Posts Tagged ‘indoctrinate u’

Thanks to YouTube and my fellow contributor to this site Harpuia, I’ve started watching Indoctrinate U. It’s a student film about how public universities in the United States are acting more as indoctrination centers than educational facilities as they are supposed to be. It’s pretty disturbing, watching supposedly rational people acting so knee-jerk about social issues because of what they’re taught in college, and it strikes a distinct chord with me because I did drift significantly from my conservative heritage just in the one year I attended the University of Oklahoma.

However, I didn’t drift as far left as some of the people shown in that film. Whether due to a factor of my inquisitive nature or the short time I was a college student, I didn’t drift any further than moderate. If anything, I dropped off from any solid political leanings due to my cynicism. Looking at this film, I consider myself to be extremely lucky. I also have to wonder just how the idea of “liberal thinking is the only thinking worth thinking” became considered such a good idea.

I mean, history tells us that cultural uniformity is more often a destructive force. The most successful civilizations, such as the Greek and Romans, allowed their people to flourish in their gifts. The Renaissance was so awesome because so many talented people in many different areas of expertise popped up almost all at once and began to change the world, starting from where they were. On the flip side, a sense of cultural uniformity lead to events like the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Holocaust.

Not only does history warn us about the dangers of uniformity, so do literature and cinema. “1984″, “The Giver”, “Brave New World”, and many others all say that when we give up our individuality and our freedom, we become less than human. So too do movies like “Equilibrium”. That specific movie centers around a world where “peace” has been created through the death of emotion caused by a drug called Prozium, but that “peace” has to be maintained through strict laws and the violent destruction of anything emotion-provoking and anyone who is acting emotional. Alas, that kind of dystopian future is more likely to happen in this day and age than one would realize.

Are there unifying ideals that are not destructive? Yes, there are. The idea of becoming a better human race is indeed noble and should be striven for, but not at the cost of what makes human. What makes us different from animals is that we are all unique individuals, capable of figuring things out in our own way, although in some ways we may need the help of others to help us get started. Ultimately, though, each person has their own path and must find it in their own way. If we fail to truly embrace diversity, either suppressing or artificially enhancing it (the latter of which ends up acting the same as suppression), we will begin to kill our humanity. Our souls, if you will forgive the terminology, should be more precious to us than any other resource, because there is nothing we can get in return for the loss of the individual.

Consider this: do all pixels on a computer screen show the exact same color? If they do, there is nothing but one solid color, which is usually a sign that something is not working properly. Beautiful images and inspiring works of art, whether image-based or text-based, are only created by variances in color and in brightness of each individual pixel. Even black text on a white screen (or vice versa) is based on variations in color and brightness. This is not a fluke, people; this is how nature works. Nature itself is heterogeneous, with oceans and deserts, forests and prairies, mountains and plains. If the entire world was an ocean, it would be a very dull world; if the entire world was a desert, it would be unlivable.

Bottom line is that in order for us to be united, we all must first be unique. This may sound like a contradiction, but it is perfectly possible, as the Earth herself shows us. We will never be a successfully united human race until we find ways to use all of our various skills, talents, and philosophies in conjunction, rather than discard them for one perceived “complete” ideal. Look at the United Federation of Planets in the Star Trek universe. Their unity was only made possible because of the sharing of gifts, not only between human ethnic and social groups, but between races of intelligent beings throughout the galaxy. That is true unity. The social homogeneity being taught at our universities is a false unity…and a dangerous one.