Crack a book.

Well, I hate for my first post of the year to be a rant, but what can you do. I'll keep it short.

"Just because you graduated college and make 30k/yr doesn't mean you're intelligent. Memorizing information on a page and spitting it back is intellect a monkey could be trained for - don't flatter yourself." -- some idiot on a message board

I realize that dumping on the act of getting a college degree is the new black, but once again I find my feathers ruffled by the overwhelming illogic of "arguments" like these. I hear them more and more. Before I continue, I of course have to qualify all this by saying that not going to college does not mean you're not smart or successful. Or a good person, or anything like that. It's not for everybody. I understand.

But it's pretty obvious to me that statements such as the one above are just the pathetic whining of a growing populace who either did not go to college or did but couldn't hack it, and is now using muddled postmodern feel-good tactics to ease their self-perception and bolster a tarnished self-esteem. And really, is this new? How often do we hear others bring someone down not in spite of, but because of their achievements?

Every single person who goes through the gilded gates of higher learning may not be brilliant, or come out brilliant, but does that mean they should not take advantage of the opportunities that exist to better themselves? I'm sorry if the person you work with is just a bum with a degree--it happens. But idiots like the one quoted above are simply vicious, lazy thinkers who assume (likely unwittingly) that if they bark loud enough about how stupid everyone else is, no one will realize just how much they themselves are lacking.

And don't even get me started on what kind of person actually thinks monkeys sit around reading books and reciting them back to their trainers.

Anyway--if people continue to tear down the value of continued learning (so they can feel better about how much they don't know), where does it end? What's next, high school's unimportant? Junior high? School in general? Because just going to school doesn't mean you know anything!

Basically, these kinds of "arguments" can most likely be traced back to a desire to eliminate standards, so that those who don't fit the status quo can manufacture their own prominence using faulty logic and wishful thinking, rather than skills or wisdom. Expect this to continue for a while.

Video game school? GREAT IDEA.

I stumbled across this fascinating article in the New York Times Magazine about a school in New York City (of course, where else?) named Quest to Learn that uses video games as a central educational resource. There are so many different facets of life and education that the article directly and indirectly touches on, that this blog post will probably become over-long, but hey, where else am I going to post this?

What I want the reader to understand is that I'm not anti-video game. Dear God, the hours and hours I spent in the days before worries playing on systems from the Atari 2600 to the XBox 360. I also am not saying that a video game design course couldn't be integrated into existing curriculums and used interdisciplinarily to great effect. It's just that some of the ideas and philosophies driving the Quest to Learn school indicate what amounts to a scrubbing of all pre-21st century pedagogy in favor of funneling learning through video games.

Video games, essentially, teach us how to be more robotically functioning - greater response time! improved dexterity! increased peripheral vision! There has always been a decision-making function. In the great, old Atari game Pitfall it was, should I cross the lake by hopping on the croc heads or by swinging on that there vine? Decisions happen every day, nearly every instant, as physicists in favor of the infinite universes theory can tell you. So while video games can give us improved military skills and heap more decision-making on us, what they fail fundamentally to be able to teach us is the why in life.

Let's get to the thick of things. The article states, "In a speech given the day before the start of the 2009 G-20 economic summit, Eric Schmidt, the chief executive of Google, offered his own tacit approval, suggesting that playing video games, especially online multiplayer games, fosters collaboration, and that collaboration, in turn, fosters innovation — making it good training for a career in technology. 'Everything in the future online is going to look like a multiplayer game,” Schmidt said. 'If I were 15 years old, that’s what I’d be doing right now.'"

But that's just it, Eric - I'm not 15. Nor are about five billion other people on the planet. Just because video games are fun, and because there are grown-ups who find dealing with them easier than dealing with being a grown-up, does not mean that a diversion meant primarily for people who don't have responsibilities 18 hours out of the day is suddenly supposed to be all we ever do and see.

The current crisis in American job searches.

So you all know how I feel about the job search process.

One of the featured articles on Yahoo today talks about companies strangely not being able to hire middle-level workers (since those were the jobs that were hysterically slashed when the economy took a fall). There are plenty of reasons offered in the article, and I'll let you read it if you want, but the best part about it happened to be the comments section. I'm not a huge fan of these comment sections returning, because so many people are legitimately amoral, racist, sexist, or just stupid, and I hated wasting my time reading past their garbage before and I hate it now. Fortunately, many of the comments for this article actually pertain intelligently to the subject.

People everywhere are angry at the current hiring practices companies have adopted. One commenter really preached it: "I don't want to hear another word from employers griping about not being able to fill positions when they do NOT give the common courtesy of letting candidates know that they have even received application information. They don't return phone calls, they don't want to be contacted, they don't want to pay a fair wage, they don't want to offer benefits, and they certainly don't want to come clean about any going concern issues."

How in the world has it become acceptable to completely ignore the online applications that are submitted, especially when it's most times the only method we have of applying? At my last job we got so many online apps and if we weren't hiring, there was no way to contact them and let them know. We just had to ignore it, delete it from the e-mail system. But the places that are hiring, that have put out ads on Monster and CareerBuilder and so on, can't they at least extend the courtesy of sending a form e-mail that says "thanks for applying"??

