I had no idea that I could do this in Word! So, this is a test run…
Money and Values. I find it interesting that American culture is hell bent on defining itself based on its employment (everyone is so interested in asking: what do you do for a living?). Yet, to try to figure out how much someone makes is taboo. Obviously this is because people do not want to envy or be envied – this builds a very uncomfortable resentment. How do we figure out what someone is worth based on their employment? And what a statement to make – that if you pick up shoes for a living, you are only worth 8 dollars an hour, while if you are behind a desk playing solitaire, you are worth 15 dollars an hour. Hmm… It really seems a terrible shame to me that the arts are the least difficult to be successful in (success defined by money/notoriety). Why are the sciences worth more money? I wonder what would happen if we all made the same amount. Of course that is a traditional communist notion – but does it have to be a bad thing if we were motivated by something other than money? If money was no longer a driving force, if we all made the same amount, I wonder what would then become a driving force? Doing a job better than someone else? This may be a valuable thing – but what happens to the person that does not do as good a job? Should their strengths be re-evaluated and used where valuable? How would that be determined? Competition seems so embedded in humans – but I do not know if it is just cultural or biological. What does competition do for humans? Survival of the fittest, of course. Why does the "fittest" matter so damn much? Does fittest mean easiest? Why do we want things to be so easy? Do we learn more from something easy or something that takes some pursuit? So, perhaps even if money was not in the equation, humans would still find ways to be destructive. It is amazing how much we live our lives for the sake of money (because human society runs on it). It just seems ridiculous to me – that we need to have a piece of paper to shelter, clothe, and feed ourselves when the Earth gives us these materials for free. All we have to do is to figure out how to have a relationship with the Earth (and we spend so much time distracting ourselves out of that relationship for the pursuit of money!).
Education and employment. One cannot happen without the other, it seems. Increasingly, one needs to be educated to be employed and one needs to be employed to afford an education (or the gratuitous loans required to obtain the education)! How does this make sense? If human society runs on money, and money is received via employment, shouldn't education/training be free so that human beings can begin to earn money to clothe, feed, and shelter themselves? It is interesting, also, how we define education. Education is going to school. But not just any school. A Harvard education is valued more than a community college education (when if you really stop to look – you will probably find a person at a community college better able to appreciate their education.) Education is having a piece of paper that says you went to school and did what you were told to do. Education means getting an A on something. Education is only respected if it can be measured in some arbitrary way. Ironic how arbitrary the measurement is – and yet we still consider the measurement quite valid (i.e. getting an A on something measures what? That you did it? That you sounded like you knew what you were talking about? That you are able to memorize something for a required period of time? I know that plenty of my As mean jack shit. They only mean that I was present, engaged (for the time), and knew how to play the game. I guess if you can play the game well enough to get that A, you're a valuable contributor to society, while someone else, who really may know how to do something – but never went to school to learn how to do it – will be overlooked because they lack the proper game pieces. Why didn't they go to school? Who knows. Lack of time, lack of money, lack of interest in playing a social game perhaps? I think people who have never been to school could have something notable to offer –if not even more notable because they have not been so impressioned by codified thinking. And really, human thought is key to human meaning and human functioning… isn't it?
