There are lots of explanations for why college folk are the way they are. I’ve offered several of them myself. But when it comes right down to it, all the various explanations are just symptoms of the same fundamental disease: They’re boring, and they know they’re boring.
Boredom is, in fact, the modern West’s signature pathology. Nobody with a rich, full life — a rewarding job, some hobbies, family and friends — bothers about “intersectionality” and whatnot. That’s not to say that Normals don’t get bored. However, for us boredom is a temporary feature of life. We know how to handle it; we have a zillion ways of killing time. What’s more important, we know that boredom’s just a part of life; it happens to the best of us.
For them, each episode of boredom is an existential crisis. They’ve convinced themselves that they have all the answers, that to be #Woke is to be a god among men. So if their lives aren’t 100% wonderful and fulfilling all the time — every second of every minute of every hour of every day — it throws the fundamental premise of their entire existence into question. It it any wonder, then, why they’re constantly hyperventilating about everything? Without a constant infusion of drama, they have to face the fact that they’re just people, buggering through life with the rest of us.
Severian, “The Reluctant Revolutionary”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2019-04-05.
July 11, 2022
QotD: The sad plight of the academic
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