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It's so very strange that when we look around us and see what one could characterize as "impoverished minds", we want to blame that condition on an outside source. It's the public school system, it's poverty; it's video games and television, and now, the Internet. Prior to the explosion of the current home electronics and information revolution, it was comics and fast cars and rock and roll. It's diet and environment, it's drugs and prevalent social mores.

In reality, it's not any of these things or the myriads of other "excuses" that can be used in order to explain away what is actually a social illness that no one seems to want to address. All that these excuses do is give a tangible source of blame for something, a band-aid to place over that which lies much further beneath the surface than we seem to realize as a society, and at which we don't want to look. The problem does not lie within our seeming addiction to things that steal away our minds and attention, rather the problem is that we DESIRE to have our minds comfortably numbed and our attention continually diverted elsewhere.

Many people have come from difficult backgrounds, substandard education, a home full of televisions, love comics and cars and rock and roll, eat too much fat and sugar and live in appalling home situations, take various drugs throughout their lifetimes, and ignore the popular trends of social expectations to make their own codes of conduct, and STILL manage to develop impressive and wide-sweeping understanding and knowledge over a vast expanse of subjects. There is one glaring difference between these people and the people who allow their minds to stagnate and cease to be useful on a comprehensive level.

AMBITION.

I'm not talking about the sort of ambition which is so urgently and stridently advertised in infomercials on late-night TV, either. I'm talking about the ambition of the SELF, in which a person can see oneself as a lifetime learner and who truly desires to pursue knowledge and understanding concerning themselves and the world in which they live. This is the sort of personal ambition which reaches deep into the psyche of an individual and produces the desire to become a better person, to learn about a large variety of subjects, with the intent to use that information to create a better way of life for oneself and for others around them.

Education has ceased to be a privileged institution for those who truly desire its benefits, and has become a sometime meat-mill of numbers

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