I’m frustrated, quite frustrated to be specific. I’ve just had it with this world and I’ll tell you exactly why. When you know me, you know that I’m all about arts, music, culture and people. Those things matter to me, those things define me. I, of course, understand that there are people in this world who don’t work that way. Yes, I see clearly that there are people who care more about economics and politics. I don’t mind, I understand – there should be a difference in these things. In my opinion, economics and politics are just as important as cultural aspects like art or music.

But here’s the problem: apparently the amount of people who are interested in economics and politics is far bigger than the amount of cultural people like me. This shouldn’t be a problem, if each of these two groups would keep their interests to themselves. But this world isn’t a fairytale and the economics and politics-group, to generalize, doesn’t like to keep their visions to themselves. Even worse: these people are the people who rule the world. The people who rule the school systems and the exams, the people in the government, the minister of education.

They have the power to make everyone do what they want them to do. The economics and politics-group believes that economics and politics are all that matter in this world and that cultural aspects are just details that can be fun but are absolutely not necessary for survival. Therefore these mighty people with their love for economics and politics try to ban out cultural aspects as much as possible and make the only thing that matters economics and politics. ‘Because these subjects are really useful! That’s what you need in life, right? You can’t use Van Gogh’s Starry Night to solve big money problems, so why study it? Knownledge should be useful!’ But what happened to know something, just because that makes you a better person? What happened to knowing something without knowing for sure that you’ll ever use that knowledge. What happened to knowing just because of the knowing?

According the economics and politics people there is no such thing as ‘knowing just because of the knowing’, and knowledge should, at all times, be useful. And that’s where we get to the centre of this blogpost. I’ve had more than enough of useful knowledge. And I’ll tell you exactly why.

I’m the cultural person so I picked cultural subjects like history, geography, music and arts. I was hoping to limit the amount of economics and politics by picking these subjects, and, until now, I succeeded. History was about the Romans and Greek, about philosophers and religions, it was about the Middle Ages and Chinese dynasties. Geography was about volcanoes and earthquakes, about deserts and rain. I talked about Chopin and Van Gogh, enjoyed conversations on the early Baroque artists and dreamt about visiting Greece once. These were the lovely two years before senior year.

But then senior year arrived. It showed us what we had to learn for the central exam, the exam that every student in Holland should take. Every history student in Holland has to take the same history exam and the same geography exam. I had my hopes up: China, maybe, or the Romans! Could it be about volcanoes or waterfalls? I looked forward to having the time to study these subjects deeper than I ever did and pass the exams gloriously. But my dreams ended when I saw the actual subjects:

For history: Vietnamese history. Short for: communism, modern history, war, politics and economics. Oh and the Republic and it’s Golden Age. But not about Rembrandt or music of that time, no, ‘t was all about why the Republic got só successful. Short for? More politics, economics and modern capitalism.
And then geography: No volcanoes or waterfalls but East-Asia. And not about the whole geological wonderfulness of that piece of land, no, all they could talk about was import allowances, Newly Industrializing Countries, Asian Tigers and industries.

Seriously, world? Can you sink any deeper than this? I’m disappointed, I’ve lost my faith in you. Where did the ages go when man was successful when he knew a lot, and not when he had a lot of money? Where is the uomo universalis that knew all about arts and physics? I guess the financial crisis-creating-man has driven it away.

But I’m not giving up. I’m going to be the new Leonardo DaVinci. I won’t give in to make-a-lot-of-money-FAST but I’ll study my ass of on subjects like Chinese history or Greek arts. I want to have a lot of knowledge just because of the knowledge and I refuse to believe that ‘knowledge should be useful’-thing. I will know all there is to know and I won’t care about the latest financial news, the war in Afghanistan or why Balkenende didn’t become EU president. I will ignore these economics and politics people with their useful world and live my own, absolutely not-useful, but yet the best, life there is.

[I'm sorry for all the people who feel offended or see themselves as an economics and politics person. I'm a Christian, I don't hate you (:]