Two years ago, a colleague entered a prestigious graduate program. When I asked how the opening days of classes had gone, she described something akin to a dreary Maoist struggle session. Discussion focused on tedious strategies for avoiding the barely discernible microaggressions that would cause fragile classmates and others to crumple into apoplexy. Students dutifully climbed to their particular rungs on the intersectional ladder and admitted the sins that indelibly stain those on their particular rungs. Conversations signaled which sorts of viewpoints would be unwelcome. The best strategy, she thought, was to remain quiet and nod reflexively when absolutely necessary. I wondered how this particular department could have sunk so far, but in the following months, I realized that the problem had suddenly metastasized in universities of every type across America.
If you click on the link, don’t miss the Abernathy Boys at the end.
Gosh, the author’s memory of his early childhood are almost a mirror image of my own. Grew up on a farm and yeah, dad worked me like a rented mule at times but I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat. Woods, ponds, pals for life, fishing and guns. All goodness, baby.
Small wonder I get claustrophobia when visiting the grandkids in Suburbia on their pressure treated fenced .15 acre plots complete with plastic playhouses. Ugh!
Same here Burton – but also driving and repairing all manner of vehicles from a very young age. So by the time it came to getting a license, we were already very experienced at operating motor vehicles. Much of that time was spent, for lack of a better description, rally driving on the gravel roads, or in the fields, or trails.
So many city kids get in vehicles now with zero experience in how to drive, or how to anticipate and avoid accidents, and how to react in an emergency.
Left the big city for all of the reasons listed in the article – and living a happy rural life – so my kids can have similar freedoms.
“Much of that time was spent, for lack of a better description, rally driving on the gravel roads, or in the fields, or trails.”
Our youngest is amazed at what I throw our vehicles against, especially snow & off road. The common question is, ‘Where did you learn to do that?” Always the same response: “By pushing envelopes when I was your age.”
His description of his childhood brought back so many similar memories.
In the summer, my cousin and I would wander the hills of the Hockley Valley, north of Orangeville, Ontario in a little hamlet called Glen Cross. The only thing we were told was “supper is at 5:30”. No “be careful, don’t hurt yourself”. We already knew the “don’t talk to strangers” bit since we were about 3-4 years old. There were no strangers there anyway. “Supper is at 5:30”, that was it.
We ate so many green apples that my cousin puked his guts out into the Nottawasaga River crouching over the riverbank. We caught brook (speckled) and rainbow trout and explored an old deserted farmhouse and barn. Always wondered how the people left the house with dishes still on the kitchen table and an old straight razor in the bathroom. Left in a hurry for some reason, I’d say.
Our whole family would work at my grandfather’s bakery even as kids. My Dad worked 6 days a week from 4am till 7:30pm and I never heard him complain once. We’d all go in after church on Sundays in December just to get the Christmas orders ready for the Mondays for the 3 weeks leading up to Christmas.
These are just some recollections and those are all days I would give anything to re-live again. In a heartbeat. This article really touched me. It was a great time to be a youngster in North America in those days.
I feel for the kids of the last 30 years. They have really missed an important part of young life.
When this city boy spent a summer working on a hay ranch in Klamath Falls OR, in 1974 … I was amazed to read the local newspapers. No, not the National News … not the local appliance sales … but the wedding announcements (and birth announcements). The typical entry would read: “Joe and Tammy, who just graduated from Klamath Falls HS, will wed on June 29th. Both are 18 years old”. Announcement after announcement of “kids” getting married and having babies … in their teens.
That whole concept seemed so archaic, and “agrarian” to me. I honestly thought those kids were RUINING their lives. Why? Because I was raised to believe that nobody should get married till they were finished with college. That was drilled into my head from a very young age.
And now … in a society where ALL marriages are waning, and child-bearing is forestalled or eliminated altogether … I look back on those announcements, sadly, as a remnant of better times. Times when the idea of starting a family … of leaving and cleaving … of actually GROWING UP! … still had a place in our society.
Now it seems our culture is stuck in “adulthood interrupted” mode. We have created a culture of perpetual childhood. Peter Pan syndrome doesn’t even begin to describe what our fragilely-woke young people have become.
