"The Education of Henry Adams" and Derek Ririe

I've definitely noticed the correlation between all of these different essays (about time right?). They all have to do with critical thinking and questioning the very ways you were taught to look at people and events.
I like this essay alot and am seriously going to buy more written by Adams just to see if he develops anything else further. I really should have read this one sooner, necause it is another affirmation that i am not the only who feels as though they were born in the wrong time, and to a faulty education system, although i know even i guess not to wholly blame either. I would probably complain just as loudly in any other time as i do now. It really is an amazing time in history to be alive, unless you happened to be born into wealth, intelligence, even-temperment, and good looks in another time, or at least one of those four, than life would have been much tougher in ages past than in today's world. Still though, it's easy to bemoan the "good ol days" and treat the now as if it were some rabid dog that badly needs to be put on a leash, or is on a leash controlled by idiots. It's much harder to realize the world has always really felt this way, at least to somebody, and that for the most part all you can really do is try to make a difference in your own way and try to discern through learning, what the truth really is concerning the state of the world and it's various real and assumed problems.
Where does knowledge come from, and does have an "education" really prove anything? As weird as it seems i was watching a show called 'america's most smartest model' where a group of smart young models try to prove their intelligence in various competitions against each other. It's pretty silly but i still like the show because the tests do not test book smarts, or the ability to remember facts, but instead they focus on different areas such as your ability to communicate efficiently, work under pressure, learn not to make assumptions, etc. Last night they sent home a guy with a Ph. D in psychology because although he knew much in a specialized area, he buckled easily under pressure, and behaved like a child when things didn't go his way. As silly as this example was it reminded me alot of this essay, or at least the first part of it.
I loved that he felt nothing for school, and didn't actually regard college as "education" although as i write that it feels somewhat like an excuse on my part, or at least a justification since he still must have achieved decent grades while i'm not. I honestly can't figure out why i hate school so intensely, since i never really have before, i always regarded it as something beneath me growing up, since i didn't need good grades to comprehend the material better than most, and i never really had to try to fit in, people just seemed to like me. I always felt like it didn't matter that my grades were poor in high school, because i knew that i knew what i was doing and i assumed i'd always do well in life despite of grades because my comprehension was so high. Now i'm in college and i constantly feel like i'm drowning, and all i want to do is read. i just want to read and fantasize about the meaning of existence. Now i'm constantly terrified of falling behind and ending up with a terrible life, just because i never "buckled" down and got things done for school, yet whenever i "buckle" down i feel as though i'm compromising a part of myself, only doing the work in order to keep going into a life that i will hate forever since i HATE "buckling" down. gahhhhhh. I know i'm being silly but it's not letting me sleep. I don't want to be afraid because it feels as though i have no future, but i also don't want to be afraid because my future is too restrictive.
I just want freedom. I just want to love and be allowed to question while not having to conform to anything i don't feel is me. I don't want to have to conform to school, or to work, or the idea that one needs both to be complete. I know this is not everyone's idea but i'm not sure what else to do. Still, i can only do what i can for now, and keep questioning and filling my mind with thoughts of greater men, only to question and reject those in the end in the emergence of my own patchwork and ever changing philosophy on how life is and how it should be and what the means. Unfortunately few are paid to read and to think. We are paid to act, and act well in order to get paid more, which is a disease and a ceaseless cycle, with no intention of letting the individual be free to simply exist in it's natural form.

"Already Northern society betrayed a preference for economists over diplomats or soldiers- one might even call it a jealousy- against which two eighteenth-century types had little chance to live, and which they had in common to fear."
I am like this, in fear of the world, because it wants machines, not men, and i am less than a man, i am an idealist. I am not a part of the same species that beings named Roosevelt and Washington are a part of. I am less than a man to those would want robots, because i question the need for robots. I want more who just love and who love to be alive, while questioning values and meaning, but does this really work? No. Jesus came and made his impact, but it has changed nothing about human nature, it is still by and large, a wasteland for zombies, and a playground for idealists. I think i am more human than most but since they set the standard, i become something else altogether.
"...he perpetually fell back into the heresy that if anything universal was unreal, it was himself and not the appearances; it was the poet and not the banker; it was his own thought, not the thing that moved it."
Completely counter intuitibe and correct in a sense. The banker is much more real than the poet. The banker deals with tangible realities while the poet mainly concerns himself with abstract concepts and observations concerning age old questions regarding human nature. These are not what is real to the work-a-day world but makes more impact to someone like me than all the money in the world. I am not saying, however, that money holds nothing over me, just that it seems more abstract to me than a concept like truth or love. I'd rather contemplate the importance of truth than engage in money making or money spending.
Adams talks about not having money or much of a mind, but being well adapted for social standings. He sought after something in life that secured his social station and exercised his talent for being social, such as a diplomat, or some such position. This is exactly like myself. I love interactions with people, especially friendly and intelligent ones, although intelligence is a tricky word to define. I should say instead, people who possess not only knowledge about history, literature, and events, but also the ability to fit them all together and realize the signifigance of them in relation to themselves and history. This is where i want my life to lead; rich social interactions while continuing to learn all that i can from word, thought, and experience.
"Henry Adams never professed the smallest faith in universities of any kind, either as boy or man, nor had he the faintest admiration for the university graduate, either in Europe or in America."
A degree is a piece of paper. It says little about your ability to think and your levels of intelligence. I dated a senior who was attending UNLV majoring in marketing, while i was a senior in high school and while she could quote text book statistics regarding the economy, and differences between consumer markets, she had so little passion and thought concerning the world, i soon became disgusted and let her go, and yet she was the one who will probably be regarded as the more intelligent of us, because she has a piece of paper that claims that she is "educated." A degree is proof that you can endure at least four years of suppression, and pass the tests claiming you know very well how to conform and become a more efficient robot.
The thought has occurred to me though that i complain so much only because i'm too lazy to just get the work needed accomplished. My aunt told me once that i only work hard when i want to, or when i see an end in sight. I become extremely productive at work when i know i'm quitting in a month, but when there is no end in sight, i despair and lose interest in what i'm doing. I agree, i do work better when i see an end, but is that much different from someone working hard only to get a promotion? I don't really think so, except it's more socially acceptable. It's a fact that i hate working for someone else, and it just so happens that i feel that same way for school. if it was really for us, we would grade ourselves, or not work on a grading system at all. A degree is only a piece of paper that proves that you already know how to work for someone else, and that you can do it better than someone who doesn't have that piece of paper.
I am torn completely though because i also feel that there should be some accountability, some separation. We are all born equal but we do not end that way and there should be a way to show that you have actually accomplished something. Except that every accomplishment i'm capable of is inside. I had an amazing love affair with someone, and it taught me much more than any schooling at any level ever could, and yet i'll never receive any sort of decoration for this accomplishment, or any sort of proof. It is all internal, and I will never be paid more than someone else for that experience which was worth more to me to this date than anything else even remotely in my life.
That manifestation of love was the catalyst for my journey into critical thought. It was the event that triggered my eventually intense separation from mormonism and god, and my realization that everything must be questioned and that unprovable universals must be rejected in order to really search for truth, be it beautiful or ugly. I've had to thank this experience countless times for what it continually teaches me, and yet it has less relevance to the "real" world than even someone's relationship with a possibly imaginary camera lens in the sky. Life is strange.