I think I've come to terms with my limitations. I guess that comes with getting older and realizing that there are fewer and fewer things that you can really explore and experience without too much risk. I realize that sounds naive, me being 20 years old, but I think it's true. When I was a kid, I wanted to be hundreds of different things: a baseball player, a scientist, a writer, a kid with a smaller head, etc. I really didn't have any limitations, save for the head shrinking, and I could fool around with a whole bunch of different stuff. They say that the difference between primary school teachers and secondary school teachers is that the primary school teachers know a little about a lot and secondary school teachers know a lot about a little. Also, banging students is a little more frowned upon at the primary school level.
I think that narrowing of expertise is a reality of life today; in order to be a "productive member of society" you have to have a specific area of expertise. I don't think it necessarily is involved with the limitations of the human mind, people can learn almost infinite amounts of information, or limitations of time, we are around for a very long time and the brain is only useless when you're very young and very old (except for 14 year old males, whose brains become dedicated only to pornography, violence, and violent pornography for at least one calendar year), I think it has to do with limitations imposed by society, specifically American society.
America seems to be motivated, as well as controlled by work. One could argue that this work ethic gave us airplanes, automobiles, the moon landing, and those plastic things that go on the end of shoelaces (aglets). One could also argue that it made everyone in this country fucking boring. The work ethic back in the day led to the notion that getting up and going to work every morning at 9, doing something there, and getting back at 5 was an honorable and useful way to spend time, which I think is ridiculous. Have you ever pushed a pencil for 8 hours? Those things are REALLY tiny, and bending down to give them the business all day is really hard on the back. I guess you could say that the airplane, automobile, and aglet were all fantastic inventions and totally worth the work that was put into them. I'd actually have to agree with you on that. Which makes my examples very bad. I'm sort of getting away from my point.
Do you think that all of the modern conveniences we know and love would never have come along without the "American spirit" of toiling work? I think they would have. Eventually. I think my theory is pretty half-baked at this point, but there is something to it. I'll come back to this later, I'm too tired from working on schoolwork. Which actually was the impetus for this in the first place.
Here's a line from the best melodrama ever made:
"You want me to get a job on the line for the next 20 years til I’m granted leave with my gold-plated watch and my balls full of tumors because I surrendered the one thing that means shit to me? Well, you can just exhale because it’s not gonna happen, not in this lifetime."
I like the part about the watch. And the ball tumors. Fuuuck.
