Wednesday, October 31, 2007

The first thing I thought of when I read the part of this post about Simulacrum was drinking in college. Have people always drank excessively in college? Is this a new development? Did it happen after Animal House? People come to college and expect to do a lot of partying and drinking? Is there a more explainable reason behind this? Is it because students are finally free from their parents and they decide that they are going to drink an excessive amount just because they can now? But if that is true, why aren't kids sleeping on the streets to rebel, or fasting, or doing lots of heroin?
It is because students rely on the simulation of the college experience. I have been told that these are the best years of my life, or that college is the maximum amount of freedom I will have in my life with the most limited amount of responsibility. And there is no better way to flaunt this lack of responsibility than to drink yourself into a stupor. But why do we come to school thinking that drinking is a part of college? I think it is because we have heard all of these stories about the crazy things people did when they were in college and we watch movies like old school, animal house, and PCU and think that this is what college is supposed to be and since we have only a limited amount of time many people fall into the pattern of partying and drinking all the time in college.

Now I am not making this post to try and knock drinking, I am in no way against it. I have drank before and will drink again. And I also acknowledge (for all my commenters who may be and college and not drink) that not everybody drinks in college. But it is a college stereotype and we can all think of people that we know that fit the animal house role to a T. Drinking is just the first thing that I thought of while I was reading Ken Rufo's post.

Another point I really enjoyed about his post/
Baudrillard's theory is that there is a glimmer of hope. When Ken Rufo said that, "The idea is that the world ultimately resists our attempts to theorize it, whether those attempts are philosophy or physics, and that this actually may be a saving grace" it made me smile. There is finally a little bit of hope in these theories. Even though his other theories suggest that nothing is real (which can no doubt be depressing) he does say that the world's refusal to fit into the neatness of one persons theory makes me happy and makes me think that there can be some randomness and hopefully some reality in the world.... you know.... like on MTV's the real world.

No comments: