I have commented many times in this blog about how most universities, especially in the United States, the United Kingdom and in an ever-increasing amount of western countries, have become social justice indoctrination and activism training camps, pumping out thousands and thousands of brainwashed drones into society (who then go to infest and infect every company and institution).
But one could ask how this is possible. Why do all these students allow themselves to be indoctrinated like this? Why do the go along with it? Can't they think for themselves and be critical of it?
It's easy to ask this as an older person with a lot more life experience and having encountered and researched copious amounts (in fact too much) of social justice ideology and its criticism. It's easy to get detached from the average young person and think that everybody thinks like oneself and is aware of the same things.
However, you have to take into account that these students are still young and impressionable. They enroll in university quite typically by the age of 20, give or take. They don't have much life experience outside their home town or city, and what they have seen in TV and the internet (which, in the case of most people, does not include social justice criticism).
For the vast majority of them this is their first time moving out of home, to a far away place, often to a far away city and sometimes even a different state. This is all new to them. It's the big unknown. They have absolutely no idea what university is like. Their only "knowledge" of university is the highly stylized dramatized version shown in movies and TV series. But they have absolutely no idea what university is actually like for the just-enrolled first-year student. This is a completely new, prestigious, even intimidating higher learning environment, with big fancy buildings and big fancy professors and doctors, and a whole new culture that they have never experienced before and know very little about.
On top of that, they are often under great pressure from their parents and family to succeed. After all, usually their parents are paying hefty sums of money to get them into university, or they have taken huge life-crippling loans to do so, and thus they are under tremendous pressure to not let them down and to succeed and graduate. Thus they are pressured into and willing to learn the ropes as quickly as possible, and to get into the university life, and to conform and start advancing in their studies.
Thus, when the first introductory classes start, they are eager to listen to everything that's being said, to follow all the instructions, to learn all the facts being told in order to help them settle into the university and start their academic life, in this new and scary environment.
Thus, when the professor starts talking in weird ways and asking the students to do weird things, most students simply accept and conform to it, because they want to get into the university life as quickly and painlessly and possible, and don't know any better. When the professor asks them to do weird things, like get into groups to greet each other and describe each other and where they come from, most of them don't question it.
When the professor starts laying out rules of speech, rules of conduct, what is allowed, what is banned, what is required, most students don't question it, because they don't know any better. They don't know that this is actually not what universities should be like, because they don't know what university should be like. When the professor starts talking about "preferred pronouns", "microaggressions" and all the other jazz, and when the professor instructs them to watch each other's words and behavior and rat them out if they don't conform, most students don't question it because they don't know any better and think that this is normal.
And even when a few of them do question it a bit inside their heads, you shouldn't underestimate the human instinctive need to belong, to not be rejected, to not be a cast-out. When everybody around them is using these speech codes and words, when everybody around them is behaving in a certain manner, saying certain things, when everybody around them is constantly watching each other and imposing these speech and behavioral rules onto each other, even these few doubters will start doing it too, because they don't know any better and they have the strong instinct to belong. They don't want to be the odd one out, they don't want to be criticized and rejected. Thus they start doing what everybody else is doing, and they start imposing these rules onto others because it gives them a feeling of accomplishment, importance, approval and belonging. Group behavior is a strong phenomenon.
Surprisingly quickly all these strange words and rules become second nature to most of them. They become completely normal. They stop sounding strange and artificial, and start sounding self-evident. These impressionable students start repeating the buzzwords and the doctrine, and start watching each other and imposing the rules on each other, because it has become completely normal to them, and they don't know any better. They are, after all, living a life that's completely sheltered from the outside world. The only environment they know is the university. The university has become their home, their community, and they have been raised to belong to this community and to act like everybody else in the community.
In other words, they have been indoctrinated, because they just don't know better. They just don't know anything else, and they have never been prepared for this, and it's all new to them.
Of course given that there are hundreds of thousands of university students in the United States alone, there are always the few who don't submit to the indoctrination, who actually do have the knowledge about it and what it is about, or who are smart enough to understand that something is not right here and start openly questioning it (even if they don't yet have the experience to oppose it with good strong arguments).
However, these few dissenters will very soon find themselves on the receiving end of ever-increasing pressure, shunning, discrimination, verbal attacks and harassment. If they become loud and infamous enough, the harassment will start worsening and worsening until it's a daily occurrence, often unprompted.
This kind of persona non grata will find himself completely helpless because nobody will come to his help or defense. If he goes to the professors or the university staff, it will be him who will be blamed. In fact, quite often the university staff itself will engage in harassing him, and discriminating against him, because he refuses to conform. (I think that violent physical assaults are usually discouraged against a student because the staff doesn't want the police to become involved. They don't want outsiders into the situation.)
You might easily think that you could just withstand all this harassment, to tell Truth to Power, to be a rebel and a non-conformist. However, you underestimate how extraordinarily psychologically tiring it is to be the target of constant harassment from everybody around you for years and years. You might be able to be the rebel for some weeks, even some months, but when the relentless harassment and discrimination just continues and continues for years, when you start failing classes because your professors discriminate against you and you have no recourse against it because the university staff refuses to intervene, when you just can't live anything even resembling a normal life and you can't have any peace, at some point you will have no psychological stamina left to continue. Never underestimate the devastating psychological effect of harassment that continues non-stop for months and years. You might think that you can withstand it, but you won't.
So even the very few dissenters who do not submit will eventually be intimidated and harassed into silence and conformity, or even quitting university.
Maybe students who enroll in STEM fields might be able to avoid the worst indoctrination, but more and more universities have made sure that they too will get their share of it, whether they want it or not.
Comments
Post a Comment