ah, to think. to think is a marvelous thing. to ponder, to quiz, to speculate, to debate, to suppose, to visualize, to determine, to regard. i have just figured this out. this is the answer to many of my questions. we love to think.
you see, i was reading the book *fahrenheit 51*, by ray bradbury, recently. for those of you not familiar with it, the book is about a futuristic society where books are burned and the brain-dead people sit inside watching their 4D tvs all day. and i could not figure out, what's wrong with that? as long as they're enjoying themselves, who cares if they're blank-minded? but here is the problem-they are not thinking. and thought is the most important thing.
what caused me to realize this was the fact that i am in a very stressful time in my life right now, in terms of my education, and i thought, similarly, what's the point? so my school watched obama's speech to schoolkids, and i realized-unlike bush, the only reason our president is where he is now is his education. not money, not class, not connections, not even intelligence (although he is very smart). what got him there was that he worked his ass off to get a good education, and it paid off.
it's the henry higgins theory.
you see, wealth and class aren't determined entirely by where you live, what you eat, or what you do. they are determined by what you know. knowledge can get you there, and knowledge can make it clear to people that you are there.
now, granted, there is a difference between learned knowledge and thought. in fact, i made a word for this divide- the prudenossisseca (translated into latin, wisdom knowledge line). and they serve two different purposes. thought is what you do to keep your brain in shape, for entertainment, and to be better equipped to learn. the problem with a lot of common Merkin past times (including most homework) is that they actually decrease brain activity, rather than increase it. knowledge, on the other hand, is something you gain by reading, talking to other people, living in the world, and going to school.
these two things are the reason that the human race is where it is today. and that is why we must think.
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3 comments:
yes, and if we exercise it actually stimulates the blood flow to our brain, thus making us smarter, so it's a circle: keep fit in the body and you will in the mind.
hmm. that's an interesting way to describe why obama's prez. what schools do you want to go to anyhow?
i spent some time trying to figure out how to pronounce your word, and i think i've got it =) i need to learn latin again. i took 6 years of it and now i forget it all. ray bradbury is great. i've never read farenheit 51 though. recently i read one of his short stories "all summer in a day"
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