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My ex-wife Amanda used to cut her own hair. But occasionally she’d have her hair done by a professional. She referred to this as having her hair cut by a “real person”? and she’d sometimes say things like: “I really like having my hair cut by a real person.”?

The term caught.

Years after Amanda and I separated, I started using the term “real person”? more broadly. In graduate school, for example, I referred to anyone who was done with school and had a “real”? job as a “real person.”?

But in my mind, being a “real person”? wasn’t just about having a respectable job, it was about . . .

The End of Stepping Stones

So many of us live “stepping stone lives.”? We spend the majority of our waking hours working for goals that are merely stepping stones to other goals. For example:

• We do well in high school so we can get into a good college.
• We do well in college so we can get hired by a good company (or get into a good graduate school).
• We do well at our jobs so we can get even better jobs and make more money.
• We join committees to pad our resumes or impress our bosses.

(Question: what would your life be like if you cut out all the stepping stones?)

So anyway, a few years ago I referred to anyone done with a formal education (who was working full-time) as “a real person.”?

In my mind . . .

• Real people get up between 5 and 7am and go to work on weekdays
• Real people have the weekends off
• Real people own property
• Real people are grown ups
• Real people aren’t what their former selves wanted to be when they grew up
• Real people are married (to other real people) and tend to have children
• Real people don’t get to take a lot of chances
• Real people do not take mini-retirements or engage in long-term travel
• Real people have separate home lives and work lives
• Real people’s daily realities are owned by institutions (their pay, how they spend their time, and what they think abut during their most productive hours are determined by their employers).
• Real people gain legitimacy from schools, institutions, monetary income, etc.

Real people, however, most definitely do not get to . . .

Photo by Fort Photo 
[Note: This post means a lot to me.  It discusses the future of The Growing Life, and of my life.  I’d be sincerely grateful for your thoughts.]

I was home-schooled/unschooled during the 1980s. My parents yanked me from school because I resisted classroom teaching. At a very young age, I somehow knew that the schooling process was bullshit. I knew that my school existed for 100 reasons other than enriching the minds of its students. I somehow knew that my school was there to – as much as anything else – create obedient members of society and slowly habituate students to accept arbitrary rules without question. I could somehow tell that my school was in place to discourage the trouble making that often comes when children start thinking for themselves.

My un-schooling made me somewhat sensitive to . . .

The Weight of Institutionalization

Cognitive diversity is at least as threatened as biodiversity on this planet.
-Ben Dunlap

The weight of institutionalization is the burden we feel when the majority of our productive hours are aligned with an institution’s interest rather than our own. One of the great tragedies of human existence is that so many of us toil for another person, who is in turn toiling for someone else, who is working for someone else’s interest. And on and on. There are entire corporate chains of command comprised of people working for someone else’s interest rather than their own. In far too many cases, there is no there, there.

The weight of institutionalization is perhaps the reason why U.S. workers change jobs roughly every 18 months. We’re searching for another school, another job, another church, or another degree program that will accept us, validate us, engage our unique talents, and give us creative flexibility. We often bounce around in search of institutional acceptance because we cannot accept ourselves.

While many are able to find occupations that are good fits for their lifestyles and talents, there are many people with odd and/or unique combinations of gifts and talents that may never obtain a well-fitting job.Unless they create it.