Turning Back the Wheel of Progress

…if we are to produce a society of educated people, fitted to preserve their intellectual freedom amid the complex pressures of our modern society, we must turn back the wheel of progress some four or five hundred years, to the point at which education began to lose sight of its true object, towards the end of the Middle Ages.
- Dorothy Sayers, “The Lost Tools of Learning”

I’ve had my head wrapped in Clive Staples Lewis for the past couple months (as I’ve been teaching this class), and the most notable feature of my study thus far is probably the sort of education he received and delivered. This, by and large, was “Classics” – but it was remarkably thorough in that he studied not just the history and language of Latin or Greek (the definition of “Classics” that I’d learned in school); his course of study applied such a wide range of disciplines to whatever he read. So, of course modern thought was important and fit for study, but the foundation of these modern questions was (and remains to be) found in antiquity. That is, all good and truthful ideas are really just old ideas – found in old books, written by old thinkers, and now (probably at an ever-diminishing rate) only taught by old dinosaurs of teachers (as Lewis might say).

My friend Dan recently recommended Dorothy Sayers’ article “The Lost Tools of Learning” – it’s really her set of suggestions about how to teach young people – from childhood to adolescence. She laments keeping kids in school too long, thus extending that adolescence; she prescribes a Scholastic model, based on Medieval practices (yes, there was a lively educational institution in those “Dark Ages”). You should learn Grammar, Dialectic, and Rhetoric all by 16.

And honestly, the “Scholastic School of Sayers” is something I would have shuddered at as a kid. But now the only shuddering I’m doing is based on the fact that I have read only too little of ancient thought and history. Better late than never, or so they say.

So, how does a 26-year-old catch up? Or a 30 something or older, for that matter? Its tough advice, since the learning curve is so steep – but I think we need to take Lewis’ advice for ourselves and READ OLD BOOKS, and we need to take Sayers’ advice for our children and TURN BACK THE WHEEL.

Aching for the dear reader’s thoughts on this.

‘Being dead’ is so last season!

Exactly.

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.

Dear Reader, dear,
I’m hearing some stuff about the end of the university, or, maybe it’s the beginning… ? Well, I don’t want either. And I’m just starting up again, so give me a break! (If I haven’t told you yet, we decided, and we’re both enrolling in Talbot’s Philosophy of Religion and Ethics MA program.)

I’m talkin’ about stuff like this and this. I’m sure there’s more of it, too. We now live among a culture and people which, in this era, LOVE to pronounce the death and end of things. ‘God is dead!’ ‘Blogging is dead!’ ‘Eating food is dead!’ ‘Sleeping is so last season!’ I think this is reflective of the temptation of immediacy – to pick up and speed along. Maybe there’s even some “chronological snobbery” built into that (this “snobbery” is a term of C.S. Lewis, borrowed from fellow Inkling, Owen Barfield).

But the concerns about humanities departments (philosophy, religion, theology, english, etc.) “dying” don’t worry me. I’m not worried about going back to school. In fact, I’m more sure about this than LOTS of other decisions in my 26-year life. I’ll continue to pursue a patient spiritual, intellectual, social and academic lifestyle; and the foundation for this patience is the inherent value of thinking and contemplating (v. “to think long and lovingly” – thanks Dave Evans for that) about the world and everything, physical and non-, in it.

If there is any worry for anyone at all, the source must be the reigning (and thoroughly unwelcome, I say) pragmatism of all generations. Earlier in my life I would have said that cultural pragmatism (the kind that suggests going to college merely for a job, to make money) is a generational thing. Silly baby-boomers. But I’m starting to think it’s not generational. Worry comes in all shapes and sizes and ages and so does the pragmatism that dons the crown deep below the surface of that worry.

So I’m rebelling. I’m going to actually enjoy grad school, and I’m going to enjoy the debt we shall incur and the job scarcity and low salaries that follow from a life of academics. I’m hoping to learn a little more about the Classic, undying value for the intellectual life of mind, heart and soul, and what that means for the details of my life.

It’s gotta be a media thing – ironically enough, since ‘News is dead!” is not an uncommon hidden meaning in headlines these days. In fact, how’s “News is old!” for the next NYT headline? Double irony!!

So, media giants! you soothsayers of cultural fate! Will anything else be dead tomorrow? Pragmatists! you worrisome lot! Is anything else regrettably last season?

More importantly, and for the rest of us, is anything alive today? is anything eternal today?

New Class: Clive Staples

So we’ve just wrapped up a 14-week class I was teaching on Philosophy & Worldview. Great great fun! Challenging for all, I think, but exactly what we (or, I, at the least) need to stay engaged and enjoying life.

So much so, in fact, that I’ve got another class starting up soon, on the lovely life and work of a man most of us (religious and ir-) look up to his unmatched combination of clarity, wit, smarts, creativity, and kind-heartedly brutal honesty (in some of his most powerful moments).

Feel free to track with the course via this new blog:
CLIVE STAPLES: The Life and Work of C.S. Lewis

All too Familiar: That Hideous Strength and the Abolition of Man

How nice a literary connection to all this political talk.

The N.I.C.E. is Great Britain’s National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments, from the mind of C.S. Lewis in the conclusion of his Space Trilogy, That Hideous Strength (THS).

