No, