I have suspected it for some time – but now I know it to be true! This damnable university bears one sole intendment – the destruction of the soul, the destruction of the individual. Its pestilent maws snap and grind, that rebellion might be crushed, and the soul might be truncated. Legion thoughtless forms are racked on some Ixionian instrument, wheedled with promises of future toil and debt and freedom! Freedom through enslavement! Freedom through abnegation!
Today it is enough to moil under agony to be free. Freedom is to have enough money to tend another's chains. I cannot retain my sanity in such a world! Is madness knowledge? How has the rebellious spirit become mental unhingement? Who threw the pall of lunacy over thought?
I am reminded of The Dream by Byron, and the following extract:
her thoughts
Were combinations of disjointed things;
And forms impalpable and unperceived
Of others' sight familiar were to hers.
And this the world calls frenzy; but the wise
Have a far deeper madness, and the glance
Of melancholy is a fearful gift;
What is it but the telescope of truth?
Which strips the distance of its fantasies,
And brings life near in utter nakedness,
Making the cold reality too real!
And is this not utter truth? Who has experienced any meaningful epiphany in joy? Is joy not the placation of the mind? This explains a great deal in a world in which sadness is considered derangement. We must feign happiness at all times, and therein lies the problem of man's modern stultification. No progress has ever been made by an individual who is satisfied with the world. But more than this, far more – the soul cannot ever be perfected when its host is unwilling to admit its imperfections.
I sit in a lecture, and words are extruded betwixt the lecturers mandibles and lashed against the beholder. All is grey, all is artificial. Every sentence is a torment of bone. There is a real, physical pain attendant on each syllable, as if black barbs had riven the flesh. With each PowerPoint slide I feel an assault on the soul, and I check the lecturer's grim features for sadistic smirks which might affirm such a fear. Starchy, bloated faces are placed all around the room, perfectly indifferent to the world, yet awaiting the lecturer's next word with utter anxiety. There is the real possibility that the lecture might spontaneously conclude, the spell would be broken, and all the faces would collapse where they float, receding into the bland furniture.
I must take a moment to assay the absolute toxicity of such a mode of learning. One is told too frequently how university is different from school – university is where one might think for oneself. However, I have seen no evidence to confirm such an assertion. The above description of the university system, and certainly the university in which I am trapped, may seem histrionic, but I assure you, dear reader, it makes only a tiny assault on the vast edifice of evil to be found here.
Then university is a place for individual growth and discovery – let us consider this statement. First, they begin the 'experience' by assigning each student their very own student number, by which one will be referred in all sorts of official communication. Hereby, one is shown one's place as a mere number in a colossal machine. This is the root from which all dehumanisation blooms.
More than this, and in addition to countless measures designed to punish individualism, one observes a bizarre trend in this supposed 'learning'. Namely, one is absolutely not to have an opinion on any matter. One is to read others' views, absorb them and then contrast them so as to create an overview of the given topic (and this is regarding humanities subjects – sciences do not even afford this luxury). One is not assessed on the strength of one's own words, but on that of others, and how well one has sewn them together. Of course, this can be a useful skill, and is one which I use often, but the homogeneity of thought, and the humbling of the individual, promoted by such a tendency is clear. Any critique must be based on the findings of some contrary source, all censure must be filtered through another's viewpoint, reliant on the chance occurrence that someone has said previously what one wishes to say now. It is difficult to describe quite how inimical this is, but the impression is broadly as follows: One must not be so impetuous as to think one's own view is important, one must obey the established authorities on truth. Simply, it breeds timidity in the expression of opinion. Such a system cannot stimulate freedom of thought, rather it stimulates the desire for oppression I will discuss later. I have met more vacuous people at university than I could care to mention – one must remember that these are people who have followed the government's prescribed course of living for their entire spans. A preponderance of programmed robots is to be expected here.
