Salvador Dalí
What we can formulate is that almost all historic revolutions were conceived by
20–30 year olds.
When a child grows up, it relinquishes its fits of rage, emotional bargaining for attention and tantrums in exchange for a newfound sense of “otherness”, or the opposite of self-centeredness. That ‘otherness’ can be spiritual, it can also be practical — someone else, a sibling, or parent or neighbor that becomes as important as the child and has needs just like theirs. ‘Otherness’ also implies togetherness by denying ourselves just enough to be available to someone else or even better, available to a transcendent God.
Padre Pio, Blessed Catholic Saint and known for his Confessions, “while occupying the heights of holiness, was amazingly attentive to those he encountered. More to the point, it was because of their otherness, not despite it, that such saints loved their neighbors so concretely. It is a mark of the saints that in becoming other they were able to be more attentive to others”. Rev Paul Scalia, Holy Otherness. 2014.
With the dissemination of social media and its effect of collective loneliness, where is that sense of otherness? Furthermore, where is that sense of togetherness? (Another reason I am pro in class education). Add to the loneliness of our time, the COVID Pandemic lockdown and drive millions of people into existential home cubicals and you’ve got a pent up wrath of volunteers taking to the streets.
What do you have with riots and protests? Masses of people chanting one idea in unison, a pedestrian choir, and newfound community that many have been starving for. There is an adrenaline and a euphoria that is coveted in these encounters. You don’t have to approve or disapprove of any movement to understand the rational and in a way I don’t blame the attraction to revolutionary ideas that we see today in the 20–30 year olds on a University Campus. It is not a defense of the violence that has taken place and the pillage of our most esteemed values but I do think I understand where the new generation of activists come from: Educational poverty.
What we can formulate is that almost all historic revolutions were conceived by 20–30 year olds. That goes for enlightened composers and artists too. From the writing of Manifesto’s, revolutionary pamphlets to future altering revolutions, we see the intellectual incubation years all-common. Robespierre of The French Revolution who spearheaded the Insurrectionary Paris Commune was 34, Karl Marx was 30 when he wrote the Communist Manifesto, Adolph Hitler was 30 when he joined the Workers Party and attempted a failed coup only a couple years later. You don’t attempt a coup in your 30’s without some kind of previous indoctrination so his began in his late 20’s. Salvador Dalí (Dadaist Movement) was 25, Marinetti of Italian Futurist movement was 33. Lenin was 22 when he became part of the Communist Revolution. Fidel Castro of the Cuban Revolution joined in Cuban riots at the age of 22. Argentinian Che Guevara, Marxist revolutionary was 22 when he embarked on his motorcycle journey and so on.Revolutions, Insurrections and Activism are in the torched hands of the 20’s and 30’s pupil.
Anger always drives these movements, maybe a righteous anger, who am I to judge. It is that search for the perfect man, the search for Utopia. And yet “To seek for utopia is to end in disaster, the conservative says: we are not made for perfect things. All that we reasonably can expect is a tolerably ordered, just, and free society, in which some evils, maladjustments, and suffering will continue to lurk”. Russell Kirk, Ten Conservative Principals.
Still, the revolutionary heart presses on with the hope that being part of something so powerful can make change and move mountains: you were there on foot, voiced your charity, shoulder to shoulder with others, ‘Otherness’. Deep down it is the most progressive and liberal minded that are really hell bent on making a Christian world for themselves. If only we could make that happen here on earth and not be hit on the head with the reality of imperfectability. “For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known”. 1 Corinthians 13:12. The pain and heartache here now is what makes afterlife palpable.
I have a strange parallel to make but it is worth it; the main gesture of the Black Lives Matter Movement for the George Floyd protests was kneeling. Where else do we see kneeling? The modern day Cathedral is inevitable ever present and outstretches its arms like a colonnade. When someone is deeply moved or suffering somewhere in time, regardless of religion, race, or creed the entrances and exits of that Church are sometimes ambiguous, even mysterious. There comes a point where you find yourself there in your deepest longing, looking up. The zeal that is attached to these movements has been around for generations and yet it still disappoints and leaves the activist, protester or revolutionary thirsty for more. So much more that people (those who were misguided) are willing to die and millions have over the course of history.
