23 April 2008

post-college revelation

I am amazed at the disparity of world knowledge amongst my coworkers. Some people are completely ignorant to anything outside of hunting and strip clubs, yet some are better informed than most people I know. I'm beginning to understand that the blue-collar environment is more closely related to the happenings on Capitol Hill than I previously thought. I think the people in blue-collar industry have a lot riding on politics. That is where you find unions, lobbying, and industries regulated by many federal agencies (the EPA for one); jobs that heavily reflect the decisions made in the political arena. Coming from the Pacific Northwest, we were less concerned with the federal issues, but I do remember the loggers, mill workers, fishermen and farmers discussing the latest in local politics. And then in college, students seemed very radical and issue-intense at every level of legislation (federal down to new university rules), often overlooking the big picture--as many college kids with dellusions of untouchability often do (but in college you can get away with that)--while the professors were always more concerned with how issues outside of their immediate life would affect them.

I never thought that college kids could be so narrowminded, especially about themselves. Experience and wisdom trump enthusiasm and ignorance. Too bad I didn't figure this out in college.

2 comments:

Robbie said...

But is it really the college kids who are narrow minded? It seems to me that the blue collar crowd in this senario are the narrow minded ones because they are only concerned with policies that affect them directly. While it is true that the college kids don't understand the real world implications of the policies they so passionatly support I don't think that shows narrow mindedness rather a very broad mindedness (yes I can do that). That broad mindedness lacks the depth necessary to truly understand the policies. It really come back to the fact that in college we have no real world experiences to ground our views in policy or other such agendas.

It is kind of a catch 22 because you only come to this realization after college. You can't come to it if you skip college, and you can't come to it while you are in college due to the lack of experience. So really it is impossible to gain wisdom while still in school, but school is a necessary step to obtaining that wisdom.

jared davidavich said...

robbie-
well stated

and an addition...

college kids are of the narrow mind in this instance because they are [mainly] focused on one central or a very few interdependent issues, whereas blue collar workers, their actual depth of knowledge in general politics aside, look for the bigger picture. the blue collar workers are often ignorant to the broad implications of specific policies outside of themselves, but i was referring to the college kids ignorance to broad issues' affect on their person; so young [college] kids and older, [blue collar] workers flip-flop on their ingnorance and wisdom/enthusiam.