There is a missing element from student life at The University of Massachusetts reflecting a broader trend in America and throughout the other nations that comprise what is today tenuously called Western Civilization, and in times past was referred to as Christendom. This missing element is the lack of a broad civic and national engagement. On a college campus, this idea is often referred to as school spirit.

This lack of school spirit is detrimental to our personal health and well-being, and will result in a further decay of the dignity and respect of our campus.

The major problem that underlies this decay is the radicalization of the notion of individual liberty into something far beyond what was intended by the principles of freedom and equality found in America. Even amongst left?leaning political movements ‘- which traditionally have been founded on the idea of addressing the needs of those who are on the less privileged end of the social spectrum ‘- the idea of having genuine love and concern for our fellow-man seems to have been lost. We have turned compassion for our fellow-man into a bureaucratic function.

There is a difficult balance of how to address such civic decay without intruding upon individual liberty. But we know human beings have wired within themselves the attraction to serve within causes that have as their goal something greater than the desires of the individual members.

This does not mean that all people have an equal drive to participate as actively as others within these movements, but simply that we seek to belong to one or more groups. This feeling of belonging is often referred to as our identity.

Belonging to a larger society, such as a college community, serves to elevate our behavior, as in most cases a certain discipline is required to maintain full membership. We seek to live up to the expectations of others within the group because we know that they will hold us accountable. In order to accomplish the same without being part of a group is much more difficult because it will require an extraordinary amount of self-discipline to maintain the same level of integrity without external reinforcement.

In addition to political forces that have shaped our more individualistic understanding of the world, the exponential growth of technological advances, while serving the great purpose of relieving suffering and facilitating access to information, have served to allow us to become more detached from the community around us.

Perhaps technology will one day serve as a mechanism that transforms the very way we define our communities. It may even replace the current paradigm completely. Without the physical proximity required in traditional communities, we can pull from a much wider range of available people and make our communities much more specialized. This being acknowledged, the impersonal, and sometimes virtually anonymous, nature of technology facilitates our separateness. Without the physical interaction, we simply cannot be as intimately committed to the communities in which we take part.

The immutability of human nature has thus far been left out of this equation. Absent some change in the way that we look at the world, external changes have no power to repair the breaches within our communities. What is needed is the transformation of our hearts and our minds.

If we do not do something more urgently, we will find that the very structure of our individual freedom will erode. In the Republic, the Greek philosopher Plato argued that democracy has the tendency to erode into tyranny. Without the proper course of action, we could find ourselves willing to give up on the very freedoms that have sustained the American people for over three centuries.

Thus stands the diagnosis of our current challenge. We have allowed ourselves to become disconnected from each other. We have exchanged our old civic virtues for a moral wasteland. The more difficult component is what is needed to repair this damage. This is where many social and political movements have made their entrance into various times in history. They have come on the scene with the idealistic nature of repairing the breach.

A planned agenda cannot change what is inside of man. If the insides are rotted, no amount of external dressing that can mask the foul taste.

What is instead needed is a change in our understanding of the world around us. It is something that must be brought to each and every individual human being. If we commit ourselves to such a change, over time, the repair will come naturally. We will easily find the politicians we are looking for, and we will know how to use technology rightly.

Fortunately for us, the repair works rather rapidly once we commit ourselves to the proper treatment. We will quickly find other people that will support and reinforce us. There is much evil inside of man, but with the right intervention the good can be redeemed.

This goal is not far from us, if we choose to accept the mission. We will establish a society, and a university community, that will stand as a lamppost testifying to our highest ideals.

Eric Magazu is a Collegian columnist. He can be reach
ed at [email protected].