Reinventing the March

I just thought of something earlier today. So I'm back in school, and already we're spending most of our time quoting "great" people. And I stopped and thought about a question that I've been entertaining for years: why do we not have any "great" people of our own generation?

Then it hit me: maybe we don't have any great people because we haven't allowed our predecessors to fall back into memory? I mean think about it... at your average college right now, there's thousands of students learning, writing reports, etc. And 50% of what they say or do has to be supported by the words of someone that came before them. Well... how can somebody ever take credit for an idea that they got from somebody else? Hence, greatness is not so easily achieved.

I mean seriously, that's my whole formula for writing papers. Yes, I include my own thoughts, but the law is 'your thoughts don't have any validity until you get the nod of someone that came before you'. 50% my thoughts... 50% nods from "great" people... boom, completed paper. So when it's all said and done, it's rather difficult to establish yourself because your entire validity is based upon the validity of someone else.

This is a personal thing with me, but I really don't like asking for advice much. Why? I mean, yes, in a sense you end up "reinventing the wheel". In another sense, you end up discovering YOUR wheel. Ownership is a powerful thing. Consider: whoever discovered the wheel probably developed the first use for the wheel, right? And do you know what probably ensued? Whatever use he developed, his peers probably adopted immediately. Copycats.

And copycatting is to be expected; who wouldn't take advantage of an obvious answer to an important question right before their eyes. But just imagine: if all of the wheel-inventor's peers had discovered the wheel for themselves? You probably would have seen a plethora of fresh ideas and uses for the wheel INSTANTLY, right? Because no two people think alike, nor do we all face the exact same circumstances. That whole bit about great minds thinking alike? Bullsh!t. Great minds might arrive at the same CONCLUSIONS sometimes, but I guarantee they don't think alike to get there. And the differences in our thought processes should be valued, because that's what makes each one of us "great" in our own respect.

Then again... I could be wrong...

Martin Luther King Jr. Day is coming up on the 15th. How do we celebrate? We have parades. We get out of school for a day. Etcetera. And so on.

Back during King's day, marching wasn't for celebration as much as it was for protest and progress. But it seems... we've reinvented the march, haven't we? When Martin Luther King Jr. Day comes, everyone looks forward to celebrating. But perhaps, in contrast to what I stated earlier, this is a time when we SHOULD follow in the footsteps of a "great" person. He left us a great foundation, and with each passing year we should be drawing closer to fulfilling his dream.

But--- out of all the pointless, purposeless, theoretical rhetorics that we break our necks trying to understand (despite their tendency to never have true significance in the average life) in order to attain degrees--- we decide to let Martin Luther King Jr.'s be the one that we cease to build upon. We decide to reinvent the march for equality instead of reinventing the bibliography (seriously... what is the serious, legitimate, make-a-believer-outta-me point in having a million different bibliography styles that give you the same information in different formats? and don't hand me what I know you're about to hand me; can't you distinguish subject matter by simply READING it? u know, the way you make US read it? c'mon...)

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that everything you learn in college is hogwash that shouldn't be taken into account. I'm not saying there's anything necessarily wrong with quoting people to substantiate arguments and such. All I'm saying is I think we're prioritizing the wrong things in our society: we give too much glory to those of limited significance and not enough glory to those of infinite significance. No, let me put it this way: we give the wrong kind of significance to the wrong people. Perhaps it would be more constructive to quote the people who actually change lives for the better, and have parties and parades for the people who merely make interesting discoveries (that, ironically, we might make and understand better ourselves if we weren't so busy reading about them all the time ;-P).

Mind over Matter; That is the Question B-J