They need not be representative of their peers for the damage they are doing to have long lasting repercussions.
Hearken back into the far mist of time gone by, in the beforetime before any of the indispensable electronic tools requiring frequent charging even existed, except as science fiction devices carried by Jim Kirk and Mr Spock. I am speaking of course, of the 1980s. There I was, a young and impressionable lad, cruelly and without warning ambushed by a teacher and assigned the task of researching and writing a report on the youth movement of 1968, a year of immense significance in the minds of everyone alive at the time, at least anyone under say, forty years of age.
Being of a somewhat rebellious and therefore inevitably of a conservative bent, as were many of my fellow students at the time (well, if you wanted to rebel against your teachers, there really was no other option given that our teachers were all redder than a postbox at sunset), I was not a happy camper. I knew very well the mystical and mythological significance my teachers attached to the spirit of 1968. This was the very pinnacle of their own youth, back when they were (or so it was presented to us in retrospect) - all of them - living in a collective with a bunch of cool, hip, long-haired fellow travellers, having sex with everything that moved, and spending their time smoking pot while grooving out to Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. And doing so, while occupying the offices of their professors, organizing sit-ins, discussing the lyrics of Bob Dylan and endlessly participating in demonstrations against the Vietnam war, against nuclear power, against <fill-in-the-blank>.
Clearly, Wordsworth knew of what he spoke 'Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive. But to be young was very heaven.'
But an assignment was an assignment and while my classmates were delving into some of the wars of the 60s or some of the technological advances (and earning my envy), I began to research and dig. And very quickly discovered to my surprise something that common sense should have told me much earlier - the student protesters of 1968 whose antics had come to entirely dominate the perception of the period for those who were too young to be present and aware at the time, were in fact a very, very, very small minority of their cohort. They were very loud and obnoxious, they got a lot of attention, but they were in no way representative.
But for a couple of generations they had an incredibly outsize impact.
The general unpopularity of the 68ers was one of the points of Intifada Chic (April 25), maybe the pain point, but you're right about their impact. . . at least about our collective perceptions about their impact. Those may also be overblown. I'm not sure what's wrought more destruction over the last ten years: the far left idiocy that was there all along, or the technology that allowed that far left left idiocy to attain critical mass. Most likely the symbiosis between them. Either way, it's produced a hell of a shit show.
Agreed. The most worrying thing is the clear deterioration in the standard of the general level of education among university students. The 68ers might have been filled to the brim with revolutionary fervor and the impervious certitude of the young, but they were the beneficiaries of an established level of education and a certain rigor in the fundamentals that they and their heirs in academia have almost completely failed to preserve. The depressing result of which we see, where students at supposedly top-tier Ivy League schools, are only marginally fluent in their native tongue and just about the only thing they are able to articulate clearly -albeit inadvertently - is their own complete ignorance of history and the culture and civilization they seem to hellbent on destroying.
Their lack of a real education has the not inconsiderable upside that it is difficult to see how they will be able to work effectively anywhere outside their progressive bubble. My guess is that if you are a still a crybully when you are 23, you are probably a crybully for life.
Of course, today there is a quite large and well funded network of progressive NGOs, which presumably will be very attractive work places in the minds of the young activists, since I think the DEI positions have probably peaked now. Whether they are able to work effectively with others at anything other than professional activism, when they cannot seem to handle anyone disagreeing with them is another question.
I think the most important point you make has to do with the fact that 68ers were standing on a foundation of actual education that their successors lack -- precisely because the 68ers, in their selfish and narrow worldview, ensured that their successors were denied a similarly broad and complete education. That's sort of the nub right there.
They need not be representative of their peers for the damage they are doing to have long lasting repercussions.
Hearken back into the far mist of time gone by, in the beforetime before any of the indispensable electronic tools requiring frequent charging even existed, except as science fiction devices carried by Jim Kirk and Mr Spock. I am speaking of course, of the 1980s. There I was, a young and impressionable lad, cruelly and without warning ambushed by a teacher and assigned the task of researching and writing a report on the youth movement of 1968, a year of immense significance in the minds of everyone alive at the time, at least anyone under say, forty years of age.
Being of a somewhat rebellious and therefore inevitably of a conservative bent, as were many of my fellow students at the time (well, if you wanted to rebel against your teachers, there really was no other option given that our teachers were all redder than a postbox at sunset), I was not a happy camper. I knew very well the mystical and mythological significance my teachers attached to the spirit of 1968. This was the very pinnacle of their own youth, back when they were (or so it was presented to us in retrospect) - all of them - living in a collective with a bunch of cool, hip, long-haired fellow travellers, having sex with everything that moved, and spending their time smoking pot while grooving out to Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. And doing so, while occupying the offices of their professors, organizing sit-ins, discussing the lyrics of Bob Dylan and endlessly participating in demonstrations against the Vietnam war, against nuclear power, against <fill-in-the-blank>.
Clearly, Wordsworth knew of what he spoke 'Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive. But to be young was very heaven.'
But an assignment was an assignment and while my classmates were delving into some of the wars of the 60s or some of the technological advances (and earning my envy), I began to research and dig. And very quickly discovered to my surprise something that common sense should have told me much earlier - the student protesters of 1968 whose antics had come to entirely dominate the perception of the period for those who were too young to be present and aware at the time, were in fact a very, very, very small minority of their cohort. They were very loud and obnoxious, they got a lot of attention, but they were in no way representative.
But for a couple of generations they had an incredibly outsize impact.
The general unpopularity of the 68ers was one of the points of Intifada Chic (April 25), maybe the pain point, but you're right about their impact. . . at least about our collective perceptions about their impact. Those may also be overblown. I'm not sure what's wrought more destruction over the last ten years: the far left idiocy that was there all along, or the technology that allowed that far left left idiocy to attain critical mass. Most likely the symbiosis between them. Either way, it's produced a hell of a shit show.
Agreed. The most worrying thing is the clear deterioration in the standard of the general level of education among university students. The 68ers might have been filled to the brim with revolutionary fervor and the impervious certitude of the young, but they were the beneficiaries of an established level of education and a certain rigor in the fundamentals that they and their heirs in academia have almost completely failed to preserve. The depressing result of which we see, where students at supposedly top-tier Ivy League schools, are only marginally fluent in their native tongue and just about the only thing they are able to articulate clearly -albeit inadvertently - is their own complete ignorance of history and the culture and civilization they seem to hellbent on destroying.
Their lack of a real education has the not inconsiderable upside that it is difficult to see how they will be able to work effectively anywhere outside their progressive bubble. My guess is that if you are a still a crybully when you are 23, you are probably a crybully for life.
Of course, today there is a quite large and well funded network of progressive NGOs, which presumably will be very attractive work places in the minds of the young activists, since I think the DEI positions have probably peaked now. Whether they are able to work effectively with others at anything other than professional activism, when they cannot seem to handle anyone disagreeing with them is another question.
I think the most important point you make has to do with the fact that 68ers were standing on a foundation of actual education that their successors lack -- precisely because the 68ers, in their selfish and narrow worldview, ensured that their successors were denied a similarly broad and complete education. That's sort of the nub right there.