Education
Have you ever wondered about education? I have.
I remember sitting at school learning about the sort of clothes the Dutch civilians wore in 1944 and how they ate Tulip bulbs. Obviously I was much more interested in Rommel’s strategic decisions (I read “The world at war” when I was 10), but they’re obviously less important (although they still get used in warfare today) than bulb recipes.
And I remember studying. How I had to behave at work. How to change nappies (I never did quite get the hang of it). How to steer behaviour (getting others to do as society wants them to).
Very interesting stuff.
I was talking to some friends of late. About what they learned at college. All of them learned how to do the job the course was setting them up for.
Not one person mentioned ever being taught how to be happy or how to make other people happy..
Funny that, isn’t it?
Education teaches you how to be civil (do what you are told), how to be productive (make the boss lots of money) and how be a good little productive element within society. Education teaches you the importance of money, the importance of being “part of it” and last, but certainly not least, the importance of education itself.
Besides regular education you have: Media education. Parental education. Governmental education. How much of this education teaches you to be happy?
What’s your goal in life?
Buy a house? A nice car? An interesting job? Lots of money? To write a best-seller? Become an actor?
How many people will honestly say that their main aim in life is to be happy?
Have you seen Monty Python’s: “The meaning of life”?
What is the meaning of life? Is it to be pious (religious), is it procreation (shagging), eating, what???
I’m going to let you all in on a wee secret, something I’ve known for some time and now feel the urge to share with you. I know what the meaning of life is. I will tell you how I know. I will prove it and I will tell you what obstructs it and what increases it.
How I know
I guess it started when I was 15. I read Bertrand Russel’s: “The conquest of happiness.”
This books explains methods of becoming happy. I suggest you read it.
I played with star wars dolls until I was 18.
I rode motorbikes from the age of 16.
I nearly died for the first time when I was 17.
I had my first shag on my 20th birthday party.
Is any of this important? No.
But I dressed completely in black, had long curly hair, got drunk and was the monster at parties. Then I’d ride home on my “brommer” (Dutch word for moped, but mine was a motorbike of sorts) and play with my star wars dolls until I fell asleep.
When I was 17 I had an accident, the helmet flew from my head. I smashed all my teeth out my face, broke my chin and jaw, smashed my upper right leg and ended up in a canal. When I was dragged out the ambulance came to pick me up.
On the way to the hospital (obviously I didn’t lose consciousness) the ambulance got a flat tyre. I laughed until my teeth were falling out my face. I remember the nurse saying: “This isn’t very funny.”
In the hospital they drilled a hole in my knee to pull something in the leg. I remember saying: “That’s bloody sore.” (saying….yelling actually) and I recall the doctor answering: “You don’t feel anything. You are sedated.”
On my 20th birthday party I had my first shag. I didn’t know that a fellow student was lying in the other bed…awake…and heard the whole thing (and first shags are embarrassing at the best of times… “Is this the right spot?” “Does it usually take this long?” and “Ooooooh thank you.” . My fellow student just winked at me in the morning and told the whole class on Monday.
At the age of 20, I didn’t know it. But the seeds of the meaning of life were planted and it wasn’t in the womb of my first shag.
I was living in Israel at the age of 25 (or thereabouts) and the Hezbollah were holding a bombing campaign in the North. I was 3 km’s or so from Kryat Shmona, a town in the Lebanese hills. We used to sit up on top of the bunker and watch the katusha rockets hitting home and hear them whistling over our heads. We didn’t want to go into the bunkers for 3 American girls were stuck in there for weeks, because they were scared of the bombing. There were no shower facilities in the bunker.
This is a very compromised version of what we were up to on top of the bunkers.
A year or so earlier I accidentally discovered the French head quarters from WW1 in Berney Riviere, a small town near the town where the Peace treaty was signed in a train carriage at the end of WW1 (and incidentally the same town and train carriage where Hitler forced the French to resign at the beginning of WW2). Nobody had been there for decades!
I was working for Eurocamp as the kiddie worker and I would take the kids “up the bunkers”. Not only the kids from Eurocamp, but the kids from all the organisations…and their parents too.
The bunkers was a massive underground complex. Dark and mysterious. A little church, burned out cars and everything…on top of a hill, near the campsite. I’d tell a ghost story in two languages (Dutch and English) at the same time. Scare them with a scream and then take everyone into the dungeons…
When my travels ended and I was sat in Holland talking to friends it suddenly dawned on me. I didn’t have any money. I didn’t own anything. I didn’t have a girlfriend. I didn’t have a steady job. I didn’t have a piece of clothing without a hole in it.
