* science
* philosophy
* psychology
You didn’t come from an educated background. Your parents were fairly wealthy but they were working class wealthy. They had grown up poor so they’re mentalities were those of poor people. Yet you are grateful though for this because it forced you to build your own character and it is always more powerful when we have to do something ourselves.
You went through life for the first decades by just following along and being good enough to get to the next level. You had no higher ambitions or need to excel in anything. You liked reading books. You read the Hardy Boys paperback novels. You got good grades, did your homework and passed your tests. There was no pressure at home to survive or be anyone in particular so you developed on your name. However, you parents, society, teachers, relatives, friends (and their parents), taught you a certain paradigm, a certain kind of ideology about life in general. You didn’t become aware of this hidden ideology until much later in life. And by then it was incredibly difficult to change but somehow you did. For some reason, once it was made clear to you, you realised that you never really believed it in the first place. You also noticed that the majority of humanimals go through their whole lives not even seeing what this ideology is that they believe in! They just focus on other bad ideologies. Some even mistakenly think they have no ideology at all. And that all ideologies are dangerous. They teach this in their classes only to come home later and violate their very own principles. They simply do not see what lies hidden right before their very eyes.
You experienced public school in two very different continents. Canada from grades 1-8. And Finland from grade 9-12 (high school). The funny thing is that because they start school earlier in Canada, when you came back to your home country, they decided to skip you a grade. In Canada you were the smartest kid in class but in Finland you were below average. Some of these Canadian kids couldn’t even read properly. When the teacher went for a break he said “Markus, read to the class”. Who knows where he went or what he was up to. And then because it was such a struggle for you and the Finnish language proved to be surprisingly tough in its written form, you decided to repeat grade 9 to get into a better high school. So the grade skipping was neutralised. At least now you were on par with the other kids.
When high school came along, you had pretty much lost interest in everything except music, drinking and girls. That was your holy trinity and anything else was noise. Sex, drugs an rock’n roll. You were ready to dedicate your life to the trinity. But you HAD to go to school to get your diploma. But at least you met some good people there. It was more of a social event then anything. And the biggest lessons are probably not what you learned in class. You struggled to motivate yourself to study and your grades were no longer that great,
But a few subjects fascinated you. Psychology was one and philosophy another. You were also applauded for your writing abilities, not so much for your mastery of language but for the content. This encouraged you to write more. Vomiting out an essay or two felt like an easy task for you. You struggled much more with math, physics, chemistry, history, geography , biology, etc. You weren’t good at remembering stuff or learning by listening to a teacher for an hour. You thrived in the abstract. What does all this mean? How do we know what we know? How does our mind work? These question struck at the root of your whole existence and seemed much more important than memorising Finnish war tactics and why the Russians failed in their attack. That said, later in life you became just as much fascinated with that other stuff once you had some solid structure to you basic operation system.
You also started to read some more serious novels for book reports. You got to choose from a list and for some reason 1984 popped out and so you dove right in. This book was powerful. It’s hard to underestimate what kind of influence it had on your worldview. Orwell was on to something. What made the book scary was that it almost felt like he was talking about modern society or at least predicting where things are headed. And he wrote it in the 1940s! What a masterpiece and so well written also. Orwell’s Animal Farm fable became another favourite, both of which you would go back to again and again for some clarity.
After school had finished, you had no intentions of going to university and focused on your music instead. But you continued reading, watching movies and you understanding of the world grew. You were still a poor thinker, caught up in a world of biases and fallacies but you were on the right path. One book led to the next.
And of course your life experiences taught you about how things really are. You faltered and failed. You often felt overwhelmed by the overwhelming uncertainty and hypocrisy surrounding everything. How can people be so sure of themselves. They walk around as if they own the place. You medicated yourself with alcohol and art to soothe your way through your formative years and into your twenties.
Your education was only just beginning.