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Gen Z Speaks

Posted by mshupe 3 years, 5 months ago to Education
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My experience of attending college and interacting with people my age is strikingly similar to Kira’s. As the newest generation of voters, and during an election that is almost an intellectual civil war, everyone is quick to take a side, and quick to proclaim their hatred for anyone who does not agree with them. And the side that recruits the overwhelming majority of devoted followers is the Left. The Left has come to bear a striking similarity to the Proletarian movement, claiming to call for equality while ultimately just retaliating with vengeance against anyone they deem an oppressor.

They pledge their allegiance with the same fanatical, cultish fervor as the Proletarian students of Kira’s world. It seems as though every thought, every conversation, every interaction is tainted by Leftist propaganda. It is the subject constantly bubbling under the surface, threatening to breach at any given moment. And if you do not actively take the pledge, agree with everything said by the Left, and regurgitate every bit of propaganda to anyone who will listen, then, just like a suspected bourgeois, you place a target on your own back.

Like Kira, I refuse to be bound to any collective. I will not adhere myself to either side. My highest priority is my own freedom as an individual, the freedom to choose my beliefs rather than have them chosen for me. But to my peers, that is almost worse than choosing the opposite side. To them, it is incomprehensible. They mistake independence for indifference; they preach that neutrality is even more evil than active hate, all while not even realizing the immensity of their own hate.
SOURCE URL: https://www.centerforindividualism.org/are-we-reliving-we-the-livingwho-is-kira-argounova-gen-zs-defense-against-losing-themselves-to-the-siren-song-of-equality/


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  • Posted by DrZarkov99 3 years, 5 months ago
    Everyone here should read Eric Hoffer's "The True Believer, A Study in Mass Movements." Hoffer was a self taught philosopher, a blue collar worker who, as a dock worker asked many refugees from Europe and Asia about their experiences leading up to WW II. His book is his analysis of the characteristics of totalitarian movements and processes, and I see them being repeated here in the U.S. daily.

    I had been a reader of Hoffer's books when I was in college, but my interest was reactivated when I heard Obama talk about "Hope and Change." There was a familiar ring to that phrase, and when I went back to Hoffer's book, there it was, "Every mass movement begins with the words 'Hope and Change'."
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  • Posted by $ Commander 3 years, 5 months ago
    qhrjk is one of these bright, wonderful youngsters as well.
    From a favorite folk song: Mountain, we measure our lives by tens and by twenty years only. Teach us the way of a million-year mind, what a million-year heart could be hoping.
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    • Posted by 3 years, 5 months ago
      Thanks, one of our group? Also, along these lines at the end of the novel. "She smiled, as if she had lived it. She had known something which no human words could ever tell and she knew it now. Life had been, if only because she had known it could be. A moment or an eternity – did it matter? Life, undefeated, existed and could exist."
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      • Posted by $ Commander 3 years, 5 months ago
        One of our group....https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts/1181fa...
        I have been in private dialog through this forum for well over a year.
        A look at historic comment, and then a potential of PM support can go a long way.