And they don't want to be contacted! I have submitted almost 18 online applications and only ONE gave me, in the process, a name and number for a contact. Everyone else - screw you, we don't want to hear from you, we don't give a shit about you.

Another complaint from a commenter was that positions are being eliminated and then combined at a lower salary. His former company laid off a slew of people, then started combining their disparate positions into one and put out ads looking for not only one person to do the job of three or more people, but to do it for much less pay. His theory is that it was done to keep padding the pockets of the top dogs - and it's hard to argue with that. But also...why are Americans being asked to keep taking lower-paying jobs? It should be obvious that employers don't want to pay us what we're worth anymore - that degreed people end up making $25,000 a year or less which is a CRIME - and then they sit around and contribute to articles complaining about how jobs aren't being filled.

I checked in with my temp agency today and the two or three positions they had available only paid nine or ten dollars an hour. I felt bad telling the lady that I just can't go that low, but after reading all the comments from the people at the article, I don't so much now. I have no savings, therefore I have to re-enter the work force in a place that allows me to become financially independent once again. And I won't apologize for that.

I wish I had a proper conclusion for this post, but there are no words to sum up how I feel at this point.

A contemporary application of the categorical imperative.

It's times like these that I wish I had just a few more followers, so maybe something I said could reach a large portion of eyes.

About three years ago when I first joined Blogger, my blog was just a place to get really, really pissed off and say how I really felt about things. I have curbed that instinct here.

Anyway, one day I wrote a post about Immanuel Kant's idea of the categorical imperative. There had been a recent news story about some lame teen outfitter selling shirts that said very inappropriate things on them, mostly things degrading women/girls, and as I read the comments on the story I was saddened and pissed off that so many people were saying, "If you don't like it, don't buy the shirts."

So I asked my readership of zero, what if that was how everyone handled things they found inappropriate/offensive/wrong/immoral?

- don't like war? Don't fight in one.
- don't like rape? Don't go out at night.
- don't like child abuse? Don't be friends with the parent(s).
- don't like the death sentence? Turn off the news.
- don't like the lyrics to songs these days? Turn off the radio.
- don't like corruption in business? Don't buy anything.

The categorical imperative is "an absolute requirement that asserts itself in all circumstances." So if you apply a thought or statement to multiple situations and it still seems "right" (makes sense), then there's a greater likelihood that it is.

Clearly, applying it in this instance reveals that if we shouldn't ignore war, rape, child abuse, and so many other things that are wrong in this world, then we shouldn't ignore anything that's wrong. Conversely if we should ignore apparel that urges young men to treat their counterparts as objects, then we should ignore everything negative.

This does not mean that every single individual has to take up a flag for something. But when someone does, it should be recognized as illogical when another person tells them not to worry about it.

Because again, logically, ignoring a problem does not make it go away. It does not suddenly, magically make the problem a good thing. It does not make someone forget that there's a problem.

The only people who say "don't like it? Ignore it" are people who are not only okay with the problem, but are allowing for that problem to be universally accepted, for it to become mainstream, and hoping for all opposition to the problem to vanish and quite passively so. People like this are also parrots, who say things they hear without ever thinking about what those things actually mean. Enter the prevelance of the ridiculous slogan I've been picking apart.

I mean, really? Do none of these people ever stop to consider if someone said the same thing to them about something of which they disapproved? No, because they assume the world is exactly like them, that their viewpoint is the only one that matters, and so they have little experience seeing more than one side to an issue, let alone the weighty task of walking in someone else's shoes.

If you couldn't tell, I find a slogan like this to be utterly repulsive because of how totally and inherently illogical it is. And the fact that it is so obviously illogical, and so obviously harmful when put in practice, makes it worse.

Now, I know that at some point someone could say, "There's a big difference between war or rape, and silly shirts with questionable sayings on them."

And I'd say that's true. There is a difference. However, consider the criminal justice system. There are crimes that in some states draw a death penalty; some crimes that garner a life sentence; some that result in twenty years, some that result in paying a hefty fine, some that result in probation, some in just a five-dollar ticket.

But you wouldn't say, "There's a big difference between raping and murdering eighteen women, and robbing a corner drugstore of fifty dollars. Therefore, the latter is not a crime."

So you would not say to ignore the impact of teens walking around with sexist comments on their shirts just because it's not war or child pornography. The underlying principle remains the same.

However, I'm also not saying that any one person has to be affected by any of these things. But what's crucial to remember is that a person's indifference to something does not affect its actual right or wrong quality. Now, if you want to pull out the old yarn of "don't tell me what to believe," that's fine, but just realize that it takes a badass to stand in public and say that murder is moral, or rape is moral. No matter how advanced your liberal ideology, there are still some things that you'd have to be crazy to think are okay.

In the end, indifference to something looks almost just like acceptance of it. So I'm tired of people playing the indifference card. And in the end, telling someone else to be indifferent to a problem which they've already decided bothers them, is mind-bogglingly arrogant.

As someone once said, it's a free country. People can, for the most part, do and think what they want. I agree with this.

I also, however, understand the nature of cause and effect, and the nature of consequence. If we continue to breed a nation, or a world, of indifferent people, then it will be those few left who remained passionate who have all the power.

And it starts by ignoring something as "silly" as sexist T-shirts.