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I'm Alex and I'm and Accidential Philosopher
I've got a little bit of an audience this time around so it's like I'm talking to someone
instead of talking to you guys out there in the YouTube world.
What's been on my mind recently? Well recently I have an article coming in from Harvard University.
Look at Al Franken doing all sorts of cool stuff in Minnesota.
Besides the point - Civic Duty. Renewing Civic duty in the higher education.
What does this mean to me? Well, Frankly the notion that colleges have lost their vision.
Colleges were originally installed in order to pursue higher education. What does that
mean now a days?
Math. Science.
All of these crunchy mindsets that have to further the GDP, right?
Reading this article brought a lot of things to attention. The notion of civic duty and
what it means to put things in a philosophical perspective.
This applies to me in a lot of different ways because, yeah, I do realize, sometimes things
aren't really thought about.
I know myself going through the college system and coming out with a nice fat degree like
the rest of us out here on the Internet, tend to wonder if were put on the right track.
I like to make a comparison to a lot a of things, this comparison I'd like to draw to
a specific machine that has caught a craze across the land.
The Keurig machine. This my friends his hot chocolate.
I recently made a tout on a new social network about tea. Tea is not that hard to do, right?
Probably one of life's most easy beverages- you take leaves and pour hot water on it.
Now all of a sudden we have a machine that packages it into a futuristic container, heats
our water, applies it, and delivers us tea, hot chocolate, or even coffee.
Coffee is not that hard folks, you take beans and grind them up and pour hot water on it,
right?
Has this furthering of science, technology lead us astray?
So in the sense of colleges having to instill a higher education, have they lost ourselves
a civic duty?
The notion of teaching kids the right of morality, or the right of doing a justice in their society?
This is something I'm trying to really comprehend as I obviously grow older and take you on
a journey with me. But I don't really know about a lot of things and that's why I like
to reach out into the universe. We're like a giant consensus of knowledge and education,
right?
Now does this devalue education?
Maybe. Maybe not.
Colleges obviously have come to a point where they're now a business, they have a ranking
system. They are constantly in competition with one another. Does that all of a sudden
devalue the education they're doling out? Nevermind the fact that they've lost our own
notion and focus of teaching kids the philosophical pursuits of "Goodness" or "betterment" or
whatever things that we used to be taught.
Some people may think I'm full of ***, like my audience over here. But that's besides
the point.
Certain things as humans we need to understand the notion of good, happiness, and the American
way.
So is the college System completely screwed up? Should we hit the reset button and just
start over? That's a lot of questions I've been asked as of late and I like to wonder
if you have the same opinion as well?
Knowledge has never before been available, and accessible, in such a way like the internet
is providing us.
Now all of a sudden we have to go through this structured and institutionalized system
of ranking and scoring and betterment. One thing they're forgetting, philosophy, they've
kind of lost their way.
It's not a part of their curriculum any more, it's almost an elective, an elective.
Whatever, these are "soft sciences", these are fluffy, froo-froo magic sciences, right?
We don't really need them, right?
Well something I like to bring to the table it- Question Everything.
Like question things.
Let's figure things out together. I'm not saying I have the right opinion, I'm not saying
there is a right opinion.
What is right, anyway?
But I think this article here, in this Harvard Magazine that I've been reading.
We are in our own monkey sphere of awareness and I think that's very important to realize,
over time we've lost a sense of what is "important" in our own lives.
Now I understand there's a perpetuating system of people in debt and making them desire high
paying jobs to pay off that debt and the cycle repeats itself, but is that bubble that's
eventually going to pop?
I know there are far bigger minds and far older people crunching those numbers. But
I just think our certain level and our certain existence here in the wonderful age of 2012,
we have to ask ourselves.
And that's all I can bring to to the table.
So I'm wondering what you guys have to think about the civic duty of colleges, the Keurig
machine as a whole and whether both should have to readjust their own systems.
Leave a comment below!
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And now the next reading of Das Energi
Life is a continuity. All things are related All beings are interdependent. They cannot
exist without each other.
They do not exist without each other.
I'm Alex and I'm an accidential Philosopher.