Post by Dan Ryan on Oct 12, 2019 15:10:36 GMT -5
The summer of 1964, before my senior year in high school, I took a Literature course at a junior college. It fulfilled my dreams about the intellectual environment at college. Then one day, before class, I had my wake-up call. One of the students, married, holding a full-time job, with a kid on the way, was having a nervous breakdown from the pressure he was under. He believed he had no future without a college degree, but didn't see how he could pull it off; his other commitments needed his full attention, though they were normal and healthy for his age.
Which was practically my age. Now, at 17, instead of seeing his predicament as confirming my decision to drop out of all normal teenage activities, including making a little money, I realized with a shock how much I wanted and needed to be like him and always had. In my delusion, I had always thought getting into that stuff before I graduated from law school was kid stuff. Changed completely, I needed it now; it was worth throwing away all that rich-and-famous future; and going to college at all would put me in his situation if I went back to living a normal life. So I quit my program of self-study and even of studying to make grades.
I realized that college was for teenagers afraid to grow up. Just as when I had my crisis in 7th Grade when I became a laughingstock as an A-student, I felt betrayed by the ruling class, not by social pressure. On the other hand, if I acted my age and rejected this emasculating indentured servitude that is all the University really is, despite the Big Brother propaganda, I might have a dire economic future. But I'd rather have that than submit to the hereditary plutocracy's insulting crap.
I felt betrayed by TO GET A GOOD JOB, GET A GOOD EDUCATION. Who are they to tell us in the first place? The talented should call the shots, not the economic bullies who'd be broke without us to do their bidding. Those who mandate this insult to the intelligent absolutely know that college is nothing more than work without pay, which causes serious and permanent psychological damage. If the plutocrats told their sons what they tell us, they'd never give them an adult allowance, which is worth far more to any normal teenager than just paying his tuition. But they don't, so their sons must be attacked mercilessly. Hit the bullies where it hurts the most; take away their noble house's future. If the classmate who clued me in about all that had gotten someone to finance his adult living expenses, he could have quit his job and the pressure would have been off.
First, I had to get a girlfriend. All this time, I had thought I could pick up where I left off in April 1962. But I had changed into an inhibited weakling; that's why I hate bookworming intensely and have seen many wouldbe normal people turned into pathetic nerds by mind-candy escapism.