Logismoi

I’m sorry to hear you’ve been under siege once again. Your university obviously makes a conservative’s life much more difficult than I have it here in South Carolina. This is in part, however, simply the fortunate result of my rank and professional standing and not necessarily a measure of the institution’s culture at large. My students are not always so lucky, and I hear from them about the occasional classroom outbreak of illiberal liberalism.

As it happens I was recently inducted as an honorary member of the USC Euphradian Society, a men’s-only, conservative group on campus, and with my students’ experiences in mind I read the following poem written for the occasion. As you know, logismoi is Greek for “thoughts”, though in the spiritual literature of the Orthodox East, we’re not talking about just any thoughts, but above all distracting, debilitating, dangerous—even demonic—thoughts.

Where precisely the logismoi of our left-of-center academic ideologues should be placed on this spectrum I leave you to decide!

Logismoi
Musings as to Why There Is, and Must Be, an L. Marion Gressette Euphradian Society Hall

Your mind is numb. Your nerves are frayed.
You find in fact you are afraid.
Afraid of what? It’s hard to say …
So many thoughts in disarray:

Thoughts forbidden lest they trigger,
Quite bereft of ancient rigor.
Thoughts required lest one be banished,
Thoughts to spare the other’s anguish.

Thoughts that fuel diversity,
And sell the university.
Thoughts correct, and thus banal,
Thoughts not thought––disgorged withal.

Thoughts expressed by acronyms,
Postmodernistic ticks and whims.
Thoughts by feelings much congested,
Thoughts gulped down, but not digested.

Your mind is numb. Your nerves are frayed.
You find in fact your ire displayed
Toward all such thoughts barbarian:
Find solace here, Euphradian.

James S. Cutsinger
30 November 2015