An introduction to a series of stories about my spiritual journey, thoughts and philosophies. A summary and insight into my personal longing for freedom.
I am a 23 year old Egyptian female. I was born in Manhattan, NY. Both my parents were born and raised in Egypt. They moved to the US in the early 80’s and worked for the United Nations. After they had my brother and I, they decided the family had to go back to Egypt. My father felt it was necessary that we learn and retain our heritage, culture and language. I was eight when we moved to Egypt. We remained in Cairo until I was 16. After we traveled to Lebanon, Syria, Greece and Turkey, we returned to the US in 2000. The past eight years of my life since my return to the US have been confusing, unfulfilling, boring, depressing, empty and dark just to mention a few of the negative adjectives that come to mind. I have to admit that despair and sadness, inspire beauty, thought and meaningful searches. I have become vegetarian (vegan on and off,) a lover of holistic healing and an environmentally and health conscious person. Since my return and depression, I learned to love: yoga, organic foods, cooking, literature, exercise, mythology, alchemy, symbolism, sociology, psychology, film, anthropology, theology, herbal medicines, biology, art, music, oil painting, politics and above all philosophy.
I have always been a seeker, a questioner who never believed in or accepted anything without questioning. I’ve always tried to expand my knowledge on any topic before I formulated my own opinion. My parents, the cultural people they are (especially my mom) used to think I was a “crazy” or a “wild” child. I guess that was due to my constant “irregular” behavior (whatever that means.) I would never take a lame excuse such as: “because I said so” for an answer. They took me to a doctor, because I was “too hyper” in the words of my mother. I constantly and continuously refused to take mindless simple answers from adults, teachers, religion and authority. I never did well in school. Not because I wasn’t capable of doing well, but because the material was dull, boring, mundane and didn’t challenge me for more than a couple of days. In my opinion, everything taught in school was bias and useless. When I would ask teachers “why?” their answers would be something along the lines of “because that’s what it says in the book!” I hated the school system and thought it to be a miserable failure. A friend I had met on my recent travels put it so eloquently: “Schools serve to polish stones and dull diamonds, creating stagnation and mediocrity across the board.”
I had decided that I was going to teach myself and not even care about the school system any longer. A lot of brilliant people in history never went to college and were self educated, such as Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Edison. These people, among many others, learned and formulated their own thoughts and opinions about the world by directly studying it and contemplating about it. Plus, the majority of people with degrees now-a-days are barely even educated. I feel alone in a sea of sheeple (sheep-people, that’s what I call them.) I never felt that I needed a piece of paper from a capitalist government establishment stating that I am now qualified for a boring unfulfilling job for the rest of my life.
That is not my goal, to be a part of a system that keeps young people off the job market by pumping repetitive and useless information in to their heads in a classroom. Information they end up forgetting after the tests are taken and the essays are written. Keeping the young off the job market boosts our economy. Young adults in school and college spend the most money. Their parents have to work triple hard to afford their outrageous tuitions, latest gadgets, video games and all the insane products geared towards this age group. Most students don’t work or have real jobs that give them a real concept of the importance and value of money.
Once these young adults actually enter the job market, they start to buy a lot less of these items, prioritizing for things such as rent, fuel, food etc… They almost stop buying the garbage which only kids with no “real jobs” would buy or would ask their parents for. When they do finally graduate, the majority still has to start at the bottom of the ladder: “Entry level,” as they still “lack experience.” Meaning all the school system really did for them is, delay their arrival to that “Entry Level” position. Making their minds and hands idle long enough so that they can spend their parents hard earned money, before going into the “real world” and realizing that this is junk that only people who don’t value and work hard for their own money buy into.
So what have they learned from their schools and colleges? Go ask most of them… and you’ll find that they don’t remember 70% or more of all that junk that was force feed down their throats day in and day out for almost 16 years. I’m counting the first 5 years as we do actually learn. Things such as reading, writing, spelling, adding, multiplying, subtracting, colors, shapes, names of animals and objects, those all stick. Then come fractions, lowest common denominators, dates and places of violence that happened to or was caused by dead people, Oedipus Rex, Periodic Table of Elements and the list of useless and forgotten information goes on and on. Do you remember any of it?? Even though we probably took 5 or more courses of each Algebra/Math, History, English and Sciences, we still wouldn’t be able to remember the majority of it.
Such a system also keeps the adults in this equation working harder and longer hours, so that they can afford all the junk their kids ask for and “need.” They come home feeling so unfulfilled from working so many hours for money they will probably never see or hold, because it’s already planned for. They are so exhausted, over-run, depressed and unhealthy that they want something easy and quick to numb the emptiness and pain such as beer, wine or television: things which cost money and promote the spending of even more money.
