Do we really need fifty percent of the population with university degrees? One hundred? Do we want journalism majors flipping burgers, and commerce majors sweeping floors? This seems to be the situation that our current trajectory is taking us. Every year, we are cheapening those pieces of paper that we earn at the end of our university education by reinforcing the myth that a degree will automatically produce prosperity. Well it won't. I don't think ill-equipped or ill-motivated students being thrust upon an education that may or may not want in the first place would find the success they think they would receive.
Economics 101, supply and demand. The supply of degree holders in the population far outstrips the work that actually require such an education. For example, for office administration, a job that twenty years ago, only required a high school diploma now requires a degree on a de facto basis. Has that job suddenly gained a significant literary aspect? Is deriving complex mathematical theories become part of the job description? Do we have to write a report on the systems of social control in a typical office document? Is Psychology 101 required to type at 60 words per minute? Employers, taking advantage of the glut of university-educated people are increasingly hiring university graduates because they can, believing that piece of paper they have will make them better workers when in fact having that piece of paper may mean that they are good students, may be next to meaningless in the real world. On the other side, people who don't have that piece of paper are often left in the cold, who are often more capable than those who have a degree. This trajectory we are on are taking us to a world where university is treated as just another step in the educational system, like the step from elementary to high school. While people think this world is already here, the transition has not yet been fully realized.
What am I saying? I think we need to bring university education back to where it was before, being for the intellectual elite, and put a greater emphasis on vocational and practical learning. Society must admit is that a university education is not for the majority, and make other choices valid avenues for a successful and prosperous living (which they are but people are all too often afraid to admit). There must be a clear shift in society where those who are good at or like a vocation or trade are encouraged to take that path rather than be brainwashed by society or forced by their parents to be doctors or lawyers. Unfortunately, in society, the word 'genius' is no longer used as something to describe people who are innately drawn to mechanics, or someone who just gets the interconnections of nature. In short, we greatly undervalue non-academic knowledge while grossly overvaluing academic knowledge. In a good knowledge economy, a priori and a posteriori must both be valued equally.
Being part of the most coddled generation in history, I am ashamed at the fact that the culture of entitlement has become so widespread within it. When we fail, there are no real consequences, our parents will somehow bail us out, being mortally afraid of allowing their children to learn the lessons of life. My generation is constantly told that we are entitled to anything we want without real consequences or chance of failure. To apply this to the decline of higher education, my generation has been deluded, thinking that a university education is a right rather than a privilege, and the educational system has certainly been complicit at pumping this delusion into the impressionable heads of young people. University education is a privilege because it is the most academic stream of higher education. However, people should know that academia is not for everyone, and since every person is unique and have their own needs, not everyone is destined for the same fate. And if you are not destined for a university education, then you are simply not entitled to one. Unfortunately, there are too many of the aimless that end up in university, especially in my program of engineering, who unfortunately are only in it for the money (the absolute worst reason to be in it). The passionless in engineering that may fall through the cracks may ferment disaster, not realizing that what they do actually has an effect on real human lives.
A balanced society must be founded on a balanced knowledge base with a balanced skill set. Being balanced in everything is the sign of health and prosperity for pretty much anything. Being lopsided is only a recipe for disaster, but we as a society continue to insist that the ship is being steered in the right direction while in actuality it is teetering on one side, taking on volumes of water and sinking slowly but surely. Remember, specialization is for insects.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Thursday, October 16, 2008
First post and Canadian politics
What is this blog about? It is exactly what the title is. It is the unhinged and unbalanced tirade of a person who hates injustice, inequality, ignorance, and indifference. What this blog (I have yet to decide the frequency of the updates, I'm leaning towards biweekly to weekly) targets is a wide variety of issues, from the headspace of philosophy, to the meatspace of the practical. Many of the things I say may be said in anger, and many of the things I say may seem disdainful, condescending, or even inflammatory. One constant that I assure you is that the thing I am angry about is because of the prevalence of the things I hate (listed above). However, before I begin my first departure into a musing or raving, I will first introduce myself.
I am from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 23 years old, and an electrical engineering student. I was born in an undisclosed Third-World country and immigrated to Canada when I was 7 years old. My ultimate goal in life is to be the most well-rounded human I can be. However, these shallow descriptions only provide a sliver of a glimpse into who I am. The most telling of my personality is to list my "Pantheon of Heroes", people whom I greatly admire and wish to model some aspect of them into myself. Here they are in reverse chronological order.
