Let’s go all the way back to grade school. That exciting time where you were just entering this new world of interacting with others and navigating your way through modern education. It was great getting to meet new friends and hang out at lunch and after school, hopefully strengthening the social aspect of your life and character at a young age.
The teachers were likely teaching you the basics, the foundations, such as spelling grammar and how to read and write, guiding you a long lesson and exercising. All seems to be going well until you reach the 4th grade, this is around the time when standardized tests begin to take place.
You and all your classmates are then crammed into a room to test on basic subject matter you are expected to know. All of this material is delivered to you in standardized way you are supposed to understand. This is the first introduction to indoctrination and stripping away your individual talents and potentials.
For a young student, performing low on these tests inadvertently tells your subconscious you were not good enough as this was the “standard” on which everyone was judged, and you did not meet it. Conversely, those who did well were already being groomed to be wonderful obedient workers. They were skilled at memorizing random material, doing they are told, and sticking to the standard.
Though in certain aspects some of these traits are positive and beneficial, when used improperly can lead you to simply become an order taker, atrophying your ability to think creatively and against certain norms and standards. This standardized testing process is the first clipping off of your individuality and creativity, and the process continues from here.
As you progress through life, you are introduced to more and more stimuli that inhibits your true growth; more standardized testing gets rammed down your throat, and the consequences of not doing well get steeper as you get older, from being unable to get into certain colleges (though colleges are another can of worms) to being put into lower-level learning in high school based off your poor performance.
On top of this your parents may force you into a direction you do not want to go. You are forced into a sport or activity so you can have more “structure” even though you have no interest in the activity at hand. The mental load continues to pile up as time goes on. Maybe you get made fun off by peers or your friends from something you do differently; how you dress, or them poking fun at one of the things you have left that makes you individual.
All of this happens while teachers who may not have your best interest in mind, stick strictly to the rigidity in the school system and groom you further to be a test taker and order follower. Over time, these compounding actions have their effects.
Not being able to eject from this vicious cycle, you cut more and more of yourself out to fit in. You begin dressing like everyone else, or whoever is seen to be the cool crowd, or maybe even worse, you get school uniforms. You begin to do what the crowd is doing so you don’t cause any trouble, ask to many questions, or raise too much noise about what’s going on.
More and more of your activities are based around being accepted by the crowd rather than following your individual passions or pursuits. Your gut passions and essence are now hidden away so that nobody can see them, not even you. By the time you reach college and then after graduation, you have become a bird who no longer realizes they have wings.
You have successfully been clipped mentally by the system in place to keep you right where you should be. A conformist, obedient worker, who doesn’t question much and lives out his days in a highly templated format, with dreams buried deep inside you long ago that ache to be resurrected. You still ignore it as this is what everyone else is doing, and this is how life simply is, or what you were told it was.
We don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out of it. — Sire Ken Robinson
A larger philosophical question behind all of this is; is all of this done maliciously? Or is this simply done because it is easier and more cost effective to create one flat, lifeless standard for everyone? Not taking the individual spirit, talents or predispositions into mind. This is a question to be answered and debated for another day, but nonetheless is something to let marinate in your mind.
If you follow these steps, more large corporations with have larger pools of people to pull from, all more than happy to work longer hours for lower pay as long as it provides that sense of comfort that they have grown so used to.
The reality is that this is generally what happens to people. Over a long period of time, people cripple all of their individuality and potential because of what they were taught and indoctrinated into. Instead of expanding our individual creative talents, we are taught to hide them, as sticking to rules and meeting pre-set standards entails true success. Where nothing could be further from the truth, and participating in this thinking and the activities around that idea, rob your soul and what you could be.
The template in which we live, and what is sold to us is not designed for us to necessary succeed or be happy. Whether this is on purpose or not is beside the point, the larger realization to come to is that this is designed so that you compare yourself to others, try to fit in and conform, do what everyone else is doing, put yourself into a box, and this leads you to a constant flux of unfulfillment, as the better part of you knows something is wrong, that you are hiding from your truth and that maybe this isn’t the right way for you, or for anyone.
The only way to avoid this is to come to the realization that many of the processes within our mainstream system do not have your best interests in mind, they don’t have your creativity or potential in mind, and they do not have your happiness and true fulfillment in mind. We are much greater than beings simply designed to take tests, follow orders, buy shit, do what everyone else does, then die. We are creators, we are alchemists of our lives and fate, we are designers, and we always have been.
The answer, and only thing holding us back from realizing this truth, is hiding between what brought us here. We are still sitting at our desks quietly awaiting formatted instruction. Not questioning much, just as we’re taught, just sitting back. Patiently waiting to be told what to do, what to think and who to become. We listen sharply as the indoctrination continues and we remain thinking that in those seats are the only place we are meant to be.
The door is only a few steps away, it just needs to be stepped through. Class dismissed.
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