Had to do this article analysis for Adv. Comp. Thought it was interesting.

This article focuses on the author's experience as a college student and what he learned from attending a top Ivy League university. Before he gets into the college experience though, he discusses his high school career as being one of the typical high "achieving" students who had almost perfect test scores and thus enabling him to be accepted into any Ivy League school of his choice. Going to his senior year as a college student he describes himself quite differently than his character in high school. He is burnt-out and frusterated and this is making his work suffer tremedously. His grades are just good enough to keep his dad off his back. He says he's more interested in guitar and composing music in his head than getting homework done. He became disillusioned with college. "People here are supposed to be enlightened, brilliant, etc., but this notion is bullshit, especially at 'top universities'." He believes that the Ivory Tower is not a source of truth or real creativity but of delusions. The delusions he speaks of are perhaps great "achievements". But he believes the only real thing achieved nowadays is a paper colored skin tone from 16 hours in the library so that one can beat the curve and get into graduate school or a high paying job. If people want to spend any time on social activity or just simply experience life then they are labeled as lazy and unmotivated. Another reason he lost interest is the repetitive process of college. Read, take quiz, study, take test, write paper, review, take final exam, and repeat for 4 years. In this process memorization was the main focus and it required no intelligence to do well, even in the Ivy League colleges. The professors taught just enough to make an exam and the focus wasn't ever on learning, just memorizing and meeting quotas. In summary he states that our system doesn't favor real genius but supresses it. We cling to our paychecks and grades to prove our worth. Don't fight the system and you might get by is the phrase in the minds of all the could be Beethovens and DaVincis.

I found this article incredibly interesting and almost totally correct. Prior to reading it, the idea this article presented had actually been floating around in my head for a while. Not really in organized thoughts but just random ponderings, like "Where have all the great composers gone? I mean, there is a ton of catchy music today, but where are the Beethovens and the Wagners that create masterpieces?" This article was my answer. They have been forced to conform to a society that represses creativity and true genius. They are living meaningless lives and receiving meaningless paychecks. Unlike DaVinci or Mozart, they will not leave a single trace of their existance to the future. Instead, people like Young Joc and Soulja Boy will be remembered. They create generic, overused, and stale melodies that actually become popular. And again, money is the one of the problems; they are able to keep making the same "music" because it profits, and that's what real musicians today are; money making machines. But digression is a habit of mine; it might seem that I'm following and believing everything this writer says, but on one point I disagree. In one paragraph he says, "there are so many engineers but little is invented other than techie gizmos that look cool but don't really benefit anyone." I don't believe this. Yes, in the past amazing inventions have come about and helped all of mankind, like the lightbulb and the telephone, and the car, and the boat, and before the car the wheel. These inventions were indeed epochal, but the author thinks that inventions like this aren't being created and they can if we just get past the system society has imposed upon us. Technology is a bell curve and we met the middle in history, and now we are beginning to get to the end. I think no one wants to believe it, but epochal inventions like the car aren't going to be created with such frequency as they used to. Everything has limits, even technology. Aside from that shallow opinion and lest we fall into a more severe money hording society, this article holds truth that everyone should know.


Source:
Hannibal. "The Death of All Beethnovens and the Veil of Achievement." American Nihilist Underground Society. 13 Dec. 2005. <http://anus.com/zine/articles/hannibal/beethovens/>

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