Dear Friends: What's with these kids today? And by kids, I'm referring to the over-grown, petulant, school-yard-intellectually-aged "students" littering the campuses (a note on that: are we all familiar with the Dakota Pipeline protest, which was in the name of preserving the region's pristine environment,1 and which when said protest ended, and the protestors left, they left behind 250 truck-loads of trash, which now threatens to contaminate the region's pristine environement? And, I'm just saying.) of our country's academic institutions?
There's been a lot written recently on the phenomena of "safe-spaces" and "non-Trump zones" and the perpetual protests now ubiquitously found in the college and university campuses land of the snowflakes (and, if only it was harder to imagine said land of the snowflakes being one of those souvenir-shake-up-bubbles, with a miniature college campus inside, surrounded by those little snowflakes, and when you shake it, all the little snowflakes rise up and rain a snowflake-hell down on the campus. Yikes!), and one recent book even traces the origins of such to that infamous video capturing the Yale undergrad verbally berating, at the top of her lungs, and not shrill, but angry, that poor schmuck2 of a college-professor-administrator-type who was idiot-dumb enough to allow said undergrad to make him look like such a schmuck. (And as for Yale, one of the pre-eminent academic institutions in the country, and the world, and with an admittance rate as low as the rate of economic growth during the Obama administration, and they're admitting wackos like that? Was it a voluntary or involuntary admittance? Again, just saying.)
How did this occur? (Not the Yale admittance rate of The Future Wackos Club; on applications, they all present as the cream off the top of the cream of the crop, and can probably keep it together for the personal interview, but once admitted, watch out. We've all heard the stories. And seen the videos. If not, YouTube the Yale video, and ask yourselves, is that Yale undergrad a trend-setter or a typhoid undergrad? You decide.) But seriously, my thinking on how this occurred is simple, but not simplistic, and can be summed up in two words: social media. Which is the pre-cursor to artificial intelligence. Which will kill us all. (Yes. I know. That kind of a leap makes you wonder whether I belong in a Future Wackos Club.3-4 But, I hope you pick up on the word-play. If not, think about it a little bit. It won't hurt you. Just put the emphasis on the word Future and not the word Wackos, as opposed to at Yale, where the emphasis is purely on the wackos.)
Now, I'm no psychologist. Or even a pop-psychologist. Or even a pop-anything.5 But here's my thinking: many young people today need to restrict the expression of free speech in the public sphere in reaction to their inherent need to control speech on the internet (re: social media), which they cannot. Their expression of rage, and their complicit need to humiliate others in public, is the ultimate contradiction of their own inability to possibly imagine themselves humiliated in public; as such, there is a high likelihood they've already somehow been humiliated in the on-line sphere, and cannot do anything about it, so must now seek to control the public, non-on-line sphere. And, as such, social media once again proves its own fallacy -- it seeks to connect us, and it seemingly has in the short-term, but it's an illusion, and will finally only succeed in distancing us. In simpler terms, once a person has been hated-on in the on-line sphere, they will begin to hate all on-line people, which they will then transfer to a hate of all people, and they will be in a state of perpetual hate, and life will become an expression of contained chaos: 1) the social-media-bubble that social-media-types live in will de-volve into a personal bubble insulating them from all other people 2) the majority of people will work harder in order to distance themselves as much as possible from those people, but never create any bubbles, because decent people understand the inherent value of other people, and that it's all about teamwork, and that we need each other, period. 3) the really rich will simply create literal bubbles from their bubbles of wealth (snowflakes not included, but always optional), which the really rich will eventually enhance through the use of robots, who (the robots) will then begin to think for themselves. And kill us all.6-7
And if you think this is all science-fiction, think again. It's already happening. And it shouldn't surprise anybody, at least anybody with a still-functioning brain, that when we pull back the curtain to reveal the leader of the mind-less, soul-less, robot empire, he goes by a name familiar to us all: Barrack Hosein Obama.
Just saying.
1It was also intended to protect sacred burial grounds, which should be protected, as with any expression of religious freedom, unless they seek to use their religion to blow us all up. Of course, nothing is sacred anymore, which is horrifying, since we've all seen Poltergeist.
2I'm not very well-versed in Yiddish, but I believe a schmuck is an idiot-dumb college-professor-administrator-type.
3Started by Orwell, George. What would he think today? He probably wasn't the I-told-you-so type, so he'd be horrified he was right. And even more horrified with the left. And he was a genius.4
4Other members of the club include Musk, Elon and Hawking, Stephen. And in the non-genius category: me. And hopefully, you.
5Bonus pop-music headline: Did anybody see the Grammys? I tuned in this year, for the politics. There was some politics, but what I mostly saw was some good music, and a whole lotta fashion. As such, Jennifer Lopez's dress was highly fashionable, and highly sexy, and highly inappropriate for prime-time television, since it was this close to showing her Bieber. Again, just saying.
6Garland, Alex. "Ex Machina." (Universal Pictures; 2015.)
7Nolan, Jonathan and Joy, Lisa. "Westworld." (HBO; 2016.)