Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Graduation


A ZeroHedge article today, describing the record rise of the student loan debt bubble - the only credit market still growing, praying on the young and uneducated to deepen and expand our debt enslavement - linked the following video:



Her delivery, to a degree, betrays the truth and power of the speech. I recommend visiting her blog and reading the complete text.

I found myself experiencing a myriad of emotions as watched and read and re-read this speech - elation, awe, inspiration - but more than anything else, I felt shame.

By the time I reached Junior High I had become completely disillusioned with my education. I had arrived at many of the same conclusions that Erica did, though at that time certainly not as eloquently so. I had recently been introduced to the restaurant business, garnering a job as a dishwasher at the restaurant where my father worked. I was having more fun, experiencing more of the real world, and by extension learning more working in the dish pit than I had at school since I could remember. I had already decided that I would simply go through the motions of finishing school while pursuing my new passion of learning to be a chef.

It was during my 7th grade year that I was fortunate enough to be put before Carolyn Simons, my “Donna Bryan,” for English. I am still to this day thankful that she not only recognized that I was phoning it in, but was also able to genuinely inspire me to stop doing so.

I say this because my resignation was not evident in my work or my report card. Mine was a small and mostly rural community (at the time) and as we all know the system is tailored to teach the students we have, not to produce the graduates we want. As such I easily completed the assignments given me, regurgitated the desired answers in the designated bubbles before me, and continued to receive high grades and honors despite the fact that I had long ceased going to school in any way that mattered.

But anyone who has ever been subjected to the tutalidge of Carolyn Simons knows what I quickly learned - an attitude such as that simply does not fly in her classroom. I will not delve into the multitude of ways that she opened my eyes as it would take a volume to do so, but I will say that she taught me the most important lesson that anyone can ever learn: Education is not a passive activity. Real, visceral, meaningful education can never be forced upon an unwilling student. It comes only from determined interest, inquisition, and examination. Teachers, in whatever form they may come, can only plant seeds. We must endeavor ourselves to grow them.

The best spent years of my entire formal education were the three at Bay Middle School in her class and in the classes of many other teachers like her. At that school the students were given the autonomy and latitude, the flexibility and inspiration to think outside of the box and to discover knowledge of our own accord, rather than to have it force fed to us as has become our institutionalized custom.

After Junior High I followed most of my classmates to a small, brand new public high school called South Walton. The programs were limited, the options small, the traditions non-existent, but the system for churning out volumes of obedient, unquestioning, line-toting, direction following youth was well in place. Seeing that the educational rubric I had had grown to love and embrace had been replaced by the one I had long since grown to loathe and detest, I once again retreated from school. Having become a decent line cook, and having snuck my way in to a kitchen run by an incredible chef, I spent most of my junior and senior year in the kitchen as opposed to the classroom.

I finished school not as the Valedictorian of my class, but as the 2nd runner up - a technical foul I received for logging over one hundred absences in a particular (and wholly useless) class during my senior year, and though I always submitted the assignments on time and scored well on the exams, the absences alone were enough to cause the blemish in my transcript knocking me out of the top spot. Of course, it was not the only class I frequently skipped. Thankfully, however, it was the only one taught by an instructor that could not plainly see that I did not need to be there.

My parents were furious and several of my teachers dismayed by the fact that after a lifetime of being at the top of my class I failed to graduate in that position. I was mostly apathetic. As was described in Erica’s speech, I was just happy to be getting the hell out of there - off to college where the system would be different, where teachers and students alike would be overwhelmed by a desire for a genuine education. (Can someone please invent a sarcasm font?)

Still and all, I was asked to give a speech. It was a request that I fervently refused. In fact, had it not been for a collective familial tongue-lashing, myself and my two best friends (also high placed finalists in our scholastic reality show) would have skipped graduation entirely.

Of course I found much the same in college that I had found in school before - brilliant minds and incredible tutors frustrated by a system designed to stifle creativity, discourage individualism, prohibit radical thinking, and produce increasingly efficient and obedient workers to feed our increasingly inefficient and irrational consumer driven society. Our colleges, once great venues of open debate and creative education have become incubators for the social lobotomy of entertainment-driven cultural values and a method by which we are intentionally streamlined into narrower areas of specialization with little to no emphasis on seeing, investigating, and understanding the whole puzzle, favoring instead a total focus on just our tiny piece.

