I was walking home last night and something got me thinking about the urge to, "Change the World," and where that comes from. As a very small child, strange as it may sound, I always had this thought in my head: "When I grow up I need to fix all this." As if I personally had to rejig society so that it worked better.
I'm not too sure where this sense of responsibility came from. It may sound quite an arrogant or self-important thing to think, but at the time it really wasn't like that. If anything it was more a way to give myself hope. I knew I couldn't be happy in the world the way it was, so the thought of changing it offered a way out. Though again, why I felt I had to change it, and it wasn't just something someone else would do I don't know.
Perhaps it's an intelligence thing. Like low time preference taken to its furthest extreme.
As a five or six year old I used to ask, "Okay, so I work really hard all day, every day at school, even though I don't enjoy it, then what?"
"Then you get a job," came the reply.
"So how long will I work for then?"
"Until you retire."
"When's that?"
"When you're sixty-five."
"Okay, so where's the pay off? What's the point to all this misery?"
The sheer unrelenting, inter-generational grimness of it appalled my little mind. That you go through all that. That you have children, and they then go through all that. And so the cycle goes on forever. A perpetual toil. That even if you personally somehow escape it, by becoming a millionaire or a rockstar, it doesn't spare your children from falling back into it. Nor does it spare the countless other millions and billions of people.
The balance was just so wrong. Monday to Friday - five sevenths of the week. Nine 'til five - most of the day. "This needs to change," I would think. "It seems everyone else just accepts it," I would think.
"So I need to change it," I would then conclude.
This is why, even today, I still argue for smarter, more flexible - less time demanding - education. I haven't forgotten. I really still believe it doesn't have to be like this.
I think that switch from nursery to fulltime school is the real kicker. You're a three or four year old at nursery. You're there a few hours. You play with the toys, you learn the alphabet, you have a carton of milk. You're back home by dinnertime with the daytime cartoons. "This isn't so bad," you think.
Then, suddenly, you turn five and you're thrown in at the deep end. School! It's all day. It's all work, minus playing in the sandpit for half an hour. It's long. It's tiring. You're on your own all day, away from your family. There's a sudden slog and drudgery to life.
"How long's this for?!"
Until you get a job.
"So, forever?!"
Anyway, I wonder if it's the same for the other people that have this urge to, "Change the World" ?
It's kind of a Lisa Simpson from the Simpsons type character trait. In fact, just to add a topical element, Ash Sarkar has just abandoned Woke ! The criticism from the right is that she's seen which way the wind is blowing and has acted accordingly. It's a cynical, strategic grift they say. However, I've actually always instinctively liked her - as I genuinely think she has this same Lisa Simpson-esq desire to change the world. So, though I haven't always agreed with her views (that might be an understatement), I do think they're reasonably sincere. She often references the Simpsons too, so I would guess she does actually feel a kinship with Lisa Simpson as well.
Next up: Santa Claus
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