Matt Crawford ably explains how college campuses have become incubators of schoolmarmish therapeutic supervision. No longer confident in the mission of higher education and therefore too hobbled to resist becoming an adjunct of popular society versus an engine of its thoughtful scrutiny, the American university now routinely recommends that its students turn to therapy and medication versus self-reflection and self-reliance. In this way, our colleges are exemplary of a contradiction at the heart of modernity: the Cartesian project of mastery and rational control has not liberated us from sadness and depression but still we press on undaunted, still trying to master and control ourselves, attempting to transform the burden of existential angst into the inconvenience of chemical deficiency. In other words, the central premises of modernity are mastery and control while the thinly veiled ground of a thoroughgoing therapeuticism is individual frailty. If Peter Lawler is right, that we’re really "stuck with virtue", then we’re stuck with the conditions that demand virtue, and the self-limitations that paradoxically require more self-responsibility. By abandoning the humanizing aspects of the humanities, or its part in educating us to understand our longing for happiness and its necessary obstacles, universities have become centers for career preparation overly sensitive to the moods of its consumers and insensitive to the demands of their souls.
Saturday, September 27, 2008, 11:55 AM
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September 27th, 2008 | 12:27 pm
(Great writing: “too hobbled to resist becoming an adjunct of popular society versus an engine of its thoughtful scrutiny” and “attempting to transform the burden of existential angst into the inconvenience of chemical deficiency” and “universities have become centers for career preparation overly sensitive to the moods of its consumers and insensitive to the demands of their souls.”)
Once our students graduate, if they are not already living a Life dependent upon some therapeutic framework and/or mother’s little yellow helper, such solution will likely be recommended to them along the way: by their doctor, or by loved ones, who wish to “help” them evade first things and necessary principles and the difficulty of apprehending both.
I am a “lay counselor” at a large non-denominational church with a focus on service to the spiritual (and sometimes emotional) needs of community, and I am continually amazed by the number of people who have learned to rely more on doctors, pharmaceuticals and fluffy self-help books than a prescription of sober self-examination, existential contemplation and conscious stretching of their souls. Time and again, our counselees find they are capable of so much more than they knew or believed and it is transformative for they and their families.
September 27th, 2008 | 12:38 pm
Thanks so much for the kind words…and you clarify what I should have: I’m not against the seeking of help or counseling but rather the kind of help that denies us the opportunities to become more self-reliant and transforms the search for happiness into a medical issue.
October 1st, 2008 | 12:06 pm
[...] get around to Laura Donovan’s column yesterday; before that though, there’s a wonderful piece on modernity and the college campus from the excellent Culture11, worth excerpting in its entirety: [...]
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