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universities are just like cults when you think about it.
The
students think they have 'special knowledge' others do not have for being
within the institution. There are all kinds of sensory deprivation rituals,
such as gruelling exam studies, hazing and behavioural controls
via extreme political correctness to the use of cult-like buzz phrases such as
'microagressions' and chanting. The 'elders' are the Professors who are the
high priest class, who will only give you their 'approval' if you question
nothing and do only what they tell you to do. There is the buffer of 'Campus
Jesuits' called Fraternities who police the lesser adepts for the
benefit of the Elder Professor Class. You can only read what they tell you to
read and think only what they tell you to think. You are denied a meaningful
love life and stable intimacy with someone you can trust, and your friendships
are all with people exclusively within the same campus social circle. Diets are
limited and proving your worth and unconditional devotion is EVERYTHING. You
are isolated from your old social networks and family. You even have hymns and
special vestments devoted to the glory of the institution and you consider
yourself an 'elite' for doing everything you are told to do and questioning
nothing.
By the
time you realise it is a huge scam, you have invested so much of your life
into obtaining a degree that you 'just can't' walk away only to live
with the guilt and shame of not being one the 'special adepts' with the stupid
hat and gown. Finally, they take all your money and you never recover
financially.
How is
that different from a cult?
In the
USA, I always found it amazing that working class people were not supposed to
be well read. They were to conform to a stereotype of being a 'working stiff'
who merely watches baseball on TV and drinks something called 'Lite' beer.
In the Ireland I grew up in, working class people devoured books. There was no contradiction. It was only when I realised what big business 'education' actually is, that I understood why these stereotypes from Lisa Simpson to Roseanne were almost ruthlessly enforced within the American cognition. This mentality is everywhere now.
In the Ireland I grew up in, working class people devoured books. There was no contradiction. It was only when I realised what big business 'education' actually is, that I understood why these stereotypes from Lisa Simpson to Roseanne were almost ruthlessly enforced within the American cognition. This mentality is everywhere now.
You had
to go to college in order to 'read books' in the USA, and back then I used
to come across Americans who were literally spellbound when they saw me holding
a copy of a Tennessee Williams or Lovecraft novel on my lunch
break working as a house painter.
I recall
one Harvard gentleman being literally offended that I knew more about just
about everything than he did because I was wearing painter's overalls for a
week in his house in Forest Hills. By the Friday, he was literally ready to
hurl me out the door when when I started talking about the DaDaists with his
daughter. He was terrified I was going to ask her out on a date. It was all
about no crossing over of social status and that meant who pays for education
and who does not. I did get my credentials in graphic design later, but as a
night student paying out of my own pocket. My one year as a real college
student destroying my love for Electronic Engineering put me off for life.
Listen to
this discussion between
myself and James Corbett on Joyce the other day. James did his thesis on Joyce
at Trinity in Dublin at the same time I was there reading Joyce in the park
during my lunch break. Yet there was no sense I was less knowledgeable about
the subject. I just did not pay for it and get a piece of paper and a stupid
hat and gown at the end of the ordeal.
Knowledge is Everywhere
Knowledge is Everywhere
That is
the biggest misconception and scam of all. Having people believe they need to
pay huge sums of money to get an education. If you can read and stay away from
drink, weed and TV, you will learn much with books and sexy women will fancy
you for it. The ideal solution is to go to trade school or tech and then do the
'academic' stuff as a hobby in your free time. You'll have a much easier and
less painful life and you'll beat the banks too.
Posted by
Thomas Sheridan