How school damages society

School, while criticized for many things, is the cause of one major problem in today’s society: it socially misleads its attendees.

Watching things in education these years, I’ve noticed that the system is very broken in a lot of fundamental ways. Sure, the curriculum could use reformatting, the “informing” structure should be changed, and the expectations should be modified to stop forcing students to conform to perfection. But that’s not the real problem that one can find in today’s education. The real issue is a social one.

School creates a structure for life: attend classes, learn, make friends, and get a foothold on the ways of this world before going to a “grown-up job”. Then, without a thought, it rips these things out of our lives. School creates a structured community and then tears students away from everything they’ve grown accustomed to. It begins something that it cannot, with confidence, complete in the student’s favor.

This “community” which school creates is known to many as what life should be like. Sadly, once they graduate, there’s nothing to keep their social ventures going. That’s why people end up in bars, coffee shops, and libraries (I had to). There’s nowhere else they can meet people or find new friends, and since they moved away from their hometown, they need these friends.

(Why do people become depressed? They often cannot sustain a relationship with someone after high school, so they end up living along, eventually finding a wife, and living outside community, without the friends they need in this world. Friends hold you up when you don’t know what to do. They provide the perspective you’d never think of. This is why so many people relate to psychologists: they cannot be vulnerable more than one other person [their spouse would be this one] and eventually find this last resort.)

Of the many problems school poses nowadays, this is the most harmful to its graduates. It answers other questions, too: Why are we so alone? Why do some people have a drinking problem? Why is coffee the number one commodity? And so on. Interestingly, this problem has gotten better lately because of the Internet. I often write about how this global network can hurt so many parts of out lives, but in this one it can actually connect us. I’ve met many people on the Internet in the past five years. It’s amazing how thriving the online communities are. The thing is, communication is fractured at the heart, and even though the Internet is one fix for the problem with community, it only introduces another issue.

What’s the permanent fix then? How can we repair this formula for a generation? Is every man meant to attend college after high school? How can we stop our high school friends from leaving us and forcing us to move on? How, oh how, can we stop this circle we put our children in? There are so many questions it’s overwhelming.

I believe the fix is, of all things, church. It’s always been the one thing that brings people together, whether they like it or not. Religion is not to be confused with church, though. The former is a political struggle and bi-polar mess, the latter an everlasting community faced with the same troubles as any. People shouldn’t be scared of church, but many of today’s churches create fear by being a house of fakery. It’s only pride. Pride is what drives this yearning to show people how good they aren’t. It’ll take a lot of effort to fix this community, but it’s worth it for what such a beaitiful structure can offer.

I could elaborate on many of these issues, but what I really want to do here is get a point across. I want to know what you, the reader, think of this idea. This is all my perspective from growing up in a small town of limited opportunities. Maybe it’s incorrect. That’s for you to say, so please email me!

May 21, 2013 at 8:43 pm

A small readership is valuable

I value the few people who read this blog. They might skim through things and think, “Oh cool”, but once in a while there’s the guy who compliments my writing, and that still means the world to me.

The interesting thing is, more readers is not the solution to anything. When you receive a comment like “good job”, it feels much more valid when there are fewer people perusing your work. It’s always nice to know you’re doing a good job, but when that happens all the time the novelty is quickly lost. You take good feedback for granted and soon you start doing shoddy work because there’s nothing new to keep you going. But when you get that one person who commends you on your work, it means a lot because it happens far less often than you’d like.

Don’t pray for more, pray for just what you need to keep going. It’s nice to hear “You’re doing well” from someone besides your parents and it’s almost worthless to hear praise from a crowd of individuals. Celebrities may disagree, but when you go for days without hearing anything, one person can light up your day. Just a thought.

