I've been thinking about the benefits of education, and I came across some very disturbing facts. So I decided to pute them in writing, in hope they will look better that way. Here goes:
What I got from education (highs school, university, post graduate + various courses and seminars + countless non-fiction books)
- a deeper understanding of a world around me - but not the perfect understanding as that seems to be (as yet) unatainable
- more insight in dangers and problems me as a person, the society and the human race are in
- skills for doing various jobs which - all of them - require me to be employed by someone else, and do what he tells me to when he tells me to
- bad back
It's also quite obvious that more educated people have lives that are more complex, have more 'angst', work longer hours and have less sex. OK, they have the higher probability to achieve higher earnings, but that's just it - probability.
While, if you spend less time on edcuation and more time on doing what you do best, you can become an artist, a good athlete, a good craftsman and have altogehter a simpler (and probably happier) life, with enough probability of high earnings but much larger probability of a lot of free time, more sex, less angst and a knowledge that you really mattered. Because there can be thousand people writing reports, doing seminars, teaching at universities, but there's only one guy that fixes your electricity - and he's much less interchangeable. And only one Picasso. Or Jordan. Or Madonna. See the similarity?
The conclusion? Well, there isn't one, but it seems it would be very helpful if we knew what we're good at and we devoted life to that instead of educationg ourselves further and further in the hope of finding the perfect 'thing' in someone's book or lecture. Or, to put it simply: the eduaction helps us enjoy books about sunsets, but with no education at all you can enjoy the real thing.