Anthropological Insights
What I should be doing right now is writing cover letters (man, they're a bitch!), which means it's the best time to resume the blog.
The good news is I pretty much sat out the blues period. I think my parents were sensitive to the mood swing (and I actually find that mildly surprising), because they suggested over the weekend that we go to a farm to pick some fresh cherries. I love cherries! - primo laxative.
So today we set out to a place called Phelan in the high desert. The trip itself was a bust because the newspaper RAN LAST YEAR'S ARTICLE and we found on our arrival that with the dry and cold season this year, none of trees have even started bearing fruit. Nevertheless, I didn't have such a bad time, because it was fun to see the rock formations and other desert stuff, and particularly how the area is starting to get developed. Not only were the roads being expanded, but there was also a noticeable outcropping of farms and churches, with Korean people peppered throughout. My parents said that there's a fad going around where church communities talk each other into moving to these large tracts of cheap desert land in order to raise orchards and crops, and sometimes dogs and horses too.
It's like I always suspected: Korean people LOVE their farming!
But in order to have symmetrical confirmation of my theory, one would expected to see a proportional rise of Korean fishing communities. It may be the case that they do in fact exist, but I haven't seen them because the fishermen represent only about 10% of the Korean population. But I also had an alternative idea: what if the farmer/fisherman zest is manifested temporally instead? That is, instead of seeing 90% farmers and 10% fisherman, as per the distribution of faces, what if we became both farmers and fishermen at different phases of our lives? It certainly is the case that I'm a beach boy/girl myself, which sets me apart from the shade-seeking, mountain-hiking crew that is more likely to be vegetable-farmers. And if I think back to my parents' younger days, they too seemed to have a special love for boating and sea-faring, which has since phased out, since the advent of the vegetable garden.
* * *
The other anthropological insight hit me during a practice LSAT test, when there was a passage about the model of separation, alienation, and reintegration in rites of passage. I thought, isn't it funny how all people independently arrived at this conclusion that it's a good idea to torture your teens? It seemed to be a way to set up an artificial bonus for reaching adulthood, but only recently have I started reflecting on just how necessary that bonus is. Adulthood, contrary to childhood expections, is NOT reward unto itself. You have to have a real good reason for wanting to enter it, and this is why I've been so resistent to admitting that it's time to grow up: I don't live in a society that demands that I get something branded, or hunt down a helot. So from my point of view, becoming a contributing member of society meant little more than loss of leisure, loss of freedom, and most of all, MORAL COMPROMISE.
My career choices correspondingly were an attempt to avoid moral compromise, an ineluctable thing, and eventually I found myself in the ivory tower - with no dough, no freedom, no leisure, and moral compromise anyways. I think what happened afterwards was a kind of rite of passage: I felt complete alienation and insecurity as I saw my life's identity dismantled before my eyes. (If you're keeping track, that would last week.) I was so desirious of a direction and routine, and a safeguard against being the Walmart employee living half-starved on microwave hot-pockets - that suddenly that old thing about becoming a automaton-drone of society didn't look so bad and mean anymore. No matter how awful and mundane my 9-5 would be, I could very probably find satisfaction in my work...if I knew that those hours were adding up to major dollars and cents, and a guarantee of future happiness.
I haven't found the reintegration part of this journey yet - that will come when the hiring happens - but now I see the value of torturing teenagers. I imagine those Spartan youths, sleeping naked in shrubs and hunting rodents for food and murdering helots at night, would have had a series of reflections similar to mine.
The good news is I pretty much sat out the blues period. I think my parents were sensitive to the mood swing (and I actually find that mildly surprising), because they suggested over the weekend that we go to a farm to pick some fresh cherries. I love cherries! - primo laxative.
So today we set out to a place called Phelan in the high desert. The trip itself was a bust because the newspaper RAN LAST YEAR'S ARTICLE and we found on our arrival that with the dry and cold season this year, none of trees have even started bearing fruit. Nevertheless, I didn't have such a bad time, because it was fun to see the rock formations and other desert stuff, and particularly how the area is starting to get developed. Not only were the roads being expanded, but there was also a noticeable outcropping of farms and churches, with Korean people peppered throughout. My parents said that there's a fad going around where church communities talk each other into moving to these large tracts of cheap desert land in order to raise orchards and crops, and sometimes dogs and horses too.
It's like I always suspected: Korean people LOVE their farming!
But in order to have symmetrical confirmation of my theory, one would expected to see a proportional rise of Korean fishing communities. It may be the case that they do in fact exist, but I haven't seen them because the fishermen represent only about 10% of the Korean population. But I also had an alternative idea: what if the farmer/fisherman zest is manifested temporally instead? That is, instead of seeing 90% farmers and 10% fisherman, as per the distribution of faces, what if we became both farmers and fishermen at different phases of our lives? It certainly is the case that I'm a beach boy/girl myself, which sets me apart from the shade-seeking, mountain-hiking crew that is more likely to be vegetable-farmers. And if I think back to my parents' younger days, they too seemed to have a special love for boating and sea-faring, which has since phased out, since the advent of the vegetable garden.
* * *
The other anthropological insight hit me during a practice LSAT test, when there was a passage about the model of separation, alienation, and reintegration in rites of passage. I thought, isn't it funny how all people independently arrived at this conclusion that it's a good idea to torture your teens? It seemed to be a way to set up an artificial bonus for reaching adulthood, but only recently have I started reflecting on just how necessary that bonus is. Adulthood, contrary to childhood expections, is NOT reward unto itself. You have to have a real good reason for wanting to enter it, and this is why I've been so resistent to admitting that it's time to grow up: I don't live in a society that demands that I get something branded, or hunt down a helot. So from my point of view, becoming a contributing member of society meant little more than loss of leisure, loss of freedom, and most of all, MORAL COMPROMISE.
My career choices correspondingly were an attempt to avoid moral compromise, an ineluctable thing, and eventually I found myself in the ivory tower - with no dough, no freedom, no leisure, and moral compromise anyways. I think what happened afterwards was a kind of rite of passage: I felt complete alienation and insecurity as I saw my life's identity dismantled before my eyes. (If you're keeping track, that would last week.) I was so desirious of a direction and routine, and a safeguard against being the Walmart employee living half-starved on microwave hot-pockets - that suddenly that old thing about becoming a automaton-drone of society didn't look so bad and mean anymore. No matter how awful and mundane my 9-5 would be, I could very probably find satisfaction in my work...if I knew that those hours were adding up to major dollars and cents, and a guarantee of future happiness.
I haven't found the reintegration part of this journey yet - that will come when the hiring happens - but now I see the value of torturing teenagers. I imagine those Spartan youths, sleeping naked in shrubs and hunting rodents for food and murdering helots at night, would have had a series of reflections similar to mine.
posted by Rex at 5:04 PM
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