An English professor at Emory University sits in his campus office having a discussion with a blind female student. He wants to discuss the agitation on the campus at the coming of a conservative speaker who will address those students who want to hear what he has to say. The visiting speaker is one of those we might characterize as a comet--he's having his short-lived run of fame and then he'll disappear into celebrity oblivion.
The professor has noted that there's going to be an assemblage of dissenters who've already gone to the president of the prestigious university to make their heated demands that the school disinvite a person who'll spread "hate" on their campus. They, of course, will be demonstrating against him if he's not disinvited. (We've seen some of these agitators turn violent to make sure that if such a speaker comes and makes them feel uncomfortable or unsafe, they'll shout at him, chant at him, and heckle him until he gives up and has to leave the campus under guard. (It's called "the heckler's veto.")
The professor is mystified: Why are those students so outraged? He wants to hear the young lady's viewpoint by answering his question, "Why are they so upset?" She, being "a millennial," knows why, although the learned professor doesn't. She answers him in one sentence.
She says: "Because everyone deserves to be happy," meaning that the person's lecture will make some students unhappy and feel unsafe and shouldn't be allowed because "everyone has a right to be happy." In fact, just his very presence on campus will make many feel uncomfortable and unsafe.
The professor gave her statement some deep, long, and hard consideration. He recognized that this was the majority viewpoint of youth today--everyone has a right to be happy. He began to think about what has caused such a false and unrealistic worldview to be so widespread. He came to some important conclusions.
First of all, not everyone is going to be happy all of the time. There are 32 teams in the NFL. At the end of the Super Bowl each year, only one of the 32 teams will be happy. At the end of every football, basketball, and baseball game, only one team is happy. When hundreds of students apply to the college of their dreams, only the ones admitted will be happy. When two people are being considered for a career promotion, one will be unhappy. In 2022, there were 48,000 unhappy people: they were so unhappy, they killed themselves. The list can go on.
The professor asked himself, "Where in the world did this idea come from, that everyone has the right to be happy?" He asked because a study of history would them otherwise (all Utopias fail); the Bible tells them otherwise; great art tells them otherwise; wisdom tells them otherwise, great literature tells them otherwise; common sense tells them otherwise; and certainly their own personal experience tells them otherwise. An examination of all those subjects would have told her that "everyone has a right to be happy" is false on the face of it.
And then the erudite professor realized that the girl was blind, not physically, but spiritually. And why was that? Because her education or, better yet, the lack thereof had blocked her from seeing the truth. History? Gone from the curriculum. Great literature? Banned from English classes. She doesn't read anyway. Great art? She has no frame of reference for that. The Bible? No way. She's been taught it's just one more old, irrelevant book. She has no wisdom because "the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." (That's in the "old, irrelevant" Book.) The professor concluded, she and her generation are not only blind, but also they can't be reasoned with.
There's no place on God's green earth where anyone is happy all the time. That's the dream of a Utopia which will never be on this earth. There's no getting back to Eden. This leads her and two previous generations to anger and frustration and demand the building of the Seven Cities of Cibola. Their theme song is the song from the 1960s, "The Impossible Dream."
No comments:
Post a Comment