        I've not read We The Living. Stopped with fiction around 05 after my reading partner died. Focused on my business and practical application of philosophy. I think I'm onto a solution. If you look to my historic comments of an ongoing analysis of The Objectivist's Ethics and Tao te Ching regarding Dec of Ind, US Constitution and Universal Dec of Human Rights, I think you'll see a kernel of an idea. To condense over 40 years to 40 pages is a goal to express philosophy of interaction in Lay terms. To strip the simplicity from the complex of academic constraints and put it on the street.
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        • Posted by $ allosaur 3 years, 5 months ago
          Me dino very recently bought We The Living. It's been in reach of where I sit right now for the last two days. Currently reading another book--and it's not fiction.
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  • Posted by sgijantopaeth 3 years, 5 months ago
    I own We The Living. I have not read it. I am currently on the finishing Atlas Shrugged (probably for at least the 10th time). I find I need to reread AS when I feel like the world is ending and it's the only place I can find sanity. Amazing how often that happens. We The Living will be next.
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  • Posted by trailsRus 3 years, 5 months ago
    A big LIKE on your post.
    I'm cautiously optimistic that there are more and more young people waking up to the blatant propaganda fed them via schooling, hollywood and social media. Grandparents can help counter the brainwashed void with some of the history and civics education that both you and your parents didn't get.
    Collective rights always encroach upon individual rights. The American Bill of Rights was designed to specifically address and protect against this totalitarian tendency.
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  • Posted by $ blarman 3 years, 5 months ago
    I wish there were more of every generation who would set aside the emotional investment and invest in critical thinking instead. Hate is a dead-end path. It produces nothing of value and seeks only to destroy. We've seen ample evidence of this in the wake of riots all across the US. My fear is that these purveyors of group-_non_think and mob violence will stir up enough people to foment war. I only hope that there remain enough true patriots and freedom-loving citizens to put down these insurrections.
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  • Posted by $ Olduglycarl 3 years, 5 months ago
    Sad, sad commentary...if they survive the next end of this civilization cycle...without waking up...there will be no hope for the future of mankind.
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  • Posted by Owlsrayne 3 years, 4 months ago
    I glad I went to college between 1969-1973 and had a women Professor who influence my thinking considerably. I had posted a a statement from a course she taught on Revolutionary Tradition in Over Developed Countries. So, I'm very wary of the federal gov't and especially of corrupt candidates. I view this coming election with much trepidation. If events start going south I'm contemplating following my Professors Course outline/syllabus that I still have, despite my age. I feel for young people in college today who are being brainwash by Communist Prof's.
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  • Posted by $ Stormi 3 years, 4 months ago
    When I was in school, we seemed to be independent thinkers, encouraged to read and think. When our daughter was in college, she and before that in high school, it was constant brainwashing, pushing socialism or one world issues. Foisting guilt if they did not live for others. I had no chocie but to start her at age 10 reading Rand, first with "Anthem" which made her see what she was fighting. meanwhile, my own friednds were pushing talking points, which I recognized straight out of Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals", which they had never read. I would stop them, and say, lets debate, but use our own words only, which they could not. So, now it is the media which gives the adults the phrases, commone to the owrd to each, an idea first endorsed by Rockefeller, yes that long ago. Bildbergers meet and dictate what media will say, and set the topic for all outlets. It is very much as in "Anthem" when the leaders lock all books away from the people, take away individual identity, only it is the people now, esp your generation, who no longer seek the books, the science, to challenge what they are being fed. They will only know what they thrw away when we are all robots.
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  • Posted by LWinn 3 years, 5 months ago
    You know of course that Ayn Rand said of We the Living that it is the closest thing to an autobiography she would ever write. Rand could escape. Argounova (an interesting name) could not. Can Natalie? Yes, but not easily, and not by simple resistance, even by arms. What we are seeing is a manifestation of enclosure, the absence of real, physical frontiers. It would take place even in the complete absence of philosophy. It is literally a force of nature. Enclosure has been in progress for more than 100 years, so it is quite advanced. I write about it in Survivors from Earth, which, frankly, I do not expect many people to read because it is just too obscure and too Cassandra-like, or maybe because I’m not pushing it (but it is on Amazon). My point is that the world needs an exit, and the only way out is up. The situation does seem bleak. SpaceFarers Corporation, an Arizona firm, is acting, however, by offering immersive shopping experiences in a simulated space settlement, co-marketing, among other things, technology on the path to space colonization. Musk and Bezos are working the transportation problem. Eventually, some of us will escape.
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  • Posted by Katrina41 3 years, 5 months ago
    Mshupe this was a great read and think. I wanted so badly to be involved in We the Living discussions and did follow as a lurker, but I have yet to find any of my still-packed AR books except Atlas. As soon as I can find them, I'll be re-reading both WTL and Anthem. Thank you for talking Natalie into writing a beautiful piece.
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    • Posted by 3 years, 5 months ago
      Thank you, and I found Natalie through her mother who is a member of our study group. I found her lurking in another FB group and invited her when she commented on We the Living and her daughters.
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