-=-
1. There are no such things as ideals. Our desires are all physical — cars, houses, food, women, clothes, money — they are what count. We reverence only God; we worship "success" — these are our passions.
2. Whatever the most of those around us do is right. There is no other basis for guiding our behavior. We are afraid to be different.
3. We have no feelings or emotions. Life holds no intense joys or sorrows. Life is not complicated. We understand it all.
4. Mothers and Dads are not unique personalities. They are "good" and we value them because they are convenient and ready sources of supply.
5. Life is even, mechanical, ordered, planned — a series of settled facts. There are no desires, dreams, or exultations.
6. "Sin" does not always carry with it the terrible consequences that we have been taught it would. This surprises us mildly, but does not interest us.
7. We think there is only one conception of "God". "God" is a Sunday school image. Religion is a set of prejudices learned at church — not an individual and personal experience.
8. We like to drift — we dodge anything that calls for effort. We let others set the pace and if we can keep step we consider ourselves good.
9. Life, as we have lived it, is very dull. The imaginations and emotions have no place in it.
10. We have no ideas. Thinking comes as awkwardly and clumsily to us as does a rattle to a baby's hand.
11. Human civilization is to us a great blank. We are not interested in what they did, left, or thought. We are proud of this ignorance.
12. We have no curiosity. There is no such thing as Beauty.
13. We are smug and content — enormously self-satisfied if we are "as good as the average". We are afraid to excell.
The Saturday News and Observer says that North Carolina ranks 41 or 42 among the States in education and intellectual interests and achievements.
J. O. M.
-=-
The younger member of the band of Intellectuals comes bounding into the room. Before the august body assembled there he breathlessly words his newest idea. As he ramifies, a look of disgust settles over the faces of the group. One finally says, "Why, Aristotle said the same thing two thousand years ago'.' The younger member subsides in terror. A true intellectual, he has a horror of one who claims a thought already stated, equalled only by that of being considered unread. And he hasn't read Aristotle.
Yet he has achieved what for him is original thought. More credit is due him, perhaps, than Aristotle. But he is damned and silenced for thinking the same thing as did that apparently omniscient writer. Faced by the displeasure of the group, he reads Aristotle j then the rest of the great thinkers. And what has her A huge amount of wisdom that constantly confuses him, and in place of the keen joy of nurturing an idea until it blossoms forth in splendor, enhanced because it is his own, he has only the dubious satisfaction of giving the withering blast of "Aw, Aristotle said that two thousand years ago".
J. P. P.
-=-
"Come on now! Get a little pep into this cheering. I hope a bolt of lightning will strike my grandmother in her left brass leg if this isn't the rottenest co-operation that I've ever received.
"We have got the greatest university in the south here. And after that straight-from-the-shoulder talk by coach Collins it does look like you spineless men would take a little more interest in our team and support our forty-three fighting fools. Why the noise you fellows are making sounds just about as effective as a halitosis treatment. We'll now hear from the most popular man in the University, Professor Frank Graham. Boys, this is the son of Dr. Graham, one of the greatest presidents that this glorious University has ever had. Look him over boys, look him over boys! How much am I offered? Why Hell no! ten thousand dollars? My God, boy, this great and inspiring message he is going to give you on the Old Carolina Spirit is worth more than that! AH right, three cheers for Frank Graham. And don't say G-r-a-h-a-m — say Graam! Come on now — spit it out!
"Well, I guess you slackers feel ashamed now. Why, for Carolina's sake, why can't we have the spirit now that was here in Dr. Graham's day? Everything else is modern and improved, but the Old Carolina Sprit is dead. I'll scratch a cootie on my back if it isn't. It is just like Adam said to Eve on the subject of apples. Well, there are some ladies present, so we'll come back to the fruit question later. Is the Carolina Spirit dead? Hell no, it is not! We'll prove it.
"Mr. Paul John Weaver, A. A. G. O., Etc., will you please render that magnificent old song, Hark the Sound? Brother Weaver broadcasting!"
A.B.
-=-
Two items which appeared in the state papers recently bearing the dateline, "Chapel Hill", were of such a nature as to call for both laughter and tears. The first one stated that President Chase would lead the cheering sections during the Carolina-State game, and the other announced that William R. Kenan, Jr., had given $275,000 to the University to build a new stadium.
The first of course was a ridiculous mistake, but the second is sadly true. At the time when the gift is made University officials are having to crawl on their knees before a reactionary state legislature to beg from them the necessary dollars to hold the University in the path of progress.
We need a new library, a new music building, a school of fine arts, any number of things of real value, and we get $275,000 to erect a temple to the glory of Kenan and the Great God Football! A monument which will be needed once every two years.
A.B.W.
-=-
From the November 1926 issue of Carolina Magazine, Chapel Hill, N.C. : Dialectic and Philanthropic Literary Societies of the University of North Carolina
archive.org/details/carolinamagazine19261927/page/n59/mode/2up
