Friday, January 13, 2012

There Was A Time When I Gave A Fuck

Back in the day, I sometimes gave a shit about stuff. If I remember correctly, I was trying to be cool and smart at the time, but that all failed miserably.

I don't remember who I wrote this letter to, but I do remember (hazily) that I was drunk at the time.

/rant

(I also remember that whoever I wrote this to did not reply. Lololol).

27/06/10


Did you give your laptop a good smack? Technology... man. There are so many things about our fast paced hyperculture that I hate, but there are others I am amazed about. For example, the dialogue we're having, or even the nature of this website, where people actually READ and discuss their ideas, is something I find lacking these days. Not to sound elitist, bias, or what have you, but it's hard to carry on a good conversation with people of my age-group. I feel isolated in my pursuits, and it is often lonely to be interested in things that many of my friends think are a boring waste of time. It's hard to find people who take the time to enjoy sharing their own thoughts, even in university. It's all about the grades. It's all about brown-nosing to get recognition and acceptance. Individuality is quelled under tight deadlines and strict adherence to policy and the challenge isn’t even there, because the feelings of competition and success have been sterilized and reformulated in such a way that the spirit of discovery and 'newness' is totally downtrodden; though this is not true in every case. Put a group of people who really know their own minds in a room together, and you have yourself a beautiful thing.


I guess the idea is that the world can just go fuck itself, because nobody really needs to clean up the mess. It will take care of itself, I’m sure. Oil is natural and maybe fish even like the taste of it, so there’s no need to worry. Who are we to give a shit?


I'm sure the Dark ages weren’t so bad. Maybe the enlightenment was a bad idea. Instead of universal gravitation, calculus, optics, and alchemy, Newton would have done much more for the advancement of humanity if he had burned witches and invented rap music.




Hell, there's been more than one occasion where I've come across people (whose rapid-fire texting a machine gun would envy) that are so disconnected with things, so drowned out in the background noise of over-consumption and ignorance, that I became mad and reclusive. Dealing with these people is not just a waste of time, but a complete waste of life. Feels like Gibson's bizarre experiment in social Darwinism, where some bored researcher held the fast-forward button.


It makes it difficult to share ideas and reinforce each other’s interests. I like the kind of people that never stop asking questions, and who are willing to be selfless in the pursuit of answers.


I am just starting to get perspective on how my generation has developed through the years, and it really scares me. Most of my guy friends that did go the post-secondary route are completely lacking in motivation and interest. They seem so discouraged with academia that I don’t know how they even made it through. But then again it could just be history repeating itself, and that there is little difference from this time and another, although I would argue that university attendance has certainly exploded in the past 50 years, but then again so has the population.


I couldn't agree more with your insight about work. So many people do things they hate everyday and it takes real courage to break the slavery. It's so easy to be taken advantage of in anything. It's so easy to get lost in the shuffle as you get stepped on by backstabbers climbing the pyramid of material wealth. They are idiotic and useless.


People ask me why I even like science. They ask me where the money is, and try to convince me that it's a waste of time to fiddle around with questions involving the origin of the universe and why we are here. Maybe those are pointless questions, and there is be no final answer at all, but just thinking about it drives my passion for exploration. I'm not much of an academic success to be honest. Even though I work hard I do well enough to pass. It could be that I'm not cut out for cosmology or particle physics**, because I find that what they’re really looking for is number-crunching automatons who memorize the names of everything without knowing what they mean. But I too am a smart-ass, so I won’t listen to what they say anyway. Smart-asses are what this world needs more of.

**I was obsessed with physics at the time.

(Right now, I am obsessed with video games and creative writing)


And now would be an appropriate time for Star Wars.









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