Of old and new Education, Essay #2

This concludes my essay, Of old and new Education. As your reading, look for italicized words. As they are my references, I’ve used to better explain my points. In addition, there are links for two You-tube videos. One in part 1 and 2 of the essay.

This is my application of the Feynman technique, used by the physicist Richard Feynman. Teaching what you know to others. The result is a better understanding of what you learn.

I am weaving a personalized “basket” to carry tools for life. Stockpiling a cognitive arsenal of meta skills for the 21’st century’s brave new world. This is not being an intellectual. This is the farmer of the past until WW2. Why a farmer? The farmer of yesterday was his own doctor, mechanic, craftsman, grew his own food, raised his own dairy and meat. Heated his home with wood he cut from his land, protected the family, was often a soldier and knew combat skills, taught his children alongside mom. The farmer was his own chemist and made his own tools. Farmers who are in touch with their culture and know their land often have greater knowledge than many people with PhD’s because of the broad experience base needed to farm.

I start here where I left off in part 1.

I encourage my readers to read that first if you haven’t.

Complacency

An example of one type of complacency for example, many baby boomers I have seen are fine with watching tv, getting frozen food at Walmart, picking up their medication and returning to the screen. Eventually they go into a nursing home with estranged family, social isolation, lack of purpose, lack of exercise and wait to die. I know and am not assuming as I spent about 6 years going to nursing homes accompanying my mom when I lived with her as a young child.

Clearly these people in their old age at a facility like that they were on hospice, and near the end of their life. Of course they can’t do anything. I am not being critical or hateful to the elderly. If I live long enough, I will slow down and eventually be handicapped or disabled in various ways. I love my grandparents who are alive and drive still and are in their 80's. I am talking about the life that these folks lived up to that hospice point. The time before they needed to be put in a home.

When they were younger, that generation is notoriously infamous with going to work, coming home to vegetate on the Tv, getting into debt, overconsuming, and paved the way for "consumer capitalism" that has engulfed the world at this point. The boomers and then even my parents’ generation from the 1969 and 1971 wasted years of their lives behind a screen and often still do today on Smartphones like the younger Gen Z. They had 1 or 2 vacations and mostly lived for the weekends. The baby boom generation set the benchmark for consumerism which the entire world would eventually adopt. However, many baby boomers I have met on occasion or have worked for are incredibly skilled, have a toughness and endurance not often seen anymore. This is an inspiration to me. These people embody some aspects of what I write of here. Certain boomers have grit and discipline, wake up early and sleep early. They are consistent, punctual, and manage money well, these folks I look up to. I just see many who don’t want to embrace a changing world or adapt. In a way its good, but often it becomes a self-imposed mental handicap.

The diamond education:

What I take from the image of a diamond is it has facets, as in "multi-faceted". Many angle ground down and gives the diamond a means to shine its glimmer and has a geometric beauty. Its attractive, its valuable.

Seek a diversity of life experiences, competency is built out of a habit of managing failure so that you can emerge with greater wisdom. It is in challenge that mastery is born. Briefly take the idea " No one will come and save you" in life's daily tasks and obstacles. Find a way to solve the Problem. Adapt to the problem or reroute until you are making progress again. Wisdom is using experience; with the theoretical experience of others, we can glean from the past or present.

Exercise, Strength Training, Sports, Athleticism, and Martial Arts

" No man has the right to be an amateur in the matter of physical training. It is a shame for a man to grow old without seeing the beauty and strength of which his body is capable of."- Socrates 

Without physical health and strength we are quite limited in what we can do in life. Anyone and everyone needs this. Regardless if handicaps and disabilities occur, we can maintain training within our abilities and tolerances. If we push to our personal limit without strain or injury that is great, push a bit further once your routine is down and like any muscle that is torn and recovers it becomes stronger. Push and eventually exceed our limits. To the point where we can do the thing. What ever that is. When I train and am active regularly my mental energy and focus increases. This applies to everyone.

My stories about Exercise growing up

Growing up I played soccer for 5 or 6 seasons with asthma, between the ages of five and seventeen. I scored some goals but wasn't that good. My dad and I went rock climbing above a river with his friend who was a guide for climbers in Peru. They taught me how to belay and repel. I have always lacked the coordination and motor skills that are required in group sports. This is why most normal sports I have never liked much. Later as teen I would commute on bicycle for about 5 or 6 years during high school and into college. Usually pedaling 20 miles a day.

