Four Reasons Why My Attention Is On UT-Tyler

 

When I started to write about UT-Tyler even after I graduated, many people accused me of an unhealthy fascination. They said that I was active because emotionally, I could not move on from college, that I was stuck in bygone days. They have also accused me of not having a life on my own and all sorts of other stuff. 

For this reason, I thought it would be good to state my reasons for having my attention on UT-Tyler. However, when I thought of them all, they became hard to explain. Moreover, they took a lot more than the normal length of my typical blog post to explain. Probably more than an average reader would stick around for. 

So I decided to break each of them up into their own post which I will publish in the coming weeks. 

For now, I hope these reasons can help me explain myself and my intentions more clearly and perhaps give answers to any honest mind wondering why I am still attentive to life and events at UT-Tyler. 

Thank you for reading! Here is my first reason of four to answer the question of why I still, after I have graduated, have my attention on UT-Tyler.

Reason #1 - I Believe Young People Are In Despair. 

College students today overwhelmingly support Socialist and Interventionist government policies. They promote universal healthcare, food stamps, progressive income tax and more. To me, these policy preferences describe people who want to escape their personal lives and instead live through the state.

This is the pattern of people who are running from something, and I believe what they are running from is an emotional life in ruins.

People who are confident in themselves usually have good social relationships with family and peers. These types generally prefer to solve their own problems and like to find solutions that reflect their own creativity. They reject the notion that someone else should hand it to them. They want the freedom to choose the jobs they have, the clothes they wear and more. In short, these people live their own lives. 

Not so the Progressive students of today. Instead of living their own lives, Progressive students’ preference for government solutions over personal solutions demonstrate a desire to escape their lives and live in the life that the state can give them instead. 

They seek to live through the government and this is why they prefer universal healthcare, minimum wage laws and expansive welfare programs—all government solutions. These people are emotionally codependent and wherever emotional codependence exists is always underlying despair. 

I believe many of today’s collegiates despair that they can obtain independence, whether it is material, social or emotional. 

See, for these young people, a history of broken relationships and personal failures reinforces the proposition that, for them, independence is impossible. Their shattered past convinces them that they cannot trust anyone and that they cannot achieve anything. Therefore, these broken souls abandon their ruined lives in exchange for a life that is available to them through the state. They are codependent and this explains their attachment to the state. 

It is in the life that the state can provide for them that they seek to escape the ruins of their own lives. This preference is the evidence of their inner despair and the impetus behind the Socialist Progressivism of today. 

Now, I believe despair is destructive. 

I also believe that despair comes from falsehood, and falsehood comes from spiritual darkness. Darkness exudes falsehood while light reveals truth. 

Truth gives hope and hope is what makes a person whole. 

My effort with this blog is to try to put truth out in the open and in so doing promote truth that gives young people a reason to hope. 

It is my aim that this blog will, in part, break up the ground in young people’s minds where falsehood has taken hold, and instead reveal a valid alternative way of life.

I would like my blog to reveal how hope is valid. But more than just valid, I believe it is also a moral imperative. 

This is one of the main reasons why my attention is on UT-Tyler, even after I have graduated. It is because I believe today’s college students are in despair and I want to share with them valid reasons to replace their despair with hope. 

Reason #2: I Have Something To Offer--Clear Thinking   

I believe I can help others think clearly about what is true, good and beautiful in life--something that has meant a lot to me, myself. 

Thinking plays a significant role in my own life. For one, I am a thinking person. I think a lot. I am always mulling over problems, concepts and questions within my mind. I like to discover what makes life “work” and, consequently, what makes people work.  

For another reason, I have lot of experience with thinking about these topics. Like many of you, I have had to think through important questions like “Why do bad things happen?” and “Is there moral right and wrong?” I have thought about other questions too, such as, “What is a good song?” and “What makes a film a ‘great movie'?” I believe I can help others think clearly about what is true, good and beautiful because I have thought a lot about these topics myself.

