Wow, Baby

"Such is the power of education, which can infuse even the worst sins with respectability."

From "Blood And Sand".   Vicente Blasco Ibanez

This sentence from this book refers to a specific situation in the story. But the specificity does not matter.

Hell of a sentence, no?

Knocked me for a loop. Sometimes I wish I had the dedication, the power, the intelligence and the cojones to put together a comprehensive notebook including all the sentences that have knocked me down in my reading life (which is longer than my life on earth).

I actually began reading in my mother's womb. She hated it. Found the books quite uncomfortable.

As for me I could not be bothered with all the people poking at my mother's stomach, trying to get my attention, talking gibberish, embarrassing themselves with baby talk.

I would ignore them as long as I could until finally, exasperated, I would roll my eyes and shout "Can't you see I'm concentrating here? For Christ sake, leave me alone."

These were the beginnings of misanthropy.

Education is a sweet and beautiful thing. An informed mind is an interesting mind.

Dumb brutes are rarely interesting (until they point a gun at your head).

Knowledge is a commodity, a thing, a great and wonderful feeling. I am not speaking from experience; I have no knowledge. I read about it somewhere in a book.

Education voraciously attained and judiciously used distinguishes the human from the beast.

When you taint education with unrelated concerns, you trivialize it.

The way corporate America does. Gotta have a piece of paper. Need that degree if you want to get to this level and make this kind of money.

In many situations that is an artificial condition. Working your way up through an organization(however diseased) provides knowledge. A piece of paper does not make a person superior.

However, the climate today pigeon holes people into soul sucking jobs and then traps them there because they don't have a degree.

The worst scum sucking fools own the managerial positions because they have a piece of paper.

How many managers have you dealt with who were complete idiots? Intellectually and morally repulsive. People making a lot more money than you, having power over you, yet lower on the food chain of life than a cock-a-roach. (OK - guilty as charged - Tony Montana in "Scarface" used the term cock-a-roach deliciously and I have never been able to hear it any other way since).

It is a point of pride for us humans that we take something pure, like education, and poison it.

I am not going to continue to preach; your eyes are glazed over already and I need to use today to completely change my life, top to bottom, inside out, 100%. I am already running out of time.

Point of reference: The above point of view is only one interpretation that can be derived from that beautiful sentence I opened with. The opinion expressed in those words can be applied to unlimited situations in life, all of them negative.

Roll the words around in your mouth a bit. Repeat them.

Even if you give them no more than superficial thought, it at least feels good to say them.

"Such is the power of education, which can infuse even the worst sins with respectability."

I'm thinking politics now.

Screw it.

I gotta get the hell out of here.