Do I belong? I never felt I did. If I do now, it is because I endeavor to ward off dogma and groupthink. Worry less and less about belonging. Eric Hoffer wrote in The True Believer, “A mass movement attracts and holds a following not because it can satisfy the desire for self-advancement, but because it can satisfy the passion for self-renunciation.”
The worst mistake I made in college (2002-2006) was that I chose self-renunciation. I wasn’t being practical or prudent. If I had been more mature and knowledgeable back then and chosen to advance myself, I probably would have realized all or at least some of my ambitions right now. I know definitively that in living out my fantasies I was fulfilling a need for belonging. I sought not to belong to a mass movement, as in the kind that Eric Hoffer defined, but an ideology that comforted me, albeit within obvious limits.
My own form of self-renunciative behavior wasn’t something I engaged in by protesting the war in Iraq regularly; I went to three marches, one in Washington D.C. and two in New York City, and I didn’t enjoy them much at all. Rather, it was more my style to spout out tedious left-wing bromides and clichés whenever I had the opportunity in class. It was an experience most satisfying to me, because I was doing so as a minority of one in my small, mostly blue-collar liberal arts school in rural New Hampshire. I think if I weren’t in the minority, had I gone to a different college with a radical left majority, the chances were, I would have changed my tune and become more sensible and conservative, earlier in life.
At the time of my collegiate years, I got off on living out the fantasy that I was regurgitating the romanticized images of radicals from the 1960s movement in revolt and tumult. Thinking like an outsider was a fun experience. True, it did win me a few close friends, but it also resulted in a number of bitter enemies. These were students who resented the ideas I’d spout forth in class, and the best way they got back at me was to lull me into a temporary friendship, and then soon after, they’d renounce that friendship and spread horrible insults about me to the community. This was degrading and has led to my being even more insular and reclusive in my early middle age. But the memories have led me to choose my friends more carefully, and not to make the mistake of seeing friendly acquaintances as true friendships.
I am glad, though, that for all of my youthful posturing, that is all it ever really came to—just posturing. Most importantly, I always had one north star, or position I didn’t waver on, and that was my love and support of the state of Israel, and the commitment to keeping her safe. I might have considered myself a progressive-minded Jewish boy, but I was never one of those obnoxious progressive Jews that turned Quisling toward their own homeland and people. In fact, in late 2002, my first semester of freshman year, during a student seminar on the impending invasion of Iraq, I made a statement that I would support the war effort if Saddam Hussein were to launch a scud missile barrage against Israel, just as he did during the first Gulf War in 1991. This caused a lot of murmurs of bewilderment and raised eyebrows among the other students in the room, because they saw my taking this particular position as curious and remarkable.
College is a place and time when a young person experiments in new ideologies and can inevitably overcome such rigid and deceptive thinking. Can I be forgiven for my own ideological experimentation now that I have renounced my initial acts of self-renunciation? It is an often repeated saying that youth is wasted on the young. In my case, I was twice as immature as everyone else and dangerously naive. I believed for so long that I would achieve my life’s goals automatically, that everything had a way of working out over time. I failed to recognize that I was born without many of the cognitive tools and social skills needed to navigate me through life’s many hardships and obstacles. But that is the price that inherently comes with being on the autism spectrum.
I should have been more career-oriented and less of a ‘lifetime student.’ The question that runs through my mind now on a continuous loop is, Did my past need for Belonging jeopardize my future well-being? One thing is for certain. Now that I define myself as a political realist, I have found a new, safer community to belong to. I embrace realpolitik and am a committed Zionist, without any contradiction or setback. Most of those that could be classified as fair-weather friends have withered away and left me behind. Or I have left them behind, whichever way it should be viewed.
But I do have many blessings I can count from what I have gained from my collegiate days. First, and foremost, I have my bachelor’s degree; I never let any of the posturing get in the way of being the best student I could be. Some of my fondest memories of college were of my burning the midnight oil, studying in the library. There, it was usually just me and the Asian students. Most other people were out partying. I always respected my elders, the professors who enlightened my mind, and the campus safety officers who kept me secure. And I was always open to revising my thought process whenever I learned something new. I never got bogged down by ideological tunnel vision.
Today, in 2024, I observe the legion of deluded students at the best Ivy League universities, encamped outside on their campuses, essentially living in their own filth. They are laying siege to the buildings and openly inviting violent confrontation with the police. The students are trafficking in the worst antisemitic vulgarity, and they are harassing and violating the rights of Jewish students. I could have been any one of the students facing danger and discrimination at the time of this writing. It has been of tremendous relief and comfort to me to learn that my alma mater Franklin Pierce University, remains as quiet and apolitical as it was when I was a student there and it was known as Franklin Pierce College. If in the past belonging meant indulging in flights of fantasy, then in the present belonging means being grounded in sensible reality. And I still hold out for hope for success in the future.
Fascinating essay, and as brave as it is timely.
Posted by: David Lehman | June 05, 2024 at 03:31 PM