A break is announced after the first hour. I get up, snatching my possessions with criminal ease, and run to the great palisades in the far corner, vaulting through with the energy of Satan's irruption into Eden. There are more doors ahead, and I speed up, lest they be locked before me.
'Freedom!' my mind seems to cry, as I am vomited out into linear greyness and stretching uniformity. I do feel as if I am mad at this point. Does nobody see chains? Crushed souls trudge before me, great shackles clawing the dirt where they rove.
I run to the lake or, to exercise a reluctant pedantry, the artificial lake nearby. I don't know quite why I do this, but I do it in absence of all premeditation. The thing is positioned such that the admirer of this body of water must simultaneously gaze on the buildings from which a retreat was just made – there is no escape. This whole place has been constructed as a colossal panopticon, with some industrial chimney disgorging its poisonous fumes in the centre of the wasteland. I feel like the goat in the maths problem – tied to a post, and drawn irresistibly by each movement to its dull cynosure.
I walk to a bench, wincing as the wind's brumal pangs shiver through my form. I am seated for mere moments before realising that the ducks, strewn around me like empty crisp wrappers, feel none of the woe to which I am so unnecessarily subjected. They ensconce themselves in the grass like rattlesnakes, preening their grand coats and watching. Yet how is it that these ducks, alien to the wonders of civilisation, precluded from inherited knowledge, banished from the gates of progress, are more free from fetters than I can ever hope to be? How is it that thousands of years of civilisation allows me to say that I am less free than a duck? These birds have no obligations, no exams, no places to be, and yet there is no discernible disorder among their ranks.
Civilisation, on the other hand, has spent thousands of years creating abstract boundaries and rules, such that now the personality is worthless, and the soul, once delicate and glistering, is altogether disregarded. I do not say that a return to the pure innocence of the ducks is required – this is probably impossible and, besides, such a state may be less beautiful than that of man at the summit of his potential. Yet it is only a system of benignity which will affirm this. In this damnable university I see all the vices to which civilisation has heretofore aspired, and still aspires!
And, for this reason, I do not pin the dread accusation of wickedness on university alone – it itself is in thrall to a far larger system, and must be seen as such if its malice is to be fully neutralised. All proscriptions on freedom must be seen as functions of the system which allows them, and not as regrettable anomalies. Only if we attach such importance to the upheaval of our blasted mode of living can we ever hope to apprehend even a modicum of freedom.
Rousseau saw the nocuous effects of our warped civilisation, and the neglect of the soul with all the distractions of wealth and toil. He writes, in his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences:
I walk to a bench, wincing as the wind's brumal pangs shiver through my form. I am seated for mere moments before realising that the ducks, strewn around me like empty crisp wrappers, feel none of the woe to which I am so unnecessarily subjected. They ensconce themselves in the grass like rattlesnakes, preening their grand coats and watching. Yet how is it that these ducks, alien to the wonders of civilisation, precluded from inherited knowledge, banished from the gates of progress, are more free from fetters than I can ever hope to be? How is it that thousands of years of civilisation allows me to say that I am less free than a duck? These birds have no obligations, no exams, no places to be, and yet there is no discernible disorder among their ranks.
Civilisation, on the other hand, has spent thousands of years creating abstract boundaries and rules, such that now the personality is worthless, and the soul, once delicate and glistering, is altogether disregarded. I do not say that a return to the pure innocence of the ducks is required – this is probably impossible and, besides, such a state may be less beautiful than that of man at the summit of his potential. Yet it is only a system of benignity which will affirm this. In this damnable university I see all the vices to which civilisation has heretofore aspired, and still aspires!
And, for this reason, I do not pin the dread accusation of wickedness on university alone – it itself is in thrall to a far larger system, and must be seen as such if its malice is to be fully neutralised. All proscriptions on freedom must be seen as functions of the system which allows them, and not as regrettable anomalies. Only if we attach such importance to the upheaval of our blasted mode of living can we ever hope to apprehend even a modicum of freedom.
