I want to burp the world

Todays crop o’ unsolicited solicitations for colleges for ye older critter arrived in the mail.

I was sitting here, minding my own business — well my characters’ business, like a voyaristic old woman perched atop the chair peering down at people who actually have a life — and I heard the boy mutter “Alternately, I could give its bottle and take it walkies.”

Looking up, I said “WHAT?”

He wordlessly handed me an envelope from Clark University. On the right side, some bright bulb imprinted “Challenge convention; change our world.”

Was there ever a time where this sort of disjointed halmark sentiment appealed to anyone? Did it ever appeal to college-bound people? If it does I’m scared, really.

Let’s take the thing at face value, okay? Come on, indulge me.

When I was growing up — no, wait — when I became conscious that I was growing up in the early seventies, this sentence was everywhere “You’re going to change the world”; “We’re changing the world”;”Changing the world a person at a time.”

To a certain extent this could then be uttered without irony. To a certain extent. Remember, these were the days when our own state department thought the command economy of the old USSR was viable. So, it was all a matter of a bright lad in the department for changing the world hitting on the right idea and saying “Here, here is where the change starts. We’ll have our five year plan for world changing widgets.”

And yet, even then, the young Sarah — a little girl who used to sit in a corner, sullenly glaring at the adults who said this sort of thing — used to wonder “okay. Change the world into WHAT? why doesn’t anyone say THAT? Why is changing the world a value? There are lots of worse ways it could be. Imagine no atmosphere…”

But now, in the early twenty first, when we know a little more about chaotic systems and that whatever else the world is, it is that, why are they printing this slogan on college envelopes. “Change our world” — okay, but how? Into what? And what does it mean?

Now granted they have found the magical “change your world for the better” wand. WHAT the heck does this have to do with “Challenge convention”? What convention? Scientific? Mathematical?

No, of course, what they mean by “convention” is that we should challenge social norms.

Now, bear in mind this is on a college letterhead. Doubtless the bright bulb who came up with this felt very brazen and very with it, and altogether po-mo in identifying their college with challenging social norms, but I ask you… when you want to challenge convention, where do you look? Do you look to a socially stratified institution, rigidly held together by shared opinions and beliefs? If you want to come up with the sort of (Do they still call it “out of the box”) unconventional thinking that would change any significant aspect of “the world” for better or for worse, would you go to college to learn to do it? Or do you go to college so you have proper papers certifying your world-changing abilities?

Gah. The more I think about it the more confused I get. It’s like all those teenagers dressing and behaving in an unconventional manner, just like every other unconventional teenager!

Perhaps I’m just too old. But at any rate, I’m gratified by the boy’s cynical offer to change the world, give it a bottle and take it walkies.

As for me, I’d like to teach the world to burp, in perfect harmony.