Kenji, living what is now considered a long time, I did more jobs, shit jobs, physical jobs as a young man than today’s kids can even imagine. I do not even try and tell my grandkids about them. Sometimes I wonder how I survived them. After a couple of days with the kids I am becoming maudlin and retrospective. My son sees it but the kids do not. I wish everyone knew what getting close to the end feels like. By the way suicidal is not how it feels, no matter how many government agents want to shoot shit into your body.
I am very healthy but am aware that things can change in heartbeat or lack of one.
Carry on, get out of the insanity that has become CA.
Well, VOWG … all I can say is that I never worked so hard in my life as I did the summer of 74 … working on the hay ranch. I ate like a horse and dropped my weight to 155 … about the lowest weight since 6th grade. But I did absolute shit work … moving sprinkler pipe, baling hay, bucking hay … if it was shitty farm laborer work … I did it. And before I went … I had the “Yellowstone” image of me riding a horse around the ranch and doing “cowboy stuff” … hahaha ha … damn! I was a dumb kid. But that summer was about the BEST thing ever for me … and I still have nothing but fond memories. I can’t imagine my life without having that one glimpse into REAL life … so different from my cushy suburban CA existence.
My friend … I am only 67 and suffer bouts of maudlin (good word) and retrospective. A little TMI … but I am so low testosterone that now I weep at the slightest tug at my emotions. I’m starting “puberty blockers” in my old age I guess. Don’t worry … my pronouns are still so obvious I don’t need to list them. My strength is still good … although a little more energy would be nice. Perhaps I should go full Barry Bonds and rub “the cream” and “the clear” on my skin every day, eh?
You should count yourself lucky for making it DEEP into the numbers (of years). Esp. because you appear to have made a fabulous life for yourself and your family. You need to keep sharing the wisdom you’ve earned. I believe that is part of the Natural Order of things, that “the elderly” (funny, I still don’t feel -or look- “elderly”) should share their life’s experiences and wisdom in our “extended families”. It’s bad enough that so many households have no fathers in them … but fewer still who have grandfathers. You still have time to leave a huge impression on the kids and grandkids.
And speaking of time and maudlin feelings … you know I LOVE my rock music … and one of the absolute masterpieces is ‘Time’ by Pink Floyd. It should be required reading/listening for every human. Because we are all captives of Time … and every minute of Time we spend on the planet is (mostly) in our hands. We should all spend it wisely. I hope you have as much Time left here as you wish to experience, and God grants you. No more hanging on in in quiet desperation as The English do …
https://youtu.be/9XIuBCFNBFw
From inside the belly of the beast, I can confirm that the person’s experience doesn’t describe every course, but it describes many of them and, more to the point, it is merely an somewhat more exaggerated example of a similar virus that has infected all but may 100 or so colleges and universities in the USA, and all but 5 to 10 in Canada.
Most students who take my courses choose them (as they are all elective courses), and most stay after our initial meeting. Those who do not are put off either by a) the substantial amount of reading and writing required or b) my description of the orientation of the course (e.g. if you want critical theory there are many other options; if you want critical thinking, you should stay). Thus, my classes tend to be small but the students are engaged in a positive way and tolerant of different points of view. When I leave, the University is likely to be able to hire two or three more social justice warriors.
I look at “right/left wing” ideologies metaphorically as light in an abstract way, whereas photons have both wave and particle functions. Each are required for the universal existence as we know it.
Conservatism is a particle travelling a strait trajectory until interrupted, while Liberalism is a frequency wave that rises and falls at varied amplitudes, sometimes creating wonders and at others chaos.
Conservatism is slow to change “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it”, and is stable, safe, and efficient. Liberalism facilitates faster leaps in technology & new ideas, but subsequently becomes the demise of the status quo and inherently the existing social order.
– Liberalism in the classical George Washington sense, not the mentally ill “Progressive” far left sense.
– Conservative in the Judaeo Christian values sense, not the far right Islamist extremism sense.
Unfortunately today the “far left mentally ill wavelength” is currently dominating western society at high amplitude and causing overlapping interference waves all over the map. Unless “re-tuned” it will be the total destruction of western civilization as an advanced civilization.
“….remain quiet and nod reflexively when necessary…”
There in lies the problem.
Where is the resistance?
This is the latest episode of the “Emperor’s New Clothes”.
A topic suggestion for the university folk: when is slavery and genocide justified? cf https://falkenblog.blogspot.com/2022/06/why-slavery-in-bible-doesnt-bother-me.html