An article on Forbes about laziness

http://www.forbes.com/2006/05/20/lazin...rking-good_cz_mm_06work_0523lazy.html

Thanks, that is a good article.
I think what I am getting at is this: If you asked most (not all) of the people from my old school why they dropped out, their response would be “dont know”, “Sod off”, which may well represent a failure to connect with the system. But I don’t think these people are aware that this is what they are feeling.
An interesting subject…

Leary’s advice of dropping out isn’t such a bad idea.

I just don’t know anymore…

I don’t think people at any age should be like “well I am no longer all that young so I should simply accept the house, with kids, and the boring job” I think the teen-age psyche lives well on after one’s chronological time as a teenager and the teenage pysche has some important attributes like rebellion and sexual desire. Monster movies and punk rock are monuments to the teenage pysche. Though, it is important for the pysche not to turn into a murderous blob sucking things up for self-expansion

From the movie Fright Night

Do you realize how much trouble you’ve caused me Charlie? Spying on me. Almost disturbing my sleep this afternoon. Telling policemen about me! You deserve to die boy. Of course, I can give you something I don’t have… a choice. Forget about me Charlie. Forget about me and I’ll forget about you. Well, what do you say Charlie?

http://www.forbes.com/2006/05/20/lazin...rking-good_cz_mm_06work_0523lazy.html

oh yeah and the super-human realm of existance………isn`t that something to work toward?

Yeah, I think thats absolutely the point - to strive towards that world.

From my experience of school, the dropouts (on the whole) weren’t necessarily the people who understood the game, just the people who were apathetic, or lazy.

Well I think you have to look at what each of these behaviors you’re describing means. Apathy and laziness are essentially a failure to connect to the motivations of the system. Vandalism is an outright violation of the rules and regulations of the system. I don’t believe that these things are all conscious attempts to not play the game in protest of it, but I do think that’s very much what they amount to.

Also, in my experience, if you want to talk about heavy drugs and alcohol use in highschool, the “bad kids” aren’t the ones with the biggest problems. It was the “normal” kids or the popular kids who would get really violent and screwed up, but because of their social standing, everyone sort of just allowed them to be that way…

Sure, there were some who left because of feeling towards the system, but most just “fell” out because they couldn’t keep up. Often they were just wasters, the same people you would find vandalising shops in town on a Saturday night.

Edd, ya you have a good point, even after I posted I thought a bit more about, there are some of both aspects to all of the “groupings” u could do. Because the kids who were getting the grades and putting effort into it were definitely “getting the game”, regardless of how they felt about the game, because as individuals they were all different. But probably a good lot of them were tormented and turned off by the “bad” group in discussssion, scuze the slurring I just slammed my morning scotch. Ahh. And so formed a negative attitude towards those who tended to get drunk (to excess), smoke, dope, etc, etc. Whereas those who did not want to direct their energies towards high school and the rest of the grade game, for unknown numbers of various reasons including laziness and apathy - me myself even ! was (and still am sometimes - shock!) lazy, but only when I am not interested in and focused on something of worthy pursuit. I think many are similiar in that respect. Anyway I am glad you had a good viewpoint on that.

Isn’t Peart an English Lit professor or something like that?

But anyway, while other people considered them bad kids, and while they were constantly getting into trouble, in my experience, these were the smartest and most sensitive and advanced kids in the whole school. The difference between them and everybody else was that they could see through the game. Maybe they couldn’t always articulate it, but they could see that grade-grubbing and mindless repitition of meaningless facts and adherence to rules just for the sake of it were symptoms of a system-wide illness. An illness which they innoculated themselves against with drugs and alcohol and music and each other.

Further to my first response, which was a quick reaction to the Rush thing, I really like the post and have thought along similiar lines about myself and the friends I had / have. Although I “recovered” from my drop outedness in many ways, I didn’t completely, and I am happy that I didn’t. All my friends are still those guys and gals mentioned above, but who also managed to move on and grow into happy (more or less..) people with families and jobs, but also retained the love of music (and some of those substances…), can discuss things other than our golf scores and new cars, and still recognize the “grade grubbing” or whatever.

To your main point, yes it does seem that, if you are smart enough to figure out the game and lead, but not vapid or greedy enough to want to win it at all costs, then you are out of contention while recognizing what’s happening. Like a pro level athlete who develops a knee problem before ever going pro… he certainly can understand and talk the game with the best of them, but he can’t play. If we were to want to strategize and play the game at a pro level, we have to heal our knee injuries first. But - maybe in this case healing the injury means becoming a total dick that you wouldn’t want to do in the first place. So part of that plan would need to be the driving desire to change the game to something better, rather than win it.