{"id":1315,"date":"2015-06-07T21:20:34","date_gmt":"2015-06-08T01:20:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=1315"},"modified":"2015-06-07T21:20:34","modified_gmt":"2015-06-08T01:20:34","slug":"academia-mental-conformity-and-evil","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2015\/06\/academia-mental-conformity-and-evil.html","title":{"rendered":"Academia, Mental Conformity, and Evil"},"content":{"rendered":"

St. Louis University, a Roman Catholic institution of \u201chigher learning,\u201d capitulated to student and faculty demands to remove a 19th<\/sup> century statue from campus.<\/p>\n

The statue, which commemorates the missionary efforts of Jesuit priest, Pierre-Jean De Smet, depicts the latter on an elevated platform holding a cross over the heads of two American Indians.<\/p>\n

The school paper, The University News, <\/em>featured an editorial by SLU student, Ryan McKinley. According to McKinley, the statue deserves to be removed from campus because it reflects \u201ca history of colonialism, imperialism, racism and of Christian and white supremacy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ironically, it\u2019s a shame that this event gained national news coverage, for in doing so, the public risks receiving the impression that there is something unusual afoot at SLU.\u00a0\u00a0 However, the tragic truth of the matter is that the anti-Western ideology\u2014and, hence, the anti-white, anti-Christian, anti-American, anti-male ideology\u2014underwriting the fuss over the De Smet statue is the <\/em>conceptual lens of the whole academic world.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s even worse than this: The ideology on display at SLU transcends academia, for it is the<\/em> Zeitgeist of contemporary Western and American culture.<\/p>\n

What all of this in turn means is that academics are guilty on three scores.<\/p>\n

First, they stand convicted of preaching an ideology\u2014any <\/em>ideology\u2014while they should have been teaching.<\/p>\n

Secondly, in advancing the anti-Western ideology that is our culture\u2019s dominant worldview, academics are guilty of promoting an especially pernicious <\/em>ideology.<\/p>\n

Thirdly\u2014and this is the most egregious of the crimes for which they stand condemned\u2014academics are guilty of promoting an ideology that is<\/em> their culture\u2019s dominant worldview<\/em>, i.e. the status quo.<\/p>\n

When Hannah Arendt observed the trials of Nazi war criminals, she claimed to have been struck by \u201cthe curious, but quite authentic, inability\u201d on their part \u201cto think.\u201d It is this phenomenon, Arendt noted, and not any especially wicked motives, that accounted for the Holocaust. Neither Adolph Eichmann nor any of his partners in crime were inclined to think beyond their stock of conventional phrases and clich\u00e9s. This inability or unwillingness to think critically is inseparable from, if it isn\u2019t identical with, an inability or unwillingness to exercise self-rule <\/em>or autonomy<\/em>: the defendants were only interested in obeying <\/em>others.<\/p>\n

Of course, Arendt knew that there was nothing unique about the Nazis in this regard. Most <\/em>people much of the time and all <\/em>people some of the time succumb to the temptation to relinquish critical thought. After all, it is far easier to go along in order to get along. It requires no courage, no mental exertions, to conform <\/em>to prevailing opinion, to \u201cobey.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet this inability to think, to obey The Majority, has given rise to the worst sorts of evils.<\/p>\n

It is this inclination toward mental conformity that accounts for the readiness with which otherwise reasonable, intelligent people imbibe the ideology of the students and faculty at St. Louis University. It is this inclination that explains the seeming inability of such folks to think or speak beyond the ideology\u2019s stock terms.<\/p>\n

\u201cColonialism;\u201d \u201cimperialism;\u201d \u201cracism;\u201d \u201cwhite supremacy;\u201d \u201cChristian supremacy\u201d\u2014these are the soundbites, the talking points, the bumper sticker slogans, that define both the substance and the boundaries of the PC Zeitgeist. A Taoist scholar once wrote that every \u201cism\u201d is a \u201cwasm.\u201d His point is that once a current of thought has been abstracted from its place in the complex of mental activities and frozen as a doctrine, an \u201cism,\u201d it has been divested of the dynamic character, the nuances and open-endedness that originally made it a living belief.\u00a0\u00a0 The dogma that replaces it is necessarily an oversimplification, a caricature.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s of no surprise that our student and faculty activists at SLU (and everywhere else) must <\/em>think in terms of \u201cisms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet, as I mentioned, students don\u2019t start learning about the \u201cisms\u201d once they get to the university. Regrettably, the ideology that their professors reinforce in the college classroom is the same ideology on which their minds have been fed by the larger culture all of their lives.<\/p>\n

From their first day in college, students are disposed to acquiesce in the ideology with which their professors will besiege them for the next four (or more) years. So, rather than inculcate in students those intellectual virtues\u2014curiosity, daring, discernment, and excitement\u2014necessary for challenging <\/em>the prejudices that they\u2019ve inherited from the larger society, faculty strengthen<\/em> those prejudices.<\/p>\n

In doing so, faculty strengthen their students\u2019 \u201ccurious, but quite authentic inability to think.\u201d<\/p>\n

But in burdening them with this handicap, the self-same professors who ache to make their students into little saviors of the world actually frustrate the pursuit of their own goal, for, as Arendt observed, the inability or unwillingness to think\u2014to cultivate individuality<\/em>\u2014all too often translates into the ability and willingness to aid and abet evil.<\/p>\n

Edmund Burke famously said that the only thing that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. He was right. However, there are plenty of reasonably decent people that may not be aware that evil is in their midst if they lack the ability, or the willingness, to genuinely, thoroughly, think <\/em>about the ideas that \u201ceveryone\u201d accepts as true.<\/p>\n

As for those who dare to think, they don\u2019t have their college professors to thank for it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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