EXCO 301.16 CRN: 6382 Thursday from 3:30-5:10pm starting January 29th
Join this class through SFSU enrollement in the student center
This is not a debate club. This is an experiment, an accredited experiment backed by the Division of Undergraduate Education and Academic Planning at San Francisco State University. If you join this class, it will appear on your transcript. If you pass, you gain a single unit.
People have been discussing issues--all issues--since the beginning of civilization. We are in the age where information is readily available at our fingertips at all times. Some of us take for granted the internet's power to educate; others appreciate it too much. So much that it corrupts every opinion they have. That everything they believe must have a factual link based on internet or artificially intelligent proof.
Answer this question honestly: do you make your own opinions? If you could shred your identity down to simply knowing that you are a walking object among other walking and non-walking objects, what do you believe then? It's impossible to know unless you already know it. It's not something the internet, AI, or most of your friends or family could answer. Because if that source means anything to you in the first place, the information is already poisoned. You're bound to think one way or another about what someone has to say before they even open their mouth. You're bound to think that way about me and other strangers too.
But you know what I'm saying is true. People are real and fake; fake friends, fake believers, real family, real assholes. We're not children anymore. No need to cry or scream if you don't like what they have to say. It's time to think--deeper. Time to put yourselves in the shoes of criminals, cops, psychopaths, schizophrenics, Nazis, Trump-supporters, ICE agents, gays, trans, Blacks, Whites, incels, whores, minorities, and majorities. Women and men. Nihilists and faithful. Agnostic and gnostic. Orthodox and reformed. Amish and accelerationist. Isolationist and globalist. Nothing is evil except for hiding in the dark and waiting to ambush your own kind.
We have to give a space for discussing the repugnant ideas of people who DO exist. And they exist HERE in America. HERE in San Francisco! In THIS very university! Our point is not to open the door to spreading violence, abuse, and exploitation. The point is to prevent that! We prevent it by giving it a safe place to be expressed at all. For it to cool down here in reality, not to muster in the depths of the internet!
Do you understand what I'm saying? Please, I invite you to set aside your pens and swords and come to this. This is a real, tangible meeting at our university. Don't not come because you are too anxious or don't know enough to speak. Come in blind, and prove to yourself that you really believe in what you believe. Prove that you can believe in something. Give the ugly monsters a chance to be normal people. And do not be offended by what people have to say or how they say it.
Our discussion aren't solely about politics or society. Come tell jokes. Talk about makeup or video games. There will be time for lighthearted discussion.
There will be no audio or visual recordings permitted, and access to the internet will be limited throughout our dicussions.