It wasn’t until after college that I realized the problem lies not only in how we’re taught, but also in what we’re taught. I was perhaps most disturbed to learn that facts that I’ve accepted since I was old enough to read are in truth complete fabrications that have been inextricably burned into the educational curriculum, repeated ad nauseum by countless text books of every grade level, and used as foundational argument by academics, pundits, and public figures, all of which are easily exposed as the lies they are upon any critical investigation. Unfortunately when we are told something enough, told it from an early age, and told it by people we trust, it becomes almost impossible to consider that it might be false. It is the definition of indoctrination. And given the light in which such comparatively radical deviations in empirical thought are often cast, it is all too easy to leave those things unpublished, those possibilities unexplored, those words unspoken. It has become far easier to cling to knowns at our detriment than to explore unknowns for our empowerment.

“Ignorance is bliss.”
“Why stress about what you can’t change?”
“Only fight the fights you can win.”

These have become the mantras of our day. But the truth is that ignorance inevitably leads to slavery while knowledge leads to empowerment, change has never come from a person or group that was not stressed, and we MUST fight the fights that need fighting, especially now in what is perhaps human civilization’s most dire hour.

When I was asked to address my class, my teachers and my community I should have accepted that opportunity. I should have eagerly voiced my concerns rather than resigning myself to the belief that I could have no effect, that there was no difference I could make. I should have given that speech, or at least one very similar to it.

This is the source of my shame, for I forgot the lesson Mrs. Simons so endeavored to teach me. We are all, and have always been, both students and teachers. It is a sacred duty instilled upon us by simple virtue of our birth. It is our job as citizens of the world to constantly learn and grow, and to teach others. We must continue to question that which we are told, to re-examine that which we believe we know, to challenge others to do the same, and to accept those challenges from others. We cannot allow ourselves, individually or as a society, to become complacent and stagnant. We cannot cease to move forward, to seek innovation in thought, evolution in consciousness. There is no graduation.

This is a lesson I vow to never again forget or attempt to subdue. I am elated, awestruck, and inspired to see others - teenagers no less - who realize and embrace this conclusion, and it is my greatest hope that more of us continue to do the same.

Sunday, September 11, 2011

Questions


Photo Credit: toiletpapermoney.blogspot.com


For the last few weeks I've thought a great deal about what I wanted to write regarding the 10th Anniversary of  the attacks of 9/11. Initially I thought I'd do an in-your-face, in-depth, no-holes-barred amalgamation of all of the evidence that exists which, for anyone who takes the time to look at it and processes it objectively, clearly shows that the official, 'history book version' of 9/11 is the ultimate house of cards.

I've recently re-watched many of the documentaries including The Truth & Lies of 9/11, Zeitgeist: The Movie, Loose Change, Confronting the Evidence, ZERO, In Plane Sight, and Aftermath. I've gone back and re-watched much of the news coverage from that morning where the tone of reporters was one of shock at the realization that the WTC collisions were not accidents, but were targeted attacks. Fast forward 10 years and any time there is an emergency the first speculations are always terrorism. I've thought about how this shift in mentality has, by and large, defined the 21st century thus far. I've thought about how different the Bill of Rights looks now as opposed to 10 years ago. I've thought about the various wars in which we are involved around the globe and the thousands of Americans that have been lost to those conflicts, as well as the untold number of civilians of foreign nations. I've thought about the climate of fear that is ever present in American life today - all of this a direct result of the events of that day 10 years gone.

Mostly, I've thought about the moments I remember most vividly - Mrs. Murphy coming into the computer lab at Sandestin Academy and telling our class that an airplane had just collided with one of the World Trade Center buildings in New York City - my mom picking my friend August and I up from school two hours later and taking us back to my house where we flipped through channels and found coverage of the events on every single cable station save one: MTV - receiving an email from a family friend a few days later containing a picture of the Statue of Liberty holding up her middle finger in place of the torch with the words "We're Coming Motherfuckers" written across the bottom - watching the live CNN coverage with my dad as the invasion of Afghanistan began - being pulled out of class the following year by Mrs. Stratton who said "Something's happening that you're going to want to see. Come with me." as she led me to the SWHS library where I sat with a few other students and faculty and watched as American forces invaded Baghdad and that big, beautiful tank ripped down the statue of Saddam Hussein... There are many more.

