Think and be hated. Feel and be loved.
A reflection on the lessons of academia and culture
When I was in high school, there were defined standards we were expected to achieve. I don’t have it in front of me, but the school referred to it as the “Profile” or the Profile of the Grad at Grad.
From what I gather, the Profile still exists. I’m not sure how much if any the details of it have changed in 30+ years.
It was a vision: The Profile of the Jesuit High School Graduate at Graduation. They wanted us to have achieved those standards by the time we finished at Jesuit High School in Portland, Oregon.
I don’t know who exactly developed the Profile, but the standards were well-defined. Yet in retrospect, a bit cringey and borderline-modernist for my current tastes.
Modernism was condemned by Pope Pius X in the 1907 encyclical Pascendi Dominici gregis, calling it “the synthesis of all heresies.”
The major bullet-points were thus:
Open to Growth
Intellectually Competent
Religious
Loving
Committed to Doing Justice
When I attended Jesuit, and especially as the decades have gone on, the platitudes relating to the Profile far outweighed the moral, religious, and intellectual rigor the Profile attempted to champion.
I knew these five points by heart back then. I didn’t memorize much of the language or the sub-referenced bullet points all too well, but we had the major points of the Profile drummed into us all year long.
I continued my education with the Jesuits for another 4 years, attending Boston College. There was nothing like the Profile at BC as far as I was, or am, aware.
It was more than just nominally Catholic, but Boston College in those days also tried to straddle the line between secular acceptability and post-Vatican II Catholicism. It was very bizarre and I’m afraid the university has slipped more into the secular realm these days as the “pro-Vatican II” church hierarchy tends to be radically leftist if not outright secular in some of its statements and actions.
Look no further than James Martin, probably the most famous—why? I don’t know—Jesuit priest this side of Pope Francis. For full disclosure: he also has a degree from Boston College, from what I understand.
Martin ticks most of the boxes from the Profile like one might expect.
He claims to be all of the five: Open to Growth, Intellectually Competent, Religious, Loving, and Committed to Doing Justice.
Perhaps. There is one on that list—Intellectually Competent—that sticks out as disingenuous to say the least.
But “judge not,” as Martin often Tweets. He also often goes to the rhetorical punching bag, “who am I to judge?”
I am a human being, capable of making judgments. That’s who I am.
The Profile encouraged me to be Intellectually Competent. This is where Martin falls short.
Let’s explore.
I consulted the great arbiter, Merriam-Webster, and got this:
intellect noun
in·tel·lect ˈin-tə-ˌlekt
1 a: the power of knowing as distinguished from the power to feel and to will: the capacity for knowledge
b: the capacity for rational or intelligent thought especially when highly developed
2: a person with great intellectual powers
What can we gather?
Martin, for instance, is an emotive thinker. He has little time or capacity for rational or intelligent thought.
Regarding part 2 of the definition, Martin also lacks any an outward semblance of intellectual powers, and thus may be considered a “philistine” rather than an intellectual. Somewhat ironic, given his chosen vocation.
Philistine 1 of 2 noun
Phi·lis·tine ˈfi-lə-ˌstēn fə-ˈli-stən, -ˌstēn; ˈfi-lə-stən
2 often not capitalized
a: a person who is guided by materialism and is usually disdainful of intellectual or artistic values
b: one uninformed in a special area of knowledge
James Martin is but a symptom of the problem for those who fancy themselves “intelligent” and “caring” and so forth.
First, these people aren’t bright. Intellectual mid-wits at best.
Secondly, a lot of the problem-solving they attempt with their emotive and “caring” personas only help to enable the problems that exist in the first place.
My point here is not to pick on Martin. He’s clearly a far cry from Pope Pius X—whose motto was “To restore all things in Christ”—and that should be obvious to everyone, from high-brows to half-wits.
The point is that very few in this culture, let alone high school graduates, are intellectually competent—one of the five pillars of the Profile.
Perhaps more to the point—and certainly to our detriment—we take for granted that most folks we encounter have an even a mildly developed intellect.
It is important that one distinguishes the “power of knowing” versus the “power to feel.”
To know takes work. To feel is easy and comes without effort.
So it goes.
I love college football—or at least I did until 2020 and its aftermath destroyed much of my affinity for the sport. However, I never particularly appreciated the intellectual level of a typical college football fan.
One of the great things about sports, however, is the uncultured passion that most folks have for their team or their school. It takes zero brainpower to root for the colors, but it does take a lot of feeling. This is admirable in many respects.
But, slipping through the cracks by gaming the all-too-vulnerable college admissions edifice and making it into a somewhat prestigious university, does not an intellectual make. Still, clinging to the external validation of which one’s degree confers goes unquestioned in this culture, all the while remaining a “humble brag” of sorts.
I don’t particularly care. I have zero idea where my diploma and I never got it framed. (For what it’s worth, I support you if you did and I should have done that immediately. My bad. Seriously.)
As for my school, I root for the football, hockey, and basketball teams. I also enjoy the campus and the architecture—for the most part—every time I get back to visit. A handful of professors remain influential as well.
And I love the friends that I made—and I really love one of those people, so much so that we now have a family of 7.
My school, though, like any other one I’d imagine, was littered with intellectual lightweights—from the lowliest freshman on campus to the professoriate and administration. Academia is a bubble and these people are thus shielded from reality.
I took that aforementioned Profile from high school seriously. I was fortunate to have that framework.
Many people—graduated for decades now a lot of them—were never afforded the opportunity to have such a system to work with. Some folks were also given my same opportunities but for whatever reason chose to forsake them.
Yet, the Profile was a “north star.” It is what they wanted you to achieve. It was an avatar of a graduate, not a person himself.
Nobody’s perfect and people still struggle to this day. Even alums of Jesuit institutions—shocking, I know!
So, what does this have to do with anything?
Well, some of my fellow alumni, without even a hint of intellectual curiosity, have blindly called into question all sorts of things about my character. A short two-sentence tweet may have started it:
“Not true. Scratch the surface on that case & the reality is much different.”
The tentacles from this tweet spread out far and wide. I replied to a fellow seeing that he was a BC alum and thinking that he might be “Intellectually Competent” or at least somewhat curious about a topic that I know way more about than he does.
It was absolutely foolish of me, by the way, to think this way about another based on his credential.
Twitter is a dumpster fire at times. This afternoon proved to be one of those times. But I believe Twitter can be more beneficial than not…most of the time.
All this being said, if you haven’t listened to Episode 9 of The O’Leary Review Podcast, and still consider yourself intellectually competent—or at the very least somewhat curious—start on the podcast today.
Even if you don’t care about college football (I do) or Penn State (I don’t), this story is much bigger than all of that. Find the time.
At the heart of it is a story about the rampant corruption and ineptitude of our corporate media structure, academia, and the “justice system” that most of us all take for granted…or at least did, once upon a time.
I have no time for the Vox Ignorami on Twitter and elsewhere who tout moral superiority while remaining steadfast poltroons.
Therefore, I have little time for a lot of people in today’s culture.
I want to have time for you.
As always,
Brian O’Leary
