Firing Up the Engines of Ingenuity
After my first blog post I started thinking about all the travesties I’ve experienced during my time in our “benevolent” education system and although I could think of a ton, one main travesty is the lack of creativity. Usually it’s the people who go against the herd mentality that end up making history.
Han Solo Stuck in Carbonite
The problem is that the education system filters out our uniqueness through a funnel of boredom and conformity. Michelangelo said “Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” I think in this case the students are the blocks of stone, their uniqueness is the statue and the sculptor is the teacher. The reality is (at least for me) instead of chiseling the marble, the education system adds more marble. In other words, that special part of your soul/spirit that wants to break free and show itself to the world it gets buried with conformity and censorship. Essentially, it remains trapped deep inside thick layers of stone.
This marble to your statue is being added until you finally reach University. At University one of two things may happen: you may find the right school or degree by chance or intuition that actually does chisel out this unique side of you, or the pieces of marble are still being added because you just get a degree for the sole reason that it’s expected of you. If the latter is the case and after your degree somehow you get stuck in a dead-end job, then the worst case scenario is you’re trapped after you get married and have children with so much marble being added that it’s way too late for the chiseling process to commence. The unfortunate thing is that the same scenario would probably be happening to your children too but since you’ve become so numb and ignorant to it happening to you, you’d probably just tell your children to be quiet, get good grades and their life will magically be fantastic after that (even though you know that’s not the case). In other words, you’ve been so conditioned that you don’t even listen to yourself anymore.
The System Strikes Back
My engines of Ingenuity started firing up around the time when I was in 5th grade. I played a lot of video games, watched a lot of cartoons and I always loved science and technology. All these things didn’t make me the most social of people. I was usually alone on the playground (I called it “slave recreation time”) and I had absolutely 0 interest in sports, which I viewed as a boring waste of time. I had one main friend I would hang out with and talk about how stupid and hypocritical the education system is. The point is that I was daydreaming about being some sort of hero, a hero who was a scientist and who managed to leave Earth to create his own planet on which he was king. Then I would live in a giant volcano that was a laboratory and this scientist created a way to be immune to all elements including fire, ice, and electricity. In fact, he was not only immune but had the power to manipulate those three elements. I have a lot more to say about this imaginary scientific kingdom I always had in my head but, I’ll leave it for another blog post. At this point I think you understand that I was a creative person at that time.
Since I had all this stuff in my head and it was so exciting and exhilarating, I had the ability to keep myself entertained while I was daydreaming so a side effect of that was very poor social skills (at that time). My mother saw this so I was taken into all sorts of psychological evaluations. At the time I was asked by one of the doctors about something that I wanted. I don’t exactly remember what it was and I gave some grandiose creative answer about what it was. Instead of being labeled as some kind of creative genius that can be a screenwriter like George Lucas, I was labeled as having very poor social skills. When I looked at this evaluation when I was older and I thought to myself that doctor must be a special kind of idiot.
The Artist Awakens
Throughout my life the education system and society at large has been pouring gallons and gallons of freezing cold arctic water on my Engines of Ingenuity for as long as I can remember. The education system in the middle school stages and the psychological evaluation were goading me to take those engines apart and throw them by the wayside. Fortunately for me I was never one to listen to bad advice. Now is the perfect time for me to fire up these engines once again. I know all the dirty tricks of the system that’s created all this waste of human potential and how to work my way around it. The problem remains getting the attention I need from the population at large. How to expand the military of my mind and fire its cannons of knowledge and creativity to puncture a hole in the fortress of ignorance and apathy that's my main goal now. The fortress is reinforced by very insidious forces. I can try to go at it alone but I’m going to need your help. This is basically my call to arms for all of you who had hopes and dreams but you don’t know what to do to make them a reality. I’m at the same stage as you are but I’ve never lost hope. Let’s fire up our engines, stock up on our mental capacity and set sail to attack the evil fortress of ignorance and apathy.