College experience

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Agent of the Fifth International's picture
Agent of the Fi...
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Joined: 17-08-12
Sep 17 2012 21:48
College experience

I was walking down the halls, and heard the following from a professor lecturing to a class of about twenty something students:

"Well, as it turns out after all, contrary to the popular slogan, money does make people happy."

For some reason, this made me feel like laughing. Throughout this semester, I have heard a lot of right-wing propaganda. It turns out that the university system isn't entirely free from the indoctrination system of the bourgeoisie. I'm not surprised. I mean there have been some interesting discussions in class, like in philosophy. But I just wished there was more diversity of opinions, especially of radical ones to challenge the mainstream.

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Railyon
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Sep 17 2012 22:05

One professor of philosophy at my uni defined liberalism as 'equality before the price'. That's fetishism par excellance right there1, wouldn't quite call it indoctrination system because that would require an element of will and consciousness thereof, otherwise I'd just call it ideological reproduction which is not exclusive to educational institutions at all (it's inherent in nearly all human activity in ideological systems).

Kind of puts things into perspective though - profs may be smart and all that jazz but that is not in itself a cure to the disease of 'false consciousness' (for a lack of a better word, ad-hoc). One could say, actually quite the contrary because this ideological reproduction has an inherent bias.

  • 1. and no, he didn't mean it in the "liberalism is inherently fetishistic and therefore to be rejected" kind of way
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Ethos
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Sep 17 2012 22:37
Railyon wrote:
One professor of philosophy at my uni defined liberalism as 'equality before the price'. That's fetishism par excellance right there

Reminds me of a professor who told me that capitalism's justification was the fact that it exists. Coincidentally, he too teaches philosophy (undergrads, for what it's worth).