Chapter one set an interesting tone for the book. One particular comment that was made by the author was that in his young adult years, he found himself working to pay for a car in order to get to work. This got me to thinking that the reason we go to school all of our childhood is so that we are equipped to be successful in the work world, even if that means more schooling when we have finished. The reason we go to college is to beat out all of those who did not attend so that we have a better chance of getting a job that we can have a comfortable lifestyle with. We put in all this time and effort so that we are able to live lives of luxury so that we can buy the bigger house, or the better car. If we weren’t constantly striving to have something more, there would be no need to keep pushing the envelope of technology and knowledge.
When you start to think about it at what point as the human race did we decide that competition among our peers was necessary and rewarding if you happened to succeed. When did we decide that it made us feel better to know that we had more than our neighbors and our peers? I suppose it dates back to the theory of survival of the fittest. Although many college students would have no problems finding a mediocre job out of undergrad, we all chose to go that one extra step to graduate school. Why? Who’s to say we couldn’t be just as “happy” being able to just make ends meet and have the necessities of life?
1 comment:
Good posting, I agree with our constant need to achieve more. I think that one of the comments that was left on mybolg could also relate to yours. As we progress in life, according to Maslow's hyerarchy of needs we strive to fulfill our higher order needs of self esteem and sef actualiazation. Pursuing higher education helps us in our quest to satify those higher needs.
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