The Skyliner

Issue date: 2/6/08 Section: Opinion

Ivory-towerism.

It's a term meaning "to be separate and cut-off from society and the happenings of now."

Generally, when it is used, ivory-towerism is a reference to someone who has let his bias or blatant disregard for common sense cause him to encourage others to follow a path to an undesired consequence. An example of ivory-towerism is a king who commands his troops from a tower in the middle of his castle to go over a hill into an army that he can see but they cannot.

He is the one that made the command to move in that direction, but they are the ones who have to suffer and die because he didn't think to warn them.

A real world example would be the doctor who tells a woman to have an abortion without telling her the effects it will have on her mentally, emotionally and physically or the buddy who tells you to do this drug without telling you the drug's addictive nature.

Now that I've introduced ivory-towerism let me give another example.

How about the boyfriend who pressures his girlfriend, not caring about the effects it will have on her?

Then, there are the parents who require their children to pursue a certain major or school, with total disregard to the hopes and dreams of the student.

The point is that we as people and future leaders need to recognize when we are pushing someone with a total disregard for that person's well-being, and when we do, we need to change.

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