Tuesday 5 November 2013

The Tests of Plato and Play-Doh

Someone brought this up in a forum, and I'm a bit amazed by it.

Some colleges are fine-tuning their questions on new applicants to the university.  You can't allow just anyone to walk in and sit through forty boring hours of Egyptian history, physical characteristics of beer, or Italian poetry.

So the new question being added is: what does play-doh have to do with Plato (that Greek thinker dude)?

You'd sit there for three minutes and imagine play-doh in one hand, and deep thought-provoking philosophy in the other hand.  It's kinda like mixing Mountain Dew and fine Scotch.  It wasn't meant to be compared.

The true answer?  Well....play-doh is used to describe the shape of things and help the person grasp shape.  Plato's entire thought process is that everything has shape....whether in true form, imaginative form, or fantasy form.  It's a shape thing.

A guy could answer this with three sentences and be done.  A guy could spend four hours and three hundred lines explaining how shapes in doh and thinking.....all meet at some point.

It's a sad state of our current society.....trying to think, ponder, and conclude vast questions in a simple format.

A guy from Bama would look over this mess and offer new questions:

What does the Grand Ole Oprey and Tom Cruise have in common?

What characteristics of the Ford F-150 pick-up lend itself to nuclear fusion?

Whats the true objective of a trucked loaded down with ball bearings and failed brakes?

What is the common point between a bunch of drunks at a honky-tonk and a bunch of drunks at a disco-dance club?

Is it better to be hit by lightning while under a tree, or on a hill, or by a septic tank?

Would it be better to sit in a house trailer of meth-heads or a house trailer of drunk Baptist ministers?

You see....the whole game to simple old-fashioned university attendance....was that after four lousy years....you left and were better able to think.  You weren't smarter.  You weren't imaginative.  You weren't gifted.  You weren't blessed.  You just had some better sense to think and ponder on some stupid subject.  Yeah, like kinda thinking of play-doh and Plato on serious projects, problems and consequences.

Our great world in 2013.

No comments: