DGS49
Diamond Member
You may be aware that people who take jigsaw puzzles seriously generally do them without looking at the resulting picture. They just use the shapes of the pieces and the colors to match them up, then gradually discern what the whole picture is supposed to look like. At that point, it becomes a little easier to assemble the remaining pieces.
Discovering the Meaning of Life is a lot like this process. As we go through life, we are given "pieces," or bits of information either through observation, experience, formal learning, informal education, or deduction, and we have to see how these pieces fit together, and ultimately what the picture looks like. We also have to be careful that when we get a "piece" it is a good and real piece of the picture we are striving to see. We are subjected often to people who are ignorant or even subversive, and they pass out pieces that are, in effect, junk.
Because of how this process works, it is often the case that young, intelligent people get the impression that older people are "stupid," or are doing stupid things, because these things don't make sense to them (the younger people). We hear things like, "How can we be spending money on BOMBS when there are people starving in the world?" It seldom occurs to the younger person that the decision to spend money on BOMBS was made by people who have been around for several decades longer than the younger people, and THEY JUST MIGHT have some insights that are not apparent to a 19-year-old.
Young people often have the impression that the achievement of a college degree bestows, figuratively, a mountain of pieces of the puzzle. The people who are selling that degree try their best to give that impression. Well...
There is no doubt that they have been granted a lot of "pieces" in college, but I dare say that a lot of them are garbage, and the net affect might be somewhat less than expected. In fact, many people take years to un-learn what they think they learned in college, because their professors were, in effect, idiots.
In my own view, an even larger pile of "pieces" is won when the person becomes financially emancipated (from one's parents), gets a Real Job, starts paying bills, taxes, and cleaning out one's own toilet. But unfortunately, things being as they are many, many people in the U.S. spend their entire lives without having that experience. Oddly enough, many of such people are politicians - mainly Democrats - and they try to make public policy on the basis of their own minimal life experiences and the teachings of radical college professors who themselves have never had a Real Job.
Dare I say Our Beloved President is Exhibit Fucking "A"?
Discovering the Meaning of Life is a lot like this process. As we go through life, we are given "pieces," or bits of information either through observation, experience, formal learning, informal education, or deduction, and we have to see how these pieces fit together, and ultimately what the picture looks like. We also have to be careful that when we get a "piece" it is a good and real piece of the picture we are striving to see. We are subjected often to people who are ignorant or even subversive, and they pass out pieces that are, in effect, junk.
Because of how this process works, it is often the case that young, intelligent people get the impression that older people are "stupid," or are doing stupid things, because these things don't make sense to them (the younger people). We hear things like, "How can we be spending money on BOMBS when there are people starving in the world?" It seldom occurs to the younger person that the decision to spend money on BOMBS was made by people who have been around for several decades longer than the younger people, and THEY JUST MIGHT have some insights that are not apparent to a 19-year-old.
Young people often have the impression that the achievement of a college degree bestows, figuratively, a mountain of pieces of the puzzle. The people who are selling that degree try their best to give that impression. Well...
There is no doubt that they have been granted a lot of "pieces" in college, but I dare say that a lot of them are garbage, and the net affect might be somewhat less than expected. In fact, many people take years to un-learn what they think they learned in college, because their professors were, in effect, idiots.
In my own view, an even larger pile of "pieces" is won when the person becomes financially emancipated (from one's parents), gets a Real Job, starts paying bills, taxes, and cleaning out one's own toilet. But unfortunately, things being as they are many, many people in the U.S. spend their entire lives without having that experience. Oddly enough, many of such people are politicians - mainly Democrats - and they try to make public policy on the basis of their own minimal life experiences and the teachings of radical college professors who themselves have never had a Real Job.
Dare I say Our Beloved President is Exhibit Fucking "A"?
