I am in need of advice.

[Norsemaiden]

The others have given a lot of good advice. I would warn against the idea of being a vagrant. You shouldn't be mixed up with mentally ill people and risking your health. Vagrants are assumed to be worthless people generally, and you deserve to be valued. You won't impress a decent woman if you are/were a vagrant as it suggest instability and lack of a sense of self-worth.

Your genes for intelligence are precious and I hope you pass that on, having many healthy children. That should be a priority, but there is no hurry with that at your age. Twenty-five would be the optimum age for a man to start a family, and twenty for a woman. Statistically this 5 year gap in age between a husband and wife has been shown to produce the greatest chance of a lasting marriage.

You are conscientious and I hope you continue to be, and choose a career that makes a postitive contribution to the world. Suggestions are: something that helps the environment - anything from planting trees to being a chemical engineer who invents environmentally friendly substances, or a politician even. Another suggestion is to go into a science or academic career where you think you can make an important difference. If you enjoy history, you can help prevent the politically correct rewriting of history, or if you go into genetics you may help in reversing the mass dysgenics. Or if you became a primatologist/geneticist you could make the "discovery" that the reason chimps do not show as much cooperation and altruism towards eachother as bonobos do, is because of the fact that chimps contain far more genetic diverstity. This is a nobel prize waiting to be picked up (or should be) for its implications for human evolution and civilisation.
Haha, now I'm going off topic!
The point is, that ideally you will make a difference in the world - and hopefully be remembered for it, achieving the "word fame" prized by the Vikings.

 

[derek]

Perhaps I'll weigh in cynically, then.

Do whatever the hell you want.

 

[speed]

Perhaps I'll weigh in cynically, then.

Do whatever the hell you want.

In the words of my favorite author (and thinker) of all time, Francois Rabelais, Do What Thou Wilt! and Hic Bibitur!

Oh, and to follow up on Old Scratch's post: remember, finding love is also very rewarding and wonderful, and should not be forgotten in your quest. In some ways, its the most important thing. This sounds lame as my other posts to follow yourself sound lame, but I dont know, I guess Im a lame guy, but Im just being honest. Love, happiness, satisfaction with oneself, knowledge, fulfillment of ones soul. These are the things we should all search for, and even if you dont make alot of money, or become famous, or a professor, it wont matter as long as you have them.

God, I should write lame self-help books for women or something.

 

[JColtrane]

 

[JoeVice]

its true. love is all you need. it doesn't necessarily mean love one person, as in, finding a girlfriend. in light of the thread that was closed down, i must comment on what is known as the heart chakra. all of you can probably agree that love is often accompanied by an expanding, warm sensation felt in the heart and area, near the location of the thymus gland, which is part of the mysterious endocrine system. shamanic medicine considers this chakra to be the most important, as it unifies, and in a sense, overshadows the functions of all other human processes. shutting this region off for whatever reasons can be terrible for the soul and eventually physical health.

the heart also happens to be the first stage in the development of a human embryo.

 

[Έρεβος]

Thanks for the replies everyone.

Since I am better than twice your age, I feel like someone's dad! Nevertheless:
I would definitely recommend continuing your (formal)education and pursuing a degree on some level, just do it, as Russell suggested on your own terms. No matter how implausable it seems to you today, you WILL change your mind about various things(career, lifestyle, general goals)in time, and having the educational foundation is invaluable when looking to career opportunities and the like down the line. It is clearly easiest to get it done now rather than later - and your brains should make the endeavor fairly painless. And it may be fun...think of the horrors you could visit upon the average Professor by tearing their egalitarian fantasies apart before their eyes!
And of course, you can continue your own 'studies' entirely outside the acedemic world as well. In my later thirties I am stunned at how much I still don't know...yet this fuels me on - to learn more, to know more, not for the sake of it, but because I crave fresh knowledge and never run out of new areas of interest. I suspect you will find no dearth of interests to pursue either.

One need not join the day to day rat-race to be gainfully employed. Moreover, the more education credentials one has under their belt, the more creative, particular and selective they can be with career choices. If you decide that a simple job to pay the rent on that small house in the boondocks is best after all, you will have really lost nothing in attending university...well perhaps a few grand!! But life goes that way...

Beyond all that, I think you will find that no matter what you plan...things will likely turn out differently anyway! As others have noted, stick to what is important to you - but don't be afraid to try things you NEVER would have considered had you planned it all out. Life tends to direct us as much as we it - no matter how much we like to think we are in control.

And after all that to consider, just when you think you have it figured out...you'll meet a beautiful young woman...and your whole plan goes down the tubes anyway

Maybe I will change my mind, but does that necessarily mean I'll change it in favor of such? Maybe at that time I'll be regretting having continued my education and gone into a "career." I can't think on "what I may think in the future," as I can't even guess upon that. It only makes sense to make the best choices you can according to your present views & mindset, think in the present instead of the future.

I have been looking at formal education like this lately... I am young. My body is in its peak physical shape, and shall be for the next 10 or so years of my life. If I endeavor to achieve academically this time of my life will be wasted inside a stuffy university doing all intellectual work, work more suited for a 50 year old than a 17-27 year old. It would be a huge waste of my physical energy/abilities to sit and use nothing but my mind during this time of my life. Instead of becoming more formally educated, I should live, fully. This thought leads me to vagrancy as the best alternative, but I'm not certain, though I am becoming certain that university and formal education will be a waste of my life, especially at a time when I am in highest physical health. How much money I make, how comfortably I live, and how well I do in "career" also mean nothing to me. The only reason I consider university is the experience, and possibly the credentials that it lends to my writings and how much influence I have. But even that is rather plastic.

I agree completely on the last part, though. =P

Have you thought about entering into the professions at all? Engineering, Accounting, Law, Medical? These seem the best options if you want to have an important role outside the stuffy universities, and will give you a lot of freedom to shape your individual interests. I couldn't wait to get out of the university so I could actually start learning things I wanted to learn. I found a lot of the academics, while admirable in their teaching and research, often didn't practice what they preached, and were not particularly satisfied with their lives. I know now that higher education is mostly a joke which is only taken seriously by staff and students. If I had known this before, I probably wouldn't have gone at all, and instead took up a trade of some sort.

Hmm, I don't know. I've considered trades, such as carpentry, seriously. I've worked in carpentry with my step dad for a few years, and enjoy the physical labor. Engineering, Accounting, etc. are to revolved around things within society for me to enjoy. I would only be contributing to the things I hate, but I suppose any profession I take, including physical labor, is in a way doing the same. But truly the job isn't what matters; I'd be perfectly happy working at McDonald's for 7 dollars an hour. It is just for survival, food, and such can be attained even without a job rather easily; the things I do outside my "career" are what's important, my general life setting too (e.g. complete vagrancy, uni student, etc.).

The others have given a lot of good advice. I would warn against the idea of being a vagrant. You shouldn't be mixed up with mentally ill people and risking your health. Vagrants are assumed to be worthless people generally, and you deserve to be valued. You won't impress a decent woman if you are/were a vagrant as it suggest instability and lack of a sense of self-worth.

Your genes for intelligence are precious and I hope you pass that on, having many healthy children. That should be a priority, but there is no hurry with that at your age. Twenty-five would be the optimum age for a man to start a family, and twenty for a woman. Statistically this 5 year gap in age between a husband and wife has been shown to produce the greatest chance of a lasting marriage.

You are conscientious and I hope you continue to be, and choose a career that makes a postitive contribution to the world. Suggestions are: something that helps the environment - anything from planting trees to being a chemical engineer who invents environmentally friendly substances, or a politician even. Another suggestion is to go into a science or academic career where you think you can make an important difference. If you enjoy history, you can help prevent the politically correct rewriting of history, or if you go into genetics you may help in reversing the mass dysgenics. Or if you became a primatologist/geneticist you could make the "discovery" that the reason chimps do not show as much cooperation and altruism towards eachother as bonobos do, is because of the fact that chimps contain far more genetic diverstity. This is a nobel prize waiting to be picked up (or should be) for its implications for human evolution and civilisation.
Haha, now I'm going off topic!
The point is, that ideally you will make a difference in the world - and hopefully be remembered for it, achieving the "word fame" prized by the Vikings.

I don't know ... a great deal of vagrants are highly intelligent, and a great deal more I think are simply free souls lost in a society that enslaves everyone. They are seen as scum by society because they (vagrants) reject all of their values, what they see as important. But this is generalizing; I do know that vagrants are not the horrid scum society attempts to make them out to be, though, and are even much more often greater individuals than those that pursue lives of more structure. As for a good woman, I don't really plan to find a good woman until I am a bit older anyway; but I would disagree that a decent woman would be more difficult to find as a vagrant, or much more. A truly great and intelligent woman would judge me upon me, and not upon me being vagrant. Also, I don't care for fame, or how valued I am by people in general; just those close to me. I don't care for "being known," just the truth of who I am and what I achieve. If I created art, I don't believe I would sign my name; same for books, or anything. I would care about what I achieve, and not the "fame" I gain from it. Being paraded as a "hero" is contra to what a hero really is.

The rest is good =), thanks.

 

[Blowtus]

But this is generalizing; I do know that vagrants are not the horrid scum society attempts to make them out to be, though, and are even much more often greater individuals than those that pursue lives of more structure.

What makes them greater? The answer would seem pretty useful in determining a direction for your own life, assuming you view 'greater' as 'worthwhile'

 

[Έρεβος]

What makes them greater? The answer would seem pretty useful in determining a direction for your own life, assuming you view 'greater' as 'worthwhile'

Well simply that they are strong enough to see the difference between personal satisfaction and "success" as societies label it. Just the fact that it is a path more suited for an intelligent self-outcast whom finds society gross. Most people follow the structured life, the career & education, that which society says is of value. Not much to do with vagrancy itself, except that such attracts those that are truly free spirits more-so than that which society offers.

 

[Seditious]

Well simply that they are strong enough to see the difference between personal satisfaction and "success" as societies label it.

if you can see that without being a vagrant then you obviously don't need to be a vagrant to have the same greatness you believe they have.

 

[Έρεβος]

if you can see that without being a vagrant then you obviously don't need to be a vagrant to have the same greatness you believe they have.

Believe? That isn't what I was saying at all... just that vagrancy is a lifestyle suited for those that value experience and real freedom much more than comfort and insurance. That doesn't mean vagrants are "great" inherently, just that greater individuals are more likely to head against the status quo, embracing a life that is not comfortable, easy, safe, or materially gainful, for higher reasons. That doesn't mean there aren't the typical scum burnouts, of course, just that on the outside they view the same as those that just despise the pacified unnatural life of our society.

 

[hibernal_dream]

Keep in mind you are only 17. As OldScratch pointed out, you'll change your mind on some things, and then what will you do when you become a vagrant and the decide that you're really after a comfortable, easy, safe, or materially gainful life.

 

[Justin S.]

Έρεβος,

Meaningful advice is a tough thing to give, but hopefully my thoughts here will be of some benefit to you.

To start bluntly, I whole-heartedly recommend attending a solid University (meaning, liberal arts- anything else is vocational training and a waste of time). I say this being painfully aware of the systemic failures of the institution. Attending gives one the gift of time to think and read in an environment that offers some small glimpse of activity outside the obliterating disciplinary machinations of enframing (or at least to allow reflection upon it). Furthermore, there are bright people, even if crippled ideologically, that may be of great benefit to your thought process. What else is new? We are scavengers sifting through endless piles in search of fragments that are all-important.

The University will force you to truly confront thought, and not simply get by on being smarter than your average degraded being. The constant pressure of progressing in one's thinking will also allow you to come to terms with what you are constitutionally. Others talk of "finding yourself". What I mean is that by reading/thinking on a broad scale you will find (over time, and after many false readings) what truly concerns you in your unique existential context (whether you like it or not . I am not suggesting that change is impossible; rather any capacity for change is already inscribed "constitutionally".

