A general State education is a mere contrivance for moulding people to be exactly like one another: and as the mould in which it casts them is that which pleases the predominant power in the government, whether this be a monarch, a priesthood, an aristocracy, or the majority of the existing generation in proportion as it is efficient and successful, it establishes a despotism over the mind, leading by a natural tendency to one over the body. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty.
----------------------------------------------------------------

I like math and I am unabashedly unashamed about it. But as a point as reference, I should enjoy that I enjoy learning deeply. Whether for mastery or pleasure takes precedent, I find that learning is central to loving life. I love different experiences as I would love a bouquet of flowers, the combined sense of smell and the lasting pleasure of locating the one that is special.

This is why an idea, which is invisible and free, is tantalizing. Ideas make the world round and inform the spirit. How to catch this crop of light? How does one ever catch light? We read. And as we read hesitatingly or with fury or with sentimental idealism, my eyes flicker over the the structures of sentences, of past societies and of the ideas that people died over. Sometimes  yes,  these conflicting ideas spar but sometimes these writers, you have to acknowledge, they died to smuggle the ideas of their times and their realities to our own. A book is a democracy in your hands.

If
you
can
read,
tho.

As someone cut the cord, you burn with oxygen. You hit the walls as you learn what feet are. You are only sure it is only you that is alive. You want to run; the days are for you. The sun kisses you. You learn to speak and the poetry of childhood is strong. You go to school, the worst mathematical problem of modern times. The rules creep in as the love creeps out and one morning, you wake up in fifth grade and they've farmed your mind.  FUCK.