We are all told that the next step after High School is and must be college. That is what our advanced culture and society demands of us. It’s pretty hard to get a good job without a college education and from what I’ve been shown it looks as if in the future it will be nearly impossible. But what becomes of us who don’t need no schoolin’? That question brings us to today’s quote.

“If you have the courage to say you don’t conform you had better have the courage to never live life.” -Ethan Glover

We are all conformists whether we want to admit it or not. Everyone belongs to a category and everyone can be labeled. Even “non-conformists” are conformists. Conform is a very unbalanced word. If you think about it enough a lot of words can have so many definitions that you lose track of what it meant in the first place.

Words aren’t the only things this idea applies to either. It’s very easy to lose track of the true meanings of things simply by aspiring to learn more about them than you really need to. Love, life, respect and even college.

You are told when you are young that going to college is all about getting smarter and getting a good job. Later you are told you must work hard in school and in college to get what you want out of life. And so you do just that when you are young. Then you start forgetting what you were told in the beginning and start looking for and finding alternatives.

I despise the very idea of college. I see it as a cheap shortcut to getting out of doing any real work in your life. I don’t believe in waking up on third and saying I hit a triple. I think I should start in a crappy paying job and work my way up to riches. Not read a bunch of books and get an “internship”.

I support the idea of apprenticeships but internships… Most people would see these two things as the same. I don’t. With internships you already have the education, now all you need is the experience. So you go to a company and work on small things and fetch coffee without pay. Plus you’re often competing with other interns for the job. It’s a way for companies to get free labor. Just like paid escorts being legal prostitution, internships are legal slavery.

Apprenticeships are about learning how to do the work while getting paid, usually by cash. Historically apprenticeships have been done by young children learning responsibility and young men trying to get their foot in the door of a particular trade. Today it’s still basically the same; it’s a casual way of proving yourself in the workforce.
You see, I can come up with excuses all day. I can say college education isn’t needed; machines are taking all the basic jobs making it hard to gain experience or maybe even pull out some kind of race or sex card. In the end all of that comes down to excuses and laziness. That’s not the point of this little essay though, just so we have that cleared up.

The question I want to answer is how can philosophers function in this society? You can’t do anything with a college major in philosophy. I’ve seen people get their Master’s Degree in philosophy, get out of college and have no idea what to do with it.

A philosopher cannot, and must not ignore his own mind. It’s just the way they work. So what do they do? Become authors? Freelance journalists? Advice columnists? They’ve got to get their ideas out somehow. And there aren’t very many choices out there. But no one can be just a philosopher on the side. That’s why philosophers need to figure out how to be philosophers within a normal job. This works for management, any kind of writing, teachers, anywhere where they have freedom for creative input.

But of course you still need an education for these things. This is exactly what makes it hard. Sometimes a strong mind can get in a person’s way of becoming a strong mind. The more you have the harder it is to hand onto. This makes the best choice to ignore that mind, pressure yourself into conforming and never stop moving. Keep yourself busy; overachieve on homework, chores and work. Make sure that mind never gets a chance to meditate.

Then, when all is said and done and you’re out in the real world with a college degree, that’s when you better hope that inner philosopher of yours has a chance to get out. If it’s not there and you lost touch with your roots in all the excitement. Well, is that such a bad thing?

That, as I always say, is today’s quote.