I think there is a problem when you try
to solve problems.
Say I go on my initiative to collect as
many college stories about the wasted effort, bad teachers, useless
information and so on. I spend years compiling stories, edit the
videos together, create this massive chain of anecdotal evidence that
at the very least speaks to peoples’ subjective views about the
utility they are or aren’t receiving while in school. What if I
garner enough attention? I get to sit down, express my views to the
university president. Maybe I am allowed to sit on a board of reform.
It is at this point I think you would start to see the pageantry
start to outweigh the utility.
Who still has the money? Who owns the
buildings, pays the teachers, and is making money from some
convoluted structuring that is more than a few steps removed from
your ideas about Spanish class? The problem with fixing problems is
that people are immediately resolved to negotiations. After you
invest the time, get the attention, and are made to believe are
moving in a positive direction, you have to find a way to actually
fix something instead of just creating a debate around it. When too
dramatic a change occurs too quickly, old angry white men get fearful
for their profits or positions of power.
Sometimes I feel like I shoot myself in
the foot before I begin. I am always the most gung ho for my ideas
and the biggest detractor. This digression seeks to explain why.
We start with a lot of bad ideas.
People are self-sufficient and totally responsible for their own
well-being. Everyone is equal. Your entitled opinion should be
allowed to be represented as fact. It’s someone else’s problem.
Nothing will change. Who cares? If I can’t understand it, it must
be wrong. Let’s assume they had the best intentions. So and so will
protect us. One day, by some nondescript method, they will finally
realize something or get what’s coming to them, even if only after
they’re dead.
Everything I think, or read or try to
work on, once it is put “out there” is affected by horrid ideas
like these. A gun is a great method for killing something until you
try shooting under water. And the seas of ignorance, despair, and
irresponsibility flow mightily. If there are a hundred men marching
with spears at the ready and you decide “fuck war” and start
marching in the opposite direction, you will be subsequently stabbed
and trampled. Our ideas, I think, have an even more powerful flow
than the direct impact of marching into a spear. If you pit a sea of
bad ideas against the riled up and passionate detractors who
specifically act in oppositional ways, their effort seems even more
desperately meager than before.
I want to act in ways that aren’t
exceedingly wasteful and extravagant under the guise of accomplishing
something. I can write a blog, attempt to clarify my ideas and
connect with someone on an intellectual level. It doesn’t cost
anything but time I’m happy to spend. If the simple idea being my
ideas and time can positively affect someone else’s thoughts, then
how much more can I do at that level? Is anything lost or gained by
taking big risks and trying to accomplish “more” with money and
power? Do I need to “leverage” (go into debt) my assets against
my best guess as to what I’ll make in return with a business. What
lessons are best learned from other people’s mistakes and what do
you need to screw up on your own? You can find just as many horror
stories as success stories about what happened when someone started a
business. If you get a real good talk, you’ll hear about the fifty
failures before the person stumbled on the thing they are there to
talk about. I don’t want to fail on principle. It’s clearly
inefficient and seems more than a bit unwise.
I think it is truly the mark of million
dollar households when someone said “of course that’s what we’re
gonna do” when the opportunity found them. I do not think it is the
case that most successful people are living the life of the immigrant
who started with sheer uncertainty and will and simply fought extra
hard to be the best and most profitable. Yet these are the stories we
tell. Maybe one of the best kinds of success is to truly grasp all
ways in which you are failing. The best companies choosing to
redesign and conserve instead of expand. The best people choosing
modesty over pride. A description of the life of something that
includes the bad decisions and feelings of uncertainty if there were
in fact that many bad decisions and underlying feelings.
I think in order for more people to
find the mindset to make those “of course” decisions we need a
better human philosophy. It needs to be centered on something that
literally has nothing to do with or ability to be hurt by the worst
kinds of ideas. I clearly advocate the scientific method for this
reason. Billionaires shouldn’t block legislation that levies an
estate tax in Maine, of course. We should do even the minor
improvements to our roads and bridges because we don’t want them to
collapse, of course. When are we going to set the course and leave
the debating and fighting for people who don’t belong on it?
