund) and I'd rather not borrow extreme amounts of money for something I probably wouldn't even complete. People have told me it's a much different environment than high school (and others have said it's not very different at all), and I suspect this is because the people who attend aren't required to be there and are only there because they're genuinely interested. If that's the case, I don't think I should just be there out of a sense of obligation or social expectation.
The problem is that if I did make a video about this, most of my audience would probably misinterpret it as a wholesale dismissal of the value of higher education or a refusal to validate a choice that they've put a lot of time and effort into, rather than just my own personal preference. On the other hand, if you do understand and you just think I'm making a bad decision, that's alright. It's nothing I haven't heard before.
I'm a university drop-out. While people are paying to go there, it's still a lot like high school...or was for me. People were still there because it was "the next thing" to do...and their parents were making them do it. Classes were making exciting topics the most boring things in the world. I also had my crisis of faith during the time. While it had no real effects, it was very depressing, and I ended up dropping out because I was just too depressed to get out of bed most days.
I've been reading a lot in the cognitive science field (mostly from Hofstadter and Dennett) because it interests me...and I've been recently considering going back to school. There's just 1 problem. I make a very decent wage, and am already satisfied with my job. I can keep learning on the side, and befriend some college students to get their login for their journal aggregators. I'd probably end up taking a cut in pay even if I go all the way through post-grad and do research...perhaps getting a PhD. I don't know if I can justify doing something I might like a little more when I have to leave the life I've created so far.
So yeah, I usually strongly suggest most people go to college (many opportunities are closed to me, thanks to that)...but if they drop out, it says nothing about their intelligence, determination, or "life goals" (as I recently heard from a potential date who dismissed me because of my lack of degree).
ZJ, you're not interested in higher education because you don't like the learning, or the learning environment? (Do you prefer to be self-taught?)
Is that Gödel as in the logician and mathematician from Austria?
At first I didn't want to go to college either. Mostly because I didn't know what I wanted career wise. Then I realized it doesn't matter. As a result I ended up taking classes based on a genuine interest/curiosity in the subject matter. That's how I discovered my love of anthropology, sociology and philosophy. And incidentally became an atheist :) hence the discovery of your videos.
A video about why you're not in college would certainly not be pointless. There are many people who share your view towards higher education, and feel left out because the majority of people think a degree is the ticket to "success."
College is not for everyone. It's only been since maybe the 70s when everyone started going. The government paid for a lot of returning G.I.s to go to college via the G.I. Bill, and from there started the financial aid process we have today. Most people would do fine, if not better, with technical training, an apprenticeship, a specialized school of some kind, or by focusing on personal networking to land a job.
Currently, college is overall too expensive and doesn't provide much value to the average individual who might only go for a liberal arts degree or even something specialized. I spoke with a young woman last night who graduated from law school and can't find a job. Now she clerks with a judge to get by. If even an attractive female lawyer can't find a job, colleges are not doing their job in preparing their students for the world. There are other factors at play here like population growth, the recession, and of course individual results do not mean a trend, but something is seriously wrong with our higher education system.
I spent a total of five years in college, ranging from my local community college to an elite private school. I'm still working the same kind of job I had when I was 17, and making more than my peers who graduated with liberal arts degrees. I still have some debt, but not the same kind of baggage that generally comes with four years.
So, you've got the financial scam that college has largely become, population growth trends, and the social trend of people turning against the traditional college route. Those are all interesting and weighty subjects, ZJ.
College is not for everyone. Carl Sagan taught it, Bill Gates dropped out. It's something you should do because you want to, or you want to do something that you can't do without it, like become a doctor. You're a smart guy and an effective autodidact. You probably don't need college. Some colleges are like high school, some aren't, it usually depends on where it is and what kind of school it is (i.e., NCAA sports schools are more like high school than private liberal arts colleges that have no athletic program). Most people treat it like a trade school, thinking it will get them a job. I went because my parents wanted me to and I thought I needed to to become a writer. Lots of my favorite writers didnt' go to college. Many did, but it's not a prerequisite.
Sorry to hear you have to take drugs to sleep. I'm afraid of sleep-inducing drugs. Try running a few miles every day. Nothing makes you ready to sleep at the end of the day like some road work.
This is actually pretty easy:
"College" is no longer (if it ever was) worth its cost for middle/working class students. It's a huge waste of money. Their only real value was the networking, not the "education," and you can network all you want today on the Net without a campus.
However,
If you'd like to actually work for living, e.g. you're not independently wealthy, you must have a "college" degree. Really, even a BA is just a joke anymore--you have to continue to advanced degrees.
NO ONE will hire a smart-ass cross-dresser with a bad attitude and a problem with authority (...:) for a blue-collar job.
NO ONE will hire a non-degreed person for a white collar position.
Without an academic or "professional" career path, you're setting yourself up for vocational martyrdom. Everything that has made you so valuable to so many, all of your cognitive and pedagogical accomplishments, will come to nothing unless seeded in the fertile fields of class-differentiated communities, and nurtured in the bosom of PBS. You *must* develop a source of income to protect you from the trogs, or they will devour all the delicate parts and soon all we'll get from you is pitches for Mary Kay or someone's pre-paid legal services.
You'll get a pass for few more years because of your age, but soon enough you'll need to be where you need to be, and you will be sorry the rest of your life if you don't get there.
So just go out, become like a Psychiatrist or something, and continue to develop your skills and let us all grow with you. Otherwise, I think you'll find the people waiting in line at Trader Joe's for you to finish bagging their produce will be less appreciative of your communication skills than we, your loyal audience, are.
"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at
dawn looking for an angry fix ..." - Allen Ginsberg
See, this is the sort of thing I like to hear about: the naked admission that college may be an unnecessary expenditure for most people, contrasted with the reality that it's apparently necessary anyway in order to actually accomplish anything. It seems like these opposing forces are coming ever closer to clashing, as the need for ever more advanced certification runs up against the simple inability of most people in today's economy to afford this, at least without incurring massive debt. This doesn't seem like a good situation on either side of the fence and I imagine it isn't going to end well for a lot of people.
If I've understood you correctly: Modern life has made even average, mundane success infeasible without inordinate effort. Our lives are going to suck. It is now up to us to decide which path of suck they will take, lest the suck decide for us.
You haven't responded to my question above. :(
Yes, we are entirely together on this, and it's really very interesting to watch 'The Idea Of The University' move from monetizing a teacher's vocation (Plato, Socrates), to feudalism, to today's outright economic schadenfreude.
There's quite a bit to say on this point of class warfare, but really, I'm pretty much with Chomsky and Carlin on this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYIC0eZYEtI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2w4ThqMEpUQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oztdRo9GLLk&feature=related
Yes, 'education' in the US has always been an illusion. Formerly to disguise its exploitation of, and now the punishment of, the poorer classes. But let's be clear, they do have the only game in town. Don't let anyone convince you there are viable 'alternative' or 'underground' economies to participate in. I live in the middle of Southern California, no stranger to crime, music, surfer, or drug undergrounds--I've seen them all here, and they're just variations of the mainstream business culture.
Unless you're willing to do dead-serious smuggling in bullets, boobs, or dope, just get a regular job.
BTW, nothing more pathetic than a broken street dealer, his bidness destroyed by corporate dope franchising, looking in the window of a new well-lit, well-branded marijuana dispensary with neutral interiors, lighted glass display cases, and 4-color glossy brochures with designer fonts sitting on the counter.
Of course, things have already deteriorated to the point that now even workers--people who earn wages--are seen as drags on society as they still need too much support, the working benefits that used to be the eny of the world now considered nothing but embarrassing "private welfare packages" that can't be afforded anymore. c.f. Chomsky on ruling class views on wage earnings.
I can't begain to explain to you how different things were when I was 21 years old--or how different from that this new feudalism is going to be for you. Here's a fun little KOS piece that might help:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/7/4/881413/-John-Boehners-America?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+dailykos/index+%28Daily+Kos%29&utm_content=Twitter
I'm at rexhavoc1 at gee mail if you want to continue.
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I actually heard the story of you and your highschool life from you on blogtv, and yeah, I definately don't think the position you hold on the subject is inappropriate. My university is a fair bit like my highschool except that there's a little more competition and a little less apathy. Also, there isn't much of the youthful stupidity of highschool. I have yet to see any violence or bullying or anyone acting disorderly on campus.
I was originally going into it as a business major and I planned on having a career in business, but then I realized that that was what I did in highschool to get by and it was boring and unmotivating. I dropped all my classes and am now specializing in philosophy, and I've never been so motivated to do my work. As for my career path, yeah it probably won't be the most lucrative one, but it's the only one for me. If I couldn't take philosophy in school I probably wouldn't bother getting more than a bare minimum degree just for the benefits of having one.
Gotta do what you love, you know?
I second those book recommendations, if you have a few weeks to absorb them. Don't rush, take them in stages.