No more heroes

Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, David Hockney, Karl Marx, Che Guevara, Albert Einstein, Jules Verne, Bram Stoker and George Orwell.

The Northern lights, the Pyrenees, monument valley and the Carpathian mountains.

The Napoleonic wars, the Boer war.

I’m sure you have heard of all of the above. Please, deary me I hope so. I’m afraid that not everyone has.  Indeed a phenomena I increasingly encounter is that of the ignorant adult.

I am at a loss as to explain why some people have failed to hear of such famous and iconic figures, landmarks and historical events.

I have some theories as to why this has happened, sadly I have no facts as to why. Perhaps there has been a change in the way we educate, history seems to be seen as an increasingly irrelevant subject in schools. Maybe it is due to the fact that reading for pleasure is on the wane, or that so much of our media is utterly ‘dumbed down’.  Another hypothesis I flirt with is that we have a generation of ’Kidults’. That is adults who still operate with a mentality of children, reading Harry Potter, listening to inane pop and consumed by vacuous celebrity culture.

I do find myself feeling increasingly alone these days, maybe that is in part with the company I keep, or the people that I meet.  Perhaps I should simply accept this and allow my inner ignorance to blossom like a fungus.

 

Dumb it down

 At times my patience is endless, at other times it is shorter than a midget who cannot find his built up shoes.

Yesterday I was irritable. I was cursed with ear-worms and this made meditation something of a challenge.

However, my irk was not prompted by any existential angst but instead by stupidity.

Strange, that whenever I read about education in the UK press, I am told that we have higher exam passes than the year previously, that thousands of young people are equipped to go to university or paid employment. Yet, I am consistently stunned by the ignorance shown by some young people.

Yesterday I was asked such questions as “Do theatre’s only do pantomimes”?, “Are history teachers interested in history?”, “Was Shakspere real?”, “Who was Stan Laurel?”, “Would the history teacher know about the coliseum?”, “So, Jesus died on the cross? Was that the end of it all then?”

I’m no Christian as you may have gathered but even I have to tip my hat to the church for having a pretty effective marketing department, I think most people get the idea that Christians belive in the resurection.

It’s tempting to suggest that a Zen master would be helpful in slapping these people, of course the slap is an act of compassion, though it does not seem so at the time. Tempting though…very tempting.