Puget Sound junior Elbin Grouse may be attending college, but unlike most students, he sees higher education for the puppet show it is.
“Everyone in society thinks that work and school is so important,” Grouse said. “Nobody stops to wonder what it’s all about. Nobody but me.”
Most people are too busy being sheep to think critically about society, capitalism and education. Once in a generation, a truly intelligent man is born. A man like Grouse.
“Don’t let school get in the way of your education,” Grouse said. “There’s only so much you can learn from books. That’s why I don’t read books anymore. I just watch five-minute Youtube videos about Freud so I can help people understand why they’re wrong.”
Grouse, who is finishing his third year at Puget Sound, has taken three credits every semester and is on track to graduate in 2022 as a sixth-year senior. He does not have need- or merit-based aid. By the time he graduates, Grouse’s parents will have spent nearly $300,000 on his Puget Sound experience.
“Everyone is so obsessed with ‘working hard’ to be ‘successful.’ It’s disgusting how muddy-grubbing people are. I wish everyone would just hang out at their stepdad’s beach house, like me,” Grouse said.
Grouse is one member of a larger social group on campus united by their shared value of being the only ones who see how stupid everything is. They call themselves The Brotherhood of the Mind. I spoke with the Archmage of the Brotherhood Cameron Steele about what it means to be Archmage.
“Well, we certainly weren’t going to have a ‘President.’ Not after 2016,” Steele said. “I protested that election by not voting, but unfortunately, all these brainwashed puppets still went to the ballot box and … the rest is history. Funny how the rat race is so full of sheep.”
I asked different members of The Brotherhood of the Mind if they had any plans to act on their radical values but had trouble getting a straight answer.
“Maybe if people smoked more gange there would be more perspectives in politics,” Brotherhood member Scarbey Moth said.
“I don’t really identify as an ‘American.’ I’m more of a cosmopolitan, a citizen of the world,” Brotherhood member Kinslin Cook said. “Americans are stupid and ignorant, so that label doesn’t really fit for me.”
“I wish someone would flip society on its freaking head,” Brotherhood member Trilmy Tankerbox said. “But I’m busy this weekend. I’m having a thing at my stepdad’s beach house.”
The Brotherhood of the Mind, as the name suggests, is an overwhelmingly male group. The members are also nearly all white. There are only two women in the group, who other members universally described as “not like other girls.”
“I’m just friends with guys because it’s less drama,” Victoria Pantle, female Brotherhood member, said. During our interview, she drew a single realistic eye in blue ink in the margins of her notebook.
“Lots of girls at this school are always trying to bring up feminism and intersectionality. That’s boring to me because I see farther than those petty postmodern issues. I see so freaking far. I see into infinity,” she said.
The members of The Brotherhood of the Mind are all unemployed and participate in no groups or activities beyond school. They primarily spend their time sitting in front of the Student Union Building (S.U.B.) and commenting upon the decline of culture. At night, they often hold seances to try to contact the ghost of Sigmund Freud. These seances are usually held in someone’s stepdad’s beach house. When I asked members if they even volunteer or donate, the replies were all negative.
“I’m not going to dance for the Rat King,” Grouse said.
