Narcissism Versus Free Speech

first_things600pxFirst Things had a great intro piece in the November issue where Reno argues that the great battle is no longer a Hayekian fight between individualism and conservatism, but rather between excessive libertarianism vs. an atomized society…

Written by Friedrich Hayek during World War II, The Road to Serfdom sought to shape thinking about the post-war reconstruction of society. Hayek believed the West faced a decisive choice. Are we to affirm the central importance of individual freedom? Or will we embrace central planning and socialism, which is the road to serfdom?

Today, the relevance of this passionate, once important book is much diminished. We’re not on a path toward socialism. Our problem is the opposite. The greatest threat we face is an untethered individualism and an atomized society. We’re living in a dissolving age, not a collectivist one.  (emphasis added)

Not sure I fully agree (I have a high degree of discomfort with the recent anti-libertarian turn among Catholic intelligentsia as of late) but the point raised about atomization is true — we’re all in our bubbles, throwing tantrums, demanding life conform to ourselves.

The world doesn’t work this way; the Church doesn’t work this way; nothing works this way… and when enough people aggregate to throw the tantrum, mobs are formed.

I’m reminded immediately of a particular scene in the film Metropolis (1927) where the mob of workers below — convinced that their moment to rise has come — charges the very machines that keep the city they have built for the pleasure of those above running… which incidentally, keep their own Workers City below from flooding.

The workers succeed, and the exasperated foreman finally spits out that the workers have destroyed their own city — dooming their children whom they have left behind.  The crowd, now in a maddened frenzy, turns on those who misled them into destroying the Heart Machine — a false Maria, whom they ultimately burn on a pyre.

The students at the University of Missouri and Yale University are seemingly in this phase, tearing down the old to prop up the new.  Not that the new is any better, superior, more just, or anything that resembles an improvement.  Just that there’s a certain romance in revolution rather than reform, one supposes.  From The Atlantic:

Watching footage of that meeting, a fundamental disagreement is revealed between professor and undergrads. Christakis believes that he has an obligation to listen to the views of the students, to reflect upon them, and to either respond that he is persuaded or to articulate why he has a different view. Put another way, he believes that one respects students by engaging them in earnest dialogue. But many of the students believe that his responsibility is to hear their demands for an apology and to issue it. They see anything short of a confession of wrongdoing as unacceptable. In their view, one respects students by validating their subjective feelings.

Notice that the student position allows no room for civil disagreement.

Given this set of assumptions, perhaps it is no surprise that the students behave like bullies even as they see themselves as victims. This is most vividly illustrated in a video clip that begins with one student saying, “Walk away, he doesn’t deserve to be listened to.”

Such is the product of a Yale education.

It gets worse — and the entire article is worth a patient read rather than allowing myself to pick it apart, but just one more for elucidation’s sake:

“In your position as master,” one student says, “it is your job to create a place of comfort and home for the students who live in Silliman. You have not done that. By sending out that email, that goes against your position as master. Do you understand that?!”

“No,” he said, “I don’t agree with that.”

The student explodes, “Then why the fuck did you accept the position?! Who the fuck hired you?! You should step down! If that is what you think about being a master you should step down! It is not about creating an intellectual space! It isnot! Do you understand that? It’s about creating a home here. You are not doing that!”

Safe spaces.  Bulletproof windows.  Homes not intellect.

I suppose it would be very easy to blame the students themselves.  After all, they are adults in a prolonged period of adolescences that today seems to be a spell broken only in one’s early 30s.  Raised in a public education setting that prizes feelings and self-esteem over accomplishment and free inquiry, treated as special for who they are rather than what they can accomplish, the inflated narcissism of the age is something this generation appears to have accepted carte blanche.

…but from whom did they learn it?

There’s something disquieting about a mob, even when confined by the restraints of governance.  For two generations going on a third, we have permitted this mob to educate our children, provide entitlements, enforce equality, demand compensation in our old age, and finally when the social welfare state views us as a burden, put us down.

We did this to ourselves, folks.

Pope Francis (among others) has discussed the problems of the modern world in clear, unambiguous terms in both Evangelii Gaudium and Laudato Si.  The narcissistic view of the political religions of the day, the gross materialism we have wrapped ourselves in, the utilitarian mindset that views people and government as an end and not a means.

The great Islamic historian Ibn Khaldun used the term asabiyyah to reflect the idea of social cohesion; that all societies ebb and flow through a period of four generations before facing either renewal or collapse.  Americans — amazingly enough — have mimicked this cycle of social cohesion rather well.

In 1780, we were on the cusp of winning the American Revolution.
In 1860, North declared war on South.
In 1940, the United States was on the verge of destroying Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.
In 2020… who knows.

Of course, we’ve seen mobs before.  Baltimore, for instance, has a long and proud tradition of riots and rioting.  Is what we’re seeing at Missouri and Yale anything new?  Perhaps nothing is new under the sun and we are merely hyperventilating because we can — a symptom of the very problem of an atomized culture we are trying to address.

It feels different though.  Perhaps, because it is different.

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