A Choice

Hi everybody and welcome to my blog,

It is still uncertain whether or not I will use this blog continuously to spill my thoughts, however it has become apparent to me recently that I do have many thoughts to spill. I find myself sitting in my backyard for hours on end just staring and thinking. The topics are endless. Anyways, let me explain myself.

I am 20 years old and I have just finished a Bachelor of Science with a double major in Pure Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at the University of Western Australia. I am doing Honours in Pure Maths next year (2010). It is a very lovely university and is said to teach the “most intelligent of students in Western Australia”. Well, if intelligence can be suitably quantified by a TER then perhaps, but otherwise I have been bitterly disappointed.

Please don’t get me wrong, I am not having a go at the students of UWA, I am rather ripping into my own expectations. For you see, when I was young I was always rather gifted intellectually yet I still had an amazing capacity for social interaction. In high school, I fell in with the wrong group (in the eyes of the education system) and made many mistakes. I found myself drinking alcohol at the young age of 14 years old and walking the streets at night in groups. I fell in love with almost every girl I ever befriended, which was always a problem for me. I did a lot of things back then that most people find themselves doing at the age of 19.

The people who were close to me at the time started to do new things, forbidden things. Their lives began to fall apart completely, and I would watch in sorrow as they traded the remains of their dignity for portions of pleasure. It was frustrating because I felt like I was the only one who could see it. So at the age of 15 years old, I started to refuse drinks. I ceased going out with my friends, and turned my attention to my studies.

I became interested in mathematics and physics.  I devoted a lot of my time to my study and ended up doing exceptionally in my TER. The most important thing that I developed during my later high school years was a clear sense of choice and individualism, the most important thing to me in the world. The ability to say no, where most would say yes. I cherished this gift. I felt that if, as a teenager, I could say no to alcohol that which epitomised teenage society, I could make my own choices in any situation. As a result, I started to question peoples actions directly to their face. I would start to pick up patterns in people’s behaviour that they wouldn’t be able to see at all.

I found my fellow teenagers to be very much like computers – they could only do what they had been programmed to do. Humans are generally more capable than computers, as we have a concept of self, the ability to step out of the system we are in and examine it from the outside. A computer can not do this. I lost many friends as a result of heated arguments regarding morality. I had a sense of righteousness which I needed to express, but nobody would have any of it. I do not blame them, the same way I do not blame computers for not being able to construct proofs to unsolved mathematical problems.

I was, at the young age of 18, an extremely lonely teenager. Although I had (and still do) a very beautiful and wonderful girlfriend, I would find myself disconnected from my fellow university students. They had been stuck at study desks for the past few years and had clearly developed an idea of what they called “expression and freedom”, or even sometimes “liberation”. But these were ideas which I had got out of my system years ago.

This is the reason I was so disappointed when I first arrived at university, I suppose I had expected a Utopian society of intellectuals. I just wanted people to talk to. I had instead found people who had dived head first into Hedonism upon first opportunity. It still makes me sad, the dance of the wild boys and broken girls continues forever. I used to try to talk to people about it, but they would not listen. Why should they? I never did when I was 14, I was scared out of the system by seeing the damage it did to my friends. And now that I am seeing alcohol and drugs wage war on an entire student body of a university I am more scared than ever.

The hardest thing is that I have no argument. I literally do not. I would ask “So why do you have to get drunk every week?” and I would also get the same answers: “To relax”, “To have fun”, “To be more confident” etc. Well, how can I argue with that? It’s a personal choice, and as long as it doesn’t infringe upon the freedoms of individuals there is nothing that can be said about it. I have simply taken the lonely road on this one.

Anyways, I actually have met some really nice people at university. I was just a bit shocked about the whole thing when I first got here 3 years ago. I don’t even bring the issue up anymore. Seriously. It’s other people who bring the issue up. People are still surprised when I say I don’t drink, and haven’t since 2004. Men actually laugh at me sometimes, and make disparaging remarks about my choices. I laugh with them. Sorrowful sympathetic laughs.

Anyways, that is enough for today. It’s just an issue that’s close to me, and I thought I would share it. It is not a common belief, and it scares people. It scares me even more.

Adrian.