When I was a lad, I lived in a place that had a tire swing across the
creek and a dairy next door that delivered warm milk every morning in glass bottles. I had a smart,
faithful dog and I learned to swim in the town pool. There was a
Fosters Freeze up the road and I thought that life would always be like this. When I was in junior high, after I gave a verbal book report on Orwell's "1984", my teacher pulled me aside and said, "Kid, we measured you and you have an IQ of 147, so we're going to teach you how to think." I had no idea what he was talking about, but I did like taking tests because I was good at it, and I thought they were fun. Also, I was fast, and I enjoyed putting down my pencil at the end and sitting back and watching everyone else as they struggled.
Later, when I was in college, they told me they were trying to get me to think "critically". The Vietnam War was raging at the time and people were pissed off and marching in the streets, so I tried to think critically. Turns out, when you thought about it critically, Vietnam was bollocks and Nixon was a crook.
I am of a generation that was supposed to be smarter than the last; we had the best education on the planet, the best food, and the tailfins of our cars were higher and prouder than anybody else's and we had NATO, too.
Apparently, none of that mattered. One of my "critically thinking" classmates became an advisor to the White House and what a shit he was (I'm looking at you, Paul Wolfowitz). Now we have a new crook in the White House; Afghanistan is still going strong after ten years and Russian spies (when they're not assassinating reporters) are advising Republicans in full public view.
You don't have even have to have an IQ to figure this shit out.
It's a long way from the tire swing, and this shit stinks.
#futurism #goals #wiseguy #education #current-events
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