Why College Students?

So, why do I care about college students? Many college students are in an important developmental stage. Their lives are changing rapidly and many of them are asking similar questions that I have: what is real? is there moral right and wrong? why do bad things happen?  

Moreover, they are asking these questions while they lay the foundation for their adult lives. Many have left home and at college now wonder whether the beliefs from their childhood are their own or just inherited from their parents. "Do I believe what I believe," they ask, "because these are my values or because someone in my childhood told me to?” There are many college students who wonder what to do with their childhood beliefs.  

On the other hand, another group of young people formed erroneous assumptions due to traumatic experiences. These, in turn, warp their way of thinking. They believe “all men are liars” or “all women are manipulators” (or whatever other oversimplification of humanity you want to use) usually have had a profoundly negative experience with representatives of one of these above groups. These people can benefit from clear thinking, as well. 

Conclusion

Many college students are in a state of disruption, either from new experiences at university that challenge their old way of life or from negative experiences that warp their current worldview. If there is anything that can help individuals in this disruptive state it is clear thinking. I believe I can help young people think through life’s problems to find beneficial insights that lead to healthy and satisfying adulthood. 

This is what I endeavor to do through my writing and my blog and why I take an interest in life at UT-Tyler. 

Reason #3: Writing Sharpens My Thinking   

My third reason has to do with why I choose writing out of all the possible mediums I could use to relate to UT-Tyler. And the reason is simple. Let me share it with you in two parts.

First, I write about UT-Tyler because writing helps me improve my own thinking. 

Have you ever had to explain to a friend what you mean? For example, perhaps you may have had to explain why you don’t want to hang out tonight or what it is you don't like about a winter scarf or the taste of lunch meat. Whatever it was, to explain yourself, you had to evaluate your situation, your feelings and your words to relate yourself to another person with greater clarity than you did at first. After you explained yourself, in the end, you probably had a clearer understanding of your friend, of yourself and of your environment for having done so. 

Writing a persuasive essay contains a similar experience. When one writes, not only does he form his own thoughts for others to understand, but he also gets to understand himself more clearly. 

Writing contains an exciting discovery process that precedes and continues throughout the entire task of writing an essay. This is the reward in writing that appeals to me and it is a large reason why I choose to write. Through writing, I can see both myself and my world more clearly, when I have to teach what I believe to another person. 

Another reason I write this blog is to sharpen my ability to reason. 

To be honest with you, I don’t really know what I am doing. I write this blog as an informal outlet to practice my persuasive writing. The essays and entries I make each time help to provide me with drills to practice and each post becomes to me a little laboratory for honing my writing craft. 

Writing, I have learned, is like having a toolkit with a certain set of tools that come together to make a well-written piece. For example, the best practices of keeping sentences short, using imagery, structuring sentences to fit patterns and so on all come together to help someone persuade. These tools help us reason, and as rational beings, reason is what we are all about. Reasons are what make a rational being "tick", and writing is one medium we employ to reason with one another. 

Now, if reason is what makes us tick, then to learn to operate on this level, to become persuasive in the realm of reason, enables one to become highly influential in the direction of human choices. People can change their minds when they experience another person’s reasoning. A persuader’s reasoning can become one's own. When it does, in that moment, we think as others think. We connect with one another through reason and argument.

Therefore, to practice writing is my attempt to improve my reasoning and persuasion with my fellow human beings. I hope that this blog becomes persuasive. 

Moreover, in this respect, my blog functions for me as a type of blank canvas, a drawing board or practice court. It helps me exercise my reasoning ability. It is where I make my thoughts clearer. 

So when people ask me why I blog about UT-Tyler, a good answer is: to practice my writing and abilities to reason. 

One Final Thought: Performance Doesn't Equal Intent 

One thing that I think is important for people who read this blog (and that I would like for them to understand) is that, while my opinion pieces may come off strong or conclusive, in the end, I am just practicing. I may be inarticulate at times. I may lack tone. As William Zinsser once said, “Writing is staged performance.” It is not always easy to get an essay to say what you want it to say. My essay is a creation rather than a direct representation of myself. 

