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Subject: Percy-L: Literary, Religious, Scientific, and Philosophical Discussion on Walker Percy

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  • From: "Brian N." <brian AT beachcitygas.com>
  • To: Walker Percy List <percy-l AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [percy-l] "I don't pay much attention to the right or the left. . ."
  • Date: Sat, 28 Dec 2002 16:40:18 -0800

". . . Students are, if the truth be known, a bad lot. En masse they're as fickle as a mob, manipulable by any professor who'll stoop to it. They have, moreover, an infinite capacity for repeating dull truths and old lies with all the insistence of self-discovery. Nothing is drearier than the ideology of students, left and right."

That's on page 219 of Love In The Ruins.

Sitting on an airplane for five hours en route to Kauai for Christmas holiday I worked my way through this three decade old book. But stuff like this quote makes it seem written yesterday. Or at least prescient of the university students here in Santa Cruz in the new century.

Someone once said something to the effect that the only thing that doesn't change is the avant garde. Well, maybe we can add university groupthink to that as well. Why is the current out gassing from the ivory tower today hardly different than three decades ago? And I presume that what Percy wrote at that time had meaning because it was a reflection on the three decades or so prior to that.

And, perhaps like WP was presaging, we now live in what can fairly be described as the post-civilization/post-human culture. There is lots of freedom here, thanks to the local meatheads: Safety free, prosperity free, civility free culture.

Where was it I recently read that "libertinism is the final step before totalitarianism"?




  • [percy-l] "I don't pay much attention to the right or the left. . .", Brian N., 12/28/2002

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