During this time, I was a regular surfer and swam a lot at the beach. My friends and I would hit the gym, and I did yoga classes in high school and early college. For a time, I was teaching my little sister yoga stretches and how to draw before I moved away. My first year out of high school I went to a ju-jitsu club.

One time my friend Ian and I had the ability to ride 100 miles in a century we did. We took our time and also ran out of water in a hot desert area of paved switchbacks in between Ojai and Santa Paula, CA. After I gave all my water to my friend we both were out of water so we waved water bottles at cars for a couple minutes until a nice lady gave us water and told us she had been in the same area and ran out of water like we did, so she paid it forward. Another time three friends my dad and I road from Ventura to Malibu and went camping in a place called sycamore canyon for one night. The full trip was 92 miles.

About a dozen times I rode from my hometown Ventura to Santa Barbara, CA from a morning to evening, we took our time, got riding before sunrise and spent time swimming at the beach and getting breakfast or lunch with friends exploring SB.

I have also done lots of camping across California and Oregon growing up. My dad and I went ocean fishing near the channel islands in so Cal hiked different places in the sierras went Ice fishing three times. I went backpacking once with my stepfather Patrick it was awesome. Then I did several other backpacking trips in Matilija with friends. All about 18 miles round trip.

I stayed on an Island for 5 days in 2018 with my girlfriend to celebrate the first year of our relationship. We hiked one of the days at least 13 miles across Santa Rosa Island. That same girlfriend 8 years later is now my wife.

I was in the CCC's "Conservation Corps" and this was perhaps the time I was the strongest I had ever been. I started on my crew about two months before the Pandemic era in early 2020. We would work 8 to 10 hours a day with trail tools chainsaws, backpacks, drank a gallon of water a day, and either walked or hiked several miles a day on steep terrain and through thick brush and forest throughout much of northern California.

My point with all this is not to brag or sound like I'm strong and fit. Currently I think I am the opposite. These days, I'm less active and have lacked motivation or make excuses. I go on walks during the week, but I need exercise instead of sitting here writing honestly. I'm back to my high school weight of 165 pounds. However, am feeling weaker since I haven't worked out or stretched in months and need to get back into it. I was going to a karate Dojo earlier this year. I feel weak and lack flexibility compared to when I was younger and quite active. This not just a call to action for others, I am speaking to myself here too. We have to move our bodies, and train if we are to function at our full potential. I want to live out that quote Socrates said.

The Hydraulic Generalist:

A hydraulic system in an excavator is pressurized and heated by the engine. The hoses and piston cylinders distribute and move the hydraulic fluid, a viscous oil is moved around and in an enclosed system to move the machine's implements, such as blade, bucket, clamshell, grapple, or auger. Why am I bringing this up? Well, I am no mechanic, but it’s a simple picture I will use to explain education. I have a background running heavy equipment and like working with these machines. It’s what I trained to do for my career involving these machines for about 4 years.

The excavator has a few jobs it excels at. These are digging grabbing and breaking up earth, loading, lifting and grading. But the machine has many attachments which can be added or removed. The excavator's immense power lies in a fluid transmission system. It is Fluid. The excavator is fluid.

Bruce lee once said infamously, "Be like water my friend."

What he meant I think had more to do with self-control, as well as control of the life force in all of us which has various names in different culture. Eastern medicine has given that life force the name QI, or chi. But I look at Bruce lee’s quote another way. Water can take any shape or form and fills empty space. Water is fluid and therefore adjusts to where it lays. Water is also the single most powerful physical force we can experience besides gravity. Ice carves canyons by glaciation. Water is in tsunamis, if we act as water. With a fluid lifestyle, we can adjust to almost any circumstance. Fluid reaction, and action gives us power. The only power we have is how we think, how we choose to react and what we choose to do by the hour, and by the year.

In the context of career, and skill acquisition deliberate focus on one project. Dan Koe, often says that a project gives us a frame for our learning, he advocates for project-based learning. For becoming a “Deep generalist.”

“A project is when a plan and strategy meet action.”-Dan Koe

Don’t focus on the plan or strategy in isolation. Act, aim in a direction. Then, as you move. If you are stumped, and confused then refer to tutorials, books, or mentors, or research. But not before. As you iterate on your project your plan and strategy will emerge. This will give you a funnel for your learning to flow through.

