Criticism
"Be yourself," they said, as they recorded you every move, took notes upon how you were performing. "There's no pressure to be perfect."
But, when everything's recorded numerically, perfection is achievable. There is a way to earn all those points. There is a way to check all those boxes. If only you try hard enough.
"Take a break this weekend, ' they said. But returning the next week, "If you were having trouble with this, I hope you took time to practice it by yourself," they said. "This isn't difficult, if you spend enough time doing it," each and every one of them said.
They say to let your mind roam free, but where is it to roam, when it is captive to a schedule, a set of cinder block walls. When you are categorized by the numbers of a test a set of parameters, but, in many cases, the most valuable thing in this world is the ability to create something new, a gap in the economy of ideas can be created. Those with the ideas are stuck without any way to use them, and, many times, those responsible for forming such plans would be more suited for implementing them.
Society tries to quantify the intangibles of people, qualities that can't be written down with numbers. They try to interpret them through college essays. They try to read into them through interviews. But many times they can't be found but through experiencing the life of a person, understanding the way they see the world, knowing them.
We find ourselves dividing up, pigeonholing our people, our workers, our students stretching them to their limits and then not maximizing their abilities. Relying on the numbers, we make our decisions, choosing from the millions upon billions of people out there. Our society has "optimized" itself to the point where it can't care for the individuals inside it, only the numbers and categories
applied to them.
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