I just stumbled across this talk, and Mr. Brooks gives one of the most brutally honest explanations of Western society I have ever heard.
For over 23 years now, I've had a tremendous amount of outside pressure put on my life. I've been unable to make a decent living since the beginning of this century. I had no idea where this pressure was coming from. There were a lot of conservative people coming into my life early on, and a fair amount of evangelical and fundamentalist Christians back in 2002-2006. The "Christian Right" seemed the best name to put on those invisible power brokers who were putting great pressure on my life.
Ultimately, I was pushed out of California, and to North Carolina, where my family had wound up living. I was pushed away from BMX freestyle, the weird little action sport that gave my life meaning. It became apparent that somebody, somewhere wanted me to live my life in a completely different way. Once I got to North Carolina, some people around me were told I had some incredibly high IQ score that no one had ever told me about. That may or may not be true. I still don't know, and I hate the entire idea of IQ scores at this point. It's a test score people, one test on one day, nothing more.
These past 23+ years have pushed me in ways I could have never imagined, and I figured out who I am, and who I am not. While it's still not totally clear, it appears some small group, part of the "educated elite" that Mr. Brooks talks about in the speech above, are the people who have been pushing me in directions I had absolutely no interest in for more than 23 years. I think I was supposed to "realize" in North Carolina that I had wasted my whole life by doing tricks on a "little kid's bike," and that I should go to college, grow up, and become a part of the East Coast establishment. I did not enroll in college in North Carolina. In fact, the exact opposite happened.
After more than 23 years of this bullshit, I have no intention of ever going to college. Not going to college was one of the best decisions I've ever made. I do not want to EVER set foot in the entire state of North Carolina for the rest of my life. I refuse to live in ANY conservative state. I would much rather die in my late 50's or early 60's as a homeless man in California, than to have ANY association with the "educated elite" that Mr. Brooks speaks of in the talk above. I want nothing to do with any of those people, any of their institutions, their religions, or anything else they are a part of.
I would rather die as a penniless homeless man in California that to be a part of their "elite." I want to earn a living here in Southern California as a writer, artist, and hopefully a video producer again, someday. I want to pay rent for my own apartment. I want to work smart and hard, doing projects I'm interested in. I want to go goof around on a BMX bike for an hour or two every evening, after a good day's work. That is success to me. NOTHING else is success to me. The educated elite of the world have nothing to offer me, they have nothing I want. They can't seem to understand this. So I will probably die in the next two or three years as a homeless man. That's fine with me.
