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“If decade after decade the truth cannot be told, each person's mind begins to roam irretrievably. One's fellow countrymen become harder to understand than Martians” …
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The downfall of the Modern & Post-Modern University
Cultural Transformation and Ideology replacing the pursuit of Truth
“One drop of truth can outweigh an ocean of lies”…
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The origins of the modern-day University emerged from medieval scholasticism that had its foundations in the theology and philosophy of 12th-century European priests and monks.
Medieval schools were known as studia generale.
Many of these institutions developed a telos that pursued the notion of truth through a combination of rigorous debate, open inquiry, and academic scholarship.
An innate desire to understand all aspects of reality across the temporal and the eternal.
Continuing Western Civilisation’s long historical tradition of seeking knowledge to illuminate the nature of Man’s relationship with the Natural World and the Divine (God).
“Your soul craves truth, beauty, wonder, love. Your soul craves to dream, to imagine, and even simply to understand. Your soul craves to connect, to commune, to create”…
— Erwin Raphael McManus
However, as outlined on numerous occasions (refer to earlier posts) the arrival of Modernity and Post-Modernity represented a hard fork in the direction of Western Society.
A decoupling of Man from God.
The embracement of a new Theology of Marxism.
History was now a process of transformation via dialectical materialism.
Marxism, Neo-Marxism, Progressivism, Second Nature, Scientific Gnosticism, and Transhumanism.
The arrival of an Übermensch.
Man as Creator.
Man as God.
“The higher we soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly”…
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Hence, the telos of the University was no longer Veritas (Truth) but one of Cultural and Societal Transformation.
The nature of epistemology had literally been inverted ( refer to Edition No: 22 ).
“The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it”…
— George Orwell
Current Examples? - [ LINK ][ LINK ] [ LINK ] [ LINK ] [ LINK ]
But had Humanity somehow overcome the eternal nature of the Human Condition?
Please read:
Is it too late? [ LINK ]
Universities, Bureaucracy, Business, and Mediocrity [ LINK ]
Strange Death of Universities: The Death of Science [ LINK ]
Strange Death of Universities: The Death of Knowledge [ LINK ]
The separation of Wissenschaft from Politik [ LINK ] [ LINK ]
Stop the Rot [ LINK ]
The Abuse and Decline of Reason - Extending the Scientific Method beyond the Natural Sciences to the Social Sciences [ LINK ]
Less is More [ LINK ]
Protestors and Freedom of Speech [ LINK ] - Should we try it again? [ LINK ]
New Universities? [ LINK ] [ LINK ]
Science 3.0 - Beyond Reductionism and confronting Complexity and Emergence [ LINK ]
The Accord won’t fix the Universities [ LINK ] - Will it backfire? [ LINK ]
Universities and Media - An Orthodoxy [ LINK ]
Rethinking Universities [ LINK ] [ LINK ]
“Truth must be told-and things must change! If words are not about real things and do not cause things to happen, what is the good of them?”…
— Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Footnote:
Florida and DEI [ LINK ]
The DEI Rollback [ LINK ]
University of Austin, Chair of Politics, Censorship and Free Speech [ LINK ]