Defining yourself is hard.

[Desu]

A big reason why I hated school was because I felt suffocated. I was forced to go to X class, do Y homework, participate in Z activity. They all told me school was "important", it was "preparing" me for my future. I spent a ridiculous amount of time riding the school bus, being in a classroom, doing sports, doing homework, stressing out about school in general. It sapped my energy and my time.

I had dreams. The problem is dreams are only respected or supported if they fall within the guidelines that your authoritarian figures have outlined for you. It's okay to have a dream about becoming a certain career, like a doctor or something equally cliche. But there are certain dreams that will not be supported, and you may get laughed at for possessing it.

It's all arbitrary though. Some people are lucky. They rolled the die of life and have goals and dreams that just happen to fall within what their parents and teachers think is acceptable. They have no problem both pursuing what they want while simultaneously making the authoritarians in their life happy. They participate in mainstream social activities, they earn their social prestige and accomplishments, they get the A, they get the summa cum laude honor at college graduation, etc. They legitimately live happily and die happily.

Some of us are not so lucky. Some of us aren't quite sure what we want to do, and it may take time and exploration to figure out what we want to become. Some of us grow up with personalities and personal experiences that make it difficult to get along with those around us, so we get hurt, and hurt them.

It's hard to live when you apparently have nothing to live for. I think this may be a big reason why growing up is hard as fuck sometimes, or why some people appear to spiral and go nowhere and live a very depressing life.

When you're growing up, you're still doing a lot of exploring, it takes some time to figure out how this society and life thing works, how you yourself work. And during this critical period, we're suffocated by school and authority telling us how to live. Some of us are okay with it and play along with it and have no problems. Some of us are not, because we believe we can live differently and become something that the authority in our life does not agree with.

This suffocation makes defining yourself a confusing process. But you can't give up. It doesn't really matter what you choose, whether you dream of one day working at X doing Y. Or writing a book. Or being a game dev. Or traveling the world. Or just having a steady job that isn't too stressful or boring and being a gamer in your own time. It all takes time though, and there's going to be a unique set of roadblocks along the way.

Defining yourself is hard. If you have big dreams, it will takes thousands of hours to get there. This is not an exaggeration. It will take you thousands of hours honing yourself. Not a weekend crash course, not a month long stint, not an afternoon project.

Not only do you have to be motivated enough to take the first courageous step to get there, but you have to be strong enough to push forward even when you're tired, you get setback financially, you get setback emotionally, you get setback physically, people think you're crazy. If you finally get motivated to spend maybe a few hundred hours doing what you want to do and truly making progress, you're going to feel amazing. But then it gets hard, you've spent a thousand hours now, and it seems like you haven't accomplished as much as you thought you would. Now you've spent 2-4 thousand hours doing _____ and people judge you, think you're wasting your time, nobody supports you anymore or gives you words of encouragement, everyone stops giving a fuck. And you, you start to question why you're doing this. But you have to keep going. You have to keep defining yourself.

A big problem with SS is that you all are against school or governing authority in general, but you have to be for something. You can't just be against everything. If that's all you are, just a rebel, what the fuck do you live for exactly? Why do you even wake up every day or continue to eat food? Why don't you just lay down and die since everything sucks anyway?

Rebellion is the first step. The next step is definition.

You rebel in order to remove the labels your peers, teachers, and parents put on you against your will.

You define in order to create your own labels, so you can become you, as opposed to becoming "them", and what they want.

It's incredibly difficult though. It's so much easier to have other people put their premade labels on you. It takes little work, no thought, and no courage. It's so much easier to be a rebel and never going beyond that.

Defining yourself is inherently unrealistic and insane. When you truly define yourself and possibly even move the world in a novel way, you are bringing into being that which did not exist before. The proper response to "You're crazy.", "That's unrealistic." is simply "Yes, and your point?"

You know what's unrealistic? Every invention that has ever been made. Every scientific discovery. Every musical composition that has never been heard. Every book that has never been written. Every successful business that has never existed. Every lifestyle that has never been lived. Every mountain that has never been climbed.

It's all crazy, it's all unrealistic. But there's nothing wrong with that, it is simply a statement of fact. Of course, when people say this, they are trying to downplay your efforts and discourage you. It's an insult disguised as rational advice.

I know for a fact that there's something all of you want to do. At times, I have doubted what I wanted to do, and thought to myself, "Wow, I really have no idea what I want to do." I'm pretty sure that's a lie. If money, time, and effort were negligible factors, I could certainly make a list of things I would want to do, and want to become. The problem was I kept trying to be "realistic". That's nonsense, most dreams are going to be a bit unrealistic and a bit crazy (the awesome ones at least). But it's going to require work, a lot of very hard work, and time, and courage, and discipline.

If there's one mistake I see a lot of on this board: You people give way too many fucks about others. Stop allowing your self-esteem to be dependent on external variables that you have no real control over. Stop sacrificing your individuality and emotions for the sake of acceptance.

I'll go ahead and say this too: You guys pretend really hard to be rebels, and yet, you actually care what people smaller than you think. Stop doing that. Other people's opinions are worth absolutely nothing. You know why? It's because there's 7 billion people on the planet, and if we asked each of them what they thought of you, you would get 7 billion different answers. On top of that, their judgments are entirely arbitrary, and based on 7 billion slightly unique personalities and personal experiences. The people in your life are completely random. Some people are really lucky and happen to have just the right people in their life so they gel well with everyone around them.

Stop allowing your history to define you. So what if you said or did something stupid before? That happened then, that isn't happening now. Now is the only thing that exists, the past is gone forever.

I know I need to work on this. And I made some grave errors before, but that's fine, because you don't have to be your past.

I'm only 22, but looking back, I have no idea why I cared about ANYONE in school. Literally, anyone. It's funny, I'm not that much older than you all, but you all seem like little kids now. Everyone in high school that looked "big" back then, including the seniors that looked like adults when I was a freshman, look like stupid little children now, all of them. Stop caring about bullies, or anyone else that tries to get you down. Just focus on your own thing, focus on becoming yourself. Stop feeding them by caring. Stop destroying your self-esteem by caring.

It becomes so much easier to accomplish all of this when you have spent a lot of time defining yourself. Imagine how much it wouldn't affect you if you spent thousands of hours honing yourself, moving toward your dreams and your goals, instead of giving attention to how shitty your life currently is.

Being a rebel shouldn't just be about being against something. Rebels should be for something, most importantly, the definition of themselves.

[SmokeyTheAggie]

I fricken love post like these, thank you.

[SoulRiser]

Excellent advice, sir. I shall now spread this around the interwebs.

[LiptomaticMate]

I took a brake and read through this, inspiring post

[тωιѕтє∂]

This is exactly what I'm trying to get to. Even though I am still quite young (11 years old the be exact), that doesn't mean I can't be productive.

I couldn't care less about what other people think of me, for your reasons exactly, which is only the first step to success.

I have become more organized, and thinking a lot about life and the future. I know my strengths and weaknesses, and who I am as a person. Not everything about me is perfect, but I now that I am one intelligent person who has a lot to offer the world.

Now I am working on raising my expectations and having higher goals for myself.

And even though I now that it will be very hard work (considering that I'm a procrastinator, but that's no excuse), as long as I take one step and a time, follow my mottoes, and be myself, I will be just fine.

Thank you so much for that inspiring thread, it made my day.

[Kundalini]

You're right. It's easy to define the strong things of myself, for example, I'm a spiritual sort of person. But most of the time I can't tell who I am.

[GamerGurl]

(01-27-2013 08:31 AM)Twisted Wrote:  This is exactly what I'm trying to get to. Even though I am still quite young (11 years old the be exact), that doesn't mean I can't be productive.

I couldn't care less about what other people think of me, for your reasons exactly, which is only the first step to success.

