OPINION:
Dear Dr. E: With the upcoming election, I see so many of my peers who are almost frozen with anxiety. It doesn’t matter whether they’re pro-Trump or pro-Harris; it is almost as if they can’t handle the possibility that their candidate might lose. They’re emotional wrecks. Can you give me any advice on how to handle the next few weeks and months of political turmoil? — COLLEGE STUDENT FROM KANSAS
Dear Kansas Student: Right after the 2016 presidential election, a University of Michigan psychology professor postponed a required exam because he believed his students were too traumatized by the GOP victory. Apparently, his students couldn’t turn their night lights off because they believed that the big bad Trump monster was going to come out from under their beds to eat them all up.
At the same time, Columbia University professors postponed exams for similar reasons, and one professor at the University of Connecticut allowed students to skip classes without penalty.
Universities from Berkeley to Brown provided counseling centers complete with Play-Doh, coloring books, crayons, and videos of frolicking puppies to help soothe the anxieties of their precious darlings.
A university in New England actually brought in a small herd of goats so its students would have their personal petting zoo to calm their anxieties and fears during finals week.
Emory University’s president issued a public apology to all his students because someone had used sidewalk chalk to write the name Trump on a campus walkway. Students reportedly felt triggered by this obvious microaggression.
The lesson taught on all these campuses of supposed higher learning was simple — if life doesn’t give you the results you want, you don’t have to work, you can neglect your responsibilities and blame it all on someone else. Go cuddle a puppy. Go pet a goat, and someone else will do life for you.
This elevation of feelings over the hard facts of life – of comfort over responsibility – has reached a crisis point in American culture. Taking responsibility is a precursor to independence and freedom. Responsible people can and do choose their own path in life. They are free. On the other hand, those who shirk responsibility are enslaved by others who are only too happy to control them. They are like lobotomized rodents — hypothalamus rats —who have no desire for independence but are content to stay in their cage, safe and secure.
The more dependent we become on others, the less independent we are in the totality of life. All the despots of history knew this. Mao and Stalin, for example, understood that people who took personal responsibility for their lives were people they couldn’t control. They knew that the number one rule for stealing freedom was to get the masses to point the finger of blame outward rather than inward. As long as they could get the proletariat to blame the bourgeoisie, they knew they would win. As long as they could get the 99% to accuse the 1%, they could kill freedom and gain power. Get women to blame men, blacks to blame whites, the young to blame the old – it didn’t matter – if they could get the masses to blame everyone but themselves, they could crush liberty and gain control.
An expectation for others to keep you safe from the hard realities of life is, at its core, self-centered. It results in placing too much emphasis on what would make the world better for you rather than asking how you can make the world a better place for someone else.
It also results in being frozen in time as a perpetual adolescent.
It is a known fact that the struggle to fight its way out of the cocoon provides life-giving blood to the wings of the butterfly. If someone intervenes and breaks the cocoon open to “help” the butterfly, they leave it incomplete and incapable of flight.
In like manner, when we are spared the effort of working through life’s disappointments and challenges – to break free from our “cocoon” – we fail to emerge, grow, and mature. The fight is necessary for flight.
The alternative is to take away the very thing that produces the pumping blood of human dignity and human freedom. The more we coddle, the more bankrupt an entire generation becomes of the work ethic that is an essential trait of a free people and culture.
If your candidate loses in November, my advice is simple. Get up and go to class. Don’t blame others for the hand you’ve been dealt. While others act childish be the adult in the room. The world isn’t going to end just because your candidate lost. It’s your responsibility, and no one else’s, to figure out how you’re going to lead and win in the days ahead.
If you are seeking guidance in today’s changing world, Higher Ground is there for you. Everett Piper, a Ph.D. and a former university president and radio host, takes your questions in his weekly ’Ask Dr. E’ column. If you have moral or ethical questions for which you’d like an answer, please email askeverett@washingtontimes.com and he may include it in a future column.
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