Be Normal and Fit In

  

Sir Roger’s close confidante writes:

My mother used to ask me if I wouldn’t prefer to work in a bank. In those days it was a safe occupation – safe as a bank, literally. A job for life with almost guaranteed promotion. I don’t think she was joking.

Both her brothers – my uncles – worked in banks and eventually became bank managers.

She married a doctor. His job was secure as long as people got sick or had babies.

Her father was an Anglican minister. He’d always have a job as long as there was a god – or as long as people believed there was.

I think my mother wanted me to be safe. She worried about my creative, artistic, unworldly temperament. If I relied on it, it might not lead to stability and security. The bank was safe if unexciting and the school system was the ideal training for future decades of boredom and repetition.

And that’s how parents tend to think.

First we want our children to be safe.

Second we want them to do well and succeed.

Third we want them to be normal and fit in.

And we want them to find someone ‘nice’ to settle down with and raise a family (for the most part).

We encourage our children to be reasonable and more or less ordinary; to be ‘realistic’. That’s the way it works, that’s the way things are, that’s the recipe for survival and success.

Mediocrity.

And that’s what schools are exceptional at producing.

Nothing important or worthwhile that has ever been achieved in the world has been achieved by reasonable, realistic, mediocre people. They have been achieved by people prepared to be unreasonable, to see beyond the realistic to the possibilities and to fight to achieve them.

And that’s who our children are before we school them.

Indeed, replied Sir Roger, schools are not only exceptional at producing these results. That is their primary function and the original purpose of the compulsory education system in Prussia to which all modern education more or less owes its tradition. Obedient hardworking bureaucrats, obedient unquestioning factory workers. Today’s office slaves.

Bruce Petty once somewhere said (or drew) something close to,

 

 

“ Having reproduced the species, efforts are made to have it employable as cheaply as possible. Through persistence and determination many survive these deformative years and go on to be average.”

Thank you for reading this far!  You might think producing a post like this takes a bit of work. 
It does! If you’ve appreciated it you might consider encouraging me. ( We all like validation! )   

Buy Me A Coffee

All posts

Categories

You might also like:

Migently Mountain Manifesto: 1

  S ir Roger is returned from the Mountain with the Migently Mountain Manifesto.Here are Tablets One to Five:    1.  Do what is right.     2.   You are safe. Now, at this instant, you are safe.You are safe, right here, right now. This might allow you to...

Émile Zola

  “ It is a crime to lie to the public ”   o in the Cimitière Montmartre Sir Roger found one of his heroes. Émile Zola That is to say, he found the memorial. He (Zola that is) is interred at the Panthéon. Why a hero? Amongst his many...

Delaying the Economic Apocalypse

  Who ultimately pays?   ir Roger is not an economist. He is (therefore) not a marxist. Nevertheless he has long been confused and at the same time fascinated by the doctrine of endless economic growth and has wondered from where and how,...

Black Breath of the Nazgûl

AKA Phillip Ruddock  AKA 'Dock Vader How dare ordinary 'people' have "views!"    sked on Southern Cross radio whether the case was a mess, he replied: "No, what I think has happened is that people who have views about the nature of the law are...

Costello and Iran

Peter Costello reaching out to his future subjects Our loyal visitors,   anting to know how to react to Peter Costello’s decision to disappear up his own arse at long last, may have been waiting with bated breath to hear Sir Roger’s wisdom on...

The Whoredom of Philip Ruddock

An Unfinished Canvas hey had, as it seemed, unending life, yet life became unendurable to them… Between rim and robe naught was there to see, save only a deadly gleam of eyes… And they became forever invisible and they entered...

Just a couple of questions…

  We have just a couple of questions. One older; one new   Firstly... Some economists get paid a lot, we assume, at least the “guru”-type ones who appear on television and write books. What do they get paid for exactly?  To divine the future, supposedly,...

Rights of Man

Magna Carta 15 June 1215 e know where we stand on a Bill of Rights and we could argue for it but we don’t think we need to any more. John Howard has argued against it and that’s just about enough for us. The little shit has been so wrong about...

Happily, No

  To the – what, 12-year-old? – spammer who wrote: Hey forum members I just became a member of this forum (Great work by the admin, mods and seriously every member around.) [etc. spam spam spam and spam etc…]" we’d just like to say: No, you...

Cronnultural Promotion

Sydney Cultural Promotion Takes Off With a Bang 16 October, 2006   16 October, 2006 – The Promotional Campaign for this year’s annual Cultural Respect Classes has taken off with a bang in Sydney, beginning at Manly and Maroubra beaches. 13 people were allegedly...

