FOOD FOR THOUGHT 7:

EXTRA!! EXTRA!! READ ALL ABOUT IT!! PRESIDENT OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY UNABLE TO TALK, REASON, THINK!!

>(Read or Print in PDF Format)>>

1

..........Those who've read A Nation Gone Blind should be—I hope—more alert in detecting empty language, code-thought, and non-think "thinking" than they were before reading the book—and more aware of the terrible importance of these sorts of things in our grotesquely endangered world of a dead left wing and a dead-but-ascendant far-right wing under the Bushiscti.

..........For those who know ANGB and have been made more alert by it, just reading the newspaper can be a crushingly dismal and even hope-destroying experience. Take The New York Times of Tuesday, September 19, 2006—just for example—and turn, again for example, to page B3. There, you'll find a headline saying that "Princeton Plans Expansion Of Black Studies Program." Under that headline you'll see a photo of the familiar and famous Cornel West, the scholar who, after having been "disrespected" by Harvard's president, Lawrence Summers, put on a nationally publicized hissy-fit, snatched up his marbles and toys, and stomped off to Princeton. At Princeton, it would seem, he was warmly welcomed by that university's president, Shirley M. Tilghman.

..........The reporter of the Times piece, Karen W. Arenson, wrote this lead paragraph:

..........Princeton University, one of the leading universities in black
..........studies, yesterday announced an expansion in its program,
..........including at least a doubling in the number of faculty mem-
..........bers, the introduction of amajor for undergraduates and
..........the creation of a new center for teaching and research on
..........race in America.

Again, readers of A Nation Gone Blind will be well enough aware that the news contained in this paragraph is, to me, not good news. After all, the third chapter of ANGB argues closely and unequivocally against what are called "victimology studies," the very thing Princeton is currently so happy about expanding. "It is one thing to study history and gain knowledge," says ANGB,


..........to insist upon the importance of that knowledge and use
..........it in every possible way to preclude the recurrence of
..........suffering, injustice, cruelty, pain—these are not only under-
..........standable pursuits but right ones. Victimology, though,
..........doesn't do this. Victimology is fatally confused, if only be-
..........because it argues simultaneously that suffering is bad and
..........that suffering has meaning—that it is meaningful to suffer
..........and that that meaning can and should be studied. This is
..........an impossible situation, since it argues that suffering must
..........be ended, yet at the same time that suffering must not be
..........ended, since then, if it were, there would be nothing to study.

..........The "victim," in other words, must remain victim in
..........order to remain meaningful. This fact makes it impossible
..........to escape the conclusion that victims' studies programs
..........are based on a deep, even vicious, and certainly corrupting
..........hypocrisy.

..........It hardly needs pointing out that these are strong words—but they're also words constituting a strong logical argument. And in the Age of Simplification—in our age—a strong logical argument is usually the last thing wanted. After all, that kind of argument is likely to result in actions based on logical thought. And the more that that happens, the less people in many a calling—certainly in academic callings—are likely to be able to go on enjoying their essentially non-logical, and "feeling-based" or "politically-based" based sinecures.

..........Again, readers of ANGB will already know how seriously the book takes these kinds of matters, salient among them the rise of victims' studies, particularly their failure to be built upon an intellectual foundation:


..........In order to maintain an intellectual position that was
..........untenable and could not be maintained, the victimologists
..........weighted things away from thought and toward feeling,
..........a position where logic could not make its customary demands.
..........In order to maintain a moral and ethical position that was
..........untenable and could not be maintained, the victimologists
..........gave up the last vestige of the true, authentic, irreducible,
..........free self and replaced it with the group, or with the tribe,
..........then took refuge in the idea of "the people" who make up
..........that group or tribe. By this time, thinking had ended, since
..........the self was gone, while feeling, instinct, and an un-intel-
..........lectual sense of the just and righteous gained prestige
..........through being identified not with a single individual and
..........accountable human mind, but with the democratically en-
..........shrined concept of a "people."

..........Brothers joined brothers, sisters joined sisters, and the
..........programs were here to stay—built on sand, inward-looking,
..........self-involved, not really political, not really intellectual, not
..........really ambitious for reform, not really honest. And so aca-
..........demia began its fiddling—and is fiddling still—while the
..........Age of Simplification helps see to it that America burn.

For the subject of America burning while academia fiddles, and to get some sense of the enormity of what I think is happening both in our intellectual classes and in our nation, see my preceding "Food for Thought" entry, #6.

2

..........Now, if black studies (as we well know to be the case in my own view) is really a bad thing, why would it be written up in the newspaper while, at the same time, actual good things ¹ that are also happening don't even get mentioned? More on this in a moment, since we have to consider another question first.

..........Now let's assume, for the moment that black studies is a bad thing (for a full argument that will actually provide context enough for you to decide for yourself, read the third chapter of A Nation Gone Blind). Further, still assuming it to be a bad thing, let's assume also—just for the moment—that you, not Shirley M. Tilghman, are the president of Princeton University. It's obvious that you've got have to say something about the new expansion of black studies. But what? Let's say that you've finished A Nation Gone Blind and consider black studies a bad thing—what would you do? Well, you could say that the expansion is therefore also not good but bad—but if you did that, the next morning would find the wheels and gears grinding and turning in the elaborate though unrelenting process that brings about the firing of one president and the finding of a new one.

