The past few days have been filled with much thoughts. And even a test of my patience and tolerance level. But the good thing is, that I've come to realised howI'll never be able to click with highly realistic/ practical/ materialistic people. Or even highly scientific people.

To all hardcore scientists out there, I apologise.

I don't know what kind of person I am. Some of you might think I'm realistic, and some might believe that the idealism is still very much alive in me. Probably a mix of both; not extreme enough to be 100% practical and yet not 100% dreamy about life to be seeing the rainbow in everything I do.

It can be exhausting talking to highly practical people sometimes. Especially if you talk about the social sciences and the humanities, and his first question is

"But what kind of job can you get? Is there a point in studying such soft sciences at all?"

I was taken aback. Literally. To link the pursue of an education, interest, life goals with a job immediately just struck me as... too practical?

Look mister. I'm an Economics major and one who is really interested in philosophy and history and political science and think that they are really useful at looking at the world...

"So you study why there is money? What for? Isn't it taken for a fact?"

Well, no sire. There's a lot more to money that you think. Anyway, nothing guarantees you a job these days...

"Yes, Chemistry. Physics. The hard sciences. Where all the facts and truth are! I mean, like philosophers, what can they do? Interesting to study, maybe, but what can they do?"

Some people just like these stuff. I mean I do, because the world is made up of more than rational stuff. There's the irrationality and the emotions and the thought processes. And people may not end up getting a job related to what they study...

"That's exactly my point. What a waste of investment, and time and money, all these years spent in something that you are not going to use? I mean, look, you don't even need to study business to do business, but you definitely need to study sciences to be in the field."

Yes, true to an extent. But humanities allows us to look at the human in our essence, of what is good or evil, right or wrong, to understand ourselves better. Social sciences allows us to look at the world and understand it...

"Why the heck do we need to know all that? Without the sciences, there will be no world! No energy, no future! Science is the way to go for human kind."

... ... (if you could see me, I have this exasperated look, and on the verge of getting pissed off. Almost chafed would be a good term.)

I guess I have gone too far, and ventured into the science-non-science argument. But being realistic, yes, it is important to be aware of our futures and not waste time and what not. But to link everything to the job prospects and money and the likes... well, maybe it gets a bit too much on my idealism-nerve-endings.

Argh! help.

# rambled by Kenneth @ 8:54 AM