In the midst of my confusion, I had an idea: ask TheAmazingAtheist for advice. I mean, he's very popular on YouTube and so the chances of him responding were nil. What I was confused about, you will see if you read the following message I sent him. He did reply...kind of. He told me he would send an audio response since he was too lazy to type one out. Well he hasn't yet. But I hope he does. I'm sharing this with my blog viewers (if there are any) because anyone else might also have some advice for me.By the way, TJ, more commonly known as TheAmazingAtheist, is an "obscene" atheist who has hundreds of video blogs on YouTube. He is very controversial, and I myself am a huge fan, though he has many haters. Maybe it's because of the way he explains things but...regardless, he has very strong points, and I admire him. Go check him out! You can search him on YouTube, or visit his blog, http://godofthegodless.blogspot.com/.
TJ,
You dropped out of high school right? I remember you saying it before in a video. I was wondering why you did it, and if you regret it?
I'm wondering because I feel completely miserable in the high school environment; it's so full of bullshit, and I don't give a shit about anything that goes on there. I don't like being part of society. I don't like being middle class. I want to disassociate myself from human civilization because it makes me sick. My friends always tell me that it's just giving up and being weak and just flat out pessimistic, but I seriously don't like living with these people. I'm very spoiled. Usually, if I want something, I get it. All of it is mostly materialistic, even though I'm one of those bullshitters who talks about generosity. I'm a taker. My life is luxurious. Physically, I'm ridiculously weak. But so what? I'm still unsatisfied with my life, and I think that's because humans aren't meant to be so...civilized. I feel very primitive, like I should be ripping a rodent's flesh apart with my teeth and swallowing it whole, like I should be sleeping in branches and leaves. I don't like living this overly-comfortable life. Luxury blows out the ass. This damn bed...that damn kitchen full of processed garbage...it weakens me as an individual. I'm too dependent on it, and so is everybody else. Corporations are taking advantage of our lazy lifestyles and fucking us over.
Screw the law. Screw the government. Screw everybody who thinks a simple life without money or a house is the equivalent of a failed life. Screw the bastards who say shit like, "You can't live a successful life without education, and you can't lead a fulfilling life without success." I want to live almost aesthetically. I hate having so many possessions. I hate wasting my life on bullshit like school and work. I, like everyone else, am going to die, and I don't want to spend the time I have doing shit just because it's what I'm "supposed" to do. I want to live like a primitive ape woman, or some shit like that. I know that's not how you live, but I just wanted to know from an actual high school drop-out how happy you actually are in life since you aren't "educated" (I mean seriously, what the fuck? You seem pretty damn smart to me....screw math and shit...you know about that worldly and IMPORTANT shit that ultimately defines the human race.), and what your own reasons for doing it were.
What the hell is the point of education? From a drop-outs perspective, do you think dropping out would be a stupid thing for me to do, and might I regret it later? I wanted your opinion on it because, well, your opinion is important. I guess not so much for THIS, but in general, you have a lot to say.
Anything to say about this?
4 comments:
God, how can he NOT respond to that? How could he fucking forget? He couldn't have! Kaytee, you seriously gotta ask him about that, because it's driving me crazy over here. I'm sorry, but he should be spending at least some of his time responding to this then making yet another video response to some idiotic thing jezuzfreek777 said. THIS is more important, in my opinion.
-Selena
*rather than making...
Sorry. Didn't proofread.
I have some advice. First, don't ask TheAmazingAtheist about anything. I've read a lot of his stuff and listened to a lot of his YouTube material. He's an intelligent guy. He's an excellent writer. And he makes a lot of very valid points. Unfortunately he also has a lot of attitudes that are absolutely toxic. He doesn't know it yet. Even if you ignore his views for a minute - imagine he were preaching as TheAmazingTheist - no matter how intelligent he sounds or how logically fool-proof his arguments are, he does things like deface hotel bibles and mocks in a very childish manner anyone who believes anything different than he. I would ask only this: if he made a video of himself defacing books on atheism at a public library by writing things like, "If you believe this shit, you are a fuckwit who is going to hell", what would you think? "Oh, he's a batty religious nut job." Right?