I want to add that having constraints and deadline for yourself, will help reduce wasted energy and reduces mental stagnation. Life will require many tools. We don't need to be great with all tools; we just need to have a working practical knowledge of many things. Each tool will be applied as life prescribes and demands.

By tools. I mean for example, social skills, patience, critical thinking, construction, research, programming, cleaning, and cooking. The list is almost infinite. You pick what relevant tools you need or want in your life.

I think an excavator is a great example. An excavator is great at one thing. However, it does many things good to the point where a single operator can do many jobs with the one machine. It is adaptable and versatile. We are capable of being like an excavator and its operator in terms of our skillset and knowledge we acquire in life. We can become the “Hydraulic Generalist”. A term I am creating as a symbol of a well-rounded person.

A master in one area, who is able to select and apply the proper tool for a job outside of his expertise.

The modern renaissance man, Specialization is for Insects.

Specialize, or generalize?

Dan Koe introduced me to this quote, which he got from Naval Ravikant. And this is a great image of what I mean by a Diamond Education.

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for Insects." 

- Lazarus Long in Robert.A.Heinlein's (Time enough for love.)

The Multidimensional Mind

What's so good about being a generalist anyway? The rate of change in terms of careers, how work and commerce is done is beyond ones ability to keep record of.

Only with Computer statistic data that is unbiased can we get a clear view of the change that has occurred this past 40 years.

The co-founder of intel, Gordon Moore first described a concept called Moore's law in 1965. The basic idea is "the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles about every two years." We are quickly reaching the limits of what's possible in terms of transistor size.

Our use of technology, data, and information has exponentially grown in orders of magnitude more than I could have imagined as a kid. As a kid something in my gut told me being a polymath was a good idea. The polymath is a fancy way of describing people like Leonardo Davinci, the quintessential renaissance man.

Thinking and recovering attention. Or let yourself become obsolete.

Various Generative AI models from these AI Companies are blatantly replacing the google search, the search browser we all know and love taking our minds out of the equation. For decades we have outsourced our minds to online tools. It will hurt us if we are not able to pivot and adapt. Knowing one thing well is good. And knowing many things is good, but these wont help in this age we are in. We have to become versatile and good at many things while holding on to what we know very well to use as needed. Be a human. Our attention and data are our most valuable resource. That's why all this stuff online has been free. But now ads aren't enough. Now we are being directed to rent everything as a subscription service. From cell phones, to car leases, to tooth brush, razors, underwear subscriptions and butcher boxes. We will own nothing and be happy in the 2030's according to the World Economic Forum. Our attention and personal data fuels algorithms and AI have entire data centers dedicated to archiving this for use any time. Human attention, and Data, the gold standard. Data mining is perhaps the most valuable enterprise economically. I don't have statistics but I'd argue its greater than any cryptocurrency. Corporations and governments spend so much to maintain and grow our screen time.

The Author of the anxious generation, Johnathan Haidt mentions what social media addiction has been doing to people since 2010 in his book. He also mentions in his interview with Dr. Peterson how the population of people born after 1995 in the United States and much of the world now are deeply affected and damaged by social media, video games and pornography. The damage is showing clearly. We have a pandemic of anxiety, depression, self-harm, mental health problems, Violence and suicide. I have yet to finish the book as I just started it. But there are solutions. I will share what I can in my essays on the actions and proactive measures as I learn about them more in the future. The young people are most dramatically and negatively affected by technology addictions but many older adults are becoming more depressed and anxious than before 2010 as well, so this technology addiction is also not generation specific. It just harms young people and especially children the most.

Haidt mentions the relationship that same psychological tactics to attract users and keep people on social media, gaming, and pornography has to tobacco and gambling and casinos with slot machines. Matthew B. Crawford, author of shop class as soul craft, also echoes this idea of gambling and media consumption in his follow up book "The world Beyond your head". I have listened to most of this audiobook on Spotify when I have a long drive at work. It is one of the best audiobooks I have heard. I highly recommend it for younger men and women. Young being 20 and 30 somethings it should help and is relevant to everyone but even more to the younger crowd.

