Get yourself an education...

So last night, I was explaining to Brendan my current thirst for knowledge. I don’t really want to know about anything in particular, but I want to know “enough” whatever that may be, to form an educated opinion on issues that affect me. Someone I work with asked me my opinion on… I think it was Communism and I said “Well, I don’t really have an opinion, because I don’t know enough about it.” This got me thinking, There are so many political beliefs as well as religions and issues in the world that I simply don’t have an opinion on because I don’t know enough about the subject. I refuse to have an opinion on things like religion because in my mind, it is far better to have no opinion than an uneducated opinion.

I remember in Year 11, the day after 9/11 a girl I went to school with confirmed for me that sometimes silence really is golden. Nadine C was a bully, a tyrant and a brash bogan who utterly terrified me. Whilst discussing in Media Studies Nadine opened her mouth and sprouted the following seed of wisdom: “Like, I think this whole terrorist thing is totally sucking. All those people died and America is such a great country, I don’t know how anyone could do this to them. I hope all the Arabs in the World die.”

If ever there was a moment, that Nadine should have kept her uneducated opinion to herself, this was it. Nadine C, to me looked like a loud mouthed, ignorant twat who probably couldn’t point out where “the Arabs” might live on a map of the world, let alone understand the complexities of such a sensitive issue. Her stupidity infuriated me, but also took away any power she had over me. Nadine might like to fight with her fists (and believe me, I encountered them on more than one occasion) but now I knew I could beat her with words. More power to me. I thought very lowly of Nadine C from here on. She was at best “an uneducated bogan” amongst small group of friends and we gave her a fair bit of grief… when she couldn’t hear us of course.

I didn’t ever want anyone to think of me as an “uneducated bogan” and rather than open my big mouth and give people the chance to think that of me, I stayed quiet on topics I wasn’t sure of.

Nadine C’s only exposure to culture or diversity was probably at Knox Shopping Centre on a Thursday Night where she ate some spring rolls with her homies and as far as I know, not much has changed in 7 years for her. My issue currently is that I want to have an opinion on all sorts of things, but I don’t have enough facts to be able to make that opinion, and be able to say that it’s fairly educated. Well, educated enough for me to sleep at night and not feel as though, when discussing the topic – I sound like Nadine C. I’ve decided that I am going to spend a fair bit of my summer seeking answers to my questions, trying to form opinions and beliefs on things that matter to me and learn to feel comfortable with them. In other words, I’m off to get myself an education.

In other brief news, loads of great stuff has been happening in the last two weeks… but I am far too selfish to share them. It would be like sharing the mint chocolates in a milk tray… and we all know I’m not too good at that.

Cmx