I would call it a nuclear conflagration rather than a jolt, but instead of passing judgment (who, me?), I offer some of his other opinions as they've appeared on this blog via CHE over the years.
- From 2008's "Mark Bauerlein: Break out the chocolate and put your feet up; you're working too hard," As a tenured full professor at an elite university, telling those joyless grinds, the tenure and job seekers, to put up their feet and not work so hard.
- From 2008's "Web reading: short takes from the Chronicle," discovering that reading web texts is somehow different from reading Kafka in print and that the digital is an "imperial force," with storm troopers. (Okay, maybe I made up the "storm troopers" part.)
- From 2015's "NY Times: Let me throw stones at you from my castle of privilege," complaining about "students these days."
- From 2009's "This is your brain on multitasking, part 2," discovering that texting while driving might be just the teensiest bit hazardous.
8 comments:
I think you've cited evidence that we should all disregard this tool. At least, that is what I'VE decided to do, based on your citations.
Yeah, I skimmed his latest and then thought, wait, he's saying he's an academic supporting Trump, isn't that in itself a perfectly good reason not to read any of his opinions?
Sophylou, Fie--Thanks! I was a little disturbed by MB's turn from harmless curmudgeon to harmful curmudgeon.
When I found out he was supporting Trump, I actually went down the rabbit hole of his most recent articles. I discovered that at some point in 2012-2013, he went from being an atheist to an Opus Dei Catholic. Now he is writing about the need for modesty and old fashion courtship if we want to prevent campus rapes.
You can find some of his latest gems here: https://www.firstthings.com/featured-author/mark-bauerlein/page_1
Spanish prof--you are so, so much braver than I am to follow that rabbit hole, but what you discovered makes a lot of sense.
OK, Spanish prof's discovery got to me. How do you go from atheist to Opus Dei? So I read his conversion narrative. Sure enough, he's one of those people who place religious meaning on transcendent experiences---one such "converted" him to atheism, and also horrified him with the revelation of personal annihilation and meaninglessness in the world.
Such identification of atheism with nihilism always baffles me. Life is not meaningless because our personal experience of it ends. God isn't necessary for morality or meaning. Nor yet for transcendence. It is entirely possible that the ability to feel transcended is adaptive, that people who have those intense revelations of meaning or identification with the world or "something greater" are in general happier, more connected, something; they are certainly common enough, and not only among mystics (who are more given to them than most). But these powerful psychological experiences don't have to be religious.
Bauerlein sounds like an unhappy, anxious person with a strong need for rules by which to understand the world. There are plenty of religious flavors ready to exploit people like that. I don't mind if people want to be religious on their own time, but just as I mind the sort of essentialist feminism I recently trashed chez moi, I also mind religiously-oriented writing like Bauerlein's that suggests that his experience ought to be universal and anyone who doesn't share it is fooling himself.
Dame Eleanor, I think you hit the nail on the head: "life isn't meaningless because our personal experience of it ends" unless you believe that you are the center of the universe. Perhaps someone who believes this--I won't say MB because I don't want to trash him unfairly, and I'm not reading any more conversion narratives unless I'm teaching them and getting paid for it--believes that his experiences are universal, and if they're not, maybe he's so awesome that they ought to be.
I've known a lot of people--too many, in fact--who treat experiences and beliefs this way, as a hierarchy in which theirs are always best. They gave me some anxious years myself, until I stopped giving a --let's just say I stopped giving them head room. I think I commented over at your place about essentialist feminism on that very point.
My motto for this is "I used to be disgusted/ and now I try to be amused." Thanks, Elvis Costello!
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