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I have made mistakes. When I was 16 I chose the wrong course educationally. Later I compounded my earlier mistakes by making the same mistakes again when I came to higher education. In terms of relationships my mistakes have been the same. I'm not at all uncomfortable admitting to being a virgin. Go ahead, have a laugh. I'll still be here waiting when you pick yourself up off the floor.
For me my mistakes have all come down to one principle: You can't make a choice if you don't realise that you have a choice to make. When I went to college I assumed that you had either retake your GCSE's OR do A-levels. I didn't realise that you could do both. I'm not sure I would have made the right decision (if it's possible to know what the right decision is) if I had known but I didn't. I turned away from romantic relations with women because I simply didn't realise that any woman would want me. I haven't got a job because I assumed that no one would want to employ me. I have nothing because I have been unaware of my choices. I'm not sure why. I think that I was so emotionally and intellectually numb that I tried very hard not to think of anything. I didn't want to make choices so I limited my knowledge of what was possible to the very minimum. Always did just enough to scrape through until even that became to much. I'm talking about myself here. My reasons for being unaware of the choices available to me are pathetic. But there are people out there who aren't aware for other reasons. In Neal Stephenson's excellent novel "Cryptonomicon" there is a scene where one of the characters, a hacker called Randy, recalls an uncomfortable dinner party in which he attempted to defend himself and the technocracy from a snarky (non medical) doctor. The doctors argument is that the technocracy is a privileged elite who have an increasing control over the world. Randy's response is that in order to become part of the technocracy all he did was to read some books and do a little studying. Anyone who knows anything about computers knows that Randy is right. Becoming part of the aristocracy involves birth or marrying in. It is a genuinely stifling institution. But anyone can be a member of the technocracy. Unless they don't realise they can be. For years people bemoaned the lack of women on the Internet. Various theories were put forward. To much porn. Men are nasty sexual harrasers. Glass ceiling. Right now there are more women on the Internet than men. So what changed? Is there less porn? Less sexual harassing men? What's changed is that the women who thought computing was something that men did have realised that operating computers is not a "guy thing". If you'd asked me ten years ago I would have said the same thing. Interestingly, whereas most men have never said that women aren't suited to computing there seem to be an awful lot of women out there who believe that the female is somehow more suited to working with them. I predict a great deal of sexist crowing from the vocal minority of females that want to feel as though they set an agenda now that there are more women on the Internet than men. But that's a separate topic. Make sure you know the full range of your choices. |