Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Collected and Counted

Foolishly, I am writing from my desktop. I know that anything I write can and could be used against me. Somehow, that is not daunting at all.

Everything we say can and could be used against us now. I used to roll my eyes about people that worried over their privacy. It seemed paranoid and quaint. Now, we know that we are just a computer server away from having our entire lives laid bare for anyone who'll pay for the privilege.

I fly near this radar assuming and hoping that I am not nearly interesting enough to spark interest. I don't even say that with my tongue in my cheek. I honestly do not want to be interesting any more.

Writing this note here and now is sloppy. I am doing it only because of my fatigue from a work day and then a night of meetings. I am too mentally tired to do more work at work. This little episode is like a yawn.

Because I find myself between a rock and a hard place, I will go on to not say too much about much of anything. Ultimately, that is my little feet stomping act of defiance here; my circumstances mute me.

It is the opposite of "You complete me." It is learning not to give much away.

I have been reading about parental education levels, income, and outcomes of children. It seems that this ability to smoothly transition through work and school is the ghost in the machine. Children from many diverse backgrounds 'act up' for many different reasons. These children create problems for themselves and for others, later they are adults and citizens that 'act out' as well.

It seems to me, in a crude and rudimentary form here, that the goal is to create as little conflict as possible. Sliding from one subject to the next, from work to home, from one place to another without drawing attention leads to prosperity. We are gazelles on the savanna. Don't be an outlier.

It seems like a nasty little lie. We believe that our culture wants us to be independent. We are individuals. We are voters. We are citizens. We are workers. But, when you look under the false back of the drawer you find out that silence is, indeed, a virtue. There is a code of invisibility.

All of this makes me wonder why we don't just tell children, workers, students, voters, and on and on that no one wants to know and that it is absolutely in their best interest to keep quiet. It seems like this is an unfair secret that only some have the fortune to figure out or be taught.

3 comments:

  1. Re: Educating Kids to be Compliant
    Check out the very cool animated sketch by Sir Ken Robinson which depicts his view of how kids lose their creative abilities over the course of their schooling:
    http://www.swiss-miss.com/2010/11/changing-education-paradigms.html

    His website http://sirkenrobinson.com/skr/ looks interesting too.

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  2. Found you. :)

    My gods you read my mind. Lately I think how I've become one of those older workers I used to look down on because they had no spine. Now I'm just trying to keep my head down and my job like them. And hoping someone else will come along braver than me while I conspire to not get booted before I can flee.

    But

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  3. You're right! We're all supposed to be quiet, really, and not stir things up. :(

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