There are plenty of unconscious humans, many of whom happen to inhabit positions of great wealth and power, committing all sorts of horrible deeds to their fellow humans on a daily basis. I’ve spent much of the past five years highlighting such behavior, but we’ve arrived at a point where it’s time to give increased attention to the multitude of conscious, deeply caring people trying to make a positive difference within our current very challenging and hostile environment.
As I was pondering what to write about today, a recent comment posted to last Thursday’s post, Why Am I Doing This?, really connected with me. I have reposted it in full below.
The perspective outlined above fits in perfectly with my recent thinking on how decent, conscious people can change the world for the better over time. Calling the current paradigm we live under the corrupt, parasitic fraud it is, is certainly important. You can’t move beyond something negative unless you recognize and admit what’s broken in the first place. That said, it is absolutely crucial to offer something better. Knowing what we are against is simply not good enough, it’s imperative that we know what we stand for (whenever possible), and that we express such desires and vision as clearly and courageously as we can.
In that regard, I want to commend and highlight a message published yesterday to college students signed by 15 professors from Harvard, Princeton and Yale. It’s short, to the point and powerful.
I have republished it in full below:
Some Thoughts and Advice for Our Students and All Students
August 28, 2017
We are scholars and teachers at Princeton, Harvard, and Yale who have some thoughts to share and advice to offer students who are headed off to colleges around the country. Our advice can be distilled to three words:
Think for yourself.
Now, that might sound easy. But you will find—as you may have discovered already in high school—that thinking for yourself can be a challenge. It always demands self-discipline and these days can require courage.
In today’s climate, it’s all-too-easy to allow your views and outlook to be shaped by dominant opinion on your campus or in the broader academic culture. The danger any student—or faculty member—faces today is falling into the vice of conformism, yielding to groupthink.
At many colleges and universities what John Stuart Mill called “the tyranny of public opinion” does more than merely discourage students from dissenting from prevailing views on moral, political, and other types of questions. It leads them to suppose that dominant views are so obviously correct that only a bigot or a crank could question them.
Since no one wants to be, or be thought of, as a bigot or a crank, the easy, lazy way to proceed is simply by falling into line with campus orthodoxies.
Don’t do that. Think for yourself.
Thinking for yourself means questioning dominant ideas even when others insist on their being treated as unquestionable. It means deciding what one believes not by conforming to fashionable opinions, but by taking the trouble to learn and honestly consider the strongest arguments to be advanced on both or all sides of questions—including arguments for positions that others revile and want to stigmatize and against positions others seek to immunize from critical scrutiny.
The love of truth and the desire to attain it should motivate you to think for yourself. The central point of a college education is to seek truth and to learn the skills and acquire the virtues necessary to be a lifelong truth-seeker. Open-mindedness, critical thinking, and debate are essential to discovering the truth. Moreover, they are our best antidotes to bigotry.
Merriam-Webster’s first definition of the word “bigot” is a person “who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices.” The only people who need fear open-minded inquiry and robust debate are the actual bigots, including those on campuses or in the broader society who seek to protect the hegemony of their opinions by claiming that to question those opinions is itself bigotry.
So don’t be tyrannized by public opinion. Don’t get trapped in an echo chamber. Whether you in the end reject or embrace a view, make sure you decide where you stand by critically assessing the arguments for the competing positions.
Think for yourself.
Good luck to you in college!
Rather than complaining about the behavior of students or college administrators, these professors went down the inspiring route of boldly putting forth a rallying cry rooted in wisdom and intellectualism. We need a lot more of this sort of thing across society. There are so many decent people out there, and it’s time for us to step up in whatever way we can to add positivity and put forth an alternative message that can someday hopefully replace the very unconscious and destructive one that currently dominates our culture.
The good news is that no one has the power to stop you. Your life circumstances may limit your options to engage, but each and every one of us is presented with many opportunities on a daily basis to be a little more kind, a little more decent and a little more courageous in our timeless pursuit of a better world. Small things matter and will add up in unimaginable ways. The best day to behave more consciously was yesterday, the second best day is today.
Thanks again to the professors who signed that valuable and courageous message.
