Gen Z Speaks
My experience of attending college and interacting with people my age is strikingly similar to Kira’s. As the newest generation of voters, and during an election that is almost an intellectual civil war, everyone is quick to take a side, and quick to proclaim their hatred for anyone who does not agree with them. And the side that recruits the overwhelming majority of devoted followers is the Left. The Left has come to bear a striking similarity to the Proletarian movement, claiming to call for equality while ultimately just retaliating with vengeance against anyone they deem an oppressor.
They pledge their allegiance with the same fanatical, cultish fervor as the Proletarian students of Kira’s world. It seems as though every thought, every conversation, every interaction is tainted by Leftist propaganda. It is the subject constantly bubbling under the surface, threatening to breach at any given moment. And if you do not actively take the pledge, agree with everything said by the Left, and regurgitate every bit of propaganda to anyone who will listen, then, just like a suspected bourgeois, you place a target on your own back.
Like Kira, I refuse to be bound to any collective. I will not adhere myself to either side. My highest priority is my own freedom as an individual, the freedom to choose my beliefs rather than have them chosen for me. But to my peers, that is almost worse than choosing the opposite side. To them, it is incomprehensible. They mistake independence for indifference; they preach that neutrality is even more evil than active hate, all while not even realizing the immensity of their own hate.
They pledge their allegiance with the same fanatical, cultish fervor as the Proletarian students of Kira’s world. It seems as though every thought, every conversation, every interaction is tainted by Leftist propaganda. It is the subject constantly bubbling under the surface, threatening to breach at any given moment. And if you do not actively take the pledge, agree with everything said by the Left, and regurgitate every bit of propaganda to anyone who will listen, then, just like a suspected bourgeois, you place a target on your own back.
Like Kira, I refuse to be bound to any collective. I will not adhere myself to either side. My highest priority is my own freedom as an individual, the freedom to choose my beliefs rather than have them chosen for me. But to my peers, that is almost worse than choosing the opposite side. To them, it is incomprehensible. They mistake independence for indifference; they preach that neutrality is even more evil than active hate, all while not even realizing the immensity of their own hate.
I had been a reader of Hoffer's books when I was in college, but my interest was reactivated when I heard Obama talk about "Hope and Change." There was a familiar ring to that phrase, and when I went back to Hoffer's book, there it was, "Every mass movement begins with the words 'Hope and Change'."
These youngsters need each other in the long run.
From a favorite folk song: Mountain, we measure our lives by tens and by twenty years only. Teach us the way of a million-year mind, what a million-year heart could be hoping.
I have been in private dialog through this forum for well over a year.
A look at historic comment, and then a potential of PM support can go a long way.
I've not read We The Living. Stopped with fiction around 05 after my reading partner died. Focused on my business and practical application of philosophy. I think I'm onto a solution. If you look to my historic comments of an ongoing analysis of The Objectivist's Ethics and Tao te Ching regarding Dec of Ind, US Constitution and Universal Dec of Human Rights, I think you'll see a kernel of an idea. To condense over 40 years to 40 pages is a goal to express philosophy of interaction in Lay terms. To strip the simplicity from the complex of academic constraints and put it on the street.
I'm cautiously optimistic that there are more and more young people waking up to the blatant propaganda fed them via schooling, hollywood and social media. Grandparents can help counter the brainwashed void with some of the history and civics education that both you and your parents didn't get.
Collective rights always encroach upon individual rights. The American Bill of Rights was designed to specifically address and protect against this totalitarian tendency.