Kelly
| Name: |
Kelly |
| I live: |
Adelaide |
Basically I'm a passionate happy young woman with a re-kindled drive to know everything there is to know about everything.
When I left school, I started a commerce degree. Very soon I found out it wasn't my thing and switched to science which I found very interesting and challenging, but narrow. I am just finishing a biomedical science degree in Adelaide. I have recently decided that research science isn't really my passion either but I will soon have the degree behind me.
I said that I think my degree was narrow. That's because I don't think that I really learnt a great deal about thinking, how to teach myself to understand stuff, about the social aspects of the world that impact on science or the method that is science and underpins the way we think as westerners in the modern world since the theory of Descartes and so on some 400 years ago. Basically I sat a big memory test - good for me. I think that this makes me a narrow person with a limited understanding of the world. And as a graduate of a good university with a course that many would regard as 'intelligent' or difficult, I think that is bad. That's right, and I was a 'good' student.
So anyway, I am now in the process of finding out stuff, reading, getting involved in my community and stuff like this to broaden my understanding of the world and be an active member of my world!
I have recently begun to understand and find out about some serious issues in our world in regards to the environment, the failings of our economic system, general knowledge of basic health and illness, oppression of youth as well as confirming previous ideas about the archaic nature of the way we conduct education.
With this small amount of knowledge I have gained I just cannot believe that my country is not in full flight doing something about it all!! Especially when we think that the generation holding most of the powerful positions these days are the 'baby boomers' who we all know as the generation of young people who very publically and sometimes violently announced were going to fix the world! What are they doing now?
Completely undiscouraged I am finding out more and more and it's really exciting. (Although once I actually graduate I think I'll have more time.)
I have met a few older people in my life who I trust and admire. For starters, my dad, he's my hero. He has saved my arse more times than I care about! He is also the only person I have ever met who has read so much and truly understands as much about the world as he does, as well as being a practical person who can teach me useful things in life like how to fix the kettle when it leaks etc.
One of the other people is my grandma. She passed away a few years ago, but I think I will never forget the things she taught me. She was pretty ignorant about a lot of things but she was still wise. (Knowlege being the stuff or information you know and wisdom being the way you use it). She worked out something most people never get - the meaning of life.
When my dad first held my older sister when she was born, grandma made a comment that he has never forgotten and has recounted to me many times. She said, 'This [reproduction and kids] is what it's all about'. Most other species on this planet can understand, except humans. The fixation we have on the other things in our lives like careers, money, appearance, 'good times', etc has moulded our fundamental concepts of time, space and things into separate, discrete things/events. If people recognised that reproduction and making the world a better place for the next lot was actually what its all about then we would waste less, consume less, put in more, be more interested in new and better ways to do things (rather than short term opinions or budgets), save more, spend less, put young people first, into safe motorcars, better conditions, involment in the community and practically change our concept of everthing. We would think of everything as interconnected and not separate events and time as future or present - it is all connected and it is all now. What you do now cannot be swept away or forgotten.
So far this is as far as I have come. I think that there is a lot missing in this theory, but I'm working on it.
This all relates to education in that how do you get people to change the way they think?
I think the answer is to avoid oppressing their inner drive to discover when they are young and to 'get out of the way' and help them educate themselves. Show them ways to improve the way they learn. Dont put them in childcare (schools) and give them stuff to memorise, what is that going to do for the obesity epidemic, rainforests in tasmania, alternative fuels for their future?
So the other thing I care about but have not yet come up with theories for is health. We have so much information available to us, why is it that we dont use it to change ourselves?
Quotes I like:
" When your heart is beating you don’t want to hear the news."
Bruce Springsteen
"Your children are not your children, they are life’s eternal longing for itself."
Kahil Gibran, The Prophet
"How are you sure the revolution will happen?"
"Because I will make it so. What are you going to do about it?"
Brian Medlin
"You don’t want a sense of purpose, that will only take you to one place"
Malcolm Slade
"The main problem with Australian’s these days is that they are so busy watching their arse, they’re likely to fall off a cliff."
Interview on a curent affairs show
"It has been revealed to me that every person behind their charming or perhaps, to our eyes, monstrous appearance retains a quality that seems to be like some final refuge, with the result that, in some very secret and perhaps irreducible realm they are what every other person is."
Jean Genet
"Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The trouble-makers. The round pegs in square holes. The ones who see things differently.
They’re not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things. They invent, they imagine, they heal, they explore, they inspire, they create, they push the human race forward.
Maybe they have to be crazy. How else could you stare at a blank canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?
We make tools for these kinds of people. While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the ones are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."
Apple Macintosh
"Stop the world, I wanna get off!!"
Someone from uni, but I think it was thought of by someone else a while ago.
