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richardf8This post is inspired by a things.
First there is this joke:
Q: What is an English Major's first words on getting a job after college?
A: "Do you want fries with that?"
Then there was a discussion over on Nightstar Zoo in which it was suggested that financial aid for college should be determined by the expected return on investment of a given field of study. That is, Engineering would be more likely to warrant a student loan than English.
Then there is the letter![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chipuni received from banner, suggesting that one of the goals of "Further Confusion" and its parent company should be "try and encourage higher learning, and the learning of skills that will allow people to be able to stand on their own two feet and earn a living." The focus of education here, once again, being utilitarian.
And lastly there'ssandramort who feels guilty about wanting to pursue a degree in English because it would entail a comittment of time and money and is not strictly necessary to her goal of homeschooling her children.
So, my question is this: what does this contempt for the humanities and emphasis on the utility of education say about us as a society? Where is it leading? Why would someone feel guilty about pursuing it, for crying out loud, especially when that someone is undertaking the moral education of the next generation? I am not about to undertake a defense of the humanities, but am about to go on the offense against a shift in values that, I believe, is cutting out the very soul of America.
I. American Values
America is in a state of moral decay. We've been hearing this for years from people like Jerry Fallwell, Pat Robertson, Newt Gingrich, Ronald Reagan and George Bush. Who's responsible for this "moral decay?" They have lots of answers: feminists, gays, the ACLU, the Sierra Club, single mothers, terrorists, Janet Jackson's boob, and the litany goes on and on. There are lots of scapegoats out there for those who would do so to pin the blame on, but doing so sets our feet upon the path to holocaust.
Now I'm going to digress for a moment to tell a story, a legend of the great rivalry between Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Shammai. Even the Christians in my audience should recognize the punchline though, since Jesus was of Hillel's school and taught similar precepts.
A gentile came to Rabbi Shammai saying "I will convert to Judaism if you can explain the Torah (teachings) to me while standing on one foot." Shammai called him a fool and sent him off. The same man appeared before Hillel and posed the same challenge. Hillel replied, while standing on one foot, "love your neighbor as yourself and do not unto others that which is hateful unto you, that is the whole of the Torah, all else is commentary, now go study." The man converted.
Hillel was able to give a precis of Jewish law in a single sentence. But what would such a precis of American law look like? If I were to look at our values, study our culture, and examine our behavior, what would I determine to be the Crown of American Morality?
Buy low, sell high. All else is commentary.
We are a society that measures virtue in terms of wealth, so the key to attaining the highest virtue is to amass the most wealth. We view poverty as a symptom of moral failing and wealth as an indicator of moral uprightness. This view rationalizes contempt for the poor and extols greed as the path to enlightenment.
By making material wealth the indicator of morality, we cleave the soul from itself and pack it off on a wild goose chase after a false god.
II. Education and Democracy
The purpose of the humanities - literature, history, philosophy, and religion - is to provide us with material with which we can engage in moral struggle and contemplate our place in the universe. Once upon a time, this was the goal of education. To train leaders with a solid understanding of human nature and solid critical thinking skills so that they could make wise decisions in critical situations.
In America, on the first Tuesday following the first Monday of the month of November, the American people are called upon to make wise decisions in critical situations. For this reason, a well educated populace is one of the underpinnings of democracy. One of the easiest ways to subvert a democracy is to deprive the populace of a good education. And that is why the same people who want us to believe that Feminism cause the Twin Towers to fall, are working assiduously to replace the curricula in our schools with a read and regurgitate regimen that extols "facts" over the ability to draw conclusions. This has been the crux of a veritable war over Social Studies standards in Minnesota, and is just one of the many issues with "No Child Left Behind."
Additionally, the emphasis of education has, increasingly, not been so much in turning out well educated human beings capable of making careful moral choices as it has been in turning out a skilled workforce and eager consumers. This utilitarian view is the sort of thing we condemned the Soviet Union for, but now, in service of our highest law, "buy low, sell high," we do precisely what they did to meet the goal of the five year plan.
Indeed, any regime that prefers to rule than to govern, will find its interests best served by a constituency that has grown accustomed, within its educational system, to receiving knowledge from on high, rather than receiving information which is then assessed and validated. How much easier it is to seduce the non-critical thinker to relinquish his liberties in exchange for an empty promise of security.
III. Narrative Control and Moral Choice.
Storytelling is the oldest of human entertainments. We look to stories to tell us who we are, where we came from, and where we are going. In them we find certain universal truths about being human. The stories we hear shape the way we respond to the world.
