College is where we go to first encounter ideas. It is not where we go to understand them. Understanding them demands lifelong engagement while also engaging with their real world consequences. The amount of peiple who can encounter both circumstances, let alone have the intelligence to underatand what they encounter, is unthinkably small. For the rest of us, people like me and you, it's all guesswork.
When you look at history, the flames of revolution begin over and over in the universities. Those of you who haven't seen the otherwise marginal show Three Body Problem are missing a perfect demonstration of how Mao's Great Leap Forward began on college campuses. So did the Protestant Reformation. So did the Socialist International. So, believe it or not, did fascism. It always seems to begin with young people who only know enough about the world to know it's a shitty place, and think that with enough change, they can be the ones who do better.
Fuck, I'm too tipsy to know where I'm going with this. My duodenum feels like it's in the shape of a wooden stake.
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