I remember how enthusiastically patriotic I felt in those years of high school, I remember how that patriotism waned throughout college as I began to see the evils that were occuring at home and abroad guised under the cloak of antiterrorism, and I remember how that patriotism faded entirely and was replaced by disappointment and disgust when I learned the truth about the 9/11 attacks and the depth of the changes they've had on every facet of our society since.

But how can I sum up all of the facts & falsehoods, effects & emotions, repercussions & realizations surrounding 9/11 in anything short of a lengthy book?

I can't. Nor shall I attempt to do so. The truth is that there is nothing else to be said about that day or the aftermath that followed. Of course, this won't prevent the corporate media from spending an entire day ignoring the real, pertinent news of the world and ruinning a slough of commentary and special features - probably even some "news" - on the recap of 9/11. They'll try to extract a few extra ratings points praying on the grief of victims, the remembrances of eyewitnesses, and the continuing ethnocentrism and institutionalized fear of the American population at large.

Don't misunderstand me: I'm not saying that today is just another Sunday. The tragedy of 10 years ago should be reflected upon, and the fallen should be remembered, but it should be done by each of us privately or with our friends, family and community - not in the orgasmic barrage of media frenzy seen across America right now. And if anyone bothers to look at today's coverage in any foreign media outlets you'll see that an entirely different narrative is being discussed - one of culpability, duplicity, greed, and ignorance.

So today, in rememberance of those who died, in recognition of those who murdered them, and in respect of the fact that I simply cannot say anything that has not already been said, I will look not to the answers, but the questions, and not to the past, but the future.

A future in which the world faces an unmitigated economic collapse.

A future in which a planet in peril is becoming more violent and unpredictable.

A futue in which increasing numbers of the world's citizens are taking to the streets with varying degrees of violence in an attempt to make known to their leaders that they have had enough of the failed neo-feudalist system.

A future in which the costs of energy, medicine, food, shelter - Maslow's most basic necessities - are becoming unaffordable to all but the most affluent.

A future in which 12 citizens appointed by congressional leaders will decide the economic & social fate of the entire nation.

A future in which more middle-of-the-night blind legislation will be passed without ceremony to further the interests of the same elites who are responsible for much of the depravity and destruction we've seen over the past 10 years.

A future in which the defense budget will necessarily be slashed along with social programs in a futile attempt to address our absolutely unmanageable debt and budget deficit.

A future in which we will certainly see another malitious attack on innocent American civilians in order to foster another Higalian Dialectic and keep the money flowing into the coffers of the Masters of War at the expense of those who work on Maggie's Farm.

What do you suppose will be the next iconic target that they destroy to renew the lease on our eternal fear? Mall of the Americas? Golden Gate Bridge? Cowboys Stadium?

How many innocent lives will they sociopathically terminate in order to push the rest of us to move willingly in the direction they want us to go?

Who will be their new scapegoats? What group or nation or class of citizens will they lay the blame at the feet of? Will it be the Chinese, garnering for them the popular support to escalate from economic oppression to militaristic supression? Will it be American seperatists vocally opposed to government-sponsored tyranny, leading to public acquiescence of further stripping of the rights and freedoms our ancestors fought, bled and died to give us, all in the name of public safety and security? Will it be Americans funded by the Chinese?

How will their new doctrines deepen our dominion? Will they rob us of our right to own property as they've already (in large part) robbed us of our ability to do so? Will they take from us our immunity of group assembly to discuss and debate our ideals? Our constitutional guarantee of local governance? Our perogative to seek a redress of our grievances from our government? Our access to information outside of their control? Our privalege to legally challenge the validity of our purported infractions? Our control over our own bodies? The freedom of use of our own minds?

How low must we bow, how completely must we be subjected, how enslaved must we become before they are satisfied? How long will it be before we collectively realize and admit that the man and the dog are working together & how many innocent lives will be lost before we elect not to blindly follow where they lead?

Another thing I've re-watched recently is the Zapruder Film. For nearly 50 years we have examined and re-examined that short piece of video, clearly showing Kennedy's head blowing back and to the left, as opposed to forward and to the right as would have been the case if he had been shot by Oswald from the window of the 4th floor book depository. What good has it done us? All that is required to expose the man behind the curtain is the desire to do so. What will it take for you personally to find that desire?