Three of the Most Annoyingly Overused Words on Campus

(1) Passion.

(2) Globalization.

(3) Culture.

It has come to the point where, if I ever have the slightest doubt about what to put for an answer in a test for human geography or history (or anything, really, except for maybe cal 3), I can just start talking about how whatever it is spreads culture and furthers globalization in the world.

Progress and all that, y'know.

Oh, that reminds me. I found a really good quote by Peter Kreeft the other day in something I was reading by him... what was it... I just got a couple of new books by him - go easy on me! Let me look it up. I noted it somewhere...

Here it is. It is from page 55 of my edition of Jesus-Shock:

The field is ripe for harvesting. Our world is rich, efficient, powerful, clever, knowledgeable--and ugly. We live in strip malls and hide beauty away in museums, instead of living in the museums and hiding away the ugliness. Look how we use the word "progress". When you hear the words, "Oh, well, you can't stop progress," you can be quite certain that something beautiful has just been destroyed. Our culture has filled our heads but emptied our hearts, stuffed our wallets but starved our wonder. It has fed our thirst for facts but not for meaning or mystery. It produces "nice" people, not heroes.

Peter Kreeft tells it like it is, folks, and he's always right, too!

As for passion... that word really wouldn't annoy me if it were not so overused. The same goes for culture, too, really. However, 'globalization' is a word that annoys me on principle. Of course I know that the wide world is all about me, and that while I can fence myself in I can never fence the world forever out, to quote Gildor Inglorion from The Fellowship of the Ring.

But I can try. "I will not bow before the Iron Crown, nor will I cast my own small scepter down."

In Pace Christi,

Elyse

EDIT: I thought of another. (4) Networking. I hate the fact that we are supposed to cultivate acquaintances and friends only for what they can do for us, not for who they actually are. Grr.