Penn State Group Think

For years I have wondered how so many Penn State students could think exactly alike on so many moral and spiritual issues and yet fully believe that they think for themselves. Virtually all of them, unless they have religious reasons to the contrary, are pro-choice on abortion, homosexuality, fornication, drunkenness, and religion. They favor relatively easy divorce, buy into evolution hook, line, and sinker, believe both spouses will have to work just to make ends meet, and at least while they are in college are pro-choice on Pot smoking. It was pretty easy to figure out why they all think alike. They were merely conforming to modern day American pop culture. The question was, how could they believe that they came to these beliefs by thinking for themselves.

It took many years but a monk finally clued me in. To begin with most students were never sat down and formally taught these ideas. As we said before they absorbed them from the various vehicles of the popular culture. Virtually from the time they were born they have been watching television. They have listened to popular music, read newspapers, magazines, and popular novels, watched movies, and were educated in the public school system. For the most part all of these vehicles of information have preached the same secular message, which says that even if God exists he is irrelevant in real life, so do as you please as long as you do not hurt anyone else.

When I hold forth in front of the hallowed steps of Willard Building people know that they are being preached to. They know that someone is trying to influence them with a point of view and they are on their guard. But when they are watching T.V. and see pre-marital sex put in a neutral to positive light they are so caught up with the story that often times they do not realize that they have just been preached to. The same is true when they watch a movie, listen to pop music, read a novel etc. By the time they reach college they, and most everyone around them, have absorbed the same secular message for 18 years.

On the one hand, no one has formally sat them down and taught them these ideas so they think that they have come up with them on their own. Even in the public schools it is more caught than taught. On the other hand, they have all absorbed the same secular message from the same secular media and school system so they all think alike.

I believe that this is how 40,000 Penn State students can all think a like and yet firmly believe that they think for themselves. The only exception to this seems to be those brain washed religious kids.