I have become more organized, and thinking a lot about life and the future. I know my strengths and weaknesses, and who I am as a person. Not everything about me is perfect, but I now that I am one intelligent person who has a lot to offer the world.

Now I am working on raising my expectations and having higher goals for myself.

And even though I now that it will be very hard work (considering that I'm a procrastinator, but that's no excuse), as long as I take one step and a time, follow my mottoes, and be myself, I will be just fine.

Thank you so much for that inspiring thread, it made my day.

You're only 11? Wow. Your writing is good. :)

[тωιѕтє∂]

(01-29-2013 06:31 AM)Thel Vadam Wrote:  

(01-27-2013 08:31 AM)Twisted Wrote:  This is exactly what I'm trying to get to. Even though I am still quite young (11 years old the be exact), that doesn't mean I can't be productive.

I couldn't care less about what other people think of me, for your reasons exactly, which is only the first step to success.

I have become more organized, and thinking a lot about life and the future. I know my strengths and weaknesses, and who I am as a person. Not everything about me is perfect, but I now that I am one intelligent person who has a lot to offer the world.

Now I am working on raising my expectations and having higher goals for myself.

And even though I now that it will be very hard work (considering that I'm a procrastinator, but that's no excuse), as long as I take one step and a time, follow my mottoes, and be myself, I will be just fine.

Thank you so much for that inspiring thread, it made my day.

You're only 11? Wow. Your writing is good.

Thanks

[Bobbin]

Hot damn, that left me all warm and tingly on the inside. Definitely going to revisit this a lot.

+Thanks for the great post

(01-29-2013 06:31 AM)Thel Vadam Wrote:  

(01-27-2013 08:31 AM)Twisted Wrote:  This is exactly what I'm trying to get to. Even though I am still quite young (11 years old the be exact), that doesn't mean I can't be productive.

I couldn't care less about what other people think of me, for your reasons exactly, which is only the first step to success.

I have become more organized, and thinking a lot about life and the future. I know my strengths and weaknesses, and who I am as a person. Not everything about me is perfect, but I now that I am one intelligent person who has a lot to offer the world.

Now I am working on raising my expectations and having higher goals for myself.

And even though I now that it will be very hard work (considering that I'm a procrastinator, but that's no excuse), as long as I take one step and a time, follow my mottoes, and be myself, I will be just fine.

Thank you so much for that inspiring thread, it made my day.

You're only 11? Wow. Your writing is good.

Seconded
You're probably the most coherent eleven year old I've ever come across on the internet

[Trekkie_Aspie]

Yes, we are all for something. Learning. If school allowed actual learning then the site wouldn't exist.

[Ky]

Defining myself is easy. I'm enigmatic. There are few better words to describe me than that.

[ResidentRobot]

Thanks for the post Desu, some insightful views.

My two cents: The impression I get is that you lay a lot of importance on the self, especially in terms of not being too focused on other opinions. Would you suggest that other opinions don't matter at all? What about honing one's skills when collaborating with others? I think that listening to other opinions on the way I do things is important to better myself. There's a fine line though between just conforming to their opinions and changing according to a reasonable argument. I may be missing the point here in that maybe you refer to opinions solely in terms of subjective judgements of you by others.

Personally I'm a big fan of self-fulfillment, self teaching and all that. Practice, practice, practice etc. I'm no stranger to procrastination though (I need to finish my lab report tonight!).

[Trekkie_Aspie]

Umm...reasonable arguments have some basis in fact hence not opinions.

[Xicotc]

Some people know who they are. Some people do not, trust me. It is a curse to know who you are. I am a highly spiritual, gothic, creeper raver. o . o Not fun, there is no...mystery.

[Trapacity]

That's the biggest step for many people, stop caring about others opinions and focusing solely on yourself. It's a mental struggle, something that's difficult to not just accomplish but to begin to accomplish. There's no precise way that works for everyone because its mental.

Simply put, if you're having trouble doing such a task, you just have to try to block out people's opinions on you. I'm no expert, mind you, but if you're against conforming and allowing people to take charge of your own life, you just have to make it stop on your own, quit complaining about it.

