Education, the devil's in the details.

Public education, in all it's present glory, like any oner human creation, is flawed. But the fact that it so obviously, so deplorably flawed is what is depressing. Thirty years ago, kids in school where told a story. A story where if you when to school, and you got a college degree, then you would get a decent job. And now look what's happening. College people dropping out fresh from the campus life, bent double with the debt which they carry, and not even the good chance of finding a suitable job. Now, not all of this blame is to be put onto the system, although most of it should be. The small portion of error not belonging to the system is attributable to society, and it's perceptions on jobs. Nobody wants to be a fast food server or a farm worker. So even when the opportunities arise, we decline such an offer mostly out of pride and what society finds acceptable for a college graduate to seek employment. But tackling that would be trying to cure the symptoms.

The problem lies in the fact that public education was conceived, planned and structured around the intellectual ideas of the Enlightenment and the economic format of the Industrial Age. And so now even a traditional school is built around the idea of a factory. Bells regulating time, lockers, the works. But it's not the only outcome. We also arrange kids in batches of age, as if the most relevant thing pertaining to education that kids have in common is when they where born. A horrible miscalculation. Not to mention the gross defilement of any Arts programs in public schools. As if the only thing kids need to be happy is to have textbooks worth of facts on science and math and english crammed down their throats.

Oh, but wait, there's more! You need to sit still, pay attention. Answer these questions using the proper methods. There is only one right way to do it, and the answer is in the back of the book. And no collaboration. Let me repeat that; "NO COLLABORATION." Aren't schools supposed to teach you useful, real-world knowledge? And if that is true (or I'm merely riding on a idealist delusion), then shouldn't we be able to work in groups on almost everything? You're not going to be working alone all the time when you're in the real work force. Trying to evaluate students differently is like trying to determine the he health of the entire hive from just one bee.

Now, there are exceptions. There are enough people who fit into this mold, who are "smarter", to keep the delusion going. If that kid could make it so far, then everybody can make it that far, and anyone who does't excel in the same field, at the same pace, with the same proficiency is simply lazy. You could waste artistic genius simply because they weren't exemplary in the sciences. At that point, who cares? Artistic genius! But no, sit down, pick up your pencil, and neatly bubble in and answer, and no talking.

A Paradox of Perspective

It is quite odd, if you think about it. How unimportant and how significant we are. I mean, speaking objectively, we really aren't that much of a difference. Just dust specks floating on a dust speck in the middle of a tiny patch of inestimably small dust specks. Quite depressing. And yet, if we were to zoom in a bit, we would see a myriad of changes; small ones making big ones, big ones making small ones. Big or small, important or unimportant, for better or for worse. Going on all the time, and every little twitch counts.

A paradox of perspective, really. It's particularly scary for people who are just starting off their lives, both armed with and weighed down with the knowledge that every little decision will make a huge impact on their futures, and yet, still be unable to make any real, deliberate change on a social level. What should I major in in college? What should I focus on in high school? What internship should I go for? What do I want to do with my life? It makes me want to crawl up into a fetal position every time I think about it.

And we are forced to make these sort of life changing decisions so early on not only due to the capitalist mindset of the workforce, but also by the sheer amount of humanity pressing in on all sides, shoving for the best job, the best house, the best medical care, the best retirement... You make the tiniest slip, the smallest of mistakes, and suddenly there are a dozen more likely candidates fighting over your position. It's like trying to balance on the edge of a knife, all the while having people take potshots at you. The pressure is probably the reason for the recent pandemic of depression.

I suppose there is only one way to stay sane. You can block it out. Push it down. Lock up all your insecurities an present to the world an iron facade. But that's only a temporary solution. Sooner or later, the pressure get too much, and *pop*. And all the while you have that darker corner of your mind whispering in your ear;  You don't really matter, you never will...

An Epiphany on Loneliness

The other night, I was watching a movie called "The Outsiders" (which is basically a film on the class differences in the late 1950s), and at one point, the main character's two best friends are dead. And so I thought, "He must be feeling really lonely right now. All those happy memories that he and his friends share, no longer being able to talk to someone who was there with him, remembering too." And then it hit me. I realized I had a half-definition for loneliness. It's the inability to confirm your reality with another intelligent human being.

