Epistemology

As I study for my over-hyped midterms, I feel like ranting. Let's explore a little into the "how" dimension of knowledge (the "what" aspect I'll have to save for another time). Right now I'm just wondering how educational institutions have managed to evolve the memes of transferring knowledge from a practical and ethical tool for survival and the empowerment of humankind to a blind and rigid process of thought regurgitation. The benefits, I'm sure, have been experimented, dissected, proven, yada yada yada. But the means is not what we should care about if it's towards a direction that although satisfies our myopic desires, but ultimately contradicts life, to our realization or not.

For the last 14 years of my education, I honestly cannot say that my schooling or any of the limited knowledge I've retained has actually given my life-my essence-any additional value. But our wise teachers, who have seen through our eyes and been through our times, advise us that it's all for some distant, satisfying goal that will indeed eventually bring success. However delusional or self-righteous, these definitions of satisfaction undermine the parallel states of existential discontentment that arise from the life crises indifferent to the age or knowledge factors. Here I am fretting about the unknown future--learning to create models, hedging my fortunes, and preparing for endless options--while stacking the opportunity costs (I admit that's something I learned with some degree of utility) of simply leaving the present unexamined, unappreciated, and nonexistent.

Hah, note the irony: who's to say my cynical expressions and even the mere possibility of articulating such thoughts is not a result of the very system I critique.

Our perceptions of the world and goals as beings need to be reevaluated. Seriously, our selfish consumerism through self-promotion and competition (and our so-called sympathetic showcases of charity) is bound to beg the question: To what end?! Here's my epiphany: No end! It's an endless cycle! Obtain as much knowledge as you can to ask as many questions as you can to obtain the more knowledge you can to continue asking those fruitful questions to be answered that either: drive us insane pondering about the purpose or source of our existence or grant us an evanescence of joy that demands constant replenishment until the day we die. Or more positively, until the day we realize how to redirect our energy and lives to that which aligns our self with the present and to ride out its truths and perfections as relief from our futures and a guide to our happiness.

Hah, note the hypocrisy: and after all that, I have to resume my studies. I want an A, ya know.