Some people are born passive rather than assertive, myself and probably now of us included, and we're the ones that have the most trouble with this sort of thing. But one has to understand that being assertive is not the ultimate goal, rather it should be attention to individual needs.

[brainiac3397]

Philosophically speaking, to know yourself, you first need to define what self is. What is "yourself"? Is it your consciousness, or is it your physical body, or is it your soul(for those who believe it exists). Is self in your mind, a system of electrical impulses and chemical reactions, or is it from the immaterium(40k reference ).

Then again, the definition of yourself may not even be a definition. I for one don't really define myself as something, or as nothing either. It's simple really. Who I am at the moment is "I". I may change relatively speaking(to others), but to me I will always be "I" because "I" is all I can be.

For exampe, I amn't very social when viewed by society. I'm considered passive socially. Why? Not because I'm shy or nervous. When I do mingle, I'm confident and charming and tend to make friends quite easily and naturally. But I've adopted a logical social stance. I prefer to remain in the shadows, observing, analyzing, studying, determining. It's a subconscious belief of mine that my interference will impact the results and outcomes of my study. Why is this important? because my main goal is the obtaining of knowledge. When I observe people, I see their subtle movements, their twitches, their one-second stances, their abrupt reactions. I can gauge their thoughts, examine their clothing style, dissect their personality, learn their interests. I end up knowing them better than they know themselves.

So...there is no dictionary for defining people. Some may have rigid definitions, but through my observations I've learned that people tend to over-estimate themselves, or underestimate themselves. Sometimes even my observations don't give total insight to things unexpected. People may suddenly turn out to behave quite opposite their normal behavior. A sociopathic serial rapist and murderer may suddenly find a soft spot for cute kittens, even though this person seems to lack empathy, kindness or is devoid of emotions. It's just the human factor. We're an unpredictable and yet also predictable species.

Probably why aliens leave us alone.

[RashedMohamed]

Employers look for a well-rounded person when they are hiring an employee. Once you have satisfied the interviewer that you are a good professional in the field he may still probe you for further answers to get a better understanding of your overall personality. Research has shown that employers value following characteristics in candidates. Although all of these traits are important, however, depending on the nature of the job, some are more important than others:

• Excellent communication skills
• Trustworthy / Responsible / Mature
• Good organizational / Time management skills
• Team player
• Able to work well under pressure / Loves challenges
• Hard worker / Energetic / Self-motivated
• Having analytical skills
• Dedicated to meet deadlines / Persists until job is done
• Adaptability to changes
• Good People Skills

[James Comey]

I mostly agree with this post. Defining yourself is indeed hard. There are so many standards expected by your family, peers, teachers, and society in general. There are certain stereotypes you must follow, yet it's important not to let this cloud our minds.

We all have dreams, ambitions, and fantasies, and though I agree that it's usually worth the risk, sometimes, it really just can't be accomplished. That's why it's always important to have something to fall back on. Not all goals can be accomplished. However, that shouldn't discourage you, because we can't just assume something is out of our reach. We should at least try. Sometimes we might have to "downscale" our goals as well.

As for other peoples' opinions, I mostly agree. We should stop caring about what people think. That's part of the trap, it allows people to indirectly control your life. You have to meet some standard they prefer, etc. However, I think there should be the distinction of conforming to one's standards and simply taking in an opinion. Sometimes we can (and should) improve ourselves, because other people experience emotions just as strongly as anyone else. To completely forget about all our contacts I think is an extreme. There are some people that we meet that may very well be with us for the rest of our lives. Not all, but some.

Just my 2 cents.

[TasmSpectacular]

This post reminds me of a post I've read before.

http://hubbyshome.com/940/all-men-of-act...-dreamers/

After getting out of the schooling mindset, it took me about a year to actually pursue a hobby that I really enjoy doing instead of just complaining about the system.

Thanks for the post!

[brainiac3397]

Dont look in the box. Thus you are both dead and alive. No one else is allowed to look in box either. Put them in a box six feet under if they try...

