inspired high school seniors - Herr Hauser
Was it a class for gifted students?
Not particularly gifted. Well, just to get into the "academy" as it was called, one had to show some kind of promise. By the time we made it to senior year, we had witnessed many either get the boot (for behavioral problems or poor performance) or quit the school (for lack of access to females).
And no, the academy in question mostly prized its mathematics whizkid prodigy eggheads, someone like Ed Chu (a member of the "AP Calculus" class that had me depressed as f
uck) who had great discipline and very strict parents. My own parents were divorced the year before I entered the school, so by the time I was 17, I was engaging in some (alcoholic) drinking on weekends, pot smoking during the week, and was already starting to feel the advancing nervous tensions building up in me - the anxiety, the paranoia, the growing anti-authoritarianism. I had begun slipping a little in mathematics, and I even got to the point where I refused to attend a BASIC Computer Programming class - the beginnings of some kind of nervous breakdown? As a teenager, I was actually mostly repelled by the idea of digital electronic computers, although I had always enjoyed "computing" - as an organic computer made of meat.
The go-getter businessmen dads of other classmates had their offices in their houses with their giant computers and printers. I did not come from such a household. In fact, to this day, my father has no use for a computer. I even tried to give him one back in 2008. He didn't want one.
So, no and again no, as our Art would say. The Philosophy course,
Myths, Dreams, and Cultures was not at all reserved for the eggheads. In fact, the instructor was the head of the English department, the man responsible for getting many of the great books on the summer reading requirements, such as Pirsig's
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenacne, Levin's
This Perfect Day, Brunner's
The Sheep Look Up, and even Kesey's
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
It was a great opportunity. The course was focused on Joseph Campbel's
Myths to Live By. Unfortunately, Ed Chu did not show much interest in what "my Philosophy instructor" was offering. What is a "real man" anyway? Is a real man a man who philosophizes?
There was never any mention of Schopenhauer, but more about Wilderness Survival - the whole
Tom Brown Jr. thing.
That was the momentum behind GORT BUSTERS: It was the current generation of "The Real Man's Club" conversing on a message board like this one with old worn out Steppenwolves like myself from the old school RMC ---- I feel very fortunate to have been exposed to such a charismatic Teacher with a capital T.
My interests in mathematics and computing have returned again and again, but I am not sure how long such interest can be sustained. I wish someone like me had left me some notes like the ones I am leaving. Leaving notes to some youth in the future who will treasure my attempts to preserve something they might find extremely valuable (for their inner wealth).
I get bored with words. I sometimes even get bored with music.