{"id":585,"date":"2004-12-22T11:12:00","date_gmt":"2004-12-22T11:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/2004\/12\/22\/585\/"},"modified":"2004-12-22T11:12:00","modified_gmt":"2004-12-22T11:12:00","slug":"585","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/?p=585","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Every now and then I do a search on one of those big web engines to see how many eternal students there are out there. The results show there to be quite a few. There\u2019s more than one blogger who claims to be \u201cTHE<\/span> Eternal Student\u201d (I myself only claim to be \u201cAN<\/span> Eternal Student\u201d; but then again, humility is the virtue that dare not speak its name, so I\u2019m not being humble here). And there are a whole lot of other folk who refer to themselves in a less formal manner as eternal students (including someone on suicidegirls.com, a porno site disguised as a blog; I\u2019m sure all you guys are now punching that URL into your browsers). I\u2019m glad that the eternal student idea is popular, even in the darker corners of cyberspace.<\/p>\n

Most of the \u201ceternal students\u201d out there on the web are young grad students who are probably being ribbed by their career-conscious friends for staying in school so long. Eventually, I\u2019m sure they will all graduate and start their professional careers with business or a university or the government, and their need for witty self-defensiveness will vanish. Then there are other folk like me who are well into their working lives, but doggedly hold on to their intellectual curiosity despite the fact that it does your career absolutely no good. In the aggressive world that we live in, clever and slick do much better than wise and understanding. It\u2019s not what you know, it\u2019s how you spin it and distort it, so as to bring in the bucks. Don\u2019t fall in love with the truth if you want to live a comfortable, decent life on this planet.<\/p>\n

Still, there are people who get through a typical career of spinning and distorting without losing their desire to cuddle up with the truth before they die. Here in the US, about the best you can do is to buy some DVD lectures from Great Courses. Forget about going back to college, because that\u2019s become a place for instructing the young in the art of spinning and distorting (or performing research funded by the military and business \u2013 i.e., more spinning and distorting). But in Asia, they\u2019re now setting up university-like places just for old fogies, places where there might be more time to explore truth and wisdom. I just saw an article about \u201cuniversities for the elderly\u201d on the web site belonging to the International Pan-Pacific South East Asia Women\u2019s Association<\/span>, or PPSEAWA for short.<\/p>\n

PPSEAWA is a horrible acronym, but the organization itself seems quite worth while. It\u2019s one of those international non-profit things with ties to the United Nations, having lofty goals like \u201cpromoting peace through understanding and friendship.\u201d Well, at least PPSEAWA has a nice web site, with lots of valuable information and positive messages. So, it\u2019s not surprising that PPSEAWA became interested in places where \u201ceternal students\u201d can go in their old age. It\u2019s too bad that all of these \u201cold schools\u201d are in Asia. Maybe there is something to the myth that Asians possess greater wisdom than we westerners do, especially with regard to the aged. I certainly hope that the elderly university movement<\/span> finds its way to the States. For now, you can check out this article about \u201ctrue eternal students\u201d at www.ppseawa.org\/Bulletin\/99Aug\/students.html.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every now and then I do a search on one of those big web engines to see how many eternal students there are out there. The results show there to be quite a few. There\u2019s more than one blogger who claims to be \u201cTHE Eternal Student\u201d (I myself only claim to be \u201cAN Eternal Student\u201d; […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}