The Real Life Movement arose at the start of the 21st century. Beginning to spread its tentacles in the nation’s leading educational institutions, it found its most ferocious adherents in young, restless students, eager to free themselves of the stifling shackles of Education and enter the JAIL (Journey of Active and Indiscriminate Learning).
The members of the movement bore the unmistakable hallmarks of the age, whether it was their progressively blasé world view or their frothingly high energy levels (in many cases, attributable to varying degrees of ADHD). The thread that bound them inextricably was , however, the shared disdain for theory and the asphyxiating confines imposed by axioms, premises, propositions.....It was all so redundant, so comically circular! But the Real Life Movement was at pains to abjure the code of circular reasoning and had a new, radical credo: Learning is Experiencing and Experiencing is Learning. Several members of the RLM have written about their JAIL experiences, at times expatiating at length on how the JAIL was a source of freedom and self fulfilment. Notable among these works is “From Crisis to Crisis: Hurtling down the Path of Life” and, of course, the immensely popular Real Life self improvement book “Because Things Have Always Been the Way They Are”. RLM members averred that the JAIL had inculcated in them a sense of indomitable confidence, as their experiences continued incessantly to confirm and reinforce their beliefs and convictions.
