Found 4 bookmarks
Custom sorting
College as an incubator of Girardian terror
College as an incubator of Girardian terror
When we’re not so different from people around us, it’s irresistible to become obsessed about beating others. ​ Still here’s my answer: If one must go to college, I advise cultivating smaller social circles. Instead of going to class and preparing for exams, to go to the library and just read. Finally, not to join a fraternity or finance club, but to be part of a knitting circle or hiking group instead. ​ In Canada, people apply to major in certain subjects; if they earn admission, it’s not so easy to switch, so there’s less of this intellectual loitering that one finds on American campuses. And when I attended a German university, students told me that German 18-year-olds don’t usually go directly to university after high school. Instead, they take a year off to travel, work, or volunteer. These experiences create difference and maturity, thus better inoculating people against mimetic contagion. ​ Girard presents a model of human conflict that is Shakespearean, not Marxist. That is, he thinks that people are not engaged in class struggle, in which proletarians unite against the bourgeoisie; instead, people reserve horror and resentment for people most like themselves. ​ If one is a Girardian, then there is perhaps no greater catastrophe than the growing tendency of the American meritocracy to be incubated in elite colleges. Is it not worth fretting that the people running the country are coming in higher numbers from these hothouse environments at a young age, where one is inflamed to compete over everything and where tiny symbolic disputes seem like life and death struggles? How much of the governing class has fully adopted this attitude, and to what extent can we see our recent political problems to be manifestations of this tendency?
·danwang.co·
College as an incubator of Girardian terror
Definite optimism as human capital
Definite optimism as human capital
In addition to education levels, human capital models should consider factors like optimism, imagination, and hope for the future. It’s straightforward to measure a recession’s effects on employment and output. But what if the psychological impact of a recession is much more severe than we thought, to the extent that it could make a dent in long-term productivity growth This is the social risk: That the minds of many talented young people today will be permanently disfigured by this obsession with Trump embarrassments. have a vast base of knowledge to work with, when they’ll be able to make connections of facts on their own, instead of being taught some interesting rules and not enough content to practice them. The way to avoid this Girardian conflict is to direct our gaze outwards to the tangible things of the world.
·danwang.co·
Definite optimism as human capital