As the college protests erupt in the United States and parts of Europe, one of the only prominent individuals speaking somewhat transparently, albeit glibly, about the situation is the Italian Prime Minister. He’s speaking openly about how police and University administration are working together in a “fruitful dialogue.”
The protests themselves are a part of a luxury belief philosophy that has infiltrated American consciousness since the invention of social media. A luxury belief is an idea or opinion that gives status to members of the upper class while costing those in the unwitting lower classes. The term is often used to describe privileged people who are thought to be disconnected from the experiences of marginalized people and who are said to have political and social beliefs that indicate their elite status but that may negatively impact those with the least influence. What counts as a luxury belief can vary from person to person and the term is generally considered controversial.
Luxury beliefs allow an American who can’t afford groceries, for instance, to announce their outrage of a cause or display their empathy for a community of oppressed people typically outside of the United States safely within the confines of a computer screen. It costs them no money but their gain in respect provides a boost to their self esteem. They may not be in the same social or economic status of influencers who hold this same valued outrage but they can identify with them through this outrage, thus earning points to their social capital.
I saw this happen when the mask mandate was initiated in the United States. CEO’s of major corporations and many wealthy entertainment influencers on social media and in the entertainment industry were insisting their employees, or followers, wear a mask to stay safe. This allowed those employees, or followers in a lower socio economic status, to feel as if they were on an equal level with someone as wealthy and influential as say, Taylor Swift.
To wit, the luxury belief philosophy is a sort of social credit system.
As stated above, luxury beliefs are often for the benefit of the wealthy or influential but come at a great cost to the lower classes or those not as influential.
To remove emotion and the controversial but poignant history out of the equation of the current televised reason college campuses all over the world are suddenly erupting en masse, it becomes easier to see how this luxury belief may have muddied the intellect of those who are engaging in these sudden, highly organized protests.
Starting with Columbia University, which has now initiated at-home learning, again, it would probably be easier to install higher level of security measures, digital ID verification and hire private security when the students are away and then introduce them to these new security protocols when they are allowed to go back to campus. Since so many police have now descended upon the protests, I imagine every University in the country that is dealing with these protests has these security protocols possibly waiting in the wings.
I found it interesting that the students chose to use their own campuses to protest. I’m guessing not too many of them will be fond of having to fumble through an app to let them into class in the future, and they may not like being wanded or to have to go through metal detectors to enter into the libraries for their study sessions. After all, stuff like this is ok for poor high school kids in disadvantaged communities but not for those paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in tuition to advance their education.
I’m curious why the college students didn’t organize in a park, or near their local City or County buildings. Given the nature of the protest, it probably would have been more effective to protest outside the offices of their local legislatures who actually have the power to vote on the very thing the protest is about.
But with the story of January 6, I guess that wasn’t an option. I also imagine that these University buildings may meet the same fate as the Capitol Building in DC. Perhaps we will see these Great Halls of Intellect now covered with police tape and any staff or faculty may have to use a higher level of security to enter. Like employees of the Capitol they may now have to use a non-descript back entrance to get to their work stations or offices.
This may mean absolutely nothing but the idea of a college campus as the modern-day protest stage does support Business As Usual. Speaking of business as usual and Columbia University, in 1998 a businessman, Z. Y. Fu, founder of Tokyo-based Sansiao Trading Company and brother-in-law of then Professor of Applied Mathematics, John Chu, made a gift of $26 million to Columbia University. At the time, this gift was the largest single donation ever given to Columbia by a single benefactor.
I think we’re all old enough and wise enough by now to know that donations do come at a cost.
In March, 2018 Foreign Policy all but announced that Chinese companies would be taking over American universities, even using the image of a dragon emblazoned across their headline to warn us that 2024 — year of the dragon — would be the year this would all come to a head.
In 2018 Moody’s Investor Services announced that major colleges in the United States were closing at a rapid rate and various Chinese companies were buying them up.
And just last week the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU) quoted a Wall Street Journal article titled “How Chinese Money Flows to American Universities“ (hidden behind a paywall of course). This article showed contracts valued at $2.32 billion between Chinese companies and American universities as far back as 2012.
Perhaps we will see an upset in Administration, or firings of faculty members, at these various campuses for allowing “dangerous and divisive protests” to erupt. Perhaps we will actually see the onset of new security measures that each student must wade through for the privilege of attending in-person learning.
Whatever happens, it is clear this current luxury belief is paving the way for Business As Usual. It must be stressed that luxury beliefs highjack the emotional bandwidth of the uneducated or the unaware and turn them toward a system or contract that would denigrate their life, reduce their happiness and usefulness in society and ultimately do them great harm.
I often wonder why the level of outrage and anger and empathy seems to be missing or even non-existent for the staggering rise of fentanyl deaths in the United States, for example. Perhaps it’s because this does not benefit the Business As Usual model.
And the Business As Usual model in this particular case is that China is now managing and taking over our esteemed American University system.
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