While I am still on the psychology topic, I gained a lot from a livestream that the healthy gamer posted back in July on YouTube. His name is Alok M. Kanojia, or Dr. K. for short. Dr. K is a licensed American Psychiatrist who co-founded the mental health coaching company "Healthy Gamer."

The thumbnail tag is Why You Still Haven't Grown Up.

There is a part 2. But these two are the free ones, there are others are in his paid community on YouTube.

. My stepfather, an electric field engineer at Intel, told me about him 2 years ago when I was asking him about personal finance. This has great insight on what I believe most young men and many women struggle with today.

The struggle to Grow up and take action in life.

Puer Aeternus, is a Latin term meaning forever "boy", Puella Aeterna, forever "girl". Originally from the Roman Poet Ovid. It is also called peter pan syndrome, where an adult retains a childlike emotional state, but to an unhealthy and detrimental degree. It was described by carl Jung and Marie-Louise von Franz.

Dr. K himself admits to having recovered from being a puer aeternus himself when he was younger. There is still hope for you, so check it out!

The following is the foundation of my idea of the diamond education.

Find and master 1 to 3 skills, then over time build an experiential literacy of numerous things in life to hedge your risk. Your mind, livelihood, physical, social and economic mobility is at risk to if you're not multifaceted. So, niche down, focus for a bit on what your good at, then niche out when you have mastered something or are plenty competent. This is my goal with my career and education overall. Even with a day job we can take lessons that can reach beyond the job and may help with something at home or in various other industries and trades. If you learn plumbing, it usually overlaps and can better equip you with HVAC or may aid you in gas systems or irrigation. Knowlege that is interchangeable makes a person adaptive and this Swiss army knife persona is extremely valuable to employers. Especially in the rural country I find myself.

Embrace new ways and old ways, mesh them into a tapestry for you to use within your context. Talk to older people, and learn to listen and hear everyone, even if you disagree. Be quiet instead of babbling or interrupting.

The Diamond education is a blend of all I have been writing of here and more that I will save for later. Here is a bulleted list.

• Build the mind

• Build the body

• Mastery of one's emotions

• Do not ignore Things of the spirit and soul. Finding meaning in life, Introspection, and Faith. Figure out who or what you will serve.

• Build and strengthen relationships with others.

• Question all things and learn to be an independent thinker.

• Find a creative outlet for yourself, pick a project and take it on often, even 30 minutes a day.

• Experiment, try many things in life, go out of your comfort zone.

• Embrace hard work, push your limits. However, don't settle for spending every day in life hating what you do. Find a way to enjoy the process and the struggle, as this will toughen us. I am still working on this one now.

• Be curious and have an open mind.

• Listen and be quiet.

• Use opportunities to your advantage.

• Embody and practice Agape love in life.

• Gratitude

• Forgiveness

• Take calculated risks and learn to be decisive in any circumstance.

• Read often and write daily even just a few sentences in a journal or diary.

• Pay attention to history, have discernment in all things.

Someone recently told me; “In life your delt a hand of cards like a game of poker. Play one card right and you will set the odds in your favor. You will then acquire better hands, better cards in your life. Meaning, take what opportunities and advantages you have at your disposal and leverage that. If you choose poorly, you will get a bad hand delt to you more often."

I have found the importance of character and reputation. How your perceived by your community and how you treat people daily is everything. I live in a small town. Reputation is everything in small towns. But also anywhere you go as well.

Making a personal ark of inspiration for my artwork as a kid led me to become a prepper, and truth seeker, a homesteader, and now a writer. In 2007 when I was 9, I wanted to save a library of photos and image's to be my own idea bank for the future. To give me drawing references, art fuel and inspiration. It wasn't a haphazard pastime. At 9, I considered, that the internet and google searches may not always exist, the way they did back then. This moment and decision I made starting in 2007 is the genesis of my journey and my pursuit of self-education and unlearning the social engineering of TV and public education.

My learning has always been grounded in adaptation and preparedness. For any circumstance in life. A broad skillset, adapting to change, and being resourceful and an able asset. Instead of being ignorant liabilities, which is what most of us have been raised to be, me included. It doesn't have to be this way though. I am still not great at adapting quick and am not very resourceful, but I am starting to be more able than when I was just a few years ago.