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In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
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Good Post, Michael. It is indeed important to “do more good,” and to think for ourselves.
We were told in the Good Book “Resist not evil.” If you attack something, then you have created opposition to it and when a force is hit with a counter-force it is only going to escalate. The only counter-force to use against a force is education and the sharing of understanding, which is, of course, what you are doing.
One suggestion. Invite God. We didn’t believe in God, but we went astray in our life and finally decided if so many people believed in Him, there must be something there. We knocked on His Door and He came and opened it for us, and when we asked for understanding for our newborn son, He spoke in the still, small voice to say, “How is he going to get understanding, if you don’t have it to give to him.” Thus, we asked for ourselves and the floodgates opened.
God is never a religion; He is just the Truth. He loves the Truth more than anything. So, ask for understanding, “keep thine own counsel”, and do more good.
Jennifer, Thank you, for your witness of God’s love.
Psalm 85
10 Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.
11 Truth shall spring out of the earth; and righteousness shall look down from heaven.
12 Yea, the Lord shall give that which is good; and our land shall yield her increase.
13 Righteousness shall go before him; and shall set us in the way of his steps.
Going on 90 in age, this country is not what I grew up in, has become insane to a degree. Perhaps the Profs themselves are beginning to awake. The Hauptstrommedien not at all. Or-the Corporations. Lottsa luck USA.
I can just hear the accusations coming from the politically correct crowd against the profs’ manifesto. Signing it was a courageous act.
I hope it’s ok to share your article and commentary on my facebook page.
My mother was an elementary school teacher in a post WWII shipyard workers’, culturally mixed neighborhood in Portland, Oregon.
As a Second Grade teacher my mother’s educational goal was to help her students develop the ability to think critically and independently. Her students were expected to confidently support their conclusions with convincing evidence from their own inquiries, research, and observation. She was strict, but her students remembered her, often going out of their way to say ‘Hello’ to Mrs. Watson even when they were grownups. One student with Down Syndrome continued her loving correspondence with me after my mother’s death.
Educators can make all the difference beginning from the ground up!
That is very refreshing to hear from academics.
It’s good to know that there are still some Professors out there who are free thinkers.
Good post, Michael. If the academics wake up, that can still be a force to be reckoned with. Let’s see if that was just “a fart in a windstorm” or if more of same shows up at the change counter. We’ll know when the “patrons” say to the bureraucrats: we don’t like what some of your profs are saying, so unless you muzzle them, we’re not paying up and you know what that will mean for your personal perks, Mr. College Prez.
Showing “Gone with the wind” is declared racist thing.
Promoting milk is declared racist thing.
Sun eclipse is declared racial thing.
You know… we in Russia had a certain crisis in mid-2015: we could less and less tell two things apart: our “up to eleven” trolling of EuroMaidanians and the genuine news published by EuroUkrainian MSM. There was a clear gap of real news with ones we invented for laughs in 2014. This gap was closed in 2015. And today the sets are mostly overlapping.
Now, i wanted to make a point about 2017 news from USA… Well…
> That’s why it’s much more important to know, and focus on,
> what you are fighting FOR rather than what you are fighting AGAINST.
Wow! In Russian today it is coined as “Freedom From vs Freedom For”
Another meme is that when your shack rotten, you’d better build a new one then demolish old one, rather than other way around.
Now, what about libertarians obsession with destroying any government and any state and atomizing society back into caves?
“Any government/state is criminal” they chant.
Then they destroy that crime.
Then they got Liberia, Libya and Ukraine.
Then they should all move into those no-state paradises.
Instead they move into yet existing states and start destroying them too, repeating mindlessly the same mantras.
Isn’t it that very AGAINST with never ever thinking about FOR ?
You’re certainly right about what the US is doing, but it’s not the doing of Libertarians–they are the most consistently anti-war group in US politics. Whereas both Democrats and Republicans are enthusiastic warmongers.
Bloomin’ heck.
You need an “Ivy League” prof to tell you this.
I got this from my high school teachers 50 effing years ago.
In fact, in a British Secondary Modern. Where the thickos went. Not no fancy-pants Grammar Skool. Not no fancy Youniversity.
