The late novelist Cormac McCarthy was affiliated with the Santa Fe Institute (SFI), an educational and research institution best known for its programs in theoretical physics. He understood the value of having madmen around. In 2015, he drafted a new mission statement for SFI. Its principles would make better guidance than whatever DeSantis is implementing. “SFI is always pushing creativity to its practical limits. We always court a high risk of failure,” he wrote. “Occasionally we find that an invited guest is insane. This generally cheers us all up. We know we’re on the right track.”
Christopher Rufo doesn’t understand that radicals and nutjobs make universities great.
I read this article and liked how it ended with a story on Cormac’s humanity. Someone said one time, a teacher or a prof most likely, that a sign of a civilized society was its tolerance for oddballs and eccentrics. England was the example with its many geniuses that were often weird.
I lived in Hell, sorry, I meant to write London (do I need to say London, UK?), for a very long time, and in Hyde park there is ‘Speakers’ corner’, where nutjobs of all kinds congregate every Saturday (I think), to voice their insanity to amused onlookers and a minuscule number of potential believers. That was all fun and games because the nuts that went talking in Speakers’ corner literally had no more reach that how far their voices carried, and so their ability to convince people of the insanities they promoted was near 0. Plus, everyone got a pat on the back for tolerance.
Which brings me to the point that I see a distinctive lack of awareness between the need of the individual versus the needs of the group, whereby nobody seem to ask serious questions about how do we draw a line between ‘eccentric’ and ‘dangerously insane’. Realistically this is an open conversation where the line moves around over time due to the actual circumstances, but it is a conversation that must be had. Yet I see on offer just two options: the totalitarian injunction to conform (from left AND right), or the unhinged idea that each is a law on oneself, and we should all accept anything and everything, making (selfish) individualism the only paradigm.
Finally, it is easy to accept the odd insane guest when your power is unshakeable, but that also suggests an establishment that is much stronger and pervasive one might have thought of.
good to have you back, Federico!