[Money morkel]

Thank you for sharing...!

[Money morkel]

Thank you for sharing..!

[brainiac3397]

I came and ruined his points about the userbase of this site. Damned shame.

We might be actors...but God's the audience. hehehe.

You can define yourself when you're elderly. At that point, the building of your history will become slower.

[sfslol]

Do you ever stop defining yourself though?

If one were able to define oneself, why would life be a mystery? That's probably the only reason I live, I have absolutely no idea what's going to happen in the future. Of course there's clues, but there are endless possibilities and you make new clues every day. And even though times might be tough right now, as long as you wake up every day and leave your bed you are fighting the tough times and entering new ones.

[brainiac3397]

You don't ever stop defining yourself. You could be a happy go-lucky guy who gets hit by an elderly woman in a car, and suddenly start hating old people.

[schoolsux]

Same could apply to different races.

[the Analogist]

(09-29-2013 06:02 PM)RashedMohamed Wrote:  Employers look for a well-rounded person when they are hiring an employee. Once you have satisfied the interviewer that you are a good professional in the field he may still probe you for further answers to get a better understanding of your overall personality. Research has shown that employers value following characteristics in candidates. Although all of these traits are important, however, depending on the nature of the job, some are more important than others:

• Excellent communication skills
• Trustworthy / Responsible / Mature
• Good organizational / Time management skills
• Team player
• Able to work well under pressure / Loves challenges
• Hard worker / Energetic / Self-motivated
• Having analytical skills
• Dedicated to meet deadlines / Persists until job is done
• Adaptability to changes
• Good People Skills

Did this "research" which ascertained this make any mention of the fact that interviewers also want to hear keywords come from you and hear the job description regurgitated back to them? How about how being yourself in an interview is a big no-no?

Did they talk about how the amount of time HR ever spends on your resume is just long enough to say to themselves "this is a resume".

I get so sick of this professional world bullshit. You are a bunch of judgy assholes mostly believing your judgment to be perfectly just when you cut people out of the loop and go radio silent after finding out that he can't dance the way we never actually told him directly we wanted him to.

You dress up qualities of character and make them so alien to their whole that i can only picture some dumb-lucky moron when reading those characteristics you described. That guy who studied just hard enough to get an A on his paper but holy jeez does he even have a mind when you talk to him?

This is another religion I intend to break because it needs to be broken, the piety of business and its wonderfully rational criteria for exclusion, which lets make no mistake it totally is.

Since learning exists, qualifications are almost meaningless.

People in need of a person to do work won't actually have to look long for somebody who has their head together enough that a team can work with them, but who the hell ever does that? I applied for a job that wanted one year of experience. This job was reposted whenever it expired and remained active and open for well over a year. When you read the job requirements you are frequently reading how awesome the company thinks they are because here is where they list what they believe themselves entitled to. They could have trained a person during that year of looking and perhaps might have garnered some loyalty which, gee, is a little scarce these days. Why might that be?

Don't bring in the creed of your religion of business. Judgment with some reasonable criteria still seeks to rank humans who only when trained specifically for the task of being judged can behave in the way that a short visit seeks to witness.

"Good organizational / Time management skills"
reminds me of how they pile loads on you and then cut your hours and give you the third degree about how it didn't go. Maybe we should "work well under pressure / Loves challenge"

"Team player"
sounds like, "wont piss off the people with a ton of seniority and pull among managers".

We need "Self-motivated" people with "analytical skills" who can just figure out how to do the job that nobody will train you on since we hired you as "a good professional in the field"

You need to be "Adaptability to changes" because people will leave regularly and higher management will never be satisfied with how much they've bled out of the machine.

Why did you o Rashed reply to this thread to introduce bullshit criteria with which to mislead those struggling for reality? If I clamor for enough positive attention from an HR rep by reciting the bullet points of creed straight from the ministry of business, have I acted in any different than the but kissers who write to get the grade instead of those who actually want to express their ideas?

