Posted on 05/16/2024 6:17:22 AM PDT by MtnClimber
If you are graduating from college this year, I suspect you’re not too familiar with George Carlin. So before you become inflamed about the (intentionally) harsh title, let me tell you I plagiarized it from Carlin, who was one of the best American comedians of the last 100 years. His show You Are All Diseased is available on YouTube, and it is so good that I was willing to start by alienating you a bit just to plug it here. You’re welcome. It is especially recommended if you’re in any kind of altered state of mind.
Speaking of states of mind: I’m worried about yours.
Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide among people your age in the U.S. are skyrocketing. I myself lost a student to suicide a few years ago—an experience I wish on no one. I’m here to tell you that I think it’s partly our (your professors’) fault. We, along with others, have been feeding you a distorted view of the world and your place in it, and I think this has caused a considerable part of the existential angst you all feel.
But I’m not just aiming to point fingers.
I want to lay a vision of the present and future, which I genuinely believe and yet know many of you don’t share. After all, exposing you to unfashionable ideas is a core part of a healthy education. My deeper hope in doing so is to start a conversation on changing this sad state of affairs and to get you on your way to a happy and healthy life. Isn’t that what commencements are all about?
Whenever I speak with my students—I teach at the University of Virginia—they seem deeply pessimistic about the state of the world. We all know the reasons. Climate change is going to kill us all; late-stage capitalism is running amok; inequality is at an all-time high; racism and bigotry are rampant; gender-nonconforming and queer people are under unprecedented attack; economic anxiety has never been worse; AI is coming for our jobs; and on and on and on.
I then pose a simple thought experiment to them: If you were given a time machine that could take you back to any period in the last 12,000 years—since the dawn of civilization—when would you rather live?
You see, I believe we currently live in the golden age of humanity. Things have never been better for human beings. Yet it seems we have never felt worse about our prospects.
If you’re a woman, go back more than about 100 years and you become property (of your father and, later, your husband), with no voting rights and little protection under the law. If you’re a person with above-average melanin levels, like me, the same (and worse) happens to you. Gender-nonconforming minorities would find the past just as terrible.
Based on every objective measure of well-being—safety, health, wealth—if you are a college student in America today you are better off and wealthier than the king of England was 300 years ago. You have better access to education, entertainment, leisure, and healthcare. You have cleaner water and more abundant food. You have a significantly safer and longer life. And you have access to all of the world’s knowledge, including this piece, in the palm of your hand.
And it’s not just you. Throughout recorded history, the vast majority of humans lived in what we would today define as abject, dehumanizing poverty. Income and wealth inequality were measurably worse than they are today by orders of magnitude. Women died during childbirth at staggering rates. Most humans didn’t survive childhood. And various forms of subjugation and slavery were the norm in nearly all societies. On these and a variety of other objective metrics, humanity has made breathtaking progress in the past 300 years.
Which then raises the question: Why? Why is it that “everything is amazing and nobody is happy”?......
George...lolol.
Water is cleaner? Oh, when it’s super purified. We know there are lots of things in public water...acceptable amounts of e.coli, radiation, heavy metals, etc. But now we have medicinals, cancer chemotherapeutics, etc. Prof needs to be careful with his water purity statements. L.A. is soon gonna pump out and purify, to an extent, water which was once locally acquired water from city charged acquifers...Don’t expect them to check for the thousands of pharmaceuticals or viruses.
Prof using short range prognostication to assume that all things remain about the “same”. He leaves out war, pandemics, societal breakdown, pestilences, famines.
No wonder kids are dissolutioned, and delusional. Listening to Pollyanna-like professor with no solutions for current issues.
After everyone has copulated with everyone else even the kids will be the same. The big brother government will have us eat the same foods, know the same facts, etc. There might be no more diversity left.
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Privileged little snots.
Spend our nation’s resources trying to find a cure for cancer? NO!!!! We must spend our resources on discussions about racism and diversity! Every university, every government unit, every media show / presentation must be focused exclusively on diversity!
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That’s not a free market as the government interferes by creating the climate change boogie man and usurps power to combat it.
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