..........Luckily for you, though (that is, assuming that you really did want to remain president), there remain some other choices open to you. One is, of course, that you could lie. That is, even if you thought black studies was a bad thing, you could say it was good. But who wants to lie? Liars are awful, and lies are destructive, both of personality and of society. That aside, it's also entirely possible (but certainly not guaranteed) that you actually do think that black studies is a good thing. If that were the case, the matter would be easy: You could say why you thought black studies was a good thing, and then, logically following, you could laud the expansion of black studies at Princeton, your praise being logically related to what you'd said before about why you think black studies good. There would, in short, actually be some content, some personality, some felt purpose in your words.

..........All right. We all know that you're not really the president of P.U. and that the real president is Shirley M. Tilghman.

..........Now that we know a bit about some of the options, let's take a look and see how she handles the situation. Watch closely. Here is Karen Arenson's second paragraph:

..............................
..............................Shirley M. Tilghman, Princeton's president, said
....................in a telephone interview yesterday that she hoped the
....................effort would help the university contribute greater in-
....................sights to issues like the nature of racial identity and
....................help train a "new generation of leaders to solve prob-
....................lems that have persisted too long.

Uh, oh. Do you see the choice she made? I'll give you the new article's third paragraph, and then there'll be no choice but to declare that what is, is, and, if possible, to conclude what choice-if it was a choice-Shirley M. Tilghman made. The paragraph consists of a quote:

.............................."Of all the challenges that confront America,
....................none is more profound than the struggle to achieve
....................racial equality and understand the impact of race on
....................the life and institutions of the United States," she said.

3

..........I wish this part could formed as a quiz or a poll, so that people could write in saying what they think happened: whether Tilghman made a choice or didn't make one, and, if she made one, which one it was. Either way, those who've read A Nation Gone Blind will be leagues ahead of those who haven't—don't you think so, ANGB readers? And the reason is that A Nation Gone Blind dedicates a very, very great part of its energies to analysis of exactly the kind of thing we see given us here by President Tilghman.

..........And what is that? Well, unquestionably what we're seeing is a form of lying, but—as ANGB shows—it's probably impossible to tell whether the lying is intentional or unintentional. The truth about that difference is of huge importance in a number of ways—but it's also a truth that lies hidden within the heart and mind of Shirley M. Tilghman—perhaps—but in any case is invisible to us.

..........The three things we can tell, though, as readers of ANGB will know, are these: First, that Tilghman's words are lies (intentional or not); second, that these lies come in the form of what we can call code; and, third, corollary to the first and second assertions, we can define them as lies by merit of their implicit claim to be saying something while in fact they are saying nothing.

..........It's a bit like claiming to someone that you're saying "I love you" while in actuality the words you utter are "tile, airhorn, houseplant.

..........Let's analyze, in other words, the emptiness, deadness, vacuity—and therefore the plain and clear deceitfulness, since they're claiming to say something while in fact saying nothing—of Tilghman's words.

..........Look at these words and phrases: "help the university contribute"; "greater insights"; "issues"; "the nature of racial identity"; "new generation"; "leaders"; "problems"; "persisted too long." These words are code because, as the first chapter of A Nation Gone Blind demonstrates and discusses at length, ² because 1) they mean nothing whatsoever in and of themselves; 2) Tilghman is therefore aiming them—how could it be otherwise?—at listeners about whom her assumption is that they already think of them in a pre-determined way; 3) that, consequently, nothing whatsoever has been said, and, as a corollary, nothing whatsoever, therefore, has been said that consists of or is a result of either thinking or of thought; and 4) the only thing that has happened is that some vague and general set of presumed feelings and attitudes inside Tilghman have been 5) sent out to an audience presumed already to share both those feelings and attitudes and themselves to hold and to value the same absolute contentment with non-thinking and non-thought as has been demonstrated by Tilghman herself.

..........Nothing has been said by anyone to anyone. Nothing has been identified, defined, or thought by anyone (in this case, Tilghman), and therefore no thinking and ideas can possibly have been communicated by anyone to anyone else.

..........And just think: what we're talking about here, and what we're seeing clearly demonstrated, is the pure inanity of the code-driven non-think that substitutes for actual thinking, actual thought, among the greatest figureheads in advanced research and pedagogy, those who stand at the verymost pinnacle of American higher education in the early 21st century.

..........Anyone want to go to college? If there are any who do, let them, remember that these are the words that actually should be inscribed, in this our Age of Simplification, over the gates of all our great American universities:

........................................We are the hollow men
........................................We are the stuffed men
........................................Leaning together
........................................Headpiece filled with straw. . .

4

..........Let's just take a look at what Tilghman's words really do, might, or could mean. This is an awfully easy task, pitiably so, in fact, since almost all of her words are outright lies by merit of their being empty, of their being filler-words, of their being thoughtless jargon that can mean anything the hearer of such words wants them to mean. Her words are "equal opportunity" words: They mean nothing to anyone, in truth, but at the same time they're perfectly chosen to mean anything to anyone.