TheAmazingAtheist isn't enlightened. He behaves very appropriate to his tender age of 23. You complained just a few posts down that no one takes you seriously because you're 15. Well, I hate to tell you this, but anyone over the age of 30 won't take a 23 year-old seriously either. A common reaction to this criticism, and the one I’d imagine TJ would take, is, “It doesn’t matter how old you are, it matters how smart you are and how much sense your arguments make.” What TJ doesn’t appreciate, despite the abundance of evidence in plain view, is that nobody gives the slightest shit about your IQ, your SAT score, or how many books you read a week. It just doesn’t matter. But they do care about how old you are, because everyone who is 30 was once 23. Been there, done that.
Now, as far as your specific dilemma goes: no one likes high school. Yes, it is total bullshit. Even the popular kids who appear to be having the time of their lives (and pity those who actually are having the time of their lives) dislike the machinations of high school – going to class, doing homework, taking tests, putting up with kids snickering about you behind your back. That’s certainly no reason to drop out.
Adults say things like “education is the key to a full, happy life” because some things – particularly the motivations behind major life decisions – can’t be explained in a catch phrase. In fact, they can’t even be explained at all. I’ll do my best, though.
First, the vast majority of the crap you do in school is worthless. The books you read in English: worthless. That paper you wrote on the Missouri Compromise: worthless. The chemical composition of hexane: worthless. Trigonometry: worthless (unless you’re trying to put a roof on a shed).
Work is also bullshit. If and when you get into the working world, unless you are doing something with obvious and measurable results like dam construction in which after 6 months the dam is either built or it isn’t, 90% of the things you do at your job will be totally worthless, and it you have a thinking brain, you will wonder to yourself, “I can’t believe someone is paying me this much money to do this.” After you do it for a while, you realize that everyone gets paid a large sum of money to do essentially nothing, and that the entire idea of working for a living is really a sham. It’s very hard to disassociate your idea of what something is worth with how much a company would pay for it, but once you understand that the entire business world is all one giant pile of bullshit that everyone takes a part in so we can all enjoy rewards that are greatly disproportionate to the amount of work you actually do, it becomes a lot easier to stomach. Also, try to remember that the “evil corporations” that are “taking over America” are staffed by people like your next door neighbor. These people aren’t mysterious Sith lords who are devoid of problems who sit in Mahogany board rooms plotting the destruction of the world. They are regular people with flaws and ambitions. They are the people who sit next to you in math class (well, 30 years from now). The reason corporations exist (and do everything they can to make money) is because people want money. I know you listen to a lot of John Lennon and would love for this not to be true but it is. And trust me: the people who run these corporations are not evil. I work for one of the largest corporations in America and while I have not met the very top brass, I’ve had dinner with men who have literally thousands of people reporting to them, and you know what? They’re okay guys. We talked about vineyards. We talked about our experiences in Shanghai. We talked about our families. He showed me pictures of his kids. We had a beer together. When you’re on the outside looking in, you think, “good god, I don’t want to do this shit.” But then again, let’s consider the alternatives.
When it comes down to it, a life lived in American society has a certain upkeep cost, the bill for which someone must pay. You need a place to live. You need money for clothes. You need to eat. You need money for your vices (dice, drink, tobacco). You need money to go places. You just flat out need money. Now, at the tender age of 15 you ask yourself, well, wouldn’t it be great if all this weren’t true? Wouldn’t it be fantastic if we could all shed our luxurious material possessions and live and die by the strength of our own character?