Since moving up north in 2019, I can now run a chainsaw, cut firewood, fell a tree, use various power tools, Landscaping, repair a bad home foundation, can run many types of heavy equipment, Milk a cow, skin and butcher a deer. I can also use a manual transmission, network socialize with most people, make friends with people who are where I want to be, doing what I want to do. I now know how to ski. I have spoken to my local city council at meetings, the last two mayors, and then recently two CA state senators. I can grow my own food and have been successfully feeding my wife and I for 2 months from our own garden this summer, we now have enough vegetables to last us until January.

I owe it to my pops.

My dad is exceptionally brilliant, by nature he is a problem solver to the extent at which it is now a trait that affects his mindset in life and his physical health. John taught me to figure things out when alone and working, or confused but need to do the thing regardless. He taught me what trouble shooting was in the context of computers, but it applies to most things in life. He seeks truth, solves problems, analyzes, observes, and is curious about many things. The creative resourcefulness he exhibits is unlike anyone I have ever seen. He makes his own tools, machines, and inventions to help him with what he needs to do. I would suggest John has a genius level IQ. If I use that metric or not, I know he is highly intelligent. His intelligence however, I believe impacts his mental health, and harms his quality of life. Though others also helped me learn of creating, farming, and great life values or morals through my life. My creative, innovative thirst for understanding the world around me and love of truth I owe much to my dad John.

Old Timers

The early American's were built differently. They In my opinion excelled at much of what we have lost today. They were highly intelligent and capable in ways we aren't. They had ingenuity. This people America once held were far more versatile, resourceful, frugal, industrious, and creative than many of us today in the USA and around the world.  It was necessity and self-preservation that usually produced this in people. I would suggest that around 75% of us Americans have become complacent in terms of creativity. The masses outsource human thought to external devices and software. It was made to assist and help us. Many of our tools undermine our ability to reason and solve problems these days.

Agrarianism, localism, Mutual interdependence, and the Amish.

We have become a nihilistic culture in the west and developed nations. In addition, many of us are apathetic to our own life and everything around us. My generation, gen Z, late 90's kids seem stifled in reaching a needed maturity that most of us lack in various degrees. Our minds and bodies are stunted and stuck in a false reality. For the younger people, life is an oversaturated mirage with endless stimulation.

We aren't very good with money as most of us are in debt. We are estranged from family, friends and where we live. We lack an ethos of community, we are blinded and estranged, we have been or voluntarily opt out of participation in our local culture. We don't want to commit and are usually afraid to set down roots. We are a vagrant, depraved generation who have actually lost our minds.

For a good number of us it isn't too late to reverse this trend. But make no mistake, it will be a painful and continuous process. The dissolution of the family can be blamed correctly on the mass education machine, the state as parent. But Parents of the past 120 years are also to blame. The German education model like what Horace Man and his colleague's brought from Europe to New England circa 1880 and on, perhaps even earlier. Many parents fought to have institutional standardized education. Though I am not opposed to public education, I'm against what we have. Many parents gave up responsibility and discretion. They were lazy and as a result the government now funds education. Who funds the education of young minds decides the curriculum and the fate of the children’s minds. They make us into obedient, trainable, specialists. John Taylor Gatto and Wendell berry echo this in their writing. The first person who I found talking about the damage of American public education was none other than Charlotte Iserbyt with her book "The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America." Someone made a parody video featuring her work, that video introduced me to her work in the early 2010's.

We are the most technologically enabled generation in human history. yet we are now one of the dumbest. The internet has the ability to transform our lives for good and help us with this generational disease of the mind. On the other hand, the internet and our devices have decimated our attention span, perverted our minds and seared our conscience over time. The internet and information technology has broken many of us, we must no longer allow this. We must take care and own our problems whatever they are. We have almost no control of the outside world. But any power or control we can gain starts with a clear, and ordered mind, that is calm and can make decisions and willing to risk making mistakes in order to grow. I have been afraid to make mistakes and large decisions for most of my life; I am becoming decisive more frequently now. Deciding is changing my life. Limit our screentime and digital media consumption.

Primarily shortform content like TikTok or YouTube shorts along with the toxic aspects of social media is the most damaging to mental health. Ironically I am now trying to learn to leverage social media as a writer, Illustrator , and designer. I have a project, a reason for being on social media. The project frames my why. If you do not benefit from social media and don't have a healthy purpose for using it Id delete your accounts and cut it out of your life. I believe social media must be strategically used with intention, or else entirely avoided.