My heart is to heal and help, not to scorn or scourge. While I do not apologize for my convictions, I appreciate readers’ feedback on my delivery and presentation.

These reasons are why I choose to write and to write about UT-Tyler: doing so helps me improve my thinking, and my blog lets me practice my ability to reason with my fellow man. 

This is the third reason why I have my attention on UT-Tyler and in the way that I do. 

Reason #4: I Want You To Become A Conservative

In this fourth and final installment of my series, “Why My Attention is on UT-Tyler”, I will give my final reason for why I still have my attention on the student community even after I have graduated. It is this: I want UT-Tyler students to become Conservatives. I understand that many students may not be ready to do this—and truth be told, I don’t want you to change. 

What I really want is for students to be exposed to the insights that lead to a Conservative perspective. In the end, I would really like it and it would be great to me if, after considering the arguments and fundamental ideas, you decided on your own that you would call yourself a Conservative. What I mean is that I would love it if you decided to hold the same commitments to the values and beliefs that I hold as I do: to virtue, righteousness, security and most importantly, to God. These are all very important and I would love it if you joined me in treasuring these things so that together, we could both say, “I’m Conservative.”

Now, a person is more than being Conservative in their orientation, and really, if you go around organizing people in terms of whether or not they are Conservative, I am going to say that something is wrong with you. There is more to appreciate in a person than just whether or not they are Conservative. Appreciate people as they are and don’t look past their humanity to find their political affiliation.

Nevertheless, underneath these superficial categories, I am assuming that there are values and attitudes of the heart that are noble, honorable and worth celebrating that go along with the identification of someone being a Conservative. These values humanize a person, can make him whole and fulfill him. In the end, these humanizing values I think are what I would most consider Conservative values—although, I would say that there are even more important values than these. That is,  that Conservatism, in its natural state, does not go far enough and that what is really necessary to make a person whole is Christianity—but we can save this topic for another time.

All in all, I am writing my final installment of why my attention is on UT-Tyler because, in the end, I would like you to celebrate with me the values and ethics that preserve a person’s humanity. That is, I would like you to become a Conservative.

The Meaning of Conservatism

So what does Conservatism mean? First of all, it is important to realize the word “conservative” does not have a universal meaning. For example, there is a great deal of difference between the Conservatives in Iran than there are the Conservatives in Australia. Iranian Conservatives may seek to preserve the Islamic Theocracy presently in power in Iran while Australian Conservatives may seek to preserve a secular government that is consistent with the liberal society in Australia. So don’t let the word “conservative” throw you. There is not a uniform meaning and it does not tell you everything about the person who claims it.

What is important to understand about Conservatives is the context in which they call themselves a Conservative. It is important to ask yourself: What are they trying to conserve? To what are they committed? These are important questions one could ask to understand what positions the self-identified conservative holds.

In my case, I am a Christian, an American and a Conservative. In the American sense, I seek to uphold and preserve principles and ideals fought for and won in the American Revolution. This means that my commitments in present-day society are to uphold and preserve the classically liberal society won for Americans through that revolutionary war. For example, I support individual rights, human equality, separation of powers, and representational government. These are some values that make me uniquely American in my Conservatism.

However, my beliefs run much deeper than these political beliefs, and I recognize the value of other forms of government.

This is because underneath my personal American commitments is a deeper set of beliefs the embrace of which orient me in a certain way in the world. I have to say that the beliefs I have acquired along my personal experience with Christianity are the most powerful, and perhaps we can get into those. 