Isn’t it really easy to sit around and ask if you’re really happy when someone else is providing all of those things for you? Put another way, you know there are people all around the world – the majority of the world, in fact – that quite literally are not sure if they are going to eat today. Do you think they devote one second of their time to wondering if they are truly happy? No, because they are too busy wondering if they are truly going to starve to death if they can’t catch a good, fat rat out in the swamp today.
My point is this: the very ability to sit around and ponder true happiness and the meaning of life and developing a disdain for all your luxuries is in itself the greatest of all luxuries. Every single one of your needs is met and at the present stage in your life you personally are not required to a single thing to achieve any of these.
Have you ever heard this saying: one should not throw rocks when one lives in a house of glass?
So here’s your alternative. You shed your luxuries and your material possessions. Then what? Going to be a homeless bum? Going to move to Botswana and become a tribeswoman? Going to leech off other people, like your parents, like your idol TJ is at present doing, and put up with your parents’ bullshit for the rest of your life?
How about I put it another way. I am going to pick a person on planet Earth, at random, who is not addicted to your luxuries that you hate so much. They won’t have a house or money and the worry about whether their life is a failed one will never enter their consciousness. They will live in a place that has no law. They will live in a place that has no government. They will live in a place that has no evil billion dollar corporations. The only thing I won’t tell you for sure is whether or not they are truly “happy” (in any sense of that word you want to use). I won’t show you who that person is or where they live. I’ll just ask you whether or not you want to trade places with this person.
I could also present to this random person all of the facts of your life, and I will be sure to put the most negative spin I possibly can, such as, … well, I’ll let you fill those blanks in. Then I’ll ask if they want to trade places with you. What do you suppose their answer will be?
Let me tell you what the point of education is, and this applies both to high school and to college. The point of doing all this crap – the things you’re “supposed to do” has absolutely no basis in the garbage they tell you. It isn’t because of the virtues of education. Graduating high school proves two things: you come from a background that is stable enough that you are likely to be responsible, and that you have will power and follow through. The background part is pretty simple. The largest dropout rates are among people who come from broken homes and worry about things like getting shot, getting pregnant, or going to jail for selling drugs – they are the ones most likely to drop out of high school, and why? Because they have tougher shit on their minds. The second part is more important.
Schooling is about proving that you have the ability to fit in. Now, you hear that and you are immediately repulsed by it. “Why should I fit in! I don’t want to be another sheep! Another cog in the machine!” Yes, wouldn’t it be great if we could all invent our own rules? That we could all just define our own lives to be whatever they want? Unfortunately for everyone who has that thought (and I promise you that even the corporate sheep fantasize about a life devoid of customs and rules at one point in their lives), no matter how much we wish we could play by our own rules, there are 299,999,999 other people who are playing by the rules of American culture. You can do the waltz, but everyone else is doing the Foxtrot, and you’re going to look awfully silly. Everyone will give you funny looks.
“But it shouldn’t be that way!!!!” Why not? Life isn’t fair, darling. I didn’t make the rules. You didn’t make the rules. None of us get to make the rules. The only choice we have is whether to play by them or not. Making your own rules isn’t an option, no matter how many rock’n’roll songs or video bloggers say it is.
The truth of it, if you’re willing to suspend your disbelief here, is that the rules aren’t nearly as bad as you think. If you approach our culture with a glass half empty outlook, then that’s what you’ll see. But again, I ask you, would you really want to switch places with anyone else? And if you would, their lifestyle is really only a foreign language book and a plane ticket away. Even someone at the tender age of 15 could muster that after a summer of bagging groceries, right?
High school and college is not about learning, it’s about “doing what you’re supposed to do” and proving that even if you hate the rules so much that you go home and write vitriolic blog posts and make vitriolic YouTube videos every single night about how much you hate everything about your luxurious American life that the majority of the human race envies so much they’re willing to risk their lives floating here on rafts made of construction scraps, the piece of paper called your high school diploma shows that you were able to stomach it at least for four short years.
