Fabien Benetou's PIM
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I sincerely thank you for the time during which you honestly tried to help me. Our discussions were, to me at least, interesting and were the occasions of an exchange. I think I learned quite a lot from them. If you do not have time, I simply refuse to have my diploma, you do not have to read further if you do not want to know why, you can even think it is lazyness.
But everybody wants you to be just like them.
Bob Dylan
It all started several years ago when all my friends passed their driving test. Actually maybe not, it started even before, when all my friends had their first communion. I can't remember precisely, but I would say that a vast majority had it done. I was studying in a private catholic school. The reason ? Presents. Some did it by faith but most did it for the faith in presents, such an innocent form of materialistic greed. I had the choice to do it too, and I was almost echoing what all my peers did before me. Still something was not quite connecting in my brain. The coherence of the whole system I was going to play allegiance too, consisted in saying publicly that I was a believer and thus that i was understanding it fully. Determined by those two facts I simply decide not to follow the crowd. When you believe in something you do not need gifts to do it, but accepting gifts to bend your will you surrender to a consumerist system. Doing it for something you do not even believe in would mean walking in life on my knees. You can have your first communion anytime in life but you can not renounce it. You have to live it to experience how it feels.
Questioning the behavior of peers is not something you do openly and easily, whatever your age. Still, regarding my analysis of the situation, no matter how poor it was then, and the simple gut feeling I had comparing my possible course of actions and my values, my moral system... I could not do it. I had to face it and refuse what personally seems to me as fundamentally wrong. Years later I, when I was around 16, everybody started to focus on their new God: the car. In order to drive a car fashionable enough to impress your peers, you need a license. This driving license is somehow for youngsters what opens them the doors of adulthood, not diploma, not having an income, not wisdom but a car. Anyway they all gradually passed their driving test license and were able to drive, thus gaining freedom and adulthood at the same time. Looking back, it didnt appear to fundamentaly change their lives but at least, they felt free. They felt free to go anywhere they wanted but... nevertheless they always chose the same roads.
The question was once again: do I really need it? what will it lead to?
There are very few things that have a benefit with no price behind, and even if i dont know any I guess they could exist. What does having a car entitled to you mean? To go anywhere you want ! Well, wherever there is a road and just if you have a gas tank big enough to drive through. Transporting friends and large heavy objects easily! Well, even if I do not know precise statistics, I can bet that at least 80% of all car use today are made by one person with just a handbag as a "large object" (just look through your window and count). Being able to go to work and earn money! Well, once again I guess at least 80% of the routes made could be done using either public transportation or another less consuming device. But above all, a car does not entitle you to freedom, it entitles you to servitude. You put your finger in a mechanism you can not even grasp, at least at such an early age. A car is a keystone in the consumerist system. Having a driving license means you will probably have a car (else why even bother to pay for it with your money and your never ever refunding time!).
already did that before, changed my life (driving license)
living by/embodying my ideal, not by the ideals of others I know most people will not understand my decision or actually fully understand it but reject it as a valid choice. This is why they will live they life and I will live mine.
People should not feel threatened in any way even if my action questions their lifestyle. My life is mine, their life is theirs.(Meus mihi, suus cuique est carus. Plautus, Captivi 400)((The one who is) mine is dear to me, (the one who is) another’s is dear to him/her.) (check on: http://www.righthandpointing.com/latin/?m=200601) If I do not live my ideals, my values or, more simply, my vision of life, if I live the ideal life of someone else, who's life am I experiencing? I prefer to die young thinking "I fucked up my life ... but at least it was my life, I tried " rather than diying at a very old age blattering " I did everything perfectly, I did as other told me and sometimes as I thought was correct, and still... where had my life gone?".
I have just one life and it is this one
"I dont want to loose my time talking to people with no PhD" Paola's friend professor (who spoke is actually that old fart of my adviser...) bias of judgement that is socially negative but also for the person having the bias a very limitating view (truc pr cacher les yeux des chevaux)
by refusing to have a diploma the only proof of "my value" will be what I have done, not what a paper says I could potentially do (like a political program). This will push me to constantly realize better projects and build on top of each other, always evolving and looking for new opportunities in new grounds.
we like the river go with the easiest path, I think being used to, on a daily basis (power of habits), not taking decisions but above all not deciding the must above goal (in any form of institution, being public or private, for profit or not-for profit, you refer to a hierarchy validating your decision and setting your objective) is a very dangerous position, you forfeit your freedom. In a time of faster and faster evolution of our environment this provide a fundamental flaw.
then why should I loose precious time in the first place by this very principle people you miss your life
why did I also did NOT follow to my wise father ? my extremely well educated counselor ?
Because they are NOT what I am aiming at ! You do not ask real estate counseling to an homeless person in the street.
They are probably proefficient and good at what they do but is it really relevant to what I want to do ?
Maybe they spent their time thinking that tomorrow they would do this or that, in the end they are what they are today.
It is a crash course on risk taking, a key skill
It is always possible to get another diploma later, cancelling one never
Molecular Visualizations of DNA by the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research Even with those incredible visuals, I guess I would still have missed it when I was at school it's only based on motivation and "just do it" ... I think school really makes us more servant/docile/fragile/expecting rather than independant/strong/self-learners (cf Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky, 2002, page236 : "if he got a C in a course, nobody cared, but if he went to school three minutes late he was sent to the principal's office -and that generalized. He realized that what it meant is, what's valued here is the ability to work on an assembly line, even if it's an intellectual assembly line").
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth; Then took the other, as just as fair And having perhaps the better claim, Because it was grassy and wanted wear; Though as for that, the passing there Had worn them really about the same, And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: two roads diverged in a wood, and I -- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.
The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost