Prepping Julia

In 2012, the Obama campaign released a cartoon depiction of the choice America was facing, boiled down to a single figure: The Life of Julia.

Julia was actually, literally faceless, and entirely alone, traveling through life without family, friends, or colleagues. But ahh, like the story about the guy who asks God about the two sets of footprints, Julia wasn’t alone alone: She was supported, at all times, by the endless beneficence of the centralized state, our one true parent and deity, the very lifesource. She was able to begin learning as a child because Barack Obama gave her a HeadStart program; she was able to start a business as an adult because Barack Obama gave her an SBA loan. The God-Patriarch Barack walked with her always, enabling her to live, giving her the substance of her life.

That’s how it works, of course: You need programs so you can do stuff. How can a human being possibly reproduce without government programs to support and subsidize reproduction? It’s a biological impossibility — as is well known, the uterus isn’t even activated until the first government check arrives. You can’t do things on your own, and you certainly can’t do things with the informal support of family, friends, or community. Life requires the empowerment that comes with formalized systems of dependency.

So. In a comment on my last post about Stanford, which discussed an essay by Ginevra Davis on the planned destruction of student life at that elite university, an alert reader made this great point:

No, but really. Go read that story. It’s a gob of spit in the face dressed up as a hug:

Before the pandemic, Outdoor House would often host trips in places like the Sierra Nevadas or Mount Shasta. These trips required driving long distances or having access to specific gear, according to former Outdoor House resident Sean Roelofs ’22 M.S. ’23. While Roelofs himself has fond memories attached to some of those trips, he also recognizes that previous iterations of Outdoor House have underutilized spaces closer to campus.

“We have beautiful mountains that are a 30-minute drive from us. Why can’t all of our Outdoor House retreats be there?” Roelofs said. “Within the Bay Area, there are a ton of spaces. It’s a lot more accessible to people who don’t have time to drive eight extra hours.”

[…]

Eric Bear ’23, who applied to be an RA for Outdoor House next year, echoed Lowley’s sentiment. Bear hopes that the themed residence will help people view simpler, less-strenuous activities as a healthy, more-inclusive alternative to what he calls “conquest-based” activities. Some of those simpler activities, to him, include playing frisbee, painting outdoors or going for dish hikes or walks around campus.

By centering the house on these more accessible forms of engagement, Bear believes that the house will “invite more folks who have not necessarily been exposed” to the outdoors and allow everyone to “start to really appreciate the ways in which people experience the outdoors in ways that are not that classic model.”

Ohh, you poor thing, are you trying to travel all the way from Stanford to the Sierra Nevadas?

That’s way beyond you, poor debilitated child. Why don’t you try something that’s within your range of ability, like going for a walk around campus? You know, we have a formal organization that can support you in the attempt. To take a walk. Here. On campus.

The message of stories like this, and the message of the administrative actions they describe, is a message of weakness, fearfulness, debilitation, and dependency: You can’t. Imagine telling a healthy twenty year-old that he shouldn’t try to go camping in the mountains, ‘cause it’s probably just way too hard for him. See, Stanford’s student life administrators are helping.

What you’re doing in your late teens and early twenties, whether you go to college or not, is learning adulthood — acquiring habits of independence and resourcefulness that you’ll carry for the rest of your life. (Ideally your parents will already deliver you to legal adulthood with a big part of this training already in place.) The message, don’t try to take a trip to the mountains, it’s too hard for you, is a knife in the heart of that journey. It’s a disgusting and shameful thing to communicate to young adults.

Atomization and infantilization have consequences, and they’re thoroughly described in Mattias Desmet’s The Psychology of Totalitarianism, which will be released in less than a week:

The regulation mania, in all its extravagance and absurdity, undoubtedly contributes to the psychological troubles of our time. The contradiction and ambiguity of so many rules creates a neurotic dog-of-Pavlov effect and its excessive nature takes away the satisfaction, spontaneity, and joy of life. There is less and less space for autonomy and freedom…

The over-regulation has mostly advanced without us realizing it. It also exerts its suffocating influence mostly without us realizing it. But every time the regulation machine is tuned up higher, we lose some space for our existence as living, human beings. It creates a kind of vicious circle: In order to reduce unease and frustration in social spaces, we make more rules, protocols, and procedures. Those rules subsequently lead to more discomfort and frustration. We respond to that with even more rules. And each time the regulatory fabric is woven a little more tightly, the human being receives less oxygen.

I’ll have more to say about this book next week, when it goes on sale, but here’s my preview: This man sees what’s happening.

We have administrative systems that exist to protect young adults from a dangerous encounter with this:

Oh, don’t, it’s too hard!

This is ruin. There’s death in it.