Greg Mortenson
When I read Greg Mortenson's book "Three Cups of Tea", I was absolutely astonished that such a virtuous person lives in this time of much turmoil and upheaval. Even more surprised that I had never heard of him. He is one of the finest examples of altruism in the modern age, and tackled a real problem with a real solution. As the founder of the Central Asia Institute, a non-profit organization which builds and funds schools throughout Northern Pakistan, he sought to bring the some of the most desperate people who the world forgot, and brought them the most precious commodity one could ever have, knowledge. This sudden evacuation of ignorance has destabilized the footing of phenomena which feed on desperation, poverty, and stupidity, particularly extremeism.
Muhammad Yunus
They should really give Nobel Peace Prizes to people like Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank and its subsidiaries. Using a real-world solution to the vicious cycle of poverty, Mr. Yunus broke the chains of many people from their squalor by empowering families, especially women in Bangladesh. He did this by inventing microcredit, relatively small loans in order to pay small necessities or obtain capital for a new venture. He also advocates the idea of the "social business", where a business does not necessarily have to earn tons of cash as long as the social benefits stemming from the business offsets the lower revenue. A practical application of the Triple Bottom Line.
Gandhi
A man way ahead of his time, Mohandas Gandhi is one of the greatest people ever lived. Why? He had this incredibly audatious ideal of fighting injustice with peace. And you know what? It worked (although with mixed results, I'd admit). His views about poverty, inequality, tolerance, understanding, and loving thy neighbour sure sounds like another guy in my Pantheon of Heroes. He understood why people had to be free and empowered.
Nikola Tesla
Representing the engineer of my Pantheon, Nikola Tesla is the most transformative figure in the electric age. His inventions made the modern world possible, and many of them were so ahead of their time, it reaffirmed Arthur C. Clarke's famous quote, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". He indeed worked magic with the force which we now take for granted. He also, like me, is an immigrant, which at his time, to be so successful in his field despite this fact, is a source of inspiration (despite his downfall at the hands of jealous parties). His way of generating and transmitting electricity made it possible for something doing work hundreds, even thousands of miles away, trasmitted into millions of homes and other buildings, and transformed into heat, mechanical work, and even the exchange of ideas and information. While it was James Clerk Maxwell that provided the means, Tesla provided the practical solution.
Thomas Jefferson
As the member of my Pantheon who represents the democratic ideal, Thomas Jefferson is the intellectual that I wish to be, with the practical approach to everything I want to have. He was a polymath who dabbled in many different areas of study. I understand this feeling of not being content with what one knows, and the constant hunger for knowledge. The practical approach that I mentioned was that of stopping, in the Declaration of Independence, the cruelty and oppression not of just the King of England, but of himself and his contemporaries on future generations. He is the kind of designer of a system that doesn't only put 'the past' and 'now' into the equation, but also 'the future' into the mix as well.
Jesus
I'm not a religious person. I may have been born and raised a Catholic, but having fallen off the religion bandwagon, Jesus remains one of my heroes. If one filters away what may or may not have been added on by history, what's left is the greatest humanist philosopher of all time. In a time when brutality was the norm, this humble carpenter from Galillee said, "love thy neighbour as you love thyself". His ideals of inclusion, selfless altruism, genuine conviction, and pure, unadulterated love for everyone were shocking then and shocking now. The question, "What would Jesus do?" is a question that should be the guiding principle of people today. If it really were, then the world would be a lot nicer world than it is now.
That's my Pantheon of Heroes. There may be more that I may add later on, but I guess that's what needed to convey who I am at this point. Now begins the meat of the post.
For the last few days, I have been debating whether or not to start blogging again. My first blog was about my daily life and my photography, but it ended up being a chore. However, certain events in my life has really stirred my view of the world and the people living within it. The first is the recent Canadian election. I am not a person fixated on personalities or blind ideology, nor am I swayed by sound bites. However, in this election, I decided to vote for the Liberal Party, as opposed to my support to the NDP in previous elections. The reason is one person, Stephane Dion, and his idea, the Green Shift. I support this policy because it makes sense. People don't realize that in the modern age, taxation is the way you want to stop something in a liberal democratic context. You don't want to stop people receiving money for working, so you give them some tax relief on things that are good, i.e. paycheques. You also don't want to keep funding a way of life that promotes living beyond our means. Therefore, you levy the lower part of the cycle going towards things that are bad, i.e. pollution. This would become a loop, where the revenue for one part would be funneled into the other. It's a simple concept, and it's one adopted in many parts of Europe and has worked beautifully. However, many people, ignorant of what this policy actually is, voted for the Conservatives out of fear that it would hit them and their lifestyles. Canadians fell for Harper's Jedi Mind Trick, which told us that "there will be higher prices at the pumps" when there would not.
