Whazzat?

I’m trying to make sense of something.

This, in particular.

It’s clever, to be sure.

Maybe it casts a pall because it mentions Elon Musk, who is an intelligent and driven person to be sure, but, like the rest of us, seems incapable of seeing past the end of his own nose. Manufacture electric cars, yes. Send one into space, why? And jump onto the potential rescue of boys in Thailand from a flooded cave, but end up party to a defamation lawsuit because another expert dared challenge his Expertise in Such MattersTM and end up calling him, without basis in fact, a pedo. The Obi Wan Kenobi of our age, rightly sued for calling someone else a name in the playground because that person dared not bow to his clearly superior intellect.

Maybe it casts a pall because I’ve never read The Great Gatsby.

Or that I just don’t quite get the point of it all.

Don’t give in to the snots who ask, with wheedling voices, “Why do we have to know this?” Because knowing different things, cramming more stuff into your skull, helps you make neurological connections between the new stuff and old stuff you already know. Maybe not all of those connections will be useful. But some will. And don’t sneer at others who see utility in topics and connections and further enlightenment in what we deem as dross.

Cherish those moments when the lightning strikes. And seek to make more connections like them.

That may be at the fundament what this is all about, and if it is then it doesn’t need to be said again, not by me, nor by anyone else.

Instead, revel in the fact that gaining an education is not limited to the pubescent years when we whine about having to learn all this crap but instead spreads out over an entire lifetime when we eventually, begrudgingly, realize we want to learn all this crap. Because if we leave our educational zenith to the zitbrained versions of ourselves when we were being afflicted by a formal education, it’s probably best to snuff the lights now and put everyone to sleep.