May 18, 2013 at 12:17 pm

Communication vs. chat

Lately I’ve fallen into what seems to be a common trap of wanting to send people a text message or email rather than actually phoning or talking to them in person. It’s been happening ever since I got this new job at the local newspaper, but the problem has been in my life much longer. With the new job, I have to call people and actually talk to them. It’s proving to be a challenge each time. Girls are especially difficult for me to communicate with because, as my mind tells me, that’s how it should be.

Why am I so fearful of actually talking to someone? It could be that I’ve become conversant with emailing, Tweeting, or sending a text message to the person I need to contact. Or maybe I think I’ll say something stupid (which happened a lot in my younger life, leading to fear in the present day). The more palpable cause, though, is probably that I don’t want to let that person know anything about me. I’m scared of being even that vulnerable, and that’s a considerable problem.

When I found myself interviewing a girl for work yesterday, I was beyond panicky. It’s not something I do on a daily basis and it was never in my plans as a writer. But, of course, plans change and I end up in situations like that. I find myself continually faced with the choice of calling or text messaging, and I almost always favor the latter because I tell myself it’s “more convenient” or “better for them”. The real reason is that I’m not comfortable with talking over the phone. I’ll tell people that I don’t use Facebook because “I like interacting with people in real life”, but that’s not true at all. I actually don’t have one because I have bad memories of who I used to be a few years ago, and Facebook is connected to those memories. I also want to force myself to socialize in person.

This grand shambles of communication — in my life, at least — is not appealing to me. Lately I’ve been trying hard to do different things with my time, to stop thinking about what I will do next, to challenge myself to get out of the house more, and to simply do things that are uncomfortable for me. Exempli gratia: I’m getting my blood taken next Tuesday, which is the next step in my great adventure to—oh dear, it’s going to be dolorous, isn’t it?

My point here is that communication in this day and age is broken. People prefer to use virtual characters and emoticons to convey their perceptions rather than using the words God gave them. I can’t accuse any one person of this because I myself do it. It’s hard to take the more undefended road when there’s a phone in your pocket that creates all the walls for you. I must agree, walls are very nice, but we’re people and we don’t need walls to communicate — we need other people by our side in the physical realm. We need people who can delight in our company and not be distracted by their mobile phone every few minutes. We need vulnerability to connect, and when it’s lost, so is candor.

I hope you enjoyed this edition of Jacob’s thoughts, which is a capricious time during which he over-thinks matters to only the greatest extent.

May 17, 2013 at 2:12 pm

Valuing home

People value places in which they do not live because of the innocence that resides there.

My home is less than a mile from a lake, 15 from a ski resort, and three hours from a city with a Walmart or Jamba Juice. Some would call this paradise, but things change after you live here for nearly 11 years. The beautiful outdoors grows old, the whimsical small-town feel fades away to become bothersome, the people all look the same, and you feel trapped in a merry-go-round of misanthropic activities.

After ten years, I started to think of ways I could leave this town. To this day, I devise grand schemes of holidaying elsewhere. The sea has always interested me, and I must say that rain accompanied by foggy mountains is my favorite of weather conditions. Something like Scotland, or maybe Australia, Whales, New Zealand, Amsterdam — the list goes on. Then I stop to think about something: what is this intriguing allure about where I live? I can’t seem to find it.

I spend days chasing lightning storms, snapping photos of people enjoying silly activities, and even spelunking when I get the chance. But in all of this, I don’t think much of where I live. It’s just the predictable boisterous atmosphere that I’ve lived in all my life, and I think nothing of it. People travel thousands of miles just to ski and snowboard here; fishermen flock to the many lakes of the Eastern Sierras in the summertime; the city folk come from Silicon Valley and Orange County alike to enjoy the hot springs; and everyone who visits Mammoth Lakes seems to have more fun than I have here in my life.

Is it that the novelty has warn off? Possibly. I think the problem lies a bit deeper, though. First there’s the obvious fact that humans become accustomed to the ways which they have lived for a while. This means that they don’t think twice about where they live. It’s a gift from God, yet they dismiss it without a thought. Now, take the average vacationer. He will be much different than this debilitated and restless resident. He will only see the value in a small town like mine, and he would love to make a life for himself here.

