I got a fortune cookie once,
with the following text:

"If you do the same things you've always done,
you will get the same things you've always got"

This is trivial and almost silly when applied to an individual,
but it becomes something else when applied to generations.

As laws of the Universe have it, all the bad things that are up in the air,
will occur, unless we stand up and prevent them.

If there is no one to prevent Nuclear War,
there will be nothing to stop a moron from starting one.

If you leave it up to the politicians,
they'll impose sanctions all right, but 30 years late.

You see, we did the same things we've always done,
and we got the same things we've always been getting.

Even though, war this day and age,
is absolutely the dumbest $%#$%(@ thing in the world.

It still happened,
because of the ghouls that still live in the past.

There is only one lesson to learn,
building path through real education and towards intellectual independence.

There are too many things left unsaid, between generations,
there isn't enough class in the universe to prevent that silence from eventually being broken.

Do not do things that prevent you from having,
a happy future that is worthy of you.

It is easy not to set a foot in the bar,
but it is not so easy to stand up for real education with real and profound results.

Without learning for real,
we will cut ourselves off from anything between creativity all the way up to being able to afford medical care.

If all we do is get good grades without learning for real,
then as the world becomes more entangled by repeating stupid old mistakes we will come closer and closer to extreme poverty.

Without a powerful body of knowledge built across an entire lifetime,
one that cannot be conjured up in the last minute by cramming, we will get looped around in a mad circle.

Without real education,
there will be nowhere to go, but straight to the beginning... of the previous century.

If politicians were able to help,
you would be equipped with a Universal Income card that would make your parents green with envy.

And a clunky but fantastic and privacy respecting gadget,
that will lead you through world's most bellowed modern non-fiction.

Don't, let, anybody, to, mess, with, your, education,
not politicians, not teachers, and especially not parents.

You are in a very weird position now,
because High School is pretending to teach you.

While doing an outstanding job convincing you,
that their horse shit curricula add-up, to make you knowledgeable.

And what you need to do, is start learning in a school you create for yourself,
which will make your fake-school grades take a permanent nose-dive.

I hope I am wrong, but I suspect that if you start learning for real in High School,
your standardized grades will be so bad you will have to repeat the last year.

You will have to take the school you've built for yourself,
and turn it in a school that others can learn from, for real.

Now listen carefully, politicians will not help you,
because they know exactly how little it would take for you to become smarter than they are.

Do not merely ignore the people pushing you away from making your life and this world beautiful,
listen to them VERY carefully, and neither forget who they are, nor let them get under your skin.

Kurt Vonnegut captures the situation that you have to prevent from occurring in one of his precious quotes,
"True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country."

Don't look back, fight to make your way, towards intellectual independence,
towards knowledge, wisdom, and your greatness.

What follows is a very tiny list of interesting people,
maybe you can find something of interest here.

Remember, a great part of the meaning of life,
is found in becoming a great being.

• Plato
• Aristotle
• Baruch Spinoza
• David Hume
• Immanuel Kant
• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
• Soren Kierkegaard
• Friedrich Nietzsche
• John Dewey
• Greta Thunberg
• Michelle Alexander
• Sir Ken Robinson
• Astra Taylor
• Avital Ronell
• Martha Nussbaum
• Jill Tarter
• Brené Brown
• Richard Dawkins
• Ayaan Hirsi Ali
• Ayn Rand
• Lord Martin Rees
• Daniel Dennett
• Sam Harris
• Christopher Hitchens
• Bill Bryson
• PZ Myers
• Alex Filippenko
• Seth Shostak
• Sean Carroll
• Jared Diamond
• Howard Zinn
• Noam Chomsky
• Philip Zimbardo

...and,
a couple of philosophy books:

• The Giants of Philosophy
• The Story of Philosophy, The Lives and Opinions of the Greater Philosophers