The Value of Experience

Curators of cool.

I once knew a girl in high school who I admired very much. Her grades were consistently at the top of the class. She had a style all her own. Her bedroom walls were covered in magazine clippings and collages she'd spent long hours on. She didn't mind falling off a skateboard and scraping her elbow. Her creativity just shimmered through everything she did, no matter how small. She seemed like the model student. More so, the model friend. Then she started trying different things. Introducing different chemicals into her already-brilliant psyche. She figured that she may as well now, while she was still young and able. That—in her words—she'd like to have all these things "under her belt." It confused me. She already seemed perfect. Why the need to experiment if you've been blessed with so much? Stranger yet, her grades never suffered. They didn't dip once. Throughout all the psychedelics, pills, and whatnot—, she remained on top of her class. This confused me even more.

Long story short: she transferred schools and I never saw her again. I'd often think back to her free spirit and nonchalant attitude toward drugs and try to see the soundness therein. Her premise was probably that the more experiences one has, the more they'll have to draw from, hence, the more reliable their conclusions will be.

But I don't need to stick a needle in my arm and shoot up heroin to know it's bad for you. There are studies available. I've skimmed a few.

All sarcasm aside—there actually are people in this world who won't respect an iota of your opinion if you haven't done each and everything you're describing on a firsthand basis, multiple times over. Though, nobody reaches the top of the Empire State Building and needs proof that jumping toward the street below will be the worst—and last—mistake they'll ever make.

It's common sense. It's engrained into our DNA. Rationale; it's there to be used, often.

So why this elitist obsession with having as many things under one's belt as possible? They claim "enlightenment" as these would-be’s ingest handfuls of brightly technicolored capsules and listen to music so new that it hasn't even been assigned a sub-genre yet. These "brave" culture warriors teeter the edge which divides our mainstream from the scary wilderness beyond. They self-appoint themselves the true curators of cool but only because there is nobody else who cares enough to make such a huge production out of whatever the current flavor-of-the-week happens to be. Everyone else is gone. They've moved on. They grew brains and with them created goals, outlined plans, and just started taking those who chose to stay behind at their words.

"Oh..., too many counteractive drugs in your body will shut down your central nervous system?"

So I’ve heard.

"Oh..., you smoked three packs a day for twenty-some years and now you're bummed out by your test results?"

Hmm...

"Oh..., going through withdrawals really isn’t fun?"

Wow.

Opposite a posteriori, a priori knowledge is independent of experience.

If a privileged upper-middle class teenager who's been lucky enough to grow up in an environment where the realities of drugs could be observed through both those that litter the streets of his downtown and the internet at large, still needs further empirical evidence to fully commit to a conclusion, then I would venture to say that he is probably welcoming of all the misery he's plunging himself toward.

There are certain things in life that I don't need to experience on my own skin in order to label them a certain way. A priori knowledge. Anyone who sees this as whimpering away with fear is a masochist and can be my guest when it comes to trying "that new gasoline stuff.” My only guess is that people are forever trying to one-up each other. “You've tried the pink powder? Well I've tried the blue.” And so on and so forth. I don't admire this type of thinking. It gets you killed or at the very least, makes you extremely regretful. The one I admire is the third person looking at the two arguing with a look of bewilderment that shouts out: “Why?!”