All my friends did. They had houses. They had good paying jobs. They had everything they needed. But I was the one doing the talking.
The last eight years have seen me in a steady job.
A nice house.
A couch.
A TV, no 2.
A computer, no 2.
A printer…no 3.
A stereo…no 5 of them!
I can talk to you about my TV’s for hours on end. I used to watch Enterprise every Monday night.
This is how I know!
I will prove it
A human needs certain “items” to exist: air, food, water, shelter, clothing, warmth.
A human needs certain “items” to continue the species: good health, sex
Let’s say that we have all these basic “items”. What more do you need?
Happiness.
If you are happy you are fine. When you take away the core “items” a human needs, the chances are that the human will not be happy.
You are educated to produce. From the day you are born you are taught to be productive. Laziness is bad. Being rude is bad. Killing is bad. Theft is bad. Picking your nose is bad. Your hands under the bed covers is bad.
You are also taught from day one to respect your elders. Obey your leaders. Do what the priest says. Turn the other cheek!
What of these things actually makes you happy?
Have you ever stopped and wondered: “What makes me happy?” And if you did, did you come to the conclusion that ‘not picking your nose’ makes you happy? Or that ‘obeying your leaders’ makes you happy?
The fact of the matter is that your happiness is of no concern to the people who want you to produce. As long as you produce, they get what they want and reckon they need.
Anything extra they give you is given to you because you are majority. Majorities are scary and “they” certainly don’t want a revolution. That’s really counter-productive.
And so you are not taught to be happy. You are not taught to pursue your happiness. And you are not encouraged to be happy. As you will see in the next chapter, the road to happiness will not make anyone who lives off the production of others very wealthy. And that’s your role in life: to make a few other people rich, to keep them rich and keep the people around you content.
Here are three scenarios. Pick which one you prefer:
1.
You are extremely rich. You own a large mansion and a helicopter. You eat all the best foods. You have all the best prostitutes (male or female) brought to you. You don’t have to work. Yet you are extremely unhappy. Nobody loves you. You reckon everybody wants your money.
2.
You and your partner live on an uninhabited island (uninhabited besides your partner and yourself, obviously). You have to hunt your food and pick your berries. There’s nothing else to do. But you are happy. You have each other and the basics in life are there when you feel like chasing it around the field.
3.
You watch TV every night. You like the main actor in the daily soap. You have three children. They’re doing well at school. You eat enough food. Your husband beats you up twice a week. You are happy though, because you know he loves you.
One is true happiness, one is true misery and the other is mistaken happiness.
I agree that they are extreme examples, but they serve their purpose.
It’s not money, it’s not property, it’s not TV soap series or anything else which make life worth living. It’s happiness!
Other things are just methods of creating happiness. And as I will detail in the next chapters, most of them create an image of happiness, but don’t really make you happy at all!
What reduces happiness
Taking away the essentials needed for life reduces happiness. If you can’t feed yourself sufficiently, you will not be happy. This is probably blatantly clear.
What’s less clear is that any system which uses the denial of such essentials to stimulate people is obviously reducing happiness as well.
The current financial system in most of the world is such a system. You have unemployed people, so that people have to under-price themselves to get work.
They need work to be able to feed and house themselves and their families.
They produce items which the “owners” sell back to them for more money than they initially received to produce it in the first place.
It takes people most of their time to receive enough money to just about get the bare essentials they need to exist.
This reduces happiness.
Once you’ve secured the essentials for existence, the next step to being happy is being creative.
Children like building things and everyone is proud when they create something that’s appreciated.
So anything that reduces creativity is reducing happiness.
Creativity is not stimulated! Oh no! Creativity, you see, means thinking and changing and realisations. That’s not for the likes of you!
Imagine you want to be creative and write a book. You need to do research. You need to write (and that means re-writing and re-writing, again and again). This means time.
If you’re busy being creative, you’re not busy being productive (as in: helping to maintain someone else’s rich and luxurious lifestyle).
You want to stop work and live off the state for 3 months while you fulfil your dreams of writing a book? You should do that in your own free time! Why should we pay for you to lazy off and do what you bloody well please?? What if every silly bugger wanted to do that???
Do take note, however, that the weapons industry is a 1.000 billion (that’s a trillion, by the way) dollar a year industry. And it’s the only industry that’s financed by….tax payers money…
You don’t hear the same people saying that folk who want to buy guns and kill should go out and “Earn their own bloody money.”, do you?
Creativity is discouraged. Remember education? Remember that paper you had to hand in? Remember it had to have x-number of words, had to be on A4 size paper, it had to have a certain lay-out. It had to, it had to, it had to...
