Friday, December 05, 2014

On the Overwhelmingly Dominant Institution in our Culture

I have come to realize, due to some recent thoughts stimulated by some interesting pieces I read of late, that postmodern culture is, fundamentally, university/college culture. Postmodernism is preached at our universities; our postmodern writers and artists are all taught at university MFA programs. The speech codes, the political correctness, the elitist egalitarianism are all from our universities. Almost all our corporations are run by MBAs and Executive MBAs, meaning our corporate culture is that of the universities -- and, thus, postmodern in nature. The ethical wasteland we see within our largest corporations is a direct product of our postmodernist universities.

The university today is the Catholic church of the Medieval period in Europe. It is the place of the priest/mandarin class, and the local priests/adjuncts are kept around only so long as they abide by the the laws of God/political correctness. The Catholic Church presided over a guilt culture, while universities preside over a collective guilt culture.

Everything you love and everything you hate about our contemporary culture can be directly traced to the fact that our college/university system is the overwhelmingly dominant institution within it. That fact should be investigated more thoroughly.

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