Irrational Vanguardism as Nonsense

"What accounts for the persistence of this movement as an effective force?"

This is the question from the book "Academic Duty" raised by Donald Kennedy, who is the former President of Stanford University for 12 years, reacted against the radical situation among the animal rights movement in the 1980's and 1990's in the U.S., in which the activists substantially denounced those experimenters using animals as lively testing materials. Kennedy questioned the movement's motivation of irrationality and its violent direction derogated academic freedom of scholarly research, which is the nonsense of vanguardism only relied on subjective moral judgement of animal protection lacking sufficient reasoning. The academic environment among the U.S. campuses were fulfilled such dread of harassment and frightening. Suffering from the academic drawback is not the real well being of truth that truth cannot be replaced by computers in virtual reality of animal experiments, as Kennedy suggested in the case of biological science, which made such radical movements a hallmark of stepping backward along the cultivation history but not forth.

Kennedy answered the question of persistence: "there has been a deepening mistrust of respected, 'elite' institutions; it is visible in popular attitudes toward government, medicine, the media, and even organized religions. The animal rights effort has profited from this mistrust of elites as well as from increasingly negative public attitudes toward science." "Mistrust" given the prominent indication of the characteristics of this kind of movements motivated only in moral sense but not rigorous inference and evidence. The only nutrition fostering the organizers and supporters is merely on the sensuous and emotional belief of "emancipation" or other ethical credendum.

The U.S. case from Kennedy, yet was about twenty years ago, has been projecting its irrational aspect to the present political phenomena in Hong Kong in the 21st century, or in other words, the radicals and antics politics (e.g.: the advocate of L.S.D. (社民連)) both are nothing new in the eyes of an U.S. scholar. "Mistrust" contributes the same origin of such kind of persistence in the name of "anti-oppression" of L.S.D which emphasizes the power relativity of weak grassroots class and mighty bureaucracy. However, the society, sarcastically, suffers from polarization much severer than before for the activists' "good" intention.

Avant-garde does not guarantee sophisticated mind but superficial behaviour. Populace is easily to be engaged in the crown of fake adversity against hegemony if lacking wisdom to breakdown sensation spurted inwards self and deliberate truth. The infighting of id and superego is always the internal trace of a witty man's development, who is not dominated by any instinct motive or unrealistic superstructure / ideology.