Disorientation: How to Go to College Without Losing Your Mind– The 13 “Isms” That Will Send You to Intellectual “La-La Land.”

Disorientation: How to Go to College Without Losing Your Mind– The 13 “Isms” That Will Send You to Intellectual “La-La Land.”  Edited by John Zmirak, Ascension Press, 2010.

 

In popular culture, high school is generally presented as a time of great angst, an era of profound discomfort marked by raging hormones, acne, peer pressure, clashes with parents, social cliques, and numerous other problems, giving the impression that one is lucky to survive these four years at all.  In contrast, college is commonly depicted as four (or even longer) years of fun, a halcyon time of partying, satisfying socializing, and sometimes even intellectual stimulation.  

Of course, the reality is often different, although the pop culture stereotypes are accurate for many cases.  High school is a golden age for many youths, and college can be a time of great loneliness, emptiness, and even despair for plenty of students, who find themselves thoroughly shaken by being separated from their parents and lifelong friends, and increasingly reliant on hedonistic excesses, codependent relationships, and substance abuse in order to keep from sinking under the weight of their own internal torment.

 

Although many collegians pursue their interests and make a determined effort to make the most of their skyrocketing tuition fees, a substantial percentage of students spend their academic careers in a haze fueled by liquor or even worse substances.  Disoriented is not a book that is aimed at setting such students straight.  Few youths who fit that description would take the time to read a single one of these essays at their own volition, let alone the entire volume.  This anthology is meant as an intellectual and spiritual lifeline for those students who actually attend their classes.  It is a sad but undeniable fact that many students leave college far less informed (or rather, much more misinformed) than when they enter.  Significant percentages of students leave college with their faith shaken, since they receive a barrage of assaults against Christianity, especially Catholicism, ranging from historical surveys that denigrate the role of religion in culture, to political treatises by militant atheists, to sociologists who attack the social teachings of the Church, as well as countless other examples.  

 

The volume is book-ended by a pair of essays by John Zmirak, the first being “Introduction: A Syllabus of Errors,” and the second is, “Epilogue: Will Your College Years Be A Waste of Time?”  The bulk of the essays are divided into four subcategories.  The first being Freshman Errors, consisting of “Sentimentalism” by Elizabeth Scalia, “Relativism” by Eric Metaxas, and “Hedonism” by John Zmirak.  Sophomore Follies contains “Progressivism” by Peter Kreeft, “Multiculturalism” by Robert Spencer, and “Anti-Catholicism” by Jimmy Akin.  Junior Delusions includes “Utilitarianism” by Dwight Longenecker, “Consumerism” by Eric Brende, and “Cynicism” by George William Rutler.  Senior Dreamworlds is slightly longer than the others, with “Feminism” by Donna Steichen, “Scientism” by John W. Keck, “Americanism” by Mark Shea, and “Marxism” by Jeffrey Tucker.  The anthology is capped off by the Bonus Essay: Commencement Heresy, “Modernism” by John Zulhsdorf.

 

The authors of these essays ought to be familiar to anyone who is familiar with the Catholic blogosphere (affectionately nicknamed “St. Blog’s” by many fans).  Most of these writers run popular blogs on Catholic apologetics, and many are frequent contributors to religious periodicals.  A simple internet search ought to bring access to many of these fine websites, most of which are updated regularly and serve as useful resources for people who want to bolster their religious education, as well as receive insightful and perceptive commentary on current events.

 

All of these essays are well-written, intelligent, and informative.  Their simultaneous greatest strength and Achilles’ heel is the fact that they are so short.  Their brevity is an asset because it makes for easy and concise reading, but it is also a shortcoming because all of the topics are far too detailed and complex to be summed up in an article less than twenty pages long.  In many cases, ideas and moral quandaries are introduced and then given short thrift.  This is an unavoidable consequence of trying to be an accessible resource, but in truth each of these essays could have been extended into a full-length book.

 

All of these essays are unquestionably worth reading, but some of the most memorable ones include Metaxas’s “Relativism,” where he discusses the ultimate relativist holiday at his college: Celery Green Day, when the leaves of trees turned a certain shade of verdant, but the exact time when this happened was subject to both uncontrollable seasonal factors and pure personal opinion.  Mark Shea’s “Americanism” is a trenchant commentary on a oft-debated topic.  Shea skewers the two opposing (and equally wrong) ways of viewing the United States and its impact on the world, the first being jingoism that contends that the U.S. can do no wrong, the second slandering America as an unredeemable force for evil.  Fr. Rutler’s analysis of cynicism brilliantly illuminates the folly of living a life propelled by a refusal to care about anything in a meaningful manner.   One of the most endearing aspects of all of these essays is the fact that all of them illustrate that an adoption of any of the dissected ideologies can make a person not just less than well-rounded, but somehow less than fully human, and quite possibly far from happy. 

 

Concerned parents may want to give Disoriented to their college-bound child as a high-school graduation present, but while this is certainly a good idea, this may very well be too little, too late for many students, who receive fairly comprehensive introductions to most of the aforementioned ideologies in high school, not just from their teachers, but from their peers, celebrities, and television shows.  At several points in Disoriented, it is implied that most students get their first exposure to hedonism or cynicism or relativism or any of the other isms when they step onto a college campus, and that is simply not the case.  Parents who want to have a salutary effect on shaping their children’s minds and intellectual curiosity should start teaching these lessons to their kids early in high school, possibly even before the onset of puberty. 

 

I may have implied that the primary audience for this book is parents who want to keep their children on their desired mental and spiritual paths, but it ought to be remembered that untold numbers of college students desperately want to find a book such as this, because they crave an intellectual antidote to ideologies and attitudes that their instincts tell them are either wrong or flawed, yet they lack the background knowledge to confront these forces with anything more than stubborn recalcitrance.  A book like Disorientation provides them with counter-arguments and perspectives that you will never find in your standard college reader. 

 

There is one problem that the authors never address.  How is the student sympathetic to the ideals expressed in Disorientation to deal with professors and teaching assistants who are outspoken advocates of the ideals this book seeks to debunk?   Many Marxist, radical feminist, and secularist instructors will not hesitate to dole out low grades and deny recommendations to students who oppose their cherished beliefs, especially those who openly confront them in class.  It is one thing to discuss opinions amongst friends during the evenings, another to openly contradict a professor in class.  In order to make Disorientation work well in practice, there needs to be a way to learn how to deal with these ideologies when it is impossible to avoid them, and to critique them intelligently without alienating professors who subscribe to them.

 

The student health centers of college campuses are stuffed with little pamphlets telling students how to eat well, sleep better, get healthy, avoid or treat sexually transmitted diseases, deal with depression, and battle many other potential hazards.  If colleges and universities were really concerned about the mental and moral wellbeing their students, alongside these pamphlets would be enormous stacks of Disorientation, free for the taking.  That will never happen, so people will need to buy Disorientation on their own.  With the price of textbooks hurtling upwards towards the stratosphere, it is not surprising that many people will be reluctant to pay out an additional sum for one more book, but such a purchase ought to be considered a wise investment for one’s future wellbeing and happiness.

 

–Chris Chan