You might have heard Hamza Yusuf draw a dichotomy in Arabic thought around the time of the Prophet (saws) that the two types of poets are not the truth teller and the liar, but the one who tells the truth and the other who sells his words to the highest bidder.

We here want to be real and do real. We tolerate hoops, not because we like them, but because many of us get stuck. Far too many grow to tolerate them and become institutionalized and make no effort to ever get out.

By thinking the way you seemed to have encouraged us we continue to live unreal lives grading our own selves on a made up checklist of what a person should be.

One of the worst things is that although many people contribute positively to society, very few do it personally, but on behalf of others.

I am putting forth this counter to the claim that we who hate school stand for nothing but only against things. Here is my brief manifesto.

Be a freaking tight wad, unless its something really meaningful or worthwhile. We need to build a new philosophy of a new upper class we need to become. Arrogance could easily be summarized as forgetting the hands that helped you. We need to work to become such hands. We don't work to obtain some leisure state for our own enjoyment, but to pile up as much wealth as we can to support worthwhile endeavors, the people behind them, and use what resources we have accumulated to bring more people up. That totally goes for knowledge which has been ruined by commodification. Life should have education built within in the form of "on the job training" which doesn't just take the form of winging it and hoping it goes to plan. I want to buy a house that is big to house my family, even if some of them end up not moving out when they have kids, because I like the idea of living with my grandkids some day way in the future. By that proximity I can use what I would hope will amount to wisdom by the time they can appreciate ideas. I don't want to ever resent the work I do to maintain the house and life I keep for my kids by gladly taking a break from them and seeing them start their own house, (but maybe they want to). I want to garden and share food with neighbors for free, teach others to do it as well. Teach my kids to help build the society around them not by tolerating pharoah style divide and conquer characteristic of our entire society, but by a king authur round table style inclusion of equals working towards mutual goals.

I see no problem with school so long as its methods conformed to the standards I laid out in my Three Category System, which has yet to become a thread...

I feel about business and job seekers the way the Don tries to explain to the complaint by that guy. "if you came to me before and offered me friendship, your daughters assailants would be suffering this very day"

We are far too programmed to seek out power at its source and plead for favors using our merits. Let your works be your merit and if they do speak, let them.

There is no way to wrap this up. (anticipating brainiac to reply to only this part)

[no]

(03-03-2016 03:15 PM)the Analogist Wrote:  

(09-29-2013 06:02 PM)RashedMohamed Wrote:  Employers look for a well-rounded person when they are hiring an employee. Once you have satisfied the interviewer that you are a good professional in the field he may still probe you for further answers to get a better understanding of your overall personality. Research has shown that employers value following characteristics in candidates. Although all of these traits are important, however, depending on the nature of the job, some are more important than others:

• Excellent communication skills
• Trustworthy / Responsible / Mature
• Good organizational / Time management skills
• Team player
• Able to work well under pressure / Loves challenges
• Hard worker / Energetic / Self-motivated
• Having analytical skills
• Dedicated to meet deadlines / Persists until job is done
• Adaptability to changes
• Good People Skills

Did this "research" which ascertained this make any mention of the fact that interviewers also want to hear keywords come from you and hear the job description regurgitated back to them? How about how being yourself in an interview is a big no-no?

Did they talk about how the amount of time HR ever spends on your resume is just long enough to say to themselves "this is a resume".

I get so sick of this professional world bullshit. You are a bunch of judgy assholes mostly believing your judgment to be perfectly just when you cut people out of the loop and go radio silent after finding out that he can't dance the way we never actually told him directly we wanted him to.

You dress up qualities of character and make them so alien to their whole that i can only picture some dumb-lucky moron when reading those characteristics you described. That guy who studied just hard enough to get an A on his paper but holy jeez does he even have a mind when you talk to him?

This is another religion I intend to break because it needs to be broken, the piety of business and its wonderfully rational criteria for exclusion, which lets make no mistake it totally is.

Since learning exists, qualifications are almost meaningless.

