Oh wow, A Dystopia all of my own.

Have you ever read Orwell's 1984?  Well, Big Brother is watching me.  Okay, so maybe not exactly Big Brother-- as far as I know my university is yet to install telescreens, or publicly decry "thoughtcrime" (at least as far as we know...).  However, here on grounds we do have our own version of the "Ministry of Love "-- and it is both as deceptively innocuous and perniciously intentioned as it is in that ultrasketch book.  We pay tuition and turn over our grainy, clay minds to a school that is supposed to help shape us and equip our soft nervous tissue for whatever exciting things our God has waiting on our pink horizons after we relinquish our O'Hill dining cards, but I'm aghast at how we are actually throwing ourselves into some kind of slow-simmering indoctrination, as our neurons are being stealthily encoded with chunks of propaganda that try to derail all previously clung-to beliefs.  Holy Guac, talk about a run-on sentance.  William Strunk and E.B. White would have my head.  Anyway, am I making sense?  Maybe not.  I'm a slight crank today, so I think what I am going to do is step out to mull over a cup of Irish Breakfast, and then come back to try again.  Please excuse me, I will return.

...........

I am back: watered, caffeinated and 10% less grumpy.  I think I was talking about how I feel brainwashed by the knee-deep presence of leachate.  Everything here serves to pump us not with what we need (truth), but rather bits of information that has been premeditated, pre-packaged, and then left in strategic places we are sure to trip over-- all so that we, the truly independent students, can feel like we stumbled over it ourselves.  Eureka!  We found gold!  We don't even realize that it wasn't truth we found at all-- it was a crusty, 6-year-old TV dinner.  Yummy.

Tonight my slight grouchiness has sapped me of the cerebral fortitude needed to take you through more than one example of the "Ministry of Love's" sneaky student indoctrination, but I would really like to tell you about just one: that is my school's acidic spin on L-O-V-E. I'm not even going to go into the snide remarks of professors on the "idiocy of abstinence", or the attitude of the Women's Health and Gender Studies professors here on what defines a free and equal woman.  I'm also not going to go into the fliers tacked everywhere of borderline-student porn, or the renaming of Valentine's Day "Safer Sex Day", OR the crude performances my future alma mater both hosts AND puts on.  I'm just going to give you an example of how utterly inescapable and militant the agenda is that is seeking to replace love that waits with lust that wants.  So here it is, folks: they even post stuff in the stall doors of bathrooms.  There, laminated, boldly colored, and ethically offensive, the student shuts the door and is confronted with pithy propaganda on the necessity of safe sex, condom use, and everything else your little co-ed mind might have been wondering.  (And taking the posters down would be a breach of the U.Va. esteemed honor code, so that is out of the question...)

We all have a lovely, intrinsic desire to be of infinite worth to someone.  To love and be loved.  It's french braided into our DNA or something.  I'm no neurologist, but I can at least tell you that.  But girls today are going about their search for love in all the wrong ways, and it is not the girls' fault.  We're being force-fed this mentality that is: in order to mean something, we have to surrender our dignity to some guy.  People who promote this agenda are victims themselves, and know that pre-marital sex isn't the answer to finding meaning. They stand as a living affirmation of the adage "misery loves company".  Girls want to be loved and adored for who they are, not their bodies.  We want respect but then we're encouraged to dress so that boys don't even look us in the eye.  According to the culture, we will snag our true love wielding condoms and contraceptive rings.  No one tells you that casual sex tragically transforms a beating, bursting heart into a heart of tin; that it doesn't make you happy, or independent or free.  The safe-sex way of life clashes with our very human core and left alone to our own heart and mind we would never pursue that way of life.  And that is why pre-marital sex is so desperately promoted-- this is why its message of acid follows us around grounds and even right into our bathroom stalls.

Because that isn't what love is at all! 

Don't let the quack "Ministry of Love" bring you down, girls.

Comments

[SG]

I cant agree with you more about what you said...

[Matt]

marry me? the offer stands...

[chris]

we are slaves of rules and we are slave of ourself, just find the balance in between what our mind says and what our body says. i could be wrong.

[annemarie]

you're a spirfire. bravo. more young ladies in college need to hear this, because the filth they are hearing otherwise is, like you said, pervasive.

[Kunta]

Hollaaaa

[chris]

stealthily: i speak french me, dont use complicated words please !!!

[Chris]

Very good piece, but I question whether or not removing such trash (which is morally good) falls under the honor code you agreed to follow. I think you would be justifiable in doing such a thing. All this gar-bahge just makes me glad that I went to a Catholic school (and not a Jesuit one) :^o

But I also think you can do a lot of good in a place like where you are. There are many confused souls out there.

And my bad, I should have reminded you about St. Joseph's Solemnity earlier. That root beer float was MIGHTY tasty!

[D.J.]

So, I heard from one of your Gonzaga friends that you caught none other than Ben Affleck's eye? Is this true?

[Peace Be Still]

HA--good grief. Apparently that dumb story will follow me to my grave.

[Chris]

details!

I think that would make a great post on here. lol

Oh wait, was he the guy stalking you at you at the coffee shop? hahaha

[The philosopher]

I would like to pose the age-old dilemma:
(in Plato's dialogue, Euthypro...)
“Is what is moral commanded by God because it is moral, or is it moral because it's commanded by God?”

I recall this ethics discussion was a good one.
How would an aspiring metaphysician answer?

[D.J.]

They say we owe the fall of "Bennifer" to our very own Peace Be Still. hahahahaha.

[Kunta]

ahahaha

[Chris]

I remember my university waged the same propaganda campaign, with stuff like "The Vagina Monologues".

[Tom]

Philosopher,

The answer to your question is yes.

[MS]

I love you