Campus protesters are sheep without a shepherd
It is easy to have uncharitable feelings toward the students protesting on campuses in recent weeks. For one thing, there’s the chanting of vile antisemitic slogans by a student population that, in the past, was constantly worrying about the subtle “microaggressions” of speech that might possibly make some students feel unsafe.
Then there’s the juxtaposition between the protesters’ supposed aims — to somehow further the struggle for justice for the Palestinians — and the very real injustice being inflicted on all the students at these institutions who have paid good money to learn and are having their classes disrupted.
As if all this weren’t enough, we are treated to the spectacle of Columbia University students, after having broken into and occupied a university building, demanding “humanitarian aid,” lest they grow faint from lack of sustenance.
But then I reflect that, after all, these are just kids. Many of them are still teenagers. And they have been having a hard time of it. According to the data, they are members of the most anxious, depressed and suicidal generation on record. They have all experienced the loss of a school year — maybe in high school, maybe in college — because the adults in the room panicked during the pandemic and quarantined a population that had essentially zero risk of serious consequences from the disease.
So maybe we should turn our attention, instead, to us, the adults. This is the generation we have raised. What went wrong?
According to a recent book by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, one key factor in producing the most miserable generation ever is a dramatic shift in the experience of childhood. We have almost wholly removed children from the real world, which they used to experience through things like an abundance of unsupervised play, because we have come to see it as too dangerous. This has made them fearful and dependent. At the same time, we have put smartphones in their hands from a young age, letting them roam unrestricted in the digital world with its soul-crushing social media and violent pornography.
Another factor is ideological. These young people find themselves pulled between conflicting visions of the good life. One comes from their parents. Getting into an Ivy League school like Columbia is a project that, for many kids, begins in kindergarten. Their lives are focused on building the experiences and academic credentials necessary to gain admission, the ticket to the life of wealth and privilege their parents set before them as the picture of success.
Another vision is fed to them by the algorithms and reinforced by every element of popular culture. According to it, the good life is simply a matter of discovering your authentic self (which is simply a matter of figuring out what you desire) and then living it out.
Finally, many of their teachers in both grade school and college classrooms have taught them that the good life is to stand with the oppressed against the oppressors in a world neatly divided into these two, struggling to upend power structures and bring about a more just world.
The students encamped on college quads shouting slogans have gravitated toward the third of these visions. In some respects, this is a hopeful sign. It may mean they have found the visions of just getting rich, on the one hand, or just indulging their desires, on the other, wanting. Their presence among the protesters signals a desire for more — for the significance that comes from dedicating one’s life to something that matters and for a sense of community built around a common goal.
Unfortunately, the particular ideology they have gravitated toward is rotten at the core, with its crude dichotomy of the oppressors and the oppressed encouraging the dehumanization of one’s opponents and the violence so clearly visible in the slogans and attitudes of the protesters.
Surely we, the adults, can do better. We can, for one thing, stop giving smartphones to children and let them play again. Even more importantly, we can set before them a vision of the good life that satisfies the desires of their souls without generating violence and hate. These are our sheep, entrusted to our care. It’s time to be better shepherds.
— John Milliken is filling in for his father, Charles. John writes on Substack at Joyful Resistance.
This article originally appeared on The Daily Telegram: John Milliken: Campus protesters are sheep without a shepherd