Rousseau saw the nocuous effects of our warped civilisation, and the neglect of the soul with all the distractions of wealth and toil. He writes, in his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences:
O virtue! Sublime science of simple souls, are so many troubles and trappings necessary for one to know you? Are your principles not engraved in all hearts, and in order to learn your laws is it not enough to go back into oneself and listen to the voice of one's conscience in the silence of the passions? There you have true philosophy.
What price the elevation of the soul when we have money, this fantastic paper! Venality rendered in a convenient form! What price personality when all is fit for sale and purchase? What price one's short span when it might be Balkanised and put to commercial use? Thousands of years of supposed progress – for what! I am more in chains, by virtue of this human form, perhaps than anything which has ever stirred on this grey sphere. But even beyond Rousseau's purview, we see today an even more pernicious form of civilisation. Slavery, as traditionally conceived, never required a worship of one's chains – yet this is what is expected of me! This makes the impossible movement from physical enslavement to mental enslavement – and here such an expectation must be laid to rest!
We must adore this mercenary system, we must be grateful we are not more comprehensively desolated. Yet this modern slavery, by its assault on our passions, by its demands of more than physical supplication, leaves no space for further desolation. Winston in 1984 is free as long as he clings to his shred of rebellion, this worm of defiance in his mind. He plans to be shot by some guard and, as the bullet was released, live only in that insurrection. Hereby he would be free. Yet today we must love the system, we must discard this scrap of rebellion. We are Winston once he has declared his undying love for Big Brother, and this is the absolute core to which all slavery aspires – a willing slavery! A slavery of the mind! Only in this can the onlooker find true despair.
We must adore this mercenary system, we must be grateful we are not more comprehensively desolated. Yet this modern slavery, by its assault on our passions, by its demands of more than physical supplication, leaves no space for further desolation. Winston in 1984 is free as long as he clings to his shred of rebellion, this worm of defiance in his mind. He plans to be shot by some guard and, as the bullet was released, live only in that insurrection. Hereby he would be free. Yet today we must love the system, we must discard this scrap of rebellion. We are Winston once he has declared his undying love for Big Brother, and this is the absolute core to which all slavery aspires – a willing slavery! A slavery of the mind! Only in this can the onlooker find true despair.
This sadism, this need for enslavement on the part of the masses, is seen in the very construction of the labour market. Nobody is much bothered by the fact that today we must entreat others to affix our chains – in this we see perfect slavery. When I read in a job application form: 'Why do you want to work for this company?' why might I not reasonably write, 'Fuck you, I need the money'? The very purpose of a wage is to compensate the worker for the aching drudgery of toil. To ask the worker his reasons for willing his own enslavement is a misunderstanding of the wage system. Nay, deeper than this, it is indicative of the wickedness of our current economic system. Today we must be fawning and servile, furnishing our prospective overlords with reasons why they might be so kind as to immure us in the workplace. We must apply for jobs, wear ridiculous suits, deign to the idiocy of the corporate tempest of bureaucracy and other such needless nonsense. Of course this occurs because today we see work as a universal duty, not a detestable material necessity. Do you notice we see unemployment as the thing to be eliminated, and not employment – humanity is absolutely desirous of its bonds; a neurotic dread of freedom hangs in every heart. The soul under such a regime is desecrated beyond hope. We talk of the failure of our education system – I can scarcely think of a system which might inculcate so much servility!
I do not say that work itself is the desolation of the soul, but in its current configuration – whereby one must weep at the beauty of one's bonds, and smile at one's oppressor – it is. To regain the shred of freedom necessary to individual thought and the flourishing of the soul, it behoves the individual to disembarrass himself of these metaphysical shackles of approval. Nothing can be beautiful if this rebellion is absent. We must stop looking on things as unalterable, 'the way the world works', and instead seize change for ourselves. To admit that something is wicked but impossible to change is a gross dereliction of duty. I will have no more of the cheapened concept of liberty we cherish!
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