To be crass once again, I strongly advise against vagrancy. Keep in mind that there is no "outside the system". The historical context for romantic existence outside social structures is long past (if it ever existed), and is a dangerous delusion. The issue of how to live thoughtfully, "authentically", is the question for me currently, so please don't think I speak flippantly. We are in pure "damage control" to put it far too pleasantly; we deal with degrees, not categories. I bet that if you were to think long and hard about the existential and pragmatic logistics of vagrancy, you would be faced with the very things you wish to turn from. To choose vagrancy so young would be closing many doors (to evoke the horrid analogy) without knowing what they properly are. Give yourself a few years to learn, think, and develop. You can always quit school, take some time off, and come back if you wish. But to forgo it entirely and wander the wasteland at 18 years old is not promising by any criteria.

So, I recommend at least attending a University, and seeking out those important fragments in departments that still retain some concern for human thought/being (Your choices of Philosophy/History are excellent). If you choose to pursue some type of vagrancy anyway, it will be far more informed and thoughtful than if you were to dive in straight out of high school. Take a pause and give proper time to these considerations and choices. I think University is the best setting/arrangement for this.

 

[derbeder]

I agree with Justin and I want to add a couple words of my own.

In Turkey the university system is deplorable in a whole lot of ways, and when I was in high school I hated the prospect of going to a university there - and I later realized many reasons I wasn't aware of at the time for not going. One of the main problems is that you don't get to make up your mind about what you want to pursue once you are in the university. You take an exam at the end of high school (not like the SATs) and that determines to a large extent what program at which university you can attend. Once you are in, you can't change departments. Moreover, in high school students have to choose their direction broadly (oriented towards science and mathematics or humanties or engineering etc.), so in Turkey your future as a student gets determined to a large extent by some choices you (or more likely your parents) make for you when you are 16. This is completely unbearable.

By a stroke of luck I ended up at a small liberal arts college in the US where I could study anything I wanted. So after some dabbling in the English department because of my prior interest in literary theory, I started taking philosophy and psychology courses. Things were so flexible that I chose almost all my courses in my second major. This was a program called Scientific and Philosophical Studies of Mind. It consisted of taking courses in philosophy of mind, the psychology of perception etc. as well as working in the artificial intelligence lab. I could also take some mathematics classes just for the fun of it, even when I was doing two majors. The intellectual freedom that a small liberal arts college can provide is extremely valuable. You get to work one on one with some professors, talk things over at lunch with them and so on. These may not happen at a large university. Given your interest in philosophy and your strong desire to choose your own path, I would certainly encourage you to attend a good liberal arts college.

 

[Scourge of God]

If you assume that humans in all walks of life are likely to be intellecual and emotional cripples, you'll never be disappointed. As broken as most people are in the academy, it's still a brand of idiocy that prizes something beyond the accumulation of things - and a brand of idiocy that encourages (and demands) a level of intellectual discipline that is of incalculable value to anyone seeking to make a difference in the world. Most of what you learn will be just as much 'self-teaching' as anything you might pick up from life as a bum, but you'll also receive the highly useful instruction in ordering your thoughts coherently (which is just as valuable as a tool of internal discourse as it is in communicating with others).

 

[infoterror]

What I (think I) wish most is to firstly become the greatest individual I possibly can, physically (as long as it lasts), and foremost mentally (of course); and secondly to, when I know what it is that ... is worth (?) it, someone make the greatest "difference" the individual I am can make.

I only just saw this thread, and thought it was interesting.

The best advice I can offer you: there are many paths to your goal, but they will all be consistent. You will work hard, learn hard, play hard, and stay on one path to a goal until you reach it.

If I were in your situation, I would take a year off to work and learn about the world, and during that time, apply to colleges and describe what you have learned. See if you can get in a leadership role. Start a business; hell, join the Foreign Legion if you want. But do something that will teach you what you want to know about reality, which is what is holding back your decision.

I don't see any reason not to go to college. It is expensive, but a degree is a good thing to have in life, and the experience itself can be phenomenal. Go to the best school you can get into. Best of luck! -- many of us are cheering you on, I think.