Motivational Poster

Motivational Poster

WELCOME TO THE COLLECTIVE THOUGHTS OF THOSE WHO CURSE THE STUPID AND DAMN THE MALEVOLENT


Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Optimists and Pessimists




Are you an Optimist or a Pessimist?

Is the glass half full or half empty?

Some believe that you are one or the other.

Some will describe you as one or the other; but is their opinion of you itself optimisitic or pessimistic?

Some will sneakily call themselves Realists, but are in fact optimists or pessimists in disguise, so there is no 'third way'. Realism is not even relevant to the issue, because the issue is about how things should or shouldn't be, not how they are or aren't.

The people who describe you as an optimist or a pessimist may themselves be one or the other, thus affecting their opinion of which one you are.

This smacks of relativity, doesn't it. Perhaps you're an optimist if you talk to him, but a pessimist if you talk to her. In which case, what point is there in knowing which one you are?

Is there anything at all to be gained from considering this arguable dichotomy?



Optimism and Pessimism are argued to predict how you will approach all opportunities, set-backs and upheavals in life. In fact, people who raise the OP thesis are largely optimists themselves. They raise the issue in order to impart to you their self-declared wisdom that everyone should be optimists like them, because it is a superior state of being and approach to life. Pessimists are sad, lonely people, optimists say, who drag themselves down and are their own problem. It's not the world's fault, it's your fault - it's your attitude.


 
So, how do we describe a struggling African family, should they flee their village after several raids by rival tribes. Are the fleeing survivors being pessimistic about their situation and should be a bit more optimistic?

However, the conclusion that you are one or other is based on past experience, so the whole thesis is logically entwined with holding the argument that you can never change - your future is your past (just like a Bank when you go for a loan). But we all know that only severely dumb boring people (like Bankers) are so dull and risk averse. Not all of us are like that. It is a conclusion derived by inductive reasoning - the same argument that concludes the sun will rise tomorrow, because it has always done it before. The OP argument is deterministic: if you were pessimistic in the past, then you will be pessimistic in the future, it is your destiny.


As someone once said, "An optimist is someone who insists that everything is alright when it is not."

We think the OP thesis is neither optimistic nor pessimistic. It is just stupid.

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

Doctors, Lawyers, Accountants and other Tradies






Universities were never intended to be apprenticeship schools, but they are. Nowadays, you can't get a job in a whole range of intellectual industries unless you've been to university and completed a related or general university degree. In effect, the university is the same for the lawyer, doctor, public servant, as the technical training school is for the plumber, builder, electrician. Universities pump out suit monkeys with degrees in exactly the same way that technical schools pump out tradies with trade certificates. On average, they even earn the same range of salary. The average public servant even earns slightly less than your average tradie.





Universities were intended to extend the wealth of collective human knowledge and wisdom. The great philosopher Plato opened his Academy, the world's first university, in ancient Athens to give adults the opportunity to learn a universal breadth of knowledge, to broaden their minds and contribute to the current body of things known and understood in the world, and beyond the world. In the Gardens of Academus, Plato taught the philosophical subjects of Logic, Ethics, Economics, Aesthetics, Epistemology, Politics and Natural Philosophy (now known as Science).

Plato's star pupil was Aristotle who went on to teach a young Alexander the Great and formed his own university the Lyceum. From Plato's Academy, we derive all our 'academic' words and language. More importantly, we also derive all of our institutes of higher learning, some of which offer a 'universal' understanding of the world and award their most accomplished students the title Doctor of Philosophy or PhD.




Universities were never intended to be factories for manufacturing lawyers, doctors, accountants and public servants. So, what the hell happened? A lawyer is just a tradie. A lawyer's trade is the Law. A lawyer is an expert in the Law, which they can prove to you by showing you their trade certificate (an undergraduate degree in law from a university). Like a brickie, a lawyer practices his trade by providing his learned services and skills to a paying client. So what's the difference between those smarmy, self-congratualting professionals with degrees and the average Joe tradie? Not a damn thing.






But Our cause is the conservation of the University. Its protection against being reduced from an institute of universal understanding, knowledge growth and the pursuit of wisdom to becoming nothing more than a suit factory, pouring out an endless stream of boring, pathetic, prententious, elitist mummies' boys clutching their trade certificates in law, accounting, IT and other tripe as they saunter into the money sector having left nothing behind, but debt and giving nothing back to society except another annoying service we all have to pay for when something goes wrong.




























Our suggestion is that we keep our once esteemed universities sanctified and preserved as institutes not of learning, not in the manner of a library or news agent where people come in and take things away for themselves, but to return universities back into institutes of contribution to the sum of all human knowledge and understanding. People come in and give to the university. They research, they propose their thesis, it is accepted or rejected, then they leave.

The only reason trades are taught at university is money. Trades in law, medicine and accounting are expensive, which is why only the rich can afford to pay for such learning. Years ago, universities  stooped beneath themselves and prostituted their knowledge to the rich in exchange for training their spoilt brats to be elitist tradesmen. This practice must end.

Lawyers, accountants, doctors, nurses, IT workers, plumbers, brickies, sparkies and other tradesmen should piss off out of universities and go learn your trade in a technical school or trade college, do your apprenticeship and get lost. Neither lawyer, nor sawyer, neither surgeon nor plumber, contributes to the collective wisdom of our world. They just learn enough to practice what the world already knows and then they leave. They give nothing back, so they have no business even looking at a university. Get over yourselves! Admit that you are what you are - a bunch of tradies -  and piss off.






Leave the practice of philosophy, the pursuit of knowledge and wisdom to the thinkers. Doers should just do.