Making a journal entry on this here site has not been for my shyness -- which I can assure the random pedestrian who may stumble upon this pictureless page -- has never been a problem. No, actually, it took me about 3 monthly trials on SG just to figure out how to reach a journal entry spot. For this reason, I do declare, I need a research assistant. I have intelligence, there is no doubt, but it tends to be directed into the abstract realm. It can plainly be seen that there exists a dialectic between the abstract and the practical. Shit, more simple, it's like a balance. As one becomes more observant of intangible phenomena, they exert more mental energy into areas of life that are not before us, but at the same time, divert mental energy from more practical concerns. I think the image of the "absent-minded" professor expounding great theories of the age while unaware of that shoelace is untied, or that they've worn the same jacket every day for the past 3 years, comes to mind. Although, as a starving artist, I can attest that the habitual recycling of the same article of clothing has more to do with financial poverty of the most educated than any lack of practical knowledge.
All of this being said, I do have a point I'd like to make: intelligence is not necessarily relative, but it's much more relative than the smarter folks like to lead on. This may sound anti-intellectual, but matters of the mind purely for the mind's sake, a frequent occurence in the structure of our educational system, is absolutely a barren practice if it is not eventually compensated without a practical application. All of this sounds like commonsense, and it is, but it's not practiced by the large majority of our educational system.
The larger point to be made, however, is that it is a product of an anti-intellectual spirit that resides at the heart of American culture. After the 1960s, the American university system confronted a problematic between our state and civil society (important people). During the 1960s, kids went to college, listened to what the professors said, and then burned down buildings, dropped acid, had great sex, lived in communes, and protested the amazingly anti-democratic imperial nature of our military state that was flexing its physical and mental superiority by peppering napalm in Vietnamese jungles and killing 1 million people who wanted to create a system by which family and relatives would act as family and relatives. As a result, the American university system searched for ways to avoid the problems of disruption, and perhaps an educated masses who could communicate political thought across social and economic classes. They found it. The solution has been to very effectively siphon off communication between academic disciplines (history, anthropology, the Humanities) and vocational education (like business, nursing, etc), and by virtue, specializing human (American) minds. This has effectively replaced the dispruptive process an education in liberal arts used to perform on individuals earning a degree and getting office jobs, clerical work, etc., with a new style of education in which individuals are virtually programmed for their jobs in the university, and insulated from the potential damage a liberal arts education could do to their minds, like perhaps, challenge authority. The kind of damage this insulation of human minds can do at a collective level, at the level of culture, is imbue a certain autism into our collective consciousness. As the autist, whose emotions are deadened by such an amazing repetition of routine as a result of the configuration of their brain mechanisms that are predetermined to limit the space of outward activity, are Americans of today who pass through our educational system. This is an unavoidable pattern, since it is the result of the ways in which the path to upward mobility, a cardinal aspect of American history and society since its inception, a founding narrative if you will, has been intrinsically configured.
All of this being said, I do have a point I'd like to make: intelligence is not necessarily relative, but it's much more relative than the smarter folks like to lead on. This may sound anti-intellectual, but matters of the mind purely for the mind's sake, a frequent occurence in the structure of our educational system, is absolutely a barren practice if it is not eventually compensated without a practical application. All of this sounds like commonsense, and it is, but it's not practiced by the large majority of our educational system.
The larger point to be made, however, is that it is a product of an anti-intellectual spirit that resides at the heart of American culture. After the 1960s, the American university system confronted a problematic between our state and civil society (important people). During the 1960s, kids went to college, listened to what the professors said, and then burned down buildings, dropped acid, had great sex, lived in communes, and protested the amazingly anti-democratic imperial nature of our military state that was flexing its physical and mental superiority by peppering napalm in Vietnamese jungles and killing 1 million people who wanted to create a system by which family and relatives would act as family and relatives. As a result, the American university system searched for ways to avoid the problems of disruption, and perhaps an educated masses who could communicate political thought across social and economic classes. They found it. The solution has been to very effectively siphon off communication between academic disciplines (history, anthropology, the Humanities) and vocational education (like business, nursing, etc), and by virtue, specializing human (American) minds. This has effectively replaced the dispruptive process an education in liberal arts used to perform on individuals earning a degree and getting office jobs, clerical work, etc., with a new style of education in which individuals are virtually programmed for their jobs in the university, and insulated from the potential damage a liberal arts education could do to their minds, like perhaps, challenge authority. The kind of damage this insulation of human minds can do at a collective level, at the level of culture, is imbue a certain autism into our collective consciousness. As the autist, whose emotions are deadened by such an amazing repetition of routine as a result of the configuration of their brain mechanisms that are predetermined to limit the space of outward activity, are Americans of today who pass through our educational system. This is an unavoidable pattern, since it is the result of the ways in which the path to upward mobility, a cardinal aspect of American history and society since its inception, a founding narrative if you will, has been intrinsically configured.
VIEW 3 of 3 COMMENTS
strongislekid:
maybe. it's because unicorns never use the horn.
antimony:
it's a good song!