Is this so hard to understand?
If you can’t get that into your bonce: Go straight to the Gulag. Don’t bother with some shite job at McDonalds for five years after uni. GO STRAIGHT TO THE GULAG YOU TWATS.
A teabag talking about a Gulag.
Actually…. that makes perfect sense.
Agreeing with El Sid, it’s a lovely sentiment and beautifully worded; and, if you believe that the authors believe a word of it you’re a fool.
Leftists all — with all that entails. This is bad, … insultingly obvious … bad camouflage.
I don’t want to be too harsh, but you fell for it and are asking others to do the same.
It doesn’t matter whether the authors “believe a word of it”, Unblind.
What they wrote is what matters.
Genaro, that’s silly.
Read El Sid’s second line in the comment above this one.
What they wrote is common sense. What they wrote is what some long-dead old white men would have called “self-evident”.
The only point to Mr. Kreiger’s posting this is precisely that such self-evident common sense was, surprisingly, written by a batch of Ivy-league leftist profs…. unless, that is, you DID need to hear this from an Ivy League professor because it never occurred to you before.
The reason to post it is that it IS surprising.
It is surprising because it runs counter the well-regulated conformist thought control that infests every nook & cranny of higher education.
It is surprising because, if they truly believed it, it would represent a complete 180 degree turn from the quasi-official agenda of academia.
The point of my comment was that the reason it is so surprising is because it’s a lie. I could spout Marx if it served my purposes to do so. Just as it serves the purposes of these professors to preach skepticism and independent thought … to cover for the fact that, if you’re a student, you’d sure as hell better not do it in their classrooms, or anywhere on their campuses, … or else!
Who wrote it is the only reason you & I are talking about it .
While it’s certainly true that an anti-free speech disease seems to have infested much of academia, of course there will some who disagree and have the courage to say so. The point of the article was to celebrate such people.
You call the signers of this statement “a batch of Ivy-league leftist profs.” Personally, I was only immediately familiar with one name, Nicholas A. Christakis, who I have highlighted on this blog before and who has been a consistent free speech advocate at Yale.
It might be helpful if you could offer your definition of “leftist” and how Nicholas Christakis fits this description. Also, could you explain what makes each of the other 14 professors “leftists”?
I assume you researched them all before categorizing them.
Nah. No criticism of Mr Kreiger.
Just criticism of faux-academia.
Used to know a lot of them years ago. Claimed I was privileged. Me a white boy working as a cook. Dem earning goodness knows what with tenure an’ 3 months off in the summer.
Oh, and when their Dominican nannies asked about legalising their status in the country so they could bring their children over (open borders, as they call them these days), Adios Maria.
It’s a Brave New World out there darlings!
Great post, thanks for higlighting it, Michael.
It is a perfect example of why Donald Trump and Obama were elected: Hillary was not *for* anything except for Hillary, Trump – the marketing guru – at least managed to convince the working poor that he, a child of a 1% who had never done anything that hadn’t benefitted himself in his entire life, would help them. Trump showed that while negative ads may work, positive ads full of lies work even better, something most national-level politicians haven’t tried before. He took the “Audacity of Hope” to the extremes of both audacity and hope.
El Sid,
Many working class whites look at the phrase “white privilege” and decide there is no such thing, because it certainly hasn’t helped them. This is because the word privelege connotates a postiive effect, while “white priveilege” is actually the *neutral* state, the ability to live normally, without the disadvantages that other races experience.
It is the ability to carry a gun (or drive an expensive SUV) and not be assumed to be a criminal. The ability to smoke pot and not be arrested. The ability to engage in violent protest (Antifa and white supremist) without the police beating you. The ability to get a loan based on your credit rating and income. The ability to go anywhere in the world and be treated with a certain level of respect.
Now of course, this is nothing like the effect of “green privilege”, the ability to commit all manners of crime and not serve any prison time for it becuase of your status and expensive lawyer.
You are even blind to your own example. You were a cook, and you compared yourself to the green-privileged acadamians. Instead, compare yourself to how the (non-white) Dominican nannies were treated. How many hours did they work? What kind of respect did they get compared to you?