Does an Education Stop With Your Degree?
Nobody Wins
Long ago, I had a band called Coconuts. And in that band was a guitar player named Eric Vieth. We were on the road a lot, and Eric and I enjoyed many a deep discussion about everything, while passing the time between ‘gigs.’ After the band broke up, I tried to stay in touch with him. In fact, we both had the same philosophy teacher in college.
I thought the guy was a fool, and dropped his class. Eric, became one of his best friends. (Yes…it started there.)
Eric went on to finish his education, and became a lawyer. He still works in Missouri as a lawyer. This is all just background, because last year, after many years of not talking to him, I looked him up on the internet, and found…that the “mind” I used to love talking to…is now, very liberal.
He posted this video on his FACEBOOK page. Eric, believes every single word this man says. Here’s what Eric posted:
Bill Moyers on the Sabotage of Democracy. This is five minutes of must-watch sanity regarding Obamacare, including a cogent analysis of the tantrum being thrown by Republicans, as well as the danger this Republican stunt presents to all of us.
And you know what? My heart is very sad at this. In life, Eric’s has had a much more successful career than I. But when I saw this, I remembered how FAR I have come intellectually since college, because it was in college when I used to think Bill Moyers was just about the coolest thing around. And then I left college and read other things. I read the Founders. I read history. I paid attention to life.
I read all views, and saw that our universities grind out battalions of these sort of “emotional and illogical retards” as fast as the waves rushing in on a beach.
What I’m trying to say is, I can’t figure out why Eric never got passed idealizing Bill Moyers…like I did. I always thought he was as smart as me.
I’m sad, because I know, Eric is not a stupid man. All I can think of is that guys like Bill Moyers and those like him, talk in very authoritative tones (much like the professors) So, I guess it’s like liberals feel the professors know best. You’d best believe them.
You would THINK that a smart person would check it out. We are not a democracy. We are a Republic. The people have a right to defund Obamacare if they don’t like it. It’s the way our system is supposed to work. But listen to Bill…the people want to sabotage democracy. They keep saying “YOU LOST! YOU LOST!” Well, that doesn’t mean we should put up with tyranny.
Damn right we want to defund it. Obamacare was passed on Christmas Eve, and NONE of the politicians even read it. And yet…people like Bill Moyers and my friend Eric are okay with it. They are even okay with all it’s faults.
And why shouldn’t they be? They are not effected by it. They live in the upper classes.
Eric is a lawyer. So…uh…what am I missing here?
Read Thomas Jefferson. Or…don’t you guys read anymore?
I would love to talk to Eric again, explore ideas, compare notes, wonder at the world like we used to do in old times—- but he thinks I am just an old married housewife who is…conservative and stupid. I know…his opinion of me shouldn’t matter. But…it still makes me sad, because when it all comes down to it…Eric is still in college. Eric is in many ways…still a child. I’m sure he thinks the same of me.
He may have gotten a degree…but his mind never went any further.
And I know, he feels very superior to me. Probably even pities me.
And that’s….sad…and you know what else is sad? I’m sure, there are thousands of others out there just like me, who has a very dear liberal friend, and misses having just a decent conversation. And think: Why can’t we have a conversation?
Why? Because they would lose all arguments, and they just can’t let that happen.
That’s what the democrats have destroyed. You can’t talk anymore to them. They are just…too obsessed with themselves, and their own ignorance. They have become…tyrants and don’t even know it.
So I ask myself…do I post comments on his Facebook page? …..
Do I really want to annoy him?
Nah.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be…Thomas Jefferson.
