to build identities, communities, networks, careers all bound to specifically left ideologies.
And: so many people are so hungry for real, supportive friends and mentors, and grow those relationships like vines on any trellis provided, and it will be very hard to give up those trellises upon later finding out something awful. And every person and organization who strategically sets up something they call "community," but centered on a product they want to sell, takes advantage of that.
This is something I've thought about some, not on the scale of universities exactly, but -- like -- I am active in a religion that skews much, much more conservative than I personally am (and yeah... homophobia, check; sexism, check; racism, check; it's getting better about these things, but it's still at least twenty years behind everyone else, probably more), and I've thought seriously more than once about leaving it. And I haven't, because that community is not something I've found in any other context, and it's important to me. (As well as, I feel pretty strongly at this point that I have an important function to help the community with this transition, but that's another thing.)
I think part of the reason it is hard to find this outside of religion is that if you believe that God is literally telling you to do the things that foster community, it... makes it much easier to get you to actually do the thing than any secular reasoning. Of course things are more complicated than that, but in my experience it makes organizational things possible on a scale that you'd have a lot more difficulty implementing on a secular level.
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And: so many people are so hungry for real, supportive friends and mentors, and grow those relationships like vines on any trellis provided, and it will be very hard to give up those trellises upon later finding out something awful. And every person and organization who strategically sets up something they call "community," but centered on a product they want to sell, takes advantage of that.
This is something I've thought about some, not on the scale of universities exactly, but -- like -- I am active in a religion that skews much, much more conservative than I personally am (and yeah... homophobia, check; sexism, check; racism, check; it's getting better about these things, but it's still at least twenty years behind everyone else, probably more), and I've thought seriously more than once about leaving it. And I haven't, because that community is not something I've found in any other context, and it's important to me. (As well as, I feel pretty strongly at this point that I have an important function to help the community with this transition, but that's another thing.)
I think part of the reason it is hard to find this outside of religion is that if you believe that God is literally telling you to do the things that foster community, it... makes it much easier to get you to actually do the thing than any secular reasoning. Of course things are more complicated than that, but in my experience it makes organizational things possible on a scale that you'd have a lot more difficulty implementing on a secular level.