I was born intelligent…
So every now and then you see people boasting about the college they went to on their cars. The most common ones in Lahore are “Engineers Make It Happen” for UET champs, “Ravian”, “Crescentarian” etc. Some institutes which don’t even have toilets have a car sticker for their students. But here is one I saw today that I had not seen before. It’s a pity I didn’t have a camera with me at the time :( Anyway, it said: “I was born intelligent, education ruined me”
I guess all the people who go through our education system feel so at one time or the other. People might suggest foreign education and O/A level for high school education, but personally these things didn’t work for me. At the end of the day you have to realise that a person cannot find intellectual satisfaction in his profession and studies.
Thats attention whoring and sad narcissistic behavior at best.
I am glad that finally someone has initiated a serious debate in this forum.
While I agree with the spirit behind Saad’s comments but he is a bit too harsh and bitter about it.
Let us try to analyze the actual issue:
The Car Sticker phenomenon is actually global and you will notice similar “Attention-Whoring” (Saad; ibid) in US and rest of the Western World as well.
People boast about their School-Associations all the time through bumper-stickers or by making deliberate (and out of place some-times) references to the schools- they went to-during routine social/work-related conversations.
Identity Crisis is among the many challenges modernity has posed on humanity. Every one among us wants to be identified with a larger and more prestigious group; be it school, socio-economic class, workplace, ideology or some other well-known entity.
The bigger motive behind it all is the desire to look “important” and expression of one’s self and individuality. We all want to be “THE ONE” and have an insatiable desire to “be desired by others” and become a focus of attention. Popular Culture and Media conditions this human behavior.
Abraham Maslow in his very famous theory of Hierarchy of human-needs identifies the Belonging Needs and Self-Actualization Needs as two higher level human needs. The human behavior under discussion is one form of manifestation of human needs as identified by Maslow.
I feel this phenomenon will grow over time in future and actually there is no harm in exhibition of one’s pride as long as one does not hurt a fellow human being’s feelings.
Unfortunately our people enjoy humiliating and discrediting others more than finding satisfaction in their own accomplishments (if-any). We, very unfortunately, celebrate our success only by trivializing others and this ought to be CHANGED!!
Thanks for your comments guys. Though attention-whoring attitude is one aspect, my purpose of this post was different. If someone is boasting his Harvard years, I would say fair enough. But what about cars bearing stickers of institutes which can hardly be called a place which spreads education?
At the end I blamed corporate culture and extreme material oriented career orientation for rendering people into mare money-machines.
Further comments are welcome.
I used up all my vacations so I called in dead!
The purpose of education systems in our world is not to teach a pupil to learn, or to expand his or horizons. It is in fact the instead an active attempt to make them conform, which (arguably) may help those who are below average, but certainly does not help those who are above average.