Is going to school meaningless?

Firstly I would like to apologize. I actually wrote this a long time ago but I forgot to upload it.

Every day, I get up, and go to school; I meet some friends, always the same ones; I buy a sandwich, eat my sandwich; I sit through a lecture, and another lecture. Never did I question my lifestyle. Or actually, I did, whenever I saw this picture on Facebook:

                          

“Haha, so true”

Is it funny to be either a Nerd, a Slacker or a Zombie?

Actually, a few people defy the laws of physics, and some others are somewhere in the blank space around the schema, getting no good grades, no sleep and no social life. But who cares about this minority of people?

We are rather going to observe the large majority of students. Is it actually meaningful to have perfect grades? To get your ten-hour-long beauty sleep? To be the popular student?

The pursuit of knowledge

There is a religion common to every student who want to pass: knowledge. Whether you listened in class, whether you took notes, you just learn by heart every single thing there is to know about the subject. This method is certainly the most reassuring one. Indeed, during an exam, your best friend, your best ally, your best weapon is knowledge. The more you know the better.

But since everybody work like this, it becomes a race for knowledge. Thank God, Sciences Po doesn’t function like this.

Anyone remember Faust? This “business man” as Kierkegaard would have called him. Faust lost his youth because of his thirst for knowledge. He feels like there is nothing more to learn, like he has come to the end of all knowledge, which puts him in an advanced stage of despair, of unconscious despair.

In his despair, Faust wants to commit suicide by drinking poison. But then, Mephistopheles, the devil appears and suggests Faust to establish a contract with him. In exchange of a moment of transcendence, Faust must become his servant for the rest of eternity. And Faust accepts.

With this story, we can understand that building up knowledge without any real goal is meaningless. To be the best is a good motive but once one becomes the best, there is nothing after that one can achieve.

How to be a couch potato

Everybody wants to play Sleeping Beauty, because it is easy. But anyone could also easily understand why this kind of life is meaningless.

Unfortunately, most people do not sleep because they need it. For Kierkegaard, this type of lifestyle is a form of alienation from the Self. The “couch potato” doesn’t contribute to the society, he doesn’t care about others. It is a lower form of life.

                         

In Requiem for a Dream, the characters have no goal in life. Harry, his friend Tyron and his girlfriend Marianne are drug addicts. They wander around, not actually doing anything. Harry’s mother, Sara, is a television addict. She literally cannot live without her television. They are not alive but rather trying to survive.

Do you know your 5000 friends?

Students suffer from despair. They cannot be what they want to be, they cannot have the grades they want to have. To forget that they despair, they keep themselves entertained by any means. They want to pretend that they have a great life, a high social status so in the microcosm that is called school, they want to be popular.

But according to Pascal, this kind of life is an illusion. In French, to entertain is divertir, which also means divert. When you entertain yourself by being with others, you divert your attention from death and despair to more pleasant things. By being popular, you have a good image of yourself and you protect yourself from solitude. You build an imaginary image of yourself and others, you live beyond yourself.