There’s a purpose to vacations, then. When you get tired of the boring old place you live, it might be time to take a look at another beautiful gem on the Earth. There are many spectacles within driving distance for some, but they never leave the couch. These people cannot complain about where they live because they’re making it their permanent home and cannot embrace change.

The hard decision is whether to move somewhere more exotic or stay where you are. You could choose the former, but you will be searching for something different sometime down that green road. What’s the solution, then? For some, it might be to make the best of where they live. Instead of thinking about climbing a rock or taking a boat out for the day, these people must actually do the things they dream of. For others, it might be to move somewhere more fitting, where the rain falls every day and the sunsets are ravishing. For me, it might be to remember how valuable life was to me as a child, without worry or care of what people thought. We all need that once in a while.

May 7, 2013 at 12:34 pm

Deleting wishes

We all have a list of things we wish for, whether it’s hosted on Amazon.com, Simplenote, or in a tidy Moleskine. When I’m bored, I usually clean things. This evening I started with my iTunes library and have worked my way into my Amazon wish list. But I’ve found it so hard to click delete.

It’s always easy to click the "Add to Wish List" button because there’s nothing monumental about the decision. You’re basically saying "Yes, I’ll buy that eventually". The problem is that those little choices build up a full inventory of items you hope to one day obtain. Are they necessary? No, but you tell yourself they are when you go to delete them. This is the problem I’m facing. continue reading »

April 6, 2013 at 10:01 pm

Disney shuts down LucasArts

On the 21st of December last year, The Walt Disney Company made history by acquiring Lucasfilm for over $4 billion. Today, the multinational mass media corporation has pushed things even further and closed LucasArts, the game development branch of George Lucas’ former enterprise.

Disney says that it has “decided to shift LucasArts from an internal development to a licensing model, minimizing the company’s risk while achieving a broader portfolio of quality Star Wars games.” This move has infuriated gamers of the Internet. Twitter is currently abuzz with talk of what will replace the great LucasArts as other publishers do not own the full rights to the Star Wars universe. One company even said that it was looking for talented game developers who need a home.

Founded in 1982, LucasArts has brought to light some of the greatest computer adventure games of all time. The developers behind this name crafted such classics as Star Wars: Battlefront and Labyrinth. There are hundreds of others, including those based on the Indiana Jones franchise and the Monkey Island puzzle game series.

Thankfully, Disney did inform Polygon that Star Wars 1313 still has a possibility of being released. “The studio will be handing game development to third party developers”, said Tracy Lien of the gaming publication. “The studio confirmed that LucasArts will no longer be handling the development of Star Wars 1313, and it is exploring other avenues to release the game, although the future of 1313 and other Star Wars titles is currently uncertain.”

The Walt Disney Company’s official statement to Game Informer:

After evaluating our position in the games market, we’ve decided to shift LucasArts from an internal development to a licensing model, minimizing the company’s risk while achieving a broader portfolio of quality Star Wars games. As a result of this change, we’ve had layoffs across the organization. We are incredibly appreciative and proud of the talented teams who have been developing our new titles.

As a child, I spent hours playing Star Wars: Battlefront and its sequel. To know that there will probably be no future development in the series dampens the spirits of the youngster who still lives in me.