“The N.I.C.E. was the first-fruits of that constructive fusion between the state and the laboratory, on which so many thoughtful people base there hopes of a better world. It was to be free from almost all the tiresome restraints – “red tape” was the word its supporters used – which have hitherto hampered research in this country.” – THS, p. 23

As the drama unfolds, the N.I.C.E. proves to be the furthest thing from its acronym’s meaning, marked by media deception, violence and ulterior motives – bent on progress and control – and all nicely stated in the euphemism of “benefit to humankind.” This is starting to sound kinda familiar.

As I re-read this description today, I realize how visionary Lewis actually was. Inasmuch as That Hideous Strength is a literary allusion to his Abolition of Man (TAoM), his story is all too prophetic. As the Italian scientist Filostrato remarks to the misguided Mark Studdock regarding the philosophical underpinnings of the N.I.C.E. and the modern scientific community,

“All that talk about the power of Man over Nature-Man in the abstract-is only for the canaglia [Italian for "scoundrel"]. You know as well as I do that Man’s power over Nature means the power of some men over other men with Nature as the instrument.” – THS, p. 178

And from The Abolition of Man:

“‘Man’s conquest of Nature’ is an expression often used to describe the progress of applied science (p. 53)… In what sense is Man the possessor of increasing power over Nature?… From this point of view, what we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument (p. 54-55)… Man’s conquest of Nature, if the dreams of some scientific planners are realized, mean the rule of a few hundreds of men over billions upon billions of men (p. 58)… For the power of Man to make himself what he pleases means, as we have seen, the power of some men to make other men what they please (p. 59).”

And:

“But the man-moulders of the new age will be armed with the powers of an omnicompetent state and an irresistible scientific technique: we shall get at last a race of conditioners who really can cut out all posterity in what shape they please (p. 60)… Man’s final conquest has proved to be the abolition of Man (p. 64).”

And are the conditioners – the omnicompetent and scientific, the powerful and political – exempt from this abolition? No:

“Nature, untrammeled by values, rules the Conditioners and, through them, all humanity. Man’s conquest of Nature turns out… to be Nature’s conquest of Man (p. 68)… As soon as we take the final step of reducing our species to the level of mere Nature, the whole process is stultified, for this time the being who stood to gain and the being who has been sacrificed are one and the same (p. 71)… It is in Man’s power to treat himself as a mere ‘natural object’ and his own judgements of value as raw material for scientific manipulation to alter at will (p. 72)… Man’s conquest of himself means simply the rule of the Conditioners over the conditioned human material, the world of post-humanity which, some knowingly and some unknowingly, nearly all men in all nations are at present labouring to produce (p. 75).”

He wrote TAoM in 1944, during the writing of THS. And it applies today, March 9, 2009, in a worrisome way.

Have we a situation in which Nature is untrammeled by values? One in which ethics and the best of virtuous philosophy and theology no longer have any guiding hand or sway or influence over science? One in which we’ve reduced ourselves to mere Nature and raw material? I hope not. For I value the truly human.

But what would a “truly human” situation look like? One in which we acknowledge the personhood of the other, and rightly distinguish them from material to be manipulated. One in which we speak as “I” to “Thou” and not merely as “I” to “It” (nod to Martin Buber).

“The regenerate science which I have in mind would not do even to minerals and vegetables what modern science threatens to do to man himself. When it explained it would not explain away. When if spoke of the parts it would remember the whole. While studying the It it would not lose… the Thou-situation (p. 79).”

I fear in all this talk of the parts (stem cells), we have, in fact, forgotten the whole (the human… the embryo).

More on Humanities, the University and Classical Education

I was only recently introduced to the work and thought of Victor Davis Hanson. But from what I’ve heard and read, I’m looking forward to more.

In this article, he points out the value and benefit of a classical education (i.e., the study of classical history, literature, philosophy, philology, architecture, etc… the ancient stuff!). The benefits are: (1) Acquisition of generic methods of inquiry (what we’d call “critical thinking” or “how to think about life”), (2) Conveyance of “an older, tragic view of man’s physical and mental limitations at odds with the modern notion of life without limits” (I’m into that), and (3) Framing the “window of the West” (he argues that all subsequent trends of the Western culture/intellect, such as the medieval or modern eras, are really just tributes to or turnings from Antiquity and Classical tradition).

And he laments the loss of this classical education and study, which has led to, he argues, the degradation and shallowing of the American university. I’m still only learning about this; and being a product of the American university myself, I’m a little embarrassed for how I’ve served as an example of the shallowing Davis worries about.

But I worry about it too, and thankfully, my time in the university is not yet over (nor will it ever be over, if I could have it my way). I’m glad to be introduced to this at 26 years old, rather than 36, 46, or never… if there is life after 46… c’mon, just jokin’ ya! All to say, I’m intrigued, and wondering how I’m going to:

Learn Latin, Greek and Hebrew

Read primary accounts of classical history

Read Homer, Virgil, Marcus Aurelius, Plato, Aristotle (not to mention their critics)

Work my way through all the other important thinkers and writers and historians of the West

And still have time to walk Margaux.

Aye. God help me. I sense the looming, foreboding, impending temptation to multitask or take a speed-reading course.
Here’s to a patient and finite life of exploring the history of humanity, the plight of the fragile human condition, and the limits of my own existence!