College? Same bag. It shows the world that you were able to stomach 4 years of total bullshit and toe the line and fit in. And not only that, but you – or someone who thinks highly enough of you – are willing to spend one hundred thousand dollars for the opportunity to eat plates of bullshit for four years and be taught things that 1) you’ll forget 2) are probably lies and 3) are not applicable to life in any possible way.
Dropping out of high school will do nothing for you except close doors. TJ will never be able to work at my evil billion dollar corporation because we strictly do not hire people who do not have a college degree (in anything, just a degree). We don’t hire non-college grads because unless you put up with 4 years of bullshit, you won’t be able to put up with the endless supply of bullshit that exists in the corporate world. Your degree proves that you can tolerate the nonsense.
And what’s your reward? Oh no, more of that evil money that does things like pays for the computer from which you’re blogging, the electricity to power the computer, the internet access, etc. etc. And who invented Blogspot and YouTube? Could it have been evil corporations?
Unless you suck off someone else (like our friend TJ is doing) who is willing to stomach the bullshit of adult life which involves trivial things like financing a household, you need money to pay for shit. And that’s what it’s all about. Every single person who wakes up and goes to work every morning does it because they are getting paid. And they use that money to sustain themselves, and to buy things that will bring them happiness. And I’m not just talking about fancy materialistic things like iMacs or even yuppity things like trips to France, I’m talking about stuff as simple as a Big Mac or 5 lbs of grass seed so you can fill in the holes in your back yard.
If you can accept the fact that one day you will need money, that alone should motivate you to put up with 2 more years of high school. Because when you are faced with a pressing need to make some money so you can finally escape your wretched parents, the only people who will hire a high school dropout are places that pay 5.35 an hour. When I first got out of college and I was looking for an apartment in an area comparable to where I grew up (1 position apart on the “wealthiest counties”) list, the cheapest place I could find was $900 a month. Do some math. You want to work that many hours?
And I promise you: the world gets a lot, lot better when high school is over. Every year that goes by that you’ve been out of high school is better, but only if you are independent. If you can finance your own life then you really can do whatever you want – you can play by your own rules. In my humble backyard I can do pretty much whatever I want – at least two days a week. ;)
And as far as asking TJ about whether or not dropping out of high school is a good idea, this is exactly like asking a blind man if he’s glad he can’t see. No matter what he says, don’t listen to him. We can’t fast forward to TJ at age 43 and ask him how his illustrious career at McDonalds went after he couldn’t find anyone to publish his unoriginal (although well written) diatribes, no more than we could have asked Christopher Columbus what the new world looks like before he found it.
Wow, Evan, that was insanely long, but I read it all carefully. I guess it is true that TJ is a bit dependent, and life probably DOES get better after high school. I saw this "Shift Happens" thing today about how the world will be in just a few short years, and I thought, "With all the new jobs out there, how could I not have one of them? I could be a writer at the same time which doesn't really require much, but there are so many jobs out there that have to be done."
Actually, today, during an AP world history study session, I was looking back at history and was truly amazed at how ancient humanity was, and how organised and yet chaotic everything had been and is. And I'm a part of it. And people in the distant future (supposing there is one...can't really tell these days...I think this technological revolution is a bit scary and dangerous) will look back at these times and feel the same way.
America is just another nation (empire, colony, dynasty, country...what difference does it make? It's all civilization) that's had its ups and downs and will eventually fall into shambles, as the powerful Roman empire did ages ago. I'm witnessing history. I'm DOING history, as my teacher likes to say. And I thought - why be an anonymous face when I could be a revolutionary, spoken of in text books? Sure, Buddha went aesthetic...but he had been living a lie...I've just been living a life, that's it. I'm sure not many people are aesthetic and homeless by choice, and movies have been made about those who were/are...but that's self-change.
I decided this, just today, in that history session when I experienced goosebumps from the inevitability and predictability of everything: it's my world...if I don't like it, I need to change it.
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