Source: Game Informer

April 3, 2013 at 11:02 am

Thermodo could be the beginning of crowdsourced weather

Crowdsourcing has become increasingly popular in the past few years. Google is now using it for traffic in its Maps product and pop artist Carly Rae Jepsen has asked her fans to vote for what lyrics they’d like to see in her next single. There are many, many applications for crowdsourcing, and the Internet has opened up a whole new way of delivering the results. Today, though, I have something different to show you. It’s called Thermodo and has been described as “the tiny thermometer for mobile devices”. continue reading »

March 31, 2013 at 8:57 am

The benefits of reading a dictionary

I’m one of those outlandish people who sits in the corner of the coffee shop reading small books. Today, as I recline in this 90 degree chair, I find myself digesting Hal Leonard’s Pocket Music Dictionary. You must be thinking, “This guy is mad. Who reads a dictionary in their spare time?” I do, and here’s why:

• It’s good to exercise my memory.
• Music is my favorite subject, so that makes this particular book fun, but overall words are cool: you can learn how to use them daily and bewilder your friends with a fancy new argot.
• I always know what’s coming next. Anxiety has been cured. I just can’t wait until I find out what an equalizer does! (He said, jesting.)
• Also, I have ADD, but I can put the book down whenever I wish and there’s no story to keep in my mind.
• They’re written quite well.
• Imagine how cool you’ll look with a five-pound piece of wood in your hands. Or you could go the pocket route and people might ask you if you’re preaching a sermon or doing ministry for Merriam-Webster.
• Your English teacher won’t be able to resist giving you extra credit points.
• With a monocle you can pretend you’re actually Webster. It’ll be our secret.
• You can tell all your smart friends “Yeah, I know how hard it is to read a book that’s over 1000 pages” without actually finishing it. Legalese.
• Bookmarking is easy: I can just use another book.

March 30, 2013 at 3:48 pm

How I share

Once upon a time, “sharing” was known as the nice thing to do. When you were a child, your parents probably told you that you needed to love your younger sibling by sharing some of your time or food. There are many different things that you could share as a child. To this day, I have a hard time sharing things with people, but I’m getting better. That’s not the point here, though. I want to talk about the new definition of sharing. continue reading »

March 21, 2013 at 10:15 pm

Taking a break part four: with music

Slowly but surely, music has returned to my life. I started the day off with some instrumentals by Bethel Music — "What Does It Sound Like" and other tracks from the Without Words album — and have listened to some stuff by Switchfoot and Owl City these past few days. I’d estimate that the time spent listening to music is significantly less than before, and strangely I’m more productive.

When playing music, I have lately been more creative in my style. With writing, my output has increased in both quantity and quality. I’m glad to see that a break from something I loved did some good in my life. Now, I’m not planning to go without music forever, but I think it was a good experiment to see how much I relied on it. There were times I felt I couldn’t do work because I needed that background noise. Thankfully, I surpassed those moments and have survived listening to less music.

I’m aiming to stay on the path of intentional listening, on which I will only listen to music by itself and not play a video game or write an article while doing so. We’ll see how that goes.

March 20, 2013 at 2:37 pm

What is an editorial?

Every time I sit down to write a post on Papermail, I think about its length. After all, I’m notorious for writing thousands of words about new apps. What exactly is my requirement when I write an editorial? Should it be at least 800 words; should the paragraph count be enough to take up your whole screen; should I go on about things when I don’t necessarily have to?

I think about all this as I’m writing, even right now. It’s just a natural process, for some reason. But I really don’t know what an editorial is. I’m not sure that I could define it if you asked me to. I just sit down and write my thoughts on the subject; sometimes more of them scurry along as I compose. I do constantly want to make things more verbose than they need to be, though. I suppose everyone has their quirks in their writing style, and that’s one of mine.

To answer the question, an editorial is defined by the writer. It wouldn’t be proper to put a label on every editorial that was ever written because each author has a different state of mind when putting his thoughts on paper. I have always wondered, though: do writers think about length? Does an editorial need to be more than three paragraphs in order to be considered educational by a reader? It’s the opposite of “too long; didn’t read”.

March 13, 2013 at 7:29 pm

Taking a break part three: film

This morning I canceled my Netflix account. It was a bother only rivaled by music, but had become increasingly more used during my days. I turned it on as a distraction when I was writing something or as entertainment when I was bored (which, I told myself, was all the time). After watching Blimey Cow’s video — great stuff, I highly suggest a thorough watch — this morning, I decided it was time for a change and yet another hiatus was added to my life.

Unlike with my many older tries to “escape technology”, this break from film of all sorts is a focused intermission. I’ve noticed that trying to eliminate the whole problem at once is too distracting for my daily life. I end up thinking about it all while I’m supposed to be doing work. So instead, I’m trying out a more centered alternative.

I watch television programs all the time and now I’m going to look for the substitute, because there must be one. I could be out socializing — though in my case that’s a problem because I live 15 miles from town where everyone is at and don’t like spending unnecessary money on 91 octane fuel — or hiking. But in all honesty, I’m not much for physical exercise other than a social walk. I’m so used to doing more than one thing that I grow uneasy concentrating on so little. It’s a strange little paradigm.

That’s my plan, for now. I’m not going to watch Netflix, any of my favorite TV shows, or even a classic Star Wars film. Should be fun.

March 11, 2013 at 8:01 am

Taking a break part two: without music

My hiatus from music is going well. Obviously, I haven’t managed to completely avoid it, but I’m not listening to it intentionally while driving to work or writing. It’s actually been an enlightening experience that’s teaching me what I’ve been doing wrong all this time. I had a misconception that I “needed” music to work, walk, or do anything. Now I feel more free.

Something I didn’t even think of when starting this interlude was that I had a chance to listen to different things while driving and sitting in a coffee shop. I forgot about podcasts because I prioritized everything ahead of them. Now I’ve discovered some powerful weekly sermon releases available on iTunes, along with some of my favorite chat shows like The Pen Addict and other thoughtful 70Decibels shows. I used to listen to 5by5, but now I’ve grown to expand my network selection.

It’s weird to think that I forgot about the other types of audio. Music is just the most popular thing you can listen to; there’s a large variety of media available in this format. When I can be learning from words rather than relating to them emotionally, that might be a better route to take, right? I think I need to find the balance is all.

Onward!

March 9, 2013 at 4:21 pm

The now generation; the now world

You’ve undoubtedly heard that tagline somewhere before. Maybe a hippie — no offense to them, they’re cool — talked about living in the moment. Or you heard an elderly person discussing how the youth always need to have things instantly and patience is lost.

In the queue waiting for coffee this morning, you may have heard a couple discussing whether or not to save money for the future.

At one time or another, you think to yourself, "Should I do this now or wait until the next chance?" only to never see another come round.

Both of these are examples of what a person thinks today. It’s a hard decision: live in the moment or build a life. Everyone has to make that choice at least once in their lives because there’s no out. I personally have a conflict in my life that often stops me from doing work. I start thinking about whether or not what I’m writing will be valued for all time. I always saw this as a career, until I thought about it more.

Do I want to matter to the world or do I just want to be another person who sometimes has good things to say? Before today I didn’t know. I thought I wanted to build a life, have a prosperous career, and get married to have children: the things that all people do. I thought that if everyone else has done this, it must work. Not so.

After reevaluating things, I discovered that what I am doing with my days is not exactly affecting people in the way that I had hoped. Deep down, I’ve always thought that people would remember me if I wrote words about current topics. I had the false belief that people cared, until I looked through the eyes that each of those people do.

I don’t see what I’m doing as a long-term career anymore. In fact, all I see it as now is a temporary place that makes money. Maybe writing will be what I do with my life, but it’s probably not going to be in this category. Technology can be beneficial to some and provide jobs for others, but I don’t even understand what we’re doing with it. Is the point of electronics to help us learn, connect, feel cooler, improve the world, or fill that hole? Isn’t that last one what God — or any deity, for that matter — is for? If technology could help me understand itself, it would have a paradoxical point. But I still don’t see why people care to advance. What, besides knowledge, is so good about progress? (We’re always trying to be better, but why?) I see no problem with a simple life, even though I don’t live one.