Some might call it the Cathedral of Socialism, “Together let us desire, conceive, and create the new structure of the future, which will embrace architecture and sculpture and painting in one unity and which will one day rise toward heaven from the hands of a million workers like the crystal symbol of a new faith”. Walter Gropius Bauhaus Manifesto. 1919.
Life is extremely dull, however, if Religion is removed from Society. Spirituality being so fluid and water like can fill and penetrate many voids but it does not manifest itself in the same way that major religions do. It is porous and like a sponge it can be squeezed out as fast as it was imbibed. Our society is looking for healing: True identifiable Religion.
But back to campus life: John Henry Newman the Father of Liberal Arts Education defines its ethos: ”empowers citizens to be informed, questioning and open to different points of view“ "It stands, too, in contrast to practices that suggest we now live in a supposedly “post-truth” era in which assertive emotional preference and tribalism count for more than reasoned argument and open engagement. Reviving the understanding of liberal education by reclaiming and promoting its roots and merits would help reduce the conflict”. Manis Charleton,Sligo Institute of Technology.
University for me at the age of 18 was an explosive time of ideas, analysis, peer exchanges, moral value determinations, personal philosophy, emotional exercise, habit making or breaking and failure to fail better, intermingled with a mercurial social life. I believe however, that we have undermined the crucial formation years of Secondary School and we need not overlook its importance. High School is the 2nd major cycle of Formation and catalyst for a full University experience. Americans are given less academic expectations in High School and the major Philosophies of thought are offered only as introductions. When the American student reaches college age, he has not had time to digest or contemplate all those ISM’s and becomes overzealous. Around the world however the intellectual priming begins early at the secondary level. ln South America, for example, in Elite Catholic Schools in Peru, it is not unheard of for high school students to have read a Dumas and a Cervantes novel in its entirety. Russian High School students learn pre college level content. The average Russian secondary student can rattle off the 12 Olympian Gods over cereal. Our pragmatism in the US has suppressed the original University charism to enlighten and enrich…. A place to contemplate ideas. This stage of learning can only happen if the groundwork is first set at the highschool level. We have abandoned the importance of philosophy and poetry and supplanted the market driven mandate for schools. We settle for the University to be a mere education vendor where you press the button, pull out knowledge, apply it to a very particular skill in order to find an adequate or even mediocre job to pay bills and live an okay life. In the process we have abandoned the student, that pupil, hungry for deep knowledge, deep relationships and connections that nurture a young mind in a Liberal Arts College or any College.
It is not a surprise then, that a young revolutionary eager to make a difference in their life and the world around them would latch on to Professors with radical ideas. That encounter would make their dull computer science class more tolerable. Our existential boredom has come to haunt us like a specter. The Wall Street Journal wrote a compelling opinion as a cautionary tale: “A well-known professional standard for college professors warns against “taking unfair advantage of the student’s immaturity by indoctrinating him with the teacher’s own opinions before the student has had an opportunity fairly to examine other opinions upon the matters in question, and before he has sufficient knowledge and ripeness of judgment to be entitled to form any definitive opinion of his own.” That statement, from the American Association of University Professors, dates from 1915 but is still in force. John M. Ellis, Campus Culture Seizes the Streets.WSJ.
If we are to project the health of our Society we need to take a closer look at not only Academia and the University but all the formative years available to better equip with knowledge the student who is screaming and protesting for intellectual, philosophical and spiritual rigor. They protest all that is unfair and unjust and like a child insist solutions and answers come to them instantly, but when Natural Law is lost from Society, no amount of force, through demands can weigh in on the heart to further human progress. No legislative law can substitute for the general will of the soul, limited by the Social Contract.
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