September 28, 2012

Still, it must be observed that some university courses are bad for their students. Some are boring or time-wasting but those which do more lasting harm are those which give a single narrow answer to the problems of the world, instilling a sense of superior understanding while cutting off wide inquiry into causes and effects. Years ago you had to be careful what was said in class because the women’s studies units instilled a sense of indignation without instilling any viable notion of what one was indignant about. Certain words would set the Initiates off and nothing more could be accomplished. It was all attitude and no understanding. “Sensitivity” was encouraged in the classroom; one eventually realized that “sensitivity” indicated the willingness to leave ignorant but cherished ideas unchallenged– only certain ones, though, the intellectual fetish of the semester. All else was fair game. In class yesterday there was a discussion of how “white privilege” explains all the woes of contemporary society. One knew instantly what class they had taken, and with whom. For a while I participated, until I realized that what they were saying was a rigid and permanent stance, and no other roads would open. The attitude of orthodoxy makes students, at least for a while, unteachable. They’ve been instilled with an idea which is lovely to them for the moment, but can stand in primal loveliness only if left undiscussed. Or, if discussed, the discussion can be made only of affirmation. White privilege, of course, explains nothing, and must itself be explained. Fanatic students are often the among brightest, too, which sounds odd until one considers that most bright students know they’re bright and cling naturally to their own notions as being, in all likelihood, superior. I know this because I was that kind of student, always rolling my eyes at the folly of my professors. What a trial I must have been. If students leave college with a certain set of rigid notions they are not willing to discuss, analyze, change, then we have failed in an unanticipated way.

Blazing falls days after foggy mornings. The moon was brilliant last night, her light enhanced by bouncing between Carolyn’s white aluminum and mine.

Exhaustion of ambition and frustration, huge longing and modest having. All the sages of the East warn against this. It does no good.