Now, that definition doesn't cover the entire cause and feeling of loneliness, but it's a start towards that. You see, according to David Hume, a Scottish Enlightenment philosopher, all reality is simply a

David Hume

series of sensory inputs colliding with your consciousness in an alternate dimension, and therefore nothing is really real. In his words: "To hate, to love, to think, to feel, to see; all this is nothing but to perceive. What a particular privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call thought." Thing is, there is no way that I know of to prove or disprove this theory. And not being able to either confirm or deny such a fundamental question tends to upset my perception of reality. And whenever I start to question reality, I tend to get lonelier than usual.

No mean feat, considering. But anyway, questioning that sort of basic human assumption leads us to want to find an answer to the said question. It's within human nature. And when we are unable to even definitively say that anything physical is actually as we experience it, it leads us to question even the existence of people around us, and ultimately humanity as a whole. And that, in my experience, tends to distance ourselves from any sort of social interaction, if not physically, then at least emotionally. And that feels like loneliness to me.

A Humbling Point of View

Recently, I stumbled upon a grading system for civilizations, know as the Kardashev scale. The Kardashev scale is a highly theoretical way of measuring a civilization's advancement, both technologically and expansively, and is useful for putting the recent leaps that humanity has made into a cosmic perspective.

Overall, there are 6 official types of civilizations, and they range from Type 0 to Type 5. Type 0 is
when the civilization in question extracts it's energy and resources from crude organic based sources, and is capable of orbital flight. Natural disasters such as tsunamis and hurricanes, as well as self-created mass genocide are all risks to the Type 0 civilization. At Type 1, the civilization is still planetary, but now gets it's energy from sources such as fusion reactors and other high-density energy sources. But they must also be capable of interstellar flight travel, interstellar communication, planetary engineering, world government, and megascale engineering. Type 1 is still prone to extinction, but it is now mostly limited to supernovas or black holes. Type 2 goes even further, as a multi-system civilization, and is now also capable of terraforming and stellar engineering. Type 2 is now theoretically immune form extinction from natural phenomena, as well as some of the artificial genocides. Type 3 is a galactic empire, and is now also able to travel via wormholes. Type 4 has the ability to colonize numerous galaxies, and is effectively immortal, as well as mastering time warping and theoretical time travel. Type 5 dominate the universe, and are supposedly able to create custom, parallel universes or alternate time branches.

So, yeah. We're still a Type 0 culture, but that is changing. We have met all criteria for a Type 0 civilization, and are beginning to try our hand at becoming a Type 1. I mean, look around! We're sending rovers to Mars and they're sending data back. We've launched equipment to the farthest reaches of the solar system. And yet, we still have a long way to go. We still rely heavily on organic sources of energy such as oil and coal. Not to mention our mindset and our culture. We have yet to see planetary government, although the UN is a step in that direction. And as for interstellar travel, well... we have yet to send a man to Mars, but that future isn't far off. I just hope I live to see it.

But we have to remember, this scale is not an outline of how humanity will progress. We will see things that deviate, or the whole thing could be wrong. We don't know. I mean, if you where to ask the most learned person a thousand years ago to come up with such a scale, I don't doubt that we would scoff at it in distain as we smile smugly in our own superior knowledge of events to come for humanity. People have been erroneous to a point of being ludicrous before, and for all we know, we could be too.

Ethics, where art thou?

Shakespeare once said; "There is nothing that is good or bad, but thinking that makes it so." And there really is no better way to put it. Good and bad are merely perceptions, and our perceptions are influenced by our heritage, our religious beliefs, our experiences, our hopes, our doubts...

So, really, if you where to mold people differently, they could have completely opposing opinions on good and bad. It happens all the time. Politics is the epicenter of that debate over what is good and what is bad. So, people never do anything they believe to be the worst decision. They always pick the best option available to them. Now, I'm not saying that people always pick the right option, or the option that benefits the most people, but they do turn down the road that they believe will allow them to get to their personal goals. Tolkien knew this when he wrote his famous Lord of the Rings books. There is no character, besides Sauron, who is truly evil. They always have some conflict with the protagonists not because their sole purpose is to get in the way, but because their goals don't align with the goals of the "good" guys.

But it is hard, to understand people and their decisions. It takes a considerable amount of understanding to really grasp someone's motives. But understanding breeds empathy, and empathy breeds sympathy. And so, in order to really, truly, unquestionably understand someone, you have to first love them as they love themselves.