I don’t want to stray too far into
politics, so for the sake of this post let’s just agree that we’re talking
about “Sociology”. That’s a perfectly
respectable topic, even if it’s not a perfectly respectable “Science”. (I’ll make a note here that my son
disagrees.)
What has my attention today started with
simple nostalgia. You know how it
works—that longing for an easier, simpler, and sweeter time. It wasn’t always all of those things of
course, but there were moments we can’t forget.
At any rate, once upon a time, way back
in the Dark Ages before modern history began, I was a young high school student
who enjoyed reading and writing. So I joined
the high school “Creative Writing” club along with a variety of other people. We’ll call them “creatives” to be nice.
We wrote, and then met to read to each
other. We experimented with thoughts, words,
sentences, paragraphs, prose and poems. We
let our imaginations run wild. I don’t
know that we ever deliberately tried to hurt one another, but we (some of us
anyway) were certainly guilty of “insensitivity” had there been such a crime in
those days. That there wasn’t is
testimony to our resoluteness. We
recognized something that our Fathers called “the way of the world”.
There is a picture of me with the other
members of the club in the yearbook. I’m
wearing a “hoodie” and a somber look on my face as if there were no doubt I’d
be the next Jack Kerouac, or Richard Brautigan.
Meanwhile, the teacher who sponsored the club was praying that I would just
master “Dick and Jane”.
We called ourselves “Toads”, which we
took from a quote by Stephen Crane:
“Think
as I think," said a man, "or you are abominably wicked; you are a
toad." And after I thought of it, I said, "I will, then, be a toad.”
We were happy being “Toads”. We liked being “Toads”. Back then, if you really wanted to insult a
person you called them a “Conformist”.
No one wanted to be a “Conformist”.
I was thinking of this as I watched a
news report on students at a university rioting because they didn’t want a
speaker who didn’t think like them to be allowed to speak on campus. What? How does that work? It’s not possible to be in public with people
you only agree with. And why would you
want to be? The image of all these
“Conformists” running for the shelter of their “safe spaces” is a difficult one
for me to grasp. Our “safe space” was
where we thought, wrote, argued, and disagreed. And we called each other
“Toad”. And we did it with respect and
appreciation.
We had another quaint tradition
too. It was called “debate”. A moderator would hand you a slip of paper
with a resolution on it, telling you which position you would take. The moderator would then hand another person
a slip of paper with the same resolution, but the opposite position on it. Each of you would then prepare and defend
your position. It mattered not whether
you actually agreed with it. Your job
was to determine the best argument for your position. You were then “judged” on how well you
defended your side of the debate. There
was even a “winner”, and a “loser”, a once time honored tradition now limited
to sporting events.
Of course, today we don’t “judge”, or
“discriminate”, or “discern” either, but that’s probably another post.
It was considered a good thing to be
able to understand the other person’s argument without agreeing with it, or
demanding that they quit speaking it.
“Hey man, can you see where I’m coming
from?” we’d say.
“Yeah man, I get where you’re coming
from. I’m just not there”, we’d reply.
And it was GOOD! It was OK!
A best-selling book at that time was titled I’m OK - You’re OK. Now we’ve arrived at I’m OK - You’re Not
So Hot. Or worse. That’s not revolution, it’s devolution. (Sociology remember. We’re talking about Sociology).
This seemed normal to us. I’m sure that’s why when I went on to college
I can fondly recall—that nostalgia again—attending speeches by people as
diverse as Angela Davis and William F. Buckley, without actually freaking
out. Buckley was, in fact, my
commencement speaker. I shudder to think
what that might do to some people today.
So what in Heaven’s name is going on
here? Can we get back to that sort of
intellectual honesty? How do we go about
doing that? I don’t know. I’m just waiting, and hoping that some young
and innovative Sociologists can help.
