2 On the Reading of Old Books

C. S. Lewis has a wonderful piece written as an introduction to a translation of Athanasius's "On the Incarnation" that is often referred to as "On the Reading of Old Books".  In it, he argues for the importance of listening to the voices of the past that have made their way to us via the medium of print if we are to have anything approaching a sound perspective on the present.  His point of view needs to be trumpeted again to today's young (and old) adults, for - as I noted in my last post - I think we are living in an era in which the voices of the past are almost drowned out beyond hope of hearing by the cacophany of the voices of the present (many of which have a particular distaste for the same voices of the past).

When we fail to seek a solid acquaintance with these voices of the past, Lewis argues, we stand the risk of being unable to understand ourselves well - and to see weaknesses in our thinking or in our society.  I think he's exactly right... and the trend I see today regarding the willingness to consider points of view that are separated from us by distances measured in time rather than space is not a positive one for our society.  If we live insulated from those voices, we are prone to greater and greater degrees of blindness about our ways of thinking about each other, about God and about the world.  We become more and more easily convinced that we have risen to the pinnacle of understanding, and that our worldview lacks any shortcomings or flaws.    We think so highly of ourselves as to regard anything coming down to us from prior generations as useless or irrelevant - because we have progressed so far, and because "life just looks different today".  We become completely unable to hear anything that doesn't fit our own preconceived notions of what is right, just and important.

Every year I have students in class who struggle with the idea of reading anything older than they are.  This is by no means the NORM among my students, but enough of them have a readily observable disdain for reading works that are very old at all, and argue that, because those books are old, the authors really can't have much to say to them and certainly have no good ideas that can practically be applied to their lives.    These same students often raise the concern in the other direction - that they "just can't relate to the author's point of view".   This latter concept is intimately connected to the former, but I find myself much more sympathetic to it - because I do believe it's probably quite true, given the diet of post-modernity that the students have likely consumed for most of their lives, and at least some of the responsibility for that lies in people other than the students themselves.

That said, it can be a struggle to open the eyes of those who are (in varying degrees) willingly keeping them shut.  But, as Lewis writes in his essay, this is the job of the teacher... if only most teachers today understood this to be their job, and weren't hampered by ridiculous 'outcome-based' educational standards that scuttle every effort to truly educate the student.

0 On The Tyranny of Novelty

One of our society's biggest weaknesses today (though it is by no means unique to today) is the almost wholesale rejection of "old ideas" and "tradition" in favor of the novel and "current".    It is as though people of the past have nothing valuable to say to those living today... because of the separation in time, their ideas are, in today's view, irrelevant, and have little or no value in interpreting events or ideas of today.  This kind of short-sighted thinking has grave repercussions as we consider politics, religious practice, education and life in community with others...  and I fear some of these repercussions are rearing their heads today as I look around at each of these three areas of concern.

As I revive this blog, I'm going to be taking a look at these issues - I am struck by the rapidity with which some of these areas are devolving, and as I have started to delve into related issues, I am amazed at how each one seems to point to the fact that we, as a society (both in this country and around the world) are doing everything (it seems) that is possible to cut ourselves loose from the moorings of the past, and head off (rudderless, imho) into the future "free"... and my firm opinion is that such is hardly "freedom", but is instead bondage of the worst kind.

0 Celebrating Liberty on this President's Day

On this Presidents' Day (it's a pity that what once was two days recognizing two American Presidents for their unique contributions to our nation's history is now watered down - together as a mash-up with all the abysmal presidents we've had - into a single day) it is helpful, I think, to celebrate the ideas of liberty that our founders and this nation once held dear.   To wit, I've included a couple of quotes here from important thinkers in political economy... for your rumination and mine.

"Those that cling to the oligarchy's structure are in fact being duped — their sustenance is extracted from those that the oligarchy has bound. When that tribute stops, the dependents will either take responsibility for themselves or perish."

"Only a large-scale popular movement toward decentralization and self-help can arrest the present tendency toward statism... A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude. To make them love it is the task assigned, in present-day totalitarian states, to ministries of propaganda, newspaper editors and schoolteachers."

~ Aldous Huxley

"The immense power centralized into the oligarchy's hands has never been greater — entire nations can be laid waste in an instant, and it can only be assumed that we the people are merely living but at their pleasure and profit. The real question is why do we put up with it? Why do not the slaves who are the majority revolt?"

"I freed thousands of slaves. I could have freed thousands more if they had known they were slaves."

~ Harriet Tubman

"For the true lover of Liberty, it must seem insurmountable these days to actually live free while the ever-expanding police state continues its perpetual push into every corner of our lives. Can any other conclusion be reached than the state and its ever-increasing legions of bureaucrats (who are now paid more than those working in the private sector) have every intent to place themselves between every human transaction of every kind? Can it be denied that every sale, every transfer of property, every shipment, every receipt, every message is to be tracked, logged, and taxed by government agencies? And isn't it considered criminal to avoid such interference?"

"After having thus successively taken each member of the community in its powerful grasp and fashioned him at will, the supreme power then extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate, to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."

~ Alexis de Tocqueville

"It [the State] has taken on a vast mass of new duties and responsibilities; it has spread out its powers until they penetrate to every act of the citizen, however secret; it has begun to throw around its operations the high dignity and impeccability of a State religion; its agents become a separate and superior caste, with authority to bind and loose, and their thumbs in every pot. But it still remains, as it was in the beginning, the common enemy of all well-disposed, industrious and decent men."

~ H. L. Mencken

0 Yes, now I mean it... we're back online

After another hiatus... well, I'm on sabbatical from my teaching, so one would have thought this an excellent year to revive the blog.

One would, but until now I haven't thought of it...  we're back online (and I mean it this time) :)