..........For starters: Exactly how is the university going to "contribute"—is it by teaching (and if so teaching what)? by donating money (and if so where, to whom, and why?) by proselytizing (and if so whom, and in the name or for the sake of what?) by conditioning (and if so whom? how? why? and in what?)?

..........Those who've read A Nation Gone Blind know very well what objection is likely to be raised by many at just this point: "But," these people will object, "you know what she means."

..........That's what my students used to say at points like this: When I would ask them, for example, why they didn't write or speak clearly; why they didn't look harder for an accurate word or words; why they didn't say what they mean—that's when they'd retort, "You know what I mean." Sorry. It just ain't true. No, I don't.

..........If, as Dr. Johnson said,"Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel," we can, I'm convinced, say with equal certitude that clichéd boilerplate is the last refuge both of the non-thinker, which is to say, the last refuge of the blind woman or man (vide A Nation Gone Blind), and the last refuge of the propagandist (again, vide A Nation Gone Blind, in particular chapter one, "Watching America Go Blind").

..........Lord help me, am I calling the president of Princeton University a propagandist? Yes, indeed, I am, and I'm accusing her as well of being a most, most pernicious and powerful one. I would go—no, I will go—so far as to say that she's as pernicious and powerful a propagandist for false, destructive, and enervating ideas in the world of academia as George W. Bush, another president, is pernicious and powerful as a propagandist for his own crimes against humanity in the form a fraudulent, ruinous, and in fact non-existent "war on terror."

..........When it comes to fraud, lies of omission can be no less heinous and destructive than lies of commission. Bush's lies are primarily (though by no means solely) lies of commission, the declaring of a false thing to be a true thing. President Tilghman's lies, on the other hand (like those of most of her colleagues in our now well blinded academia), are almost entirely lies of omission.

..........We've already looked at the meaninglessness of "contribute." How about "insights"? All the same questions can be asked of this awful word—awful because it's been put to work here in a context far, far beyond its powers or means, reducing it thereby to utter emptiness—as we asked about "contribute." And what's up next? Ah ha, one of the most powerful weapons of the hollow men, the infamous word "issues." Granted, this word isn't left, here, to stand by itself—though it's drained of strength even more than usual by Tilghman's ambiguity-producing solecism via the word "like"—but it's assigned some kind of unknowable duty by being placed in the full phrase "issues like the nature of racial identity."

..........And what exactly is "the nature of racial identity"? We rightfully dare ask, but as for an answer, death will find us before we'll ever hear. But we do now learn that whatever it is the university is going to "contribute," though we still don't know where or how, it seems to be related somehow or other to an interest the university has of producing "leaders." Yup, same questions: what in the devil are they? what kind of leaders does Tilghman mean? the kind like Billy Graham? the kind like Grandma Moses? maybe the kind like George W. Bush? Well, why not? Tilghman hasn't said what kind, hasn't used words to express a thought, has left the field open for the word to mean—well, two things: anything, for one, and nothing for another.

..........And so it goes, on and on and on, more words upon more words that are empty of meaning because they're code, because nobody-speaker or listener, writer or reader-knows what they do mean but feels assured that the knowledge or understanding of what they really, really, really do mean, refer to, clarify, or define is already shared by all—so that ?nothing truly need be said.

..........We are the hollow men, indeed.

..........Regarding computer programming, it used to be routinely said "garbage in, garbage out." Why in the name of all things holy should we imagine the situation to be any different whatsoever with regard to human beings?

5

..........There's more—much more—but let's bring things to a close, at least for the moment. Pick up a copy of A Nation Gone Blind to see a far longer and more thorough discussion not only of blindness and the hollow men, but of victimology studies in general, how they're "fatally confused," how they're "built on sand, inward-looking, self-involved, not really political, not really ambitious for reform, not really honest."

..........I'm hardly happy, and none of us should be, that Shirley M. Tilghman is president of Princeton; or that at her university studies of this pernicious and dishonest kind are being widely expanded; or that one of Princeton's aims—like the aims of most American universities in the Age of Simplification—is to produce "leaders" who will, one can only presume, after being "educated" under its aegis, go out into the world successfully perpetuating and perpetrating the same kind of stuff.

..........Onto the bandwagon: It turns out, according to the Times article, that "for 37 years" Princeton has "offered a certificate in African-American studies" but that, even so, it had remained, until now, "the only Ivy League university that did not offer an undergraduate major in the field." What passes for academic thought today: If everybody else does it, it's got to be good.

..........And finally, symbolism: "The program will also get a new home at the center of campus." The placement couldn't be better.

..........As it says in A Nation Gone Blind, while academia fiddles, America burns.

................................................................................Eric Larsen
................................................................................October 4, 2006
................................................................................

¹ See Food for Thought 8.

² Using as examples essays of a number of writers, among them Almaz Abinader, Julia Alvarez, Sven Birkerts, Robert Olen Butler, Richard Ford, and Naomi Shihab Nye.