Some of the stories I grew up on included "All Quiet on the Western Front," "A Farewell to Arms," "1984," and "Brave New World." Could be that that's why I greet this administration with so much skepticism. Then of course, there was M*A*S*H, a show that I'll wager would never find a place on the air if it were to debut today. Oh and let's not forget Pink Floyd's "The Wall" and "The Final Cut." All of these stories told me the same thing: If you trust the government, they will kill you.
Controlling access to those stories or disseminating them helps shape the way our country thinks. It is scarcely any wonder then, that Bush's education secretary would call the NEA a terrorist organization. After all, they have access to all that young mindshare. By heavily regulating the stories are young people are told, by describing Pat Tillman as a valiant hero who gave his life for his country (dulce et decorum est pro patria mori and all that), rather than showing him as someone who gave up a promising career and his life for a bill of goods, and by seeing to it that nothing but insipid crap makes it onto the airwaves, we can be assured of soldiers to open markets, lower prices, whatever we need to do in service of that highest law: buy low, sell high.
Conclusion
A totalitarian government and a populace well educated in the liberal arts are two things that are at odds with each other. It should come as no surprise then, that as those who would rather rule than govern find themselves in the highest offices in the nation the first thing that is done is to devalue the liberal arts. By making things like listening to our leaders to see if their words withstand the tests of logic and truth seem foolish, and depriving us of narratives that might call attention to the fact that our leaders are not on our side, they fortify their roles as masters of the nation, and persuade us that our greatest role is that of a cog in the machine. They will take our lives as cheaply as they can get them, and sell our blood to the highest bidder, because buy low, sell high is the highest law of the land.
First there is this joke:
Q: What is an English Major's first words on getting a job after college?
A: "Do you want fries with that?"
Then there was a discussion over on Nightstar Zoo in which it was suggested that financial aid for college should be determined by the expected return on investment of a given field of study. That is, Engineering would be more likely to warrant a student loan than English.
Then there is the letter
chipuni received from banner, suggesting that one of the goals of "Further Confusion" and its parent company should be "try and encourage higher learning, and the learning of skills that will allow people to be able to stand on their own two feet and earn a living." The focus of education here, once again, being utilitarian. And lastly there's
sandramort who feels guilty about wanting to pursue a degree in English because it would entail a comittment of time and money and is not strictly necessary to her goal of homeschooling her children. So, my question is this: what does this contempt for the humanities and emphasis on the utility of education say about us as a society? Where is it leading? Why would someone feel guilty about pursuing it, for crying out loud, especially when that someone is undertaking the moral education of the next generation? I am not about to undertake a defense of the humanities, but am about to go on the offense against a shift in values that, I believe, is cutting out the very soul of America.
I. American Values
America is in a state of moral decay. We've been hearing this for years from people like Jerry Fallwell, Pat Robertson, Newt Gingrich, Ronald Reagan and George Bush. Who's responsible for this "moral decay?" They have lots of answers: feminists, gays, the ACLU, the Sierra Club, single mothers, terrorists, Janet Jackson's boob, and the litany goes on and on. There are lots of scapegoats out there for those who would do so to pin the blame on, but doing so sets our feet upon the path to holocaust.
Now I'm going to digress for a moment to tell a story, a legend of the great rivalry between Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Shammai. Even the Christians in my audience should recognize the punchline though, since Jesus was of Hillel's school and taught similar precepts.
A gentile came to Rabbi Shammai saying "I will convert to Judaism if you can explain the Torah (teachings) to me while standing on one foot." Shammai called him a fool and sent him off. The same man appeared before Hillel and posed the same challenge. Hillel replied, while standing on one foot, "love your neighbor as yourself and do not unto others that which is hateful unto you, that is the whole of the Torah, all else is commentary, now go study." The man converted.
Hillel was able to give a precis of Jewish law in a single sentence. But what would such a precis of American law look like? If I were to look at our values, study our culture, and examine our behavior, what would I determine to be the Crown of American Morality?
Buy low, sell high. All else is commentary.
We are a society that measures virtue in terms of wealth, so the key to attaining the highest virtue is to amass the most wealth. We view poverty as a symptom of moral failing and wealth as an indicator of moral uprightness. This view rationalizes contempt for the poor and extols greed as the path to enlightenment.
By making material wealth the indicator of morality, we cleave the soul from itself and pack it off on a wild goose chase after a false god.
