Verbal Diarrhoea...

I've wanted to write a post for a few days now, but I feel like whatever I write should be important or significant or somehow meaningful. A lot of thoughts have been buzzing around in my head, so here's a few snippets:

I like to give advice to other people. I enjoy mediating and, at the risk of sounding dramatic, negotiating. In doing so, I strive to "be right" and to give "correct" advice. With 22 years on this planet and relatively little experience of people, relationships, the world, politics and life in general, I sometimes doubt myself. As noble as I aim to be, I feel like I can never know if I'm truly giving the best advice. I will to an extent, be forever limited by my own paradigm, because that is how I see the world. How broad and open that paradigm is depends on how open minded and flexible I am willing to be. I will have to overcome that feeling of uncertainty and be content with who I am, and that I am at least trying to be the best I can for other people.

I've read and watched quite a few particularly interesting things this week. I caught one article by David Baddiel in which he noted how society's mark of intelligence is more often than not a simple case of who has the best memory. Exams. Pub Quizzes. Reading the news. Mastermind. If you can remember something and then regurgitate that back to society, my word you're smart. He concluded that "original thought" could be a contender for how we can tell who's got brains. The theory has its flaws, but it's nice to know that some people are actually thinking.

How can I go about altering the foundations of Western Education and still pursue my passions for filmmaking, writing and giving advice to people? And if/when the current misguided education system is reformed, what will it create? What the hell is society going to look like with all these young people who are actually learning and doing what they want instead of wasting the first 18 years of their lives?

I'm keeping up with the TED Talks that are free to watch on YouTube. This week Barry Schwartz talked about how rules and incentives can quite often stifle society, and that people need to bend the rules sometimes, much like how a jazz musician doesn't stick to the notes on a score sheet; he improvises to make up an altered, more personal melody. Schwartz gave an example of how State Kindergartens in Chicago have appallingly lengthy regulation guides on how to read books to kids, because these days teachers can't be trusted to teach without some sort of insurance policy. Have you heard of anything more ludicrous?

"To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all" - Oscar Wilde