Not a Civil Society Just Yet

    e have a new hero at Values Australia (no, not Manning Clark). His name is Julian Burnside QC. Not that we didn’t respect him before and agree with him and all like that. But, well…see it’s like this: We got an mp3 player, for the train or...

It’s Time, Mick

after Mr FishIt's Time t’s time for Mick Keelty to resign. Or be sacked. Either way, he has to go: A senior counter-terrorism officer with the Australian Federal Police has testified that police were directed to charge “as many...

Guantánamo Career Suicide

 Guantánamo Policy Chief Pulls Plug on Career: Spills Government Beans in Radio Interview     eputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Guantánamo Policy, Charles “Cully” Stimson, resigned following uproar over a 12 January interview on...

Kev’s Massive Package

  It takes Balls to Punish the Jobless   he thing about the unemployed is that, well, they’re powerless; or rather, they’re disempowered, particularly by the feeling of being unemployed in a culture in which what you do, not to mention...

Jefferson Says

  We the People   homas Jefferson was the third President of the United States, a man of the Enlightenment, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, one of the most influential Founding Fathers, who envisioned America as...

Bertrand Russell & The Life of Brian

    Bertrand Russell’s grandmother’s favourite Bible verse was this: Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil.” (Exodus 23:2) We can think of a lot of people we would like to see taking that to heart. The ones with special vests and...

It’s Madeleine Albright

Stop us if you’ve head this one…   arly in his term as Prime Minister, John Howard went to Washington for a meeting with Bill Clinton. After a private dinner, Bill says to Howard, “Well John, I don’t know what you think of the members of your...

Just a Question

   When menace lurks behind every door    f the Israelis approached civilian craft in international waters with the intention to – and in fact did – board, take control of and then tow, or with armed force cause, those craft to land in an...

What is Arpa Narpa Narp?

A guide to Federal Electioneering     Q: What is “Arpa Narpa Narp“?   Where everyone’s bills are going, according to folksy, down with the biddies, Tony Abbott today.  Strangely enough Sir Roger don’t recall his bills ever going...

Pardon Us – We Missed the Logic

We’re just a bit confused    r Haneef has been charged with recklessly providing resources to a terrorist organisation (to wit, a sim card). The alleged recklessness occurred in the UK. It did not take place in Australia. There is no...

You Are a Threat to US Security

Boulleda HadjIf you can use a computer, you are a threat to the United States    elissa Hoffer is one of those lawyers intentionally slandered in January by Charles Stimson, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, the subject of our...

Kevin Andrews: Farewell

& Good Riddance So, great news this week in Australian politics!   At least and at last some of the scum has begun oozing out under the parliamentary doors. Important slime in this case. But why is it that the "Father Of the House" is always the worst of the...

The SIEV X-Factor

“A Certain Maritime Incident”   ichard Fidler interviewed  Tony Kevin on ABC's Conversation Hour  last week. Tony Kevin is an activist who was one of the driving forces behind the campaign to uncover, and especially to tell, the truth about...

Assange – Wanted: Dead or Dead

  "Why wasn’t Assange garroted years ago?"   ir Roger had thought that there was a limited number of people who had urged or advocated the murder/assassination/execution of Wikileaks’ Julian Assange. Two people had stood out particularly...

Scott Morrison’s Ghastly Apparition

  Auschwitz in the morning    ir Roger is having a short break from the hard work of watching his serfs tiling the fields, shaving the sheep and milking the bulls or whatever they do. He has tried to fit in some self-improving rest and recreation...

The Undertaker’s Tally

  Son of Leo Strauss   n his extraordinary article, The Undertaker’s Tally, Roger Morris1 chillingly, and deeply disturbingly, lifts the veil on the life, times and evil mind of the real Donald Rumsfeld. Morris begins with Rumsfeld’s...

Ordinary Australians Lose Automatic Citizenship

Ordinary Australians are terrified by a new test the Australian Government is planning to introduce.

Drool Britannia

Unemployed Man Weds Fashion Accessory Buyer oday we celebrate the marriage of an unemployed¹ man, the son of a barking madman and a kindergarten teacher, to a fashion accessory buyer, the daughter of a flight attendant and a...

Roll up! Roll up! The Circus is in Town!

The clown car on the road to hell   es, folks! The circus is in town and the Clown Car is in the Big Top. Watch HeeHaw Howard being punished for dragging out the election date and spraying the crowd with endless government advertising. See...

Denying Gay Marriage for Power’s Sake

Sir Roger does not wish to marry a man but . . .   o put it another way, while Sir Roger and Dorothy have many good friends in common, Dorothy and Sir Roger are not Facebook buddies. And Sir Roger does not think that his personal preference...

0 Comments