Five General Beliefs Of Conservatives

However, before we tap this well, there are other views that mainly American and perhaps even British Conservatives hold that mark out the species of Conservative more than other points of philosophical worldview. Here they are in a short summary. These beliefs are what many Conservatives generally believe that gives them a Conservative temperament. See if these can’t help explain more of what is behind the meaning of Conservatism. They are:
 

1. Belief in an abiding moral order that is good for man. Is it ever justifiable to rape someone? I believe the answer is strongly no. This suggests that there is a moral order to life that must be preserved. Without it man will be unhappy. Conservatives believe in a timeless morality that is for all places at all times and important for men. 

2. Preference for the organic over the artificial, the concrete over the abstract. Conservatives find the most meaning in those social connections that seem to mean the most for man’s well-being, such as their natural family, their church and perhaps even lastly the state. These make the most sense for human relationships and come first for Conservatives. Rather than seeing themselves first as individual consumers or global citizens, Conservatives prefer communities closest to themselves, that make the most natural sense, and they distrust high-minded theories over everyday practical wisdom that has lasted over time. 

3. Belief in man’s imperfectability. Have you ever seen someone you know or a family member just go berserk? I mean, for some reason they just snap, lose their temper or betray your trust? Conservatives would say that man is flawed and can never reach perfection. They would say that human nature is susceptible to corruption, and especially so under the influence of power. Therefore, Conservatives prefer to decentralize power in order to protect themselves and their communities against the instabilities and unpredictable behavior in human nature. They are opposed to dictators. 

4. Belief in private property. Conservatives see the independence and security that comes from private ownership of property as essential and helpful for the individual to have the emotional security that allows him to take his place in the world. For example, if you have ever had difficulty paying rent, then you know the threat of losing your material stability can be emotionally destabilizing. Conservatives seek the emotional and material that comes with private ownership of property. 

5. Belief in self-government through human institutions. As someone once said, “Government can’t love.” Conservatives recognize that natural human institutions such as the family and the church can do a better job of shaping human behavior and preserving a whole society than the sword of the state can. This means Conservatives will see the influence of church, family and volunteer groups as essential to upholding a free, self-governing society.

These five tenants—belief in a moral order, preference for the organic over artificial, belief in man’s imperfectability, belief in private property and support for human institutions—are a good way to gauge what generally makes a Conservative a Conservative. When I say that I would like you to be a Conservative, these are the things I would like you to consider. 

A Word About Christianity

Lastly, I will say that behind all of the wisdom of the ages that Conservatives seek to hold, for me, is something far more enduring and important to me, and it is my experience and commitment to Christianity. For the record, I do not believe that man can build a successful society solely based upon the tenants I described above. I believe that the individual human person is a good map of what society can be at large and that at the center of the human person is his need for redemption. He is not whole and this is because of his relationship to God and his own rebellion, frankly. 

This is not what I seek to push on you, but I think it is important to understand that I believe –in my own brand of Conservatism, per se—that Christianity has a transformative effect upon individuals and through the message of God’s forgiveness and the historical resurrection of Jesus Christ its spread and influence is necessary for the renewal of our communities and society.

In my commitments, I seek to present belief a moral order and adherence to moral commitments that make sense with a future Day of Judgement, on which, Christians maintain, God will punish evildoers for their evil deeds—and this includes the secret choices of our hearts. Knowing that this day is coming and seeing the reliability of Jesus Christ’s historical resurrection, I believe it is rational to seek to live a life that makes sense in light of a coming day of reckoning.

It is with a view to these things that I seek to implore students and young people through this blog to live uprightly before the coming Day of Judgement. That’s the best way I know to say it. I don’t plan to be quoting scripture or teaching out of the Bible, but my effort with this blog will be an attempt to make an intellectual case that moral living is supreme and important and necessary for man. It is a big part man's experience of redemption.

It is these things that make me a Conservative. I hope that you will consider these things and, in the end, decide to become one, too.

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Twitter: @jhescock12

Editor's Note: This article was updated on September 12, 2020 at 4:08 p.m. with Reason #2, on July 8, 2021 at 10:58 a.m. with Reason #3, and on November 2, 2021 at 9:38 p.m. with Reason #4. All three were published at a later date than this page's original post.