People in need of a person to do work won't actually have to look long for somebody who has their head together enough that a team can work with them, but who the hell ever does that? I applied for a job that wanted one year of experience. This job was reposted whenever it expired and remained active and open for well over a year. When you read the job requirements you are frequently reading how awesome the company thinks they are because here is where they list what they believe themselves entitled to. They could have trained a person during that year of looking and perhaps might have garnered some loyalty which, gee, is a little scarce these days. Why might that be?

Don't bring in the creed of your religion of business. Judgment with some reasonable criteria still seeks to rank humans who only when trained specifically for the task of being judged can behave in the way that a short visit seeks to witness.

"Good organizational / Time management skills"
reminds me of how they pile loads on you and then cut your hours and give you the third degree about how it didn't go. Maybe we should "work well under pressure / Loves challenge"

"Team player"
sounds like, "wont piss off the people with a ton of seniority and pull among managers".

We need "Self-motivated" people with "analytical skills" who can just figure out how to do the job that nobody will train you on since we hired you as "a good professional in the field"

You need to be "Adaptability to changes" because people will leave regularly and higher management will never be satisfied with how much they've bled out of the machine.

Why did you o Rashed reply to this thread to introduce bullshit criteria with which to mislead those struggling for reality? If I clamor for enough positive attention from an HR rep by reciting the bullet points of creed straight from the ministry of business, have I acted in any different than the but kissers who write to get the grade instead of those who actually want to express their ideas?

You might have heard Hamza Yusuf draw a dichotomy in Arabic thought around the time of the Prophet (saws) that the two types of poets are not the truth teller and the liar, but the one who tells the truth and the other who sells his words to the highest bidder.

We here want to be real and do real. We tolerate hoops, not because we like them, but because many of us get stuck. Far too many grow to tolerate them and become institutionalized and make no effort to ever get out.

By thinking the way you seemed to have encouraged us we continue to live unreal lives grading our own selves on a made up checklist of what a person should be.

One of the worst things is that although many people contribute positively to society, very few do it personally, but on behalf of others.

I am putting forth this counter to the claim that we who hate school stand for nothing but only against things. Here is my brief manifesto.

Be a freaking tight wad, unless its something really meaningful or worthwhile. We need to build a new philosophy of a new upper class we need to become. Arrogance could easily be summarized as forgetting the hands that helped you. We need to work to become such hands. We don't work to obtain some leisure state for our own enjoyment, but to pile up as much wealth as we can to support worthwhile endeavors, the people behind them, and use what resources we have accumulated to bring more people up. That totally goes for knowledge which has been ruined by commodification. Life should have education built within in the form of "on the job training" which doesn't just take the form of winging it and hoping it goes to plan. I want to buy a house that is big to house my family, even if some of them end up not moving out when they have kids, because I like the idea of living with my grandkids some day way in the future. By that proximity I can use what I would hope will amount to wisdom by the time they can appreciate ideas. I don't want to ever resent the work I do to maintain the house and life I keep for my kids by gladly taking a break from them and seeing them start their own house, (but maybe they want to). I want to garden and share food with neighbors for free, teach others to do it as well. Teach my kids to help build the society around them not by tolerating pharoah style divide and conquer characteristic of our entire society, but by a king authur round table style inclusion of equals working towards mutual goals.

I see no problem with school so long as its methods conformed to the standards I laid out in my Three Category System, which has yet to become a thread...

I feel about business and job seekers the way the Don tries to explain to the complaint by that guy. "if you came to me before and offered me friendship, your daughters assailants would be suffering this very day"

We are far too programmed to seek out power at its source and plead for favors using our merits. Let your works be your merit and if they do speak, let them.

There is no way to wrap this up. (anticipating brainiac to reply to only this part)

Sir, you raise a lot of good points, but in my considered opinion, you are talking to a robot.

[James Comey]

A bot from 2013. I remember that bot. I still remember the crazy Indian spambot invasion.

[the Analogist]

To be honest, I just really wanted to say all of those things anyway.