I have learned a lot from YouTube or Google. They are incredible resources. Social media if used intentionally and deliberately with a goal in mind it's a great tool. But these come with an opportunity cost, these apps and websites are designed to capture and hold attention siphoning off one's boredom. When our creativity is absent or limited, one can trace this issue to avoiding boredom at all costs, avoiding stillness, sitting in silence with oneself. Tech conglomerates are sucking the life and soul out of us through impulsive media consumption. If you are unable to balance media usage. Your creative original thoughts will disappear, and you will be stuck doomscrolling, always in tutorial hell and never acting. I have seen this in my self since I began using a smartphone, and even earlier when I still watched Tv as a kid. Turn off the screen as much as possible, you will recover years of your life. Unless it has purpose or benefit and serves a purpose, you don't need it.

To me gardening is exercise, meditation, art, a way of stillness. Gardening is a timeless human act, so primal, intuitive and enabling, liberating. It's a healthy practice, and such a medicine in most facets of the human life.

 In the past people didn't intentionally camp, hike, fish, or hunt for fun. They did these things because they had too. Obviously they have always been forms of recreation and entertainment, but it is because of survival we had to brave the outdoors.

Some examples can be found in folks like John Muir, teddy Roosevelt, or Alexander von Humboldt. I look up to them in how they were curious, brave, and had the grit most men cant dream of doing in this era.

Now, these things are merely viewed as hobbies and recreation because we live in sterile plastic, steel, and concrete boxes. To old timers it was just part of life.

They had no other choice.

It's completely different today, we have to take time off, put life on pause, and go on vacation or quit our jobs to travel and be outdoors to the level of our ancestors. Today nature is a thing we drive to, or pay money to experience.

So I am not saying we can go and live in the past. We are tied to cities with work, obligations, school and family. As a society we act as though we are separated from nature. This self imposed alienation is the root cause of some massive problems we face. Some of it is in our control, in our actions and lifestyle, and how we vote with our time and money. Much of the divide from nature however is outside our control.

I would suggest the separation we have with nature is because of "Adam's" sin at the garden of Eden which belongs to us all. Most people these days believe that there is no proof for the bible, creation, and Jesus's claims of being God but there is. However to understand most of this you need faith. Without faith it is impossible to please or know about god. I don't mean a blind, ignorant faith. No, the opposite, see and hear for your self. We can know some things, but richest parts will stay foreign to most of us.

"Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen."- Hebrews 11:1

Immersion in Nature

Another old way that should be brought back is walking in the woods or in wild places in general. What I am advocating is not an expansion of the REI environmentalist, commercial jet boil culture we have, which I am guilty of being part of sadly. No, instead, a rustic campsite without frills, or casting out dollar bills for outings. A return to the outfitter, the mountain man, pioneer and first nations ways of being in nature. Sure, for recreation, but also as a means of connection with our humanity, and nature. Dare I say, a perfect place to commune and fellowship with and pray to God? For the world we now live in, it is impractical to go into a cabin in the sticks and be an isolated, hermit luddite, or absolute ascetic. A regular or occasional emersion in our own "Walden". Pockets of time we can take to retreat in wilderness, solitude and quietness at least seasonally or annually is necessary. The Japanese from my understanding call this forest bathing.

Grounding is another beneficial practice that can reduce cortisol levels in us. It just doesn't work well on concrete, plastic, or pavement. Many men and some women before the factory, firm, or trade union, were entrepreneurial, owned their own business, were merchants, captains, and most knew commerce, and trade. Old timers new what real work was, and valued earning their keep. Many sacrificed everything for others in their family and in their own community. The fear of taking action despite the possibility of failure didn't exist to many of the old timers. They had no option but to move, to decide out of necessity.

We settle to be employees and worker drones who lack a backbone. It’s not wrong being an employee. I think it’s wrong being complacent in life especially with learning. We are always learning, and if we aren't, we are regressing. Don't get me wrong, I am clawing my way out of the mire as this is partly my story. I'm a child of a materialistic, western consumer culture. I have had it with the noise. Most of us are entertained on the couch, comfortably numb, like Pink Floyd said. I want a bit of the old and a bit of the new in this life. How about you?

-Andrew Alvarado