He is failing his classes. He is a brilliant person. How is it that he is deemed a failure? Failing at what? He is failing at conformity. He has no desire to seek the approval of his elders and why should he? What in the world gives them the credence to provide answers to life? Math, science, english, art, social studies...all pose no real answers to the absurdity that he perceives reality to be. He is living the abstracted life.
Children don't even know what they are eating. Have a hamburger son. It sure tastes good pop. Thats all that matters. The food we eat is only a ready example for what the abstracted life entails. He doesn't understand food. Where does it come from? Who makes it? How would I live without this dependence upon others knowledge? Specialization to the extreme. We no longer are able to be fully human. We have become so removed from our independence. Good luck enjoying your specialization...don't choose poorly.
The abstracted life. The distance from digging a hole in the ground to know what our muscles are for. What are you doing in a cubicle whittling away your time? What goals have you been convinced of? Do you create? Different things?
More and more people are falling into the existential vacuum, gripping at the sides of the hole they fell into, trying to grasp any meaning they can as they pass into the abyss. My cousin recognizes the existential absurdity, and is given no vent, no legitimacy, for his concerns that what he is learning in school is gibberish. Nonsensical goal fulfillment. Get into college, get a job, get a wife and kids and teach them the same. What happens to those who recognize that the social system they live in is destroying the essence of their being.
"I must Create a System, or be enslaved by another Man's; I will not Reason and compare; my business is to Create" -William Blake
So he might not get a job. What better of a goal than to avoid the monotony of the American dream. What nonsense to buy into it. Economics, cubicles and envy fits, suburbs and segregation, commutes to work and newscasters, blithe wars and the perpetual unfulfilled hopes that plague the abstracted American life. Walk through a mall and see the masses. Playing the game of life. No respect for the mystery. Outright contempt and disregard for any challenge to their paradigm. No epiphany in the land of the free. When did forty hours of work a week become normal? Do we neeeeeed this? Stop wasting my time, my cousins time, and try getting back to the individual. We are individuals and not the television perpetuated stereotypes that babble their way into our psyche creating our altered expectations. Back to the dirt, back to meaning, back to results from our labor, not econobabble written in greek upon golden calf data sheets. Push the economist from his pedestal and enjoy a campfire and the days labor. Do you think the fast car, big house, pretty wife, obedient kids, big watch, quiet children, and the correct religion will alleviate the fear you have? WAKE UP!
"To see a world in a grain of sand, And a Heaven in a wild flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand, And Eternity in an hour." -William Blake
"If the the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite." -William Blake
"If the the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite." -William Blake