II. Education and Democracy
The purpose of the humanities - literature, history, philosophy, and religion - is to provide us with material with which we can engage in moral struggle and contemplate our place in the universe. Once upon a time, this was the goal of education. To train leaders with a solid understanding of human nature and solid critical thinking skills so that they could make wise decisions in critical situations.
In America, on the first Tuesday following the first Monday of the month of November, the American people are called upon to make wise decisions in critical situations. For this reason, a well educated populace is one of the underpinnings of democracy. One of the easiest ways to subvert a democracy is to deprive the populace of a good education. And that is why the same people who want us to believe that Feminism cause the Twin Towers to fall, are working assiduously to replace the curricula in our schools with a read and regurgitate regimen that extols "facts" over the ability to draw conclusions. This has been the crux of a veritable war over Social Studies standards in Minnesota, and is just one of the many issues with "No Child Left Behind."
Additionally, the emphasis of education has, increasingly, not been so much in turning out well educated human beings capable of making careful moral choices as it has been in turning out a skilled workforce and eager consumers. This utilitarian view is the sort of thing we condemned the Soviet Union for, but now, in service of our highest law, "buy low, sell high," we do precisely what they did to meet the goal of the five year plan.
Indeed, any regime that prefers to rule than to govern, will find its interests best served by a constituency that has grown accustomed, within its educational system, to receiving knowledge from on high, rather than receiving information which is then assessed and validated. How much easier it is to seduce the non-critical thinker to relinquish his liberties in exchange for an empty promise of security.
III. Narrative Control and Moral Choice.
Storytelling is the oldest of human entertainments. We look to stories to tell us who we are, where we came from, and where we are going. In them we find certain universal truths about being human. The stories we hear shape the way we respond to the world.
Some of the stories I grew up on included "All Quiet on the Western Front," "A Farewell to Arms," "1984," and "Brave New World." Could be that that's why I greet this administration with so much skepticism. Then of course, there was M*A*S*H, a show that I'll wager would never find a place on the air if it were to debut today. Oh and let's not forget Pink Floyd's "The Wall" and "The Final Cut." All of these stories told me the same thing: If you trust the government, they will kill you.
Controlling access to those stories or disseminating them helps shape the way our country thinks. It is scarcely any wonder then, that Bush's education secretary would call the NEA a terrorist organization. After all, they have access to all that young mindshare. By heavily regulating the stories are young people are told, by describing Pat Tillman as a valiant hero who gave his life for his country (dulce et decorum est pro patria mori and all that), rather than showing him as someone who gave up a promising career and his life for a bill of goods, and by seeing to it that nothing but insipid crap makes it onto the airwaves, we can be assured of soldiers to open markets, lower prices, whatever we need to do in service of that highest law: buy low, sell high.
Conclusion
A totalitarian government and a populace well educated in the liberal arts are two things that are at odds with each other. It should come as no surprise then, that as those who would rather rule than govern find themselves in the highest offices in the nation the first thing that is done is to devalue the liberal arts. By making things like listening to our leaders to see if their words withstand the tests of logic and truth seem foolish, and depriving us of narratives that might call attention to the fact that our leaders are not on our side, they fortify their roles as masters of the nation, and persuade us that our greatest role is that of a cog in the machine. They will take our lives as cheaply as they can get them, and sell our blood to the highest bidder, because buy low, sell high is the highest law of the land.
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Re: On Morality
Date: 2004-05-13 07:46 pm (UTC)The United States is a country where even the "poor" have, on average, a standard of living that is astounding to much of the rest of the world's population. It is also a country where the principles of individual freedom and the rights and responsibilities that go with it are much-discussed. But, while a good argument could be made that our principles had a lot to do with fostering the environment where our properity could develop, they are NOT the same thing.
We hold material wealth in a bizarre sort of mixed love/hate relationship. This is curious enough, but I see no evidence to justify an assertion that, the more material wealth one has, the higher the morality that person is assumed to possess. It's often quite the opposite.
We have, as a country, much respect for those who forgo wealth for a higher cause.
You've picked Bill Gates, famous in many ways, and Justin Timberlake as counterpoints. But when you said "so much for fame", you seem to be overlooking that Gates is tremendously more famous than Timberlake. From time to time some local boob is exposed in the media, and is shortly covered up.
As I recall, no single individual gives more to charity than Bill Gates. Is that such a bad role model to hold up to young people? Now, you and I both understand the software perspective side of this, and I remember when he scammed Digital Research by telling them he had a working language when all he could show them were faked screens. He is an opportunist, he's done very well, and the results have been both good and bad.
He's an example that shows that one can achieve success in the US despite having the handicap of being born into a wealthy family.
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