Go without a coat when it’s cold; find out what cold is. Go hungry; keep your existence lean. Wear away the fat, get down to the lean tissue and see what it’s all about. The only time you define your character is when you go without. In times of hardship, you find out what you’re made of and what you’re capable of. If you’re never tested, you’ll never define your character. Henry Rollins “Safe spaces” have been cropping up at US universities for a while. Apparently students can’t handle adult topics and cannot take a meta-perspective anymore. To cope they need sheltered spaces (or see this article): The safe space, Ms. Byron explained, was intended to give people who might find comments “troubling” or “triggering,” a place to recuperate. The room was equipped with cookies, coloring books, bubbles, Play-Doh, calming music, pillows, blankets and a video of frolicking puppies, as well as students and staff members trained to deal with trauma. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/opinion/sunday/judith-shulevitz-hiding-from-scary-ideas.html?_r=0 Even worse, apparently invited speakers who go by actual data are threatening now and get protested or boycotted. An example is Christina Hoff Sommers speaking about feminism at Oberlin. She’s a “dissident feminist” (actually arguing for freedom feminism) and [...]
↧