I'm Not Even Hungry

I Have a Theme! I Love Themes!

Yesterday, I had a column-related epiphany, which on the scale of epiphanes is pretty pathetic. But on the scale of me-related epiphanies, it's about as good as it gets. For the next little while, belief is the new skepticisim. Mostly, how do people manage to do it. It's a concept discussed remarkably well in—where else?—Serenity. Ever since I saw that movie, also known as the movie you all have to go see, I've been thinking about it. A lot of the stuff I'm going to write this semester is a consequence of that. The stuff that isn't you know, historiographical essays for class, or editorials for Spec. So, a lot of the worthwhile stuff I'm writing this semester is going to be on that. Here's my first try:

Last year, more than 2,500 students at Columbia went to pysch services looking for help. Some of their problems were probably serious—dead relatives, divorcing parents, abusive friends. Others, at least from an outsider’s perspective, probably weren’t —“I’m too rich,” “My butt’s too flat,” “Everyone has less amazing sex than me.” But no matter what was wrong, they all had something in common: a bleak, brief, life spinning in an endless void. As Summer from The OC put it, “life is, well, random, unfair and ultimately meaningless.”

Or at least that’s what it feels like sometimes. And when someone feels like that, depression feels like the logical conclusion. Of course, not everyone who goes to psych services goes because of existential dread, but that attitude runs underneath much of Columbia’s —and, for that matter, the country’s—intellectual life, or at least that part of intellectual life that deals with life. Andrew Delbanco, head of the American Studies department here, aptly summarizes the secular consensus: “We have reached a point where it is not only specific objects of belief that have been discredited but the very capacity to believe… It is divesture without reinvestment.” (Full Disclosure: I’m in a class with Professor Delbanco this semester, but since I’m fairly certain nobody except my Mom will read this, I’m okay with quoting him. Also, Hi Mom!)

Among intellectuals, disbelief has become almost a prerequisite for discussion. They have reached a point where, as Richard Rorty, another professor, but this time at Stanford, puts it: “we no longer worship anything, where we treat nothing as a quasi-divinity, where we treat everything—our language, our conscience, our community—as a product of time and chance.” Secure in their disbelief, the best and brightest have smashed, at least to their satisfaction, the old constructs that used to give people meaning. God, country, and self-hood, among many other victims, all stand revealed as delusions foisted upon us by ourselves. But everybody has had so much fun in the rubble, smashing tiny bits into even tinier ones, that nobody has yet gotten around to constructing anything new. So, for now at least, we’re adrift, or, in preferred academic speak, post-. This constitutes the background, the white noise of a contemporary liberal arts education. And, as Summer knows, it’s fucking depressing.

In a cruel coincidence, though, the structure of society works to further inculcate this worldview in students. With America having grounded its intellectual class, for now at least, to the academy, those most enamored with post-ism are also those most exposed to some of the most impressionable people in the country: us. This reality, however, runs counter to the natural inclinations of youth, simply because many haven’t had the chance to get jaded yet. It produces a jarring dissonance in students. The same people who want more than anything to have something to believe in spend their days listening to professors who tell them in countless ways that there is nothing worth believing in. The lucky ones can ignore it, even make their apathy into a virtue that demonstrates their worldliness or courage. Others can’t. In a grand tradition of aspiring intellectuals that runs at least as far back as Hamlet, they feel melancholy.

But some refuse to give up. Instead of endlessly examining themselves, they look to the world outside. Groups like the College Democrats, the College Republicans, Amnesty International, Columbia Global Justice, and Students for Choice can provide students with more than resume fodder. Students who throw themselves into these groups can spend so much time in them that they never come up for intellectual air. Monomaniacal zeal, after all, makes for a damn good organizer. Students outside protesting for a socialist revolution don’t have time to think about their place in the world because they’re too busy saving it. Religious students, despite the widespread opposition to their beliefs implicit in official academic ideology, also maintain a strong presence on campus, as anyone who attended an almost-empty classroom on Yom Kippur can attest. Members of campus religious organization often lead lives that are much, much better than those of many Columbia students. By many Columbia students, I mean me. They study hard, volunteer in the community, and work to save the immortal souls of their fellow man, while I ineffectually strive to unlock hidden characters in my Gamecube’s Super Smash Brothers.

This devotion, though, does nothing to help students who can’t believe in God or in politics. Since it’s much easier/funner to tear something down than build it back up, there are some who recognize a need for new beliefs, but don’t actually want to help create them. Instead, they content themselves with waiting. After all, those who have already lost faith in faith can afford to. Besides, something will come along. It has to.

They’re wrong. Even if beliefs are constructs, with all the contingency and irrationality that implies, people still need them to make sense of life—even people who should know better. But twiddling mental thumbs while waiting for new beliefs to come doesn’t make them come any faster. The last generation has done a fantastic job of understanding the problem of faith, and they’ve done an even better job of doing absolutely nothing to address it. Maybe it’s our turn to start trying.

posted by Tim @ 9:11 AM