On the Wings of Hope: Prose (Recognized)

Education

Education... what a strange word! A formation of all imaginable images in human minds and souls. An ideal system of formation of the man sleeping, the man unreasonable, the man unwise, the man full of useless information. Oh, if only information could somehow compensate for the absence of reason!

You still perfectly remember those school days, right? You felt yourself such a clever one, such erudite, so understanding and so quickly learning. From the earliest age you already knew that twice two is strictly and by all means four and four only; that no more than three spatial dimensions do exist, and space is both linear and homogeneously; that a man is a successor of a monkey; that no speed is greater than the velocity of light; that modern mankind is millions of years in its age; that people don't and never did live considerably more than one century; that a man is a being with no wings and thus cannot fly; that your mother Earth is the only and unique living planet among entire boundless space... All this and so much more has been made your only truth, an axiom, a new picture of the world if you desire. But not at once... the operation lasted for many years.

All in all, you, probably, still remember, how surprising and full of great secrets the world seemed to you when you were just a small child? And every day brought with itself a new wonderful discovery. Now you have seen a pigeon, gradually pacing on a roadway and tried to pursue it, but he, certainly, has soared in time into the sky, where the way to you was closed; now you have noticed an incredibly beautiful and unforgettable flower on a lawn, which didn't have a name by that time, and have been inhaling its aroma for a while with a blissful smile on your face; now a butterfly landed directly on your nose as if you were a flower yourself; now you overheard a singing of birdies in wood branches for the first time in your life; now all of a sudden some strange drops poured down from a sky, and wetted you from feet to a head; now a sun looked out as suddenly and started shining directly in your face, as though tickling you with its rays; now you have found some sonorously ringing streamlet and began sailing self-made branches-ships; here and now you are running on a green grass, clapping and joyfully shouting in happiness...

Forget about that all! Your world is so much different now... Educated, verified, measured, lined, predictable, stable. Your world is dead now. Yes, you perfectly feel why that is so – you have become too educated. Your inner live world has been destroyed for many years...

You have been told of the "facts", invented by your science, but they kept silence of the fact, that they completely contradict each other in their general set. You have been forced to learn by heart formulations of thousand and one "natural law", yet they never mentioned that all these laws are in fact no more than the theories created by same scientists of sad origin, so close to the mood of yours at present.

Your silent and once quiet mind was overloaded with whole armfuls of thick textbooks with completely useless and unnecessary information, and then they made you spit it out back over and over again, like undigested remains of food... is that the way to learn the calmness of mind then?

You were tormented by endless mathematical formulas, for they asserted that mathematics is the queen of sciences, and for now you diligently day after day use received abilities for the calculation of own profit. One thousand and once more you have overheard something like "That's impossible!" or "Stop telling us nonsense!" – and since that time they have smeared all your imagination over a wall of their own whim. Time and again did they reward you with these "terrible" points and marks, looking into your eyes with a reproach, and thus lowered your self-respect over a plinth – as if a man was unworthy of their highest attention unless he has learned to vomit back all these facts for an excellent mark!

All this did not happen at once. Injection after the injection, fact behind the fact, formula next to a formula, law following a law, but they have finally painted their own picture of a world for you to consume, which in turn has been offered to them by others before – and under the pressure of their public authority you had no more willing to refuse. Your carefree and cheerful childhood has sunk into oblivion, and the epoch of education took its place. You resisted and cried out at first, feeling how the poison of unification streams through invisible veins of your soul, you tried to escape from these tenacious paws of dead pictures of the world and imagined laws, but the system has finally prevailed nevertheless. It has formatted and educated you for its own sake, it has filled your mind with stamps and cliché, and made your soul an indifferent observer of own miniature death, it has made you almost ideal mechanism-robot, perfectly capable to carry out his "social mission", imposed by lying politicians and mass media. Since that time you have ceased to fully feel, ceased to really rejoice, you have actually ceased to live. A false world picture has made its dirty affair, and has given you substitutes of the lost joy of innocence in turn... has given you alcohol, drugs, safe sex...

You were a unique creation of God, unrepeatable, unsurpassed, never demanding comparison with others, – but have become one of many. You have educated. Now you have an unloved monotonous work, a respectability, and that head of yours contains one thousand and one fact of what actually this world is, that particular one in which you are slowly dying for now. Yes, maybe for now you know the name of that lovely butterfly that sat down on your nose so carefree in your childhood; you remember the pronunciation of the flower, which has inspired you so greatly once; you can teach your son of the types of chemical reactions occurring on the sun that once caressed your face; and pigeons tend to cause only loathing and fear for now when they are stupidly flying over your head. You believe that you have learned this world and have nothing more to be surprised about, for there is one thousand and one answer and explanation in your possession of why something is occurring so, and not differently...

But do wonder, do ask yourself even for an instant, whether you feel yourself easier from all this gathered cargo of your illusory knowledge, whether you feel happier and more cheerful than once so long ago in a half-forgotten childhood... And if you don't... maybe something is terribly wrong with that new picture of the world of yours?

Yes, they desired a better way. Indeed, they have themselves become victims in this system of formatting souls of humans. Truly, they had no idea what they were doing. Will you be able to break this vicious circle with your own life? And are you capable to create as a master your new – solar and bright – picture of the world?