I went to college for six years and never graduated. I have more than enough credits to graduate, but none of them fit into any cohesive degree. I was told if I were to take 5 more courses, I would “graduate with a double major and double minor and a bunch of electives that would have to be left out all together” as per my counselor. What the hell does that even mean? Was that supposed to make me excited? Well it didn’t. The reason I ended up with all these unrelated electives and credits is because I went to school to actually LEARN about the things which I was interested in. I wasn’t interested in grades, papers or a degree. Just learning! I like to learn, but I don’t like to be fed information that is meaningless and of no interest or use to me, just so that some idiots can give me a piece of paper that claims that I am now, with their permission and endowment, an “educated person” (whatever the definition of that is these days.)
I mean if George “dabaya” Bush has been deemed an “educated” person, by the great institution of Yale, then I really don’t want to be “educated.”I learn the material of most courses in the first 2 to 3 weeks, why do we have to be there for months, dragging and repeating and boring ourselves to death? Why? To justify the outrageous amounts of money we are spending on tuition? To keep teachers, professors, janitors, administrators, lunch ladies, delivery trucks, book stores and vending machines working longer? To keep young adults off the real job market longer? Well, there’s a reason I got an A+ in every single summer course which last 6 weeks yet I constantly dropped, failed or just stopped going to fall and spring courses that dragged on and on about stuff I read and learned, out of curiosity and thirst for knowledge, in the first 2 to 3 weeks. As soon as I am done with courses that I am either forced to take (lovely General Ed courses) or just simply fail to challenge me, all the information is flushed out of my brain. That is a waste of my time, money, energy and brain cells.
My parents work for the United Nations, which provides an almost free education for its employees’ children. So I kept enrolling in courses I was interested in. I didn’t care about graduating, I was learning! Finally for the first time in my whole life, I WAS REALLY LEARNING! I wasn’t wasting my parents’ money (contrary to what they would believe.) The UN would have paid this amount of money for my education either way, and I turned out to be a pretty knowledgeable person, when compared to people my age who do have degrees. Even to older people who have more than one degree. These are the people who can’t keep up a 5 minute conversation with me and can’t wait to run home and watch American idol, Project Runway, Soap Opera and drink their six pack or caffeinated drinks on their La-Z-Boy.
It makes me sick to my stomach thinking about how low the standards have become today. If you can pass a test and write a paper (or pay someone or some site to write it for you) then you’re in! Glad to have you! But if you think for yourself, are self educated, are curious about the world around you and learn differently then these sheeple… well, you know what happens. The sad part is that my parents still expect me to get that degree. They cling on to it so badly as if it’s my ticket to life. Like without it I’m doomed, dead and will end up in a hole in the dark somewhere lying on a cardboard box covered in garbage and piss.
As if my brain and intellect count for nothing. I mean did Socrates, Jesus or Leonardo da Vinci go to college? NO! But today the only thing that does count is; my ability to sit in a classroom day in and day out, pass tests (which I will remember nothing of once taken,) and write papers (which I probably had someone write for me or stole half of the material then “cleverly” changed it around to make it my own.) Why? Because if I poses these abilities, then I will be exactly what this culture wanted to produce; a person who can go to the same mundane job day in and day out, and follow mindless orders, and write mindless reports that are a waste of trees and ink etc… I will have shown my ability to be disciplined and not question authority enough to continue on living this mediocre life style. Where people make money with their right hand and hand it over with their left. No matter how much the majority of people make, they end up spending it and borrowing more on top of it to buy more junk and crap which they do not need.
Dance Monkey, Dance!
Mother culture, how I love the pretty pictures you paint for our society in order to keep the cash flow coming in. Those constant soft lies you whisper in our ears that serve to keep the smart dumb. How you love to “educate” the masses with your bias and edited version of life and the world, so that we can remain slaves to the money-making-monkey-machine. Remain slaves to this system of exploitation forever, so that we can never revolt or speak out and TRULY make a change. Yes mother culture, please tell us and fill our simple, tired, poisoned, over stimulated, drugged-up minds with your pretty little lies. I hear you mother culture, I hear it everywhere: “Dance monkey, dance! Cause we have the food under lock and key! The food you used to get for free! Now dance for your food monkey, dance hard and long and forever. Dance for debt, sadness, emptiness and hopelessness. And the only way to numb your pain monkey, is to dance some more! So that you can afford our magical happy potions, happy pills and entertainment picture box which tells you how to be happy! Now dance and smile like the zombie we want you to be and take it as it is, because you can never change anything!” Mmmmm…. to be continued
Where are you? And where can I find you?? 
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