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About
I am a nobody. If the different classes of America were color-coded, I would be in the yucky brown, one rung up from the bottom. I grew up in Naples, Florida and live near the Mississippi River now with my husband and two dogs. I am part of the slowly disappearing middle-class. I was a musician most of my life: drummer/singer/keyboards—but I retired before the plastic surgery flu hit. I have no degrees, which could be a good thing…depending on how you view our educational system. I do have three patents…but that really doesn’t make me a somebody. The one thing that is constant in my life is my OPINIONS, which i have more than perhaps even Carl Sagan could have imagined…mostly political. (yes…my ancestors were crabby buggers)
Hopefully other nobody’s will put their opinions on my site. But, if you happen to be a somebody, you’re more than welcomed to help out.
It’s my Nobody Opinion that Nobody’s Perfect, and Nobody Cares, that Nobody Knows why Nobody Wins, and when that happens, Nobody Wonders, why Nobody Flashes, why Nobody’s Fooled, but then Nobody remembers that Nobody ALWAYS Reports the truth.
You can email me at joyanna_adams@yahoo.com
Joyanna Adams
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Joyanna Adams 
That was a beautiful commentary on education amfortas. You did it the way I would think all people should do it…learn, test, explore, test some more, talk, come to a conclusion. And then there’s the moral.
Maybe that’s really the difference…what you think is moral. Eric is agnostic. He sees no proof of any God. Maybe it’s as simple as that….When there is no other existence beyond man. Man is God.
Thanks for the nice essay!
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A pleasure to join-in, m’dear.
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Does a Degree actually educate a person?
I have three. The first was a broad humanities degree. It was wonderful. I was mid twenties and had been a school drop-out. Thick as two short planks. That degree and all of its readings and discussion switched on floodlights. So during it, well into my third year, I started another one. One of the original subjects in the Humanities was Psych so I did that as well, to a full Honours level and actually did quite well. Upper second. So I now had two BA degrees and was feeling quite smart.
These were done, by the way, while I was working. I had a fine and demanding job as a military Officer putting in 70 hours a week as a matter of course, and sometimes far more. But there were always a few hours one could glean for study and discussion. And writing. That actually allows a chap to organise and argue with his thoughts. My colleagues, ever used to giving nick-names, called me ‘Brains’. I didn’t feel brainy, just really, really interested in challenging not only what I was reading, studying and learning but challenging every thought about things that popped into my head. That sort of smart. The sort when even you (me) refuse to just let some drivel pour out without at least a cursory examination of it and a self-whack around the ears.
I retired from the killing bizzo and went to Uni for the only full-time year I could afford. I did am MSc in Psych. Very practical. Focussed. It was to be the foundation for a new career. I could only afford one year as well as support my family so I crammed a two-year program into one. I did well at that too. I had to.
Like your friend I had a living to earn. But ‘applying’ what I knew in the real world was the start of my education. The previous career taught me more than all the studies, apart from the analytical and self-criticism. No…. that is not fully true. The military does not ‘teach’ that to you: it demands it from you.
But the new knowledge foundation facilitated enormous creativity in application to a thousand ‘human’ issues and business issues and societal issues where fluidity of accurate and reasoned thought is essential. One size fits the one. Every size wants fitting.
Your friend the lawyer went down a very different route. He rote-learned legal rubrics. One size fits all. Ideology and hierarchy rules. Deviation from the path is penalised. Money rolls in for the Legal mind. Monies deliberately manipulated from people who are prevented from even knowing the rubrics.
His is Power. Backed by force. How dare you contradict him.
Mine was ‘examine the issue; know – deeply know – the person; tell me what is in your mind; tell me what you do; tell me how that works for you; tell me what happens when it doesn’t; create the correct and best possible/workable/curative solution’. Oh, and pay me appropriately, as you can.
Does my way have rubrics? YES. But they are not found in texts or lectures. They are written into the mind and heart and Soul. Freedom; Dignity; Integrity; Authenticity.
Your friend moves to a different drum to you and me. he is carried in a sedan-chair by people he rips-off and silences; you dance with a jig and a twirl: I sit on my arse and listen, tapping my feet. You and I both like to hear people sing. You actually sing !!
Of the three of us, God probably listens to you more and smiles a lot more.
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