Back in 1985, I’d recently walked away from fundamentalist religion. I’d been a student at a school run by a Baptist megalomaniac named, Jack Hyles. I’ve written many posts about Hyles across the footprint of my blogging that dates back to 1993. Of course, in 2020, blogging is as anachronism, just as outdated as a rotary dial phone. Doesn’t mean it’s bad—it’s just not the way the ignorant masses roll these days, especially the impressionable kids.

I was just an impressionable kid myself back in the mid-1980s when Ray-Bans were all the rage. But, I had determined to dry the wetness behind my own two ears. I figured broadening my understanding was the way to go. Moving beyond mere Bible verses and jeremiads offered in daily chapel services at Hyles-Anderson College seemed like a step in a new direction.

Mark was two-years-old and Mary was working the breakfast shift at the local Wendy’s. I was working the afternoon shift keeping the prisoners at Westville Correctional Center healthy and medicated (I was a medical assistant employed by the Indiana Department of Corrections).

With my morning free save for childcare, I decided to take my three semesters of credit at the University of Maine and see if I could ramp up my hopes of success in higher ed. Purdue University had a satellite campus about 20 miles away from where we were living and just up the road from the prison where I was working in Westville. Not sure why at the time, but I enrolled in Philosophy 101. It was probably a morning time slot thing.

Thinking college was the way to go (Purdue satellite)

Being a commuter school, Purdue North Central’s (now known as Purdue University Northwest) enrollment was a mix of impressionable youngsters seasoned with older students who’d experienced more than I had at 23.

It’s been more than 30 years since I sat in the back of the class wondering “how the hell do these older students know that?” when discussing what we were assigned to read. I rarely offered much by way of discussion. Why? Because I had little to add to what these better-read and thoughtful fellow students had to say. That’s not to say that everyone that spoke up was erudite. I’m sure there were “gasbags” in the class pontificating for show. However, I don’t remember them. I recall thinking how little I knew and was determined to be one of those students some day.

For more than 30 years, I’ve invested my time in a diligent fashion. This has been done to acquire knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge can be garnered by reading, study, and rumination. Wisdom comes from living and processing information across the experiential aspects of time spent on Earth.

I am now those students I once admired and aspired to be. But, I am now living through a time when being 23 and ignorant is no longer a scourge. Instead, due to social media, one’s ignorance is displayed as a badge of honor and a means of virtue signaling.

Don’t know shit about history? Just call someone a racist for standing up for historical facts. Know nothing about the time before you were born? No worries. Just lob ad hominem attacks and chant “black lives matter” or assign all of society’s ills to the catch-all of “white privilege.”

This isn’t a recent phenomenon, either. When Portland still had a alt-weekly worthy of pitching stories to, I had to deal with a young dope of an editor after the more experienced editor I’d hoped to write a series of articles for, left. This 20-something know-it-all made getting a well-sourced and meticulously-researched story on Portland’s gentrification to the finish line a torturous process for the $500 I ended up being paid for writing it. It ended up on the front page and also was one of the last pieces I wrote for the Portland Phoenix.

At the time (2014), I noticed a shift in the Portland’s media culture. These 20 and 30-something types were taking to social media and leaving print behind. They also were more apt to attack my style of journalism, relying instead on 40-character tweets as a powerful tool designed to censor anybody and anything they didn’t want to deal with. It’s 1,000 times worse in 2020. Now, it’s not just these young dolts doing it—it’s people my age who ought to know better, but apparently don’t.

Facebook and Instagram now garner everyone’s attention. While I never had a huge audience as a blogger—I did have readers numbering in the hundreds. Now, one of my blog posts is lucky to have 25 people actually reading it, if the number is that high. Why the hell invest any energy in the blogging space if no one bothers with what you write?

If truth no longer matters (and it now seems not to), then what kind of foundation do we have to build anything meaningful upon? It appears to me that we have nothing but shifting sands.

Perhaps that’s why I find myself hearkening back to a time when thoughtful discussions mattered. Better, I wish I could go back there, even though those times were tough for me and my young family.