“How much did it cost, Mr. Feynman?”

“Well I flew to San Fransisco, so it’s the airfare, plus the parking at the airport while I was away.”

“Do you have your ticket?”

I happened to have the ticket.

“Do you have a receipt for the parking?”

“No, but it cost $2.35 to park my car.”

“But we have to have a receipt.”

“I told you how much it cost. If you don’t trust me, why did you let me tell you what I think is good and bad about the schoolbooks?”

There was a big stew about that. Unfortunately, I had been used to giving lectures for some company or university or for ordinary people, not the government. I was used to, “What were your expenses?”–”So-and-so much.”–”Here you are, Mr. Feynman.” I then decided I wasn’t going to give them a receipt for anything. After the second trip to San Francisco they again asked me for my tickets and receipts.

“I haven’t got any.”

“This can’t go on, Mr. Feynman.”

“When I accepted to serve on the commission, I was told you were doing to pay my expenses.”

“But we expected to have some receipts to prove the expenses.”

“I have nothing to prove it, but you know I live in Los Angeles and I go to these other towns; how the hell do you think I get there?”

They didn’t give in, and neither did I. I feel when you’re in a position like that, where you choose not to buckle down to the System, you much pay the consequences if it doesn’t work. So I’m perfectly satisfied, but I never did get any compensation for the trips.

It’s one of those games I play. They want a receipt? I’m not going to give them a receipt. Then you’re not going to get the money. OK, then I’m not taking the money. They don’t trust me? To hell with it; they don’t have to pay me.

Of course it’s absurd! I know that’s the way the government works; well, screw the government! I feel that human beings should treat human beings like human beings. And unless I’m being treated like one, I’m not going to have anything to do with them!

It’s “absurd” to make things harder than you have to. Except… it’s not. It can be highly rational to make things harder on yourself if you feel that it makes things better in the long run. This is almost a non-issue it’s so apparent, but I want to highlight how refusing to buckle to “the System” is in some ways, analogous to choosing future rewards.

I’ve decided not to return to college this spring. I’ve been out of school for over a year, and the combination of trying to get residency, applying to be accepted, and dealing with the increased costs of a full university over a community college have just been too much. The institution is gigantic and faceless, and it requires me to serve it and pay it in order for me to attend a class there; it does not treat me like a human would treat me; it doesn’t even treat me as human.

Just as Feynman could’ve easily kept his receipts and worked with the government office, I could fill out my forms, send off emails, pay hidden fees, and take out loans. In many ways that’d be easier than my alternative: getting an education without school. I’ve decided to put my small amount of money towards organizing a micro-classroom for myself, which will probably involve hiring a tutor. I’ll have to arrange things myself, determine my own curriculum, keep myself honest, and come away with no proof of having done the work except for the knowledge in my head. I’ve already been studying college-level stuff by myself (my calculus knowledge, for example, is entirely self-taught), but this is a decision to abandon the institution which I’ve been nominally attending.

This is shooting myself in the foot to a certain degree. Some people will clearly fail to even understand what it’d mean to have equivalent knowledge without a diploma. If those people won’t work with me because of that, I’ll simply have to pick someone a bit more open-minded. But here’s the thing: In a world where everyone fits themselves into a box, it’s easy to pay attention to the box instead of the person; in a world where many people refuse to box themselves, it’s harder to build an inhuman system. I don’t even have a high-school diploma. I am the grit in the gears of bureaucracy.

I see the world changing. As information becomes more free, we’ll have more self-taught people. As technology becomes more adaptive, we’ll have less need to make ourselves uniform. As more people break the mold, we’ll naturally incentivize more human, more agile organizations. I want to be part of this change. I want to be who I am, rather than who people expect me to be. I want to change the world, even if it means making things harder for myself.

I am reminded of the Stanford marshmallow experiment. We are given the choice of rolling with things, even if they’re unpleasant, or standing up for ourselves even if it means more work and less immediate reward. The payback comes for our children—the next generation—who will, because we stood up for being human, be treated as we had hoped to.

Over the past few months I’ve been seeing a few mentions of how universities might become obsolete recently. This is ridiculous, of course; it has been possible to learn this sort of material on your own for free since the public library was invented. What is clear, though, is that education is experiencing the first waves of disruption from the internet. After all, it’s one thing to read textbooks before bed, but nowadays I could get the books instantly, watch the lectures, and discuss the problems, even if I lived in the middle of nowhere and had to use solar panels and satellites to stay powered and wired. Hell, I could probably even do it if I didn’t speak English.

It reminds me of how the internet is disrupting books. Books aren’t going away; quite the opposite, in fact. But books can’t stay the same in the years to come. They translate too easily into bits, and the internet applies a constant pressure to serve up information as easily and cheaply as possible.

This power of the internet to push towards connection, collaboration and knowledge is probably my favorite trend right now. It’s something I can watch disrupt television, healthcare, politics, publishing, and yes, education, on a timeframe short enough for me to watch.

I’m sure Clay Shirky would agree.

UPDATE: Study Finds That Online Education Beats the Classroom