I get so caught up in the moment that I forget about the bigger plan. The one I had arranged doesn’t seem so interesting to me anymore. When I’m writing a post, my passion for talking about a subject is rejuvenated, but only for that short session, then I forget all about why I cared. If it’s that easy to forget, this must be the wrong thing.

Almost every night, I go to sleep thinking "Okay, I’m going to fix this problem with my life tomorrow" or "Finally I have a plan and I’m going to fulfill it!" but I never do anything. I wake up in the morning to my sunlit ceiling, not caring about previous plans, and get ready to do whatever work must be done for the day. My potential energy is consistently drowned out by the sound of the outside world that hasn’t even touched my mind yet. Every morning is like this, and it’s not going to be easy stopping it.

What do I enjoy doing more than anything? Playing, listening to, and helping along with the production of music. So why am I not out pursuing that dream? People have asked me the same about many things I’ve done over the years. They say I’m good with computers and should pursue a career in that. My question is always "to what end?" Now I’ve found myself asking that question about a career that I devised. But everybody makes mistakes.

I feel like I’ve been wasting all my time living every day separately. There is no connected plan because I don’t give my life enough attention to make one. If I am to excel in something that I love, I have to start by doing it. I’ve already started my dream and luckily I have located the largest road block. That doesn’t mean this is going to be a seamless journey into the bliss world of dreams. I want it to be a journey, and that’s a byword for adventure in my world.

Take the chance, but don’t waste your time. Live your life with friends at your side; if you don’t have any, be determined to find them. You should care because this is what your life is built of. Temporary fillers will never suffice because you always need one. It’s like pain medication for your entire life.

March 7, 2013 at 9:06 pm

Taking a break part one: music

I love music more than any other type of media. I play keyboard at church each Sunday, listen to iTunes, Pandora, and Spotify each day while writing, and never go on a drive without the sound of some good Switchfoot or Two Steps From Hell tracks playing in the background. Today I’ve decided to change that.

It’s going to be a temporary thing, maybe a chance to refocus. Since I’m used to doing more than one thing at a time, it will be a challenge. I took a break just like this last July for a week, right before I went to a music festival. To me it seemed like a good way to prepare myself for the 16-hour car trip (each way), as well as the many live shows I’d be attending. It was a good time, but now I’m going to take things a bit further.

Starting tonight — because "new days" don’t matter as much to me — I’m going to stop listening to music during daily routines. My day job still has a radio on, but that’ll probably be the only time I listen to a tune. Other than that, I don’t aim to play anything in the car or even while writing.

Another reason I need a break from music is because I’m constantly looking for something better. Higher beats per minute, cooler synths, better recordings. It gets a bit crazy after a while.

That seems a bit daft, doesn’t it? It makes more sense if you think of music in the way I do. I always have it on, so it’s harder for me to do without it. I literally can’t do a task without music in the background. It’s a necessary accompaniment, which is strange. Now I plan to change that. I’ll slowly ease music back in when I think I’ve had a fair break from it. I’m going to do that in a different way than you’d expect, though. Instead of going back go my usual habits, I plan to listen to music by itself, not while doing other things. It should be a fun experiment.

A break can help you remember how great something is by bringing back that first-experience feel. I’m hoping that, when I’m finished, it will be as if I am just getting back into music again and everything is fresh. We shall see.

Taking a break might be a series here on Papermail. I’m thinking of talking about the things I plan to use, do, and maybe even read less. There could be weekly updates, or maybe just a status report at the end of the "break". You should send me an email and tell me what you think about the idea.

March 6, 2013 at 5:32 pm

Cleaning Google Reader

Just over a year ago, I started using Google Reader daily for quick updates on news. I didn’t think it’d become such a bother, nor did I know that it could be used for learning and finding good reads for the end of each day. After thinking about the way I use the service, I decided it was time to rethink each of my subscriptions and keep only the stuff I care about. continue reading »

February 23, 2013 at 10:00 am