Thomas Sowell
The naked truth
RECENTLY, AS MY assistant was walking across the Stanford University campus, she
was startled to see four young women, completely naked and with their bodies painted
various colors, asking one of the men who was passing by to take a picture of them.
He apparently was happy to do so.
This was not a unique incident. On another occasion, my assistant came upon a
cheering crowd near the campus bookstore. In the midst of that crowd was a young
man, also naked and also with his body painted.
Several years ago, the Stanford student newspaper featured a front-page photograph
of a group of students, of both sexes, in the shower together. Since the picture was in
black and white, there is no way of knowing whether their bodies were painted.
The Stanford campus has not become a nudist colony, but neither are these episodes
of no significance -- especially not when they seem to meet public approval. Nor are
the only implications of such behavior sexual.
Public nudity is just one of the ways of expressing their sense of their own wonderful
specialness that so many self-indulgent students feel at many elite colleges and
universities. A Stanford law school student expressed the same haughty superiority in
terms of her work in the "prisoner's rights" movement.
This law school champion of convicted felons said, "It's precisely because prisoners
are viewed as the castaways of our society -- that's what draws me to them even
more." In other words, promoting the interests of prisoners is a way to be morally
one-up on "society."
"We should want to know," she said, "why a person can't function in this society, what
it is about this society." It cannot possibly be something wrong about the person
because that would not provide an occasion for demonstrating her own wonderful
specialness, at least not with her clothes on.
If these were simply the peccadilloes of a few vain and self-indulgent adolescents, it
would just be part of the passing parade of human folly. Unfortunately, it is part of a
whole mindset that is nourished on many campuses and which the graduates take out
into the world.
Moreover, this is not simply their own personal misfortune. Using their gilded diplomas
from big-name academic institutions as passes into policy-making positions, the
educated ego-trippers can spend years -- perhaps a lifetime -- pursuing
self-aggrandizement under pious names like "compassion" or "social justice."
What it all boils down to is imposing their superior wisdom and virtue on all the clods
they lump together disdainfully as "society." It is all supposed to be for our own good,
but there is remarkably little attention paid to evidence as to whether or not their
grandiose schemes work.
These schemes always work in terms of allowing the self-congratulatory anointed to
feel superior and to feel excitement. Eric Hoffer said that intellectuals cannot operate at
room temperature. Everything must be "exciting," "innovative," or otherwise cater to
their emotions.
The claim is of course made that these busybodies are making the rest of us better off.
But whether their crusades actually promote the wellbeing of the ostensible
beneficiaries is not a question that arouses any great interest on their part.
For example, whether or not racial busing actually helps either blacks or whites is not a
question that captures their attention. Nor are they concerned about studies that show
recycling doing more harm than good.
Nor are such people likely to pause during their "global warming" crusades to examine
scientific evidence as to whether the globe has actually gotten any warmer or not. Nor
are they likely to pause during their "overpopulation" crusades to consider why Japan is
prospering with ten times the population density of sub-Saharan African nations that
are stricken with poverty and famine.
With all the parading of concern about other people, there is remarkably little concern
with allowing those other people to live their own lives as they see fit. On the contrary,
ever increasing and ever more minute regulation of other people's lives has now
reached the point where we cannot even take a shower, flush a toilet, or take out our
garbage the way we want to.
It is not about us, it is about their own egos. That's the naked truth.
4/22/98: Playing fair and square
4/19/98: Bad teachers"
4/15/98: "Clinton in Africa
"
4/13/98: "Bundling and unbundling
"
4/9/98: "Rising or falling Starr
"
4/6/98: "Was Clinton ‘vindicated'?
"
3/26/98: "Diasters -- natural and political"
3/24/98: "A pattern of behavior"
3/22/98: Innocent explanations
3/19/98: Kathleen Willey and Anita Hill
3/17/98: Search and destroy
3/12/98: Media Circus versus Justice
3/6/98: Vindication
3/3/98: Cheap Shot Time
2/26/98: The Wrong Filter
2/24/98: Trial by Media
2/20/98: Dancing Around the Realities
2/19/98: A "Do Something" War?
2/12/98: Julian Simon, combatant in a 200-year war
2/6/98: A rush to rhetoric
Mona Charen