What if it didn’t? What if you cut circles in A4’s and bound it with a string and wrote it in a clear handwriting? What then? Would the bloody world end? Would it cease to achieve its objective?
Don’t be silly. Do as you are told!
Obeying rules undermines creativity and thus undermines happiness.
Here’s one I bet you never thought about: Property undermines happiness.
“Oh but how Mark? Surely owning a TV is better than not owning a TV?”
Property in itself doesn’t add to happiness. The core essentials add to happiness. Creativity adds to happiness. But property doesn’t.
You could own a million dollars, but if you’re stuck in the middle of a desert with no water, it’s pretty much pointless.
What property does though, is bind you.
The more property (investment) you have, the more you want to keep it.
You invested in that property, you worked hard for it, you chose it and you don’t want to lose it.
Say someone came in and stole your TV. Besides the fact that some nasty person was in your house, you worked hard for that TV and nobody, NOBODY, has the right to take it away from you.
Have you, by any chance, ever counted the number of items you own which you don’t use? Or don’t look at anymore? Have you ever wondered why you don’t give them away. Sentimental value, maybe?
Why don’t you go and travel around the world? Eat beetles in Australia, sunbathe in Indonesia and ride a donkey on the Mongolian Steppes? Is it because you’ve built up so much already? You’ve got a good life and chasing a silly dream would mean losing a lot of it?
Why don’t you design your own clothes and make them yourself? You don’t have enough time, because you’ve got to cook for your wife and look after the children?
Why don’t you tolerate water pistol fights in the house? Is it because the wallpaper and the stereo might get wet?
I put it to you: The more you want to keep your possessions, the less creative you will be.
And less creativity means less happiness.
Get an education. Get a job. Buy a house. Buy a car. Buy a DVD. Buy a computer. Get married. Have kids. Be productive. Be a productive part of society.
See. You are happy.
You’re not as creative or as free as you’d like to be. But that’s life. You are happy. And Idols is on TV tonight, so you’ll be able to rejoice in people being slagged off.
Fear undermines happiness.
What increases happiness?
I seem to be rambling on a little longer than I expected. I also presume that if you’re still reading by now, then you’ve got a reasonable impression of what I’m driving at.
But there are something’s I still feel I need to suggest.
Live in the now. Not in the future or the past.
Learn from the past by all means, but don’t hang around in it. Don’t worry about the future. Live now. The more you live now, the more, when you’re sat at a dinner party, you’ll be able to tell of fantastic things you were doing when…
If you dwell in the future, not only will Yoda be pissed off with you, but you won’t realise what you’re experiencing. And that doesn’t make for very good story telling!
No possessions
A very difficult thing to achieve. We live in a consumer society and everyone around is hording property like doomsday is upon us. Which, ironically enough, would render the possessions totally pointless.
Don’t burden yourself careers, houses, cars, TV’s, tables, couches and whatever.
Think about what YOU want to do. Right now. Right here. Not in two years time, but right now. What do you want to do? Go and do it? Obviously you may need some money to do it. So go and work, not to work, but to save the money to go and do what you want.
And if you change your mind in the meantime, so be it. Go and do that instead!
Be creative
Think of 10 things you’d like to create: stories, a car, a TV programme, a play, a painting, etc. Go and create one of them.
You may feel an awkward sense of: “Yeah, but I’ll miss Seinfeld.” Or a nagging feeling of: “but my friends are going to the pub.” Or an obstructing sensation of “but I’m not going to get laid.” Ignore it. Just go out and do one of your creative things.
Do this at least 2 or 3 times a week. Just break loose and make that game you have in the back of your head, but you reckon you’re too lazy to try.
Teach
Not dogmatic rubbish, unless asked. But teach (especially children) about happiness, creativity and enjoying one’s self. There’s something about teaching which holds a mirror up to one’s self and opens one’s eyes.
Travel
Just do it. Even if it’s only for one week. Go somewhere you don’t really fancy and have a look around. Note 10 things you actually like about the place.
See. It’s not that bad.
DO NOT BE AFRAID
Fear immobilises people. Fear makes people act irrationally. Fear undermines creativity and happiness.
Fear is the worst attribute a human can suffer from.
I tipped, very lightly on it, in the last chapter, but it is that which destroys.
The war on terrorism is fear driven. Thousands of women and children have died because of it. Millions of people have given up more of the precious little freedoms they had…because of it.
Fear of losing what you have, makes you want to keep that what you have (which doesn’t make you happy in the first place).
Fear of heights can keep you from making that parachute jump which could give you the greatest single thrill of your life.
Fear of losing your job (losing your current life-style) will make you do what your boss wants you to do, even when it’s not creative, nice or moral.