They voted for 'the past' and 'now', not for the future. This is why Canada is doomed to a fate of mediocrity, because those who have conviction are shunned, and those who pander are rewarded. Great social and economic upheavals occur often at the behest of the majority. If England in the 18th century was filled with modern-day Canadians, the industrial revolution wouldn't have occured. The fact of the matter is that our society has lost the meaning of collective sacrifice, thinking that if we just keep doing what we're doing, it'll be all right. Like so many all over the world, short term pain for long term gain is rejected for the reverse.
We Canadians chose to continue to be our children's worst enemy, too afraid of how the policy would change the lifestyles to which we have become accustomed to. Those people who advocate against some major action against the future we are creating do not understand the sheer weight of what is going to happen. This is not the whole story. We are on the cusp of a new industrial revolution, similar to the information revolution that occured in the latter part of the last century. We (not just Canadians) need to create the products, services, and know-how that would spearhead this movement. We cannot just wade in this pool. We must jump from a ten metre high platform. This is what it takes to survive.
With this, I am reminded of the film, The Seven Samurai. When the seven samurai arrive at the village which had hired them to protect from bandits, the village seemed empty, the villagers giving them the cold shoulder out of fear of the samurai. But when the villages alarm sounded of an impeding (albeit false) bandit attack, the villagers poured out, and begged on their knees to the samurai to protect them, proving how small-minded they were when they realized that the greater threat, the one that looms large over much of the film, was that of the bandits, not the samurai. Either we as a society face our fear and come out of our hovels and meet the samurai, or prove how petty and small-minded we really are when the time comes when we are left behind other countries who understand the financial benefits to becoming more efficient and less polluting.
Unfortunately, we (not just Canadians) are proving more and more that we have to be saved from ourselves. Reminiscent of patients of medieval physicians and barbers, thinking that they will be cured by being bled, when in fact they will get worse for it, the average person is too often ignorant of the facts, content of being hoodwinked by thirty second clips on television. It is our obligation to inform ourselves, and not just sources which we only agree with. That is the basis of democracy, and the something that we cannot be "too busy" for.
I am from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 23 years old, and an electrical engineering student. I was born in an undisclosed Third-World country and immigrated to Canada when I was 7 years old. My ultimate goal in life is to be the most well-rounded human I can be. However, these shallow descriptions only provide a sliver of a glimpse into who I am. The most telling of my personality is to list my "Pantheon of Heroes", people whom I greatly admire and wish to model some aspect of them into myself. Here they are in reverse chronological order.
Greg Mortenson
When I read Greg Mortenson's book "Three Cups of Tea", I was absolutely astonished that such a virtuous person lives in this time of much turmoil and upheaval. Even more surprised that I had never heard of him. He is one of the finest examples of altruism in the modern age, and tackled a real problem with a real solution. As the founder of the Central Asia Institute, a non-profit organization which builds and funds schools throughout Northern Pakistan, he sought to bring the some of the most desperate people who the world forgot, and brought them the most precious commodity one could ever have, knowledge. This sudden evacuation of ignorance has destabilized the footing of phenomena which feed on desperation, poverty, and stupidity, particularly extremeism.
Muhammad Yunus
They should really give Nobel Peace Prizes to people like Muhammad Yunus, the founder of the Grameen Bank and its subsidiaries. Using a real-world solution to the vicious cycle of poverty, Mr. Yunus broke the chains of many people from their squalor by empowering families, especially women in Bangladesh. He did this by inventing microcredit, relatively small loans in order to pay small necessities or obtain capital for a new venture. He also advocates the idea of the "social business", where a business does not necessarily have to earn tons of cash as long as the social benefits stemming from the business offsets the lower revenue. A practical application of the Triple Bottom Line.
Gandhi
A man way ahead of his time, Mohandas Gandhi is one of the greatest people ever lived. Why? He had this incredibly audatious ideal of fighting injustice with peace. And you know what? It worked (although with mixed results, I'd admit). His views about poverty, inequality, tolerance, understanding, and loving thy neighbour sure sounds like another guy in my Pantheon of Heroes. He understood why people had to be free and empowered.
Nikola Tesla
Representing the engineer of my Pantheon, Nikola Tesla is the most transformative figure in the electric age. His inventions made the modern world possible, and many of them were so ahead of their time, it reaffirmed Arthur C. Clarke's famous quote, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". He indeed worked magic with the force which we now take for granted. He also, like me, is an immigrant, which at his time, to be so successful in his field despite this fact, is a source of inspiration (despite his downfall at the hands of jealous parties). His way of generating and transmitting electricity made it possible for something doing work hundreds, even thousands of miles away, trasmitted into millions of homes and other buildings, and transformed into heat, mechanical work, and even the exchange of ideas and information. While it was James Clerk Maxwell that provided the means, Tesla provided the practical solution.
