I have been posting TED talks on Sunday, but instead I want to redirect you to an article by Kristin Rawls on Killing the Buddha.
Please read Kristin’s F$%& Your Prayer, Show me Solidarity: A coming-out story in an age of predatory credit (first three paragraphs to get you reading it):
I’m going to tell you a story. It’s the story of a good girl from a quiet town who prayed, studied hard, said no to drugs, and otherwise did everything she was told—and then went on to become Sallie Mae’s bitch and lost just about everything. This story is mine.
I grew up in an evangelical home, and was an earnest “liberal-evangelical” into my early twenties. Now I think that my former religious faith—not unlike my faith in the U.S. higher education system—gave me a warped sense of optimism about the way the world works. I believed in faith-based platitudes, plus a few secular ones. Examples:
- God has a plan for my life.
- My whole future is ahead of me.
Until a few days ago, I was too ashamed to talk publicly about what happened to me. That’s when I saw Natalia Antonova’s incredibly brave piece at Alternet detailing her pending student loan default. This issue is so cloaked in shame and humiliation that many of us stay silent. Check out Natalia’s post-articleblog post if you don’t think stigma and shame are deeply intertwined with defaulting on debt out of necessity: she has been contacted by people who say they hope her lenders drive her to suicide.
I felt some kinship with Kristin (from her short bio):
Kristin Rawls has a useless MA in ethics and international relations and an even more useless one in philosophy. Her work has appeared in The Christian Science Monitor, Religion Dispatches, Bitch Magazine, Global Comment, and elsewhere online.
Her story matches up with the words of Peter Thiel on the Bubble of Education (link to my post here):
“A true bubble is when something is over-valued and intensely believed. Education may be the only thing people still believe in in the United States. To question education is really dangerous. It is the absolute taboo. It’s like telling the world there’s no Santa Claus.”
Also, I think Kristin has touched on some problems in the underlying mythological story in our contemporary world. Our present-day culture is, in terms of story, a Father that destroys or eats his own children (link to my blog post that explains this a little more). Regardless of whatever good intentions or even charitable acts come from such a system of control, it cannot be maintained because it’s ultimate purpose is not it’s own children.
Thank you to Kristin Rawls for the article. I don’t have much power, but I’ve got your back.
What do you think of Kristin’s article?
