Incoherent Early-Morning Ramblings: I'm not actually THAT bitter, I swear!

I barely know how the government of this country works. I barely know what's going on the world. 

I can barely explain my own so-called opinions to you, and why I hold them. 

It's pathetic. I wouldn't normally admit these things; then again, I think these things are true for a lot of people who wouldn't like to admit them. I'm not dumb, which is why I can get by without learning a damned thing. Funny how that works. 

Damnit, I want to learn. I want to go back and do it right. I want to read my textbooks--the ones I never cracked; and then when test day came, I patted myself on the back for fooling the teacher and getting a mediocre passing grade. Good for me! I've been dishonest, learned nothing, and earned a merely acceptable grade. My skills in life? Forging knowledge and dodging responsibility!

How sad. How lazy. How wasteful. I want to learn.

I've been told that academia is worthless. Pointless. A massive masturbatory exercise in futility and vanity. Fuck the system, man! It's all the MAN, dude! You're just a cog in the machine! This certainly may be true. If it is true for you, you should get out. Isn't it infinitely more worthless if you take up space without taking from the system what you can? I'm sure we can find SOME cog to eagerly replace you.

How dare we complain without MOVING? 

Darlings, let's count our blessings--wherever we think they came from. We are the over-privileged children of an over-privileged country: born with silver spoons in our mouths, our disposable diapers padded with praise, dressed in sweatshop footie PJs, and when the system (duuude) said the time was right, escorted through the golden gates of "adulthood" with Xeroxed Hope Scholarships slapped on our ungrateful asses. And we have the gall to ignore our opportunities in favor of the hipness of stupidity. Fuck that. I want to learn.

It's not that I oppose challenging the system. FAR from it. But those who challenge authority rarely get far with no credibility. Sure, kick back with your oh-so-cool friends in the martyrdom of your self-made faux-poverty and talk about the fruitlessness of academia--no one's going to listen to you. You're not changing anything. 

In art, you learn the rules to break the rules. Picasso isn't a legend because he decided to paint twisted-up faces one night on an acid trip in his parents' basement. You best believe that boy did technically perfect portraits for years before Guernica. What makes you think you can start a revolution without knowing how things work NOW?

Hypocrisy, unoriginality, consumerism, privilege, ingratitude, insignificance. It's best for your health not to think about it all. In America, it seems ignorance isn't just bliss; it's a way of life.

Unfortunately, I've been thinking about it a little too much.  

So I'm just going to take small bites I can handle. 

I'll be over here with a newspaper, my philosophy books from last semester and a big bottle of Ritalin. Because lord knows, getting through this shit on natural motivation and desire alone would be far too much to ask of a poor deprived college student like me.