Thomas Jefferson
As the member of my Pantheon who represents the democratic ideal, Thomas Jefferson is the intellectual that I wish to be, with the practical approach to everything I want to have. He was a polymath who dabbled in many different areas of study. I understand this feeling of not being content with what one knows, and the constant hunger for knowledge. The practical approach that I mentioned was that of stopping, in the Declaration of Independence, the cruelty and oppression not of just the King of England, but of himself and his contemporaries on future generations. He is the kind of designer of a system that doesn't only put 'the past' and 'now' into the equation, but also 'the future' into the mix as well.
Jesus
I'm not a religious person. I may have been born and raised a Catholic, but having fallen off the religion bandwagon, Jesus remains one of my heroes. If one filters away what may or may not have been added on by history, what's left is the greatest humanist philosopher of all time. In a time when brutality was the norm, this humble carpenter from Galillee said, "love thy neighbour as you love thyself". His ideals of inclusion, selfless altruism, genuine conviction, and pure, unadulterated love for everyone were shocking then and shocking now. The question, "What would Jesus do?" is a question that should be the guiding principle of people today. If it really were, then the world would be a lot nicer world than it is now.
That's my Pantheon of Heroes. There may be more that I may add later on, but I guess that's what needed to convey who I am at this point. Now begins the meat of the post.
For the last few days, I have been debating whether or not to start blogging again. My first blog was about my daily life and my photography, but it ended up being a chore. However, certain events in my life has really stirred my view of the world and the people living within it. The first is the recent Canadian election. I am not a person fixated on personalities or blind ideology, nor am I swayed by sound bites. However, in this election, I decided to vote for the Liberal Party, as opposed to my support to the NDP in previous elections. The reason is one person, Stephane Dion, and his idea, the Green Shift. I support this policy because it makes sense. People don't realize that in the modern age, taxation is the way you want to stop something in a liberal democratic context. You don't want to stop people receiving money for working, so you give them some tax relief on things that are good, i.e. paycheques. You also don't want to keep funding a way of life that promotes living beyond our means. Therefore, you levy the lower part of the cycle going towards things that are bad, i.e. pollution. This would become a loop, where the revenue for one part would be funneled into the other. It's a simple concept, and it's one adopted in many parts of Europe and has worked beautifully. However, many people, ignorant of what this policy actually is, voted for the Conservatives out of fear that it would hit them and their lifestyles. Canadians fell for Harper's Jedi Mind Trick, which told us that "there will be higher prices at the pumps" when there would not.
They voted for 'the past' and 'now', not for the future. This is why Canada is doomed to a fate of mediocrity, because those who have conviction are shunned, and those who pander are rewarded. Great social and economic upheavals occur often at the behest of the majority. If England in the 18th century was filled with modern-day Canadians, the industrial revolution wouldn't have occured. The fact of the matter is that our society has lost the meaning of collective sacrifice, thinking that if we just keep doing what we're doing, it'll be all right. Like so many all over the world, short term pain for long term gain is rejected for the reverse.
We Canadians chose to continue to be our children's worst enemy, too afraid of how the policy would change the lifestyles to which we have become accustomed to. Those people who advocate against some major action against the future we are creating do not understand the sheer weight of what is going to happen. This is not the whole story. We are on the cusp of a new industrial revolution, similar to the information revolution that occured in the latter part of the last century. We (not just Canadians) need to create the products, services, and know-how that would spearhead this movement. We cannot just wade in this pool. We must jump from a ten metre high platform. This is what it takes to survive.
With this, I am reminded of the film, The Seven Samurai. When the seven samurai arrive at the village which had hired them to protect from bandits, the village seemed empty, the villagers giving them the cold shoulder out of fear of the samurai. But when the villages alarm sounded of an impeding (albeit false) bandit attack, the villagers poured out, and begged on their knees to the samurai to protect them, proving how small-minded they were when they realized that the greater threat, the one that looms large over much of the film, was that of the bandits, not the samurai. Either we as a society face our fear and come out of our hovels and meet the samurai, or prove how petty and small-minded we really are when the time comes when we are left behind other countries who understand the financial benefits to becoming more efficient and less polluting.
Unfortunately, we (not just Canadians) are proving more and more that we have to be saved from ourselves. Reminiscent of patients of medieval physicians and barbers, thinking that they will be cured by being bled, when in fact they will get worse for it, the average person is too often ignorant of the facts, content of being hoodwinked by thirty second clips on television. It is our obligation to inform ourselves, and not just sources which we only agree with. That is the basis of democracy, and the something that we cannot be "too busy" for.
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