Student Activism in the USA

I think there's a few things here perhaps - first of all I agree, it's natural and beneficial to question the status quo, everyone should have a bit of Brando in them - I've largely built my career around doing exactly that, but now ask yourself, how many in the radical/activist domain question their status quo? Doesn't seem too Brando to me, looks like they are as conformist [intra-group] as the frat boy next door! ['All punks look the same']

Secondly - and this extends philosophically too far perhaps - but it's like postmodern critique in general, it is a critique, it isn't a 'new way' nor does it stand alone without reference to the modern or the pre-modern. It's useful only to improve when you have a grasp of the underpinnings and why and how they operate - Chesterton's fence if you will. It's deconstructive by definition. Applied here it is easy to be channeled into thinking the west is a terrible place/thing etc, without having that broader perspective. There are a lot of things that are fked up, to put it technically, but unfking them may mean you fk up even worse than before with something else. This I think takes consideration, something that is not at all evident from these types. What is their solution? They don't have one, so WHY are adults listening to them...?

On comfort I would say perhaps it's a question of how the individual fits into the collective, the collective can't operate without some rules and discipline, some conformity and purpose and a LOT of 'load bearing fictions'. That tie, WHY?! - it's scrap of cloth that sits around your neck serving no purpose you fool, but in the collective it's a signal that you're professional or attending a sober meeting or some other convention we have going on - this is just part of culture. Religion, as you bring it up, is similar [imo] in that it operates as a collective hallucination/'load bearing fiction' that keeps everyone from doing bad things, looking after your neighbour is good, not sleeping with them if you're married is better etc. etc.. They may be 'constructs', but there is purpose behind them. Eschew god when you understand why god is there and you can perhaps improve things and not be riddled with Catholic guilt or have an Islamic license for misogyny whilst maintaining those beneficial parts - I think this is the true direction/advantage of postmodernist thinking rather than the 'everything is fake so tear it down' one that it has sort of morphed into.

Map all of that onto this small issue here and you could see how promoting the rights of the Palestinians may be beneficial, to put some small brake on the whole bloody mess or to check the wilder excesses, but that's not what is going on, imo because the wider context, realities and theory of mind isn't there. It's as I've said above, much more to do with inculcation in a certain direction, a group think or memetic desire, so that the mere act of protest is an end in and of itself. This is Dostoevsky's point I think rather than that of a pro-conformist one - the values of the lady came from wearing the blue spectacles and calling themselves a Nihilist, and not that their values made them a Nihilist.