Fear is something you have to try to conquer.
When you are scared ask yourself: “Will I be happier in living and having done what I’m scared of doing? Or will I be happier in the knowledge that if I’d tried it I could have died, so it’s just as well I didn’t try it?”
If you live you will die. If you don’t live, you’ll just fade away.
A conclusion of sorts
“Mark, I find it reckless that you’re saying what you are to a group of people who might be influenced by it.”
Yes. Go on. Undermine their creativity. Undermine their happiness. Make them what you are. Make them productive little elements of society.
Rejoice in how well they are doing with their TV’s, their cars and their jobs.
It’s good enough for you, it’s good enough for them!
I shouldn’t be filling their heads with dreams of travelling and painting.
They have to work for their pensions. They have to do what they are told or they’ll go to jail.
They have responsibilities! If nobody felt obliged to be responsible the system wouldn’t work.
Oh dear. Imagine the system failing to work.
Originally posted by shavixmirHow can anyone write so much!!!
[b]Education
Have you ever wondered about education? I have.
I remember sitting at school learning about the sort of clothes the Dutch civilians wore in 1944 and how they ate Tulip bulbs. Obviously I was much more interested in Rommel’s strategic decisions (I read “The world at war” when I was 10), but they’re obviously less important (although th ...[text shortened]... ext chapters, most of them create an image of happiness, but don’t really make you happy at all![/b]
Congratulations to anyone who actually gets past the first paragraph,
I do feel like I'm missing out on something special though...
From a commencement address given by Steve Jobs:
"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."
Originally posted by widgetWell said . I've never seen on a tombstone : "I wish I'd worked more ." / "Spent too much time with loved ones." / or "Wish I'd had more money when I kicked."
From a commencement address given by Steve Jobs:
"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is tr ...[text shortened]... have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."
WELL,
With all that said what's left to say?
Happiness is self reliance and independance.
Happiness is one day leaving your parents home and making your own way in life. Holding your head high in the world and taking pride in your accomplishments.
Self reliance is being able to provide yourself with the neccesities of life needed to make you happy. Not relying on the financial backing of family (or state)
Independance is knowing that you will always be able to maintain these neccesities throughout your lifetime with out anyone elses help, although help isn't in and of itself a bad thing when needed.
Pursuit of happiness is taught in the home, where the real education of the world begins.
I was taught to persue happiness.
I teach my own children to persue happiness.
I have water fights in my home.
I have breakfast for supper.
I don't "take" my kids to the park, I play with my kids at the park.
I allow chocolates before bedtime
and I never say "Don't jump on that"
In return I have happy, healthy children who are respectfull, well mannered and well behaved.
Having this makes me happy.
Having this and maintaining my own independance and self reliance has made me happy and well adjusted.
Happiness is subjective.
It's within us all if we dare to seek it.
Live outside the norm. and for gods sake pick your nose if it makes you happy, just please consider the happiness of others on the when and wheres of the matter.
Whatever makes you happpy 😀😀😀
Originally posted by shavixmirI do. (I now pronounce us hale & hearty!)
Do you reckon you need to underline that?
Too often we justify ignoring the intercomplexity of our lives with those of the lives of those around us by caliming to be in pursuit of happiness. Change is wonderful. How we differ from the rocks, etc... But not at the expense of another... Take Wal-Mart f'r instance... and their chinese sweatshops ~ just because we don't see this abuse doesn't mean it's not happening.
Ghandi said: "Be the change that you want to see in the world.
Originally posted by widgetI do see what you're saying.
I do. (I now pronounce us hale & hearty!)
Too often we justify ignoring the intercomplexity of our lives with those of the lives of those around us by caliming to be in pursuit of happiness. Change is wonderful. How we differ from the rocks, etc... But not at the expense of another... Take Wal-Mart f'r instance... and their chinese sweatshops ~ just be ...[text shortened]... 't mean it's not happening.
Ghandi said: "Be the change that you want to see in the world.
What I'm wishing to address however is that anybody who seeks happiness over the backs of others is obviously selfish.
If someone is selfish (or ego centric as the official term is), then they automatically wish to be better, have more and do gooder than others.
The "want" to do and be such is counter productive to happiness. Because they are not wanting to "be", but they are "comparing", even without knowing it. This ultimately leads to "the system" and people wanting us to do their bidding.
If I have to tread on you to be happy, then obviously I'm comparing my happiness to that of yours. I'm scoring happiness as a commodity and then it becomes nothing more than a penny, a TV or a painting on my wall.
People who really find happiness are looking internal. What do they want. What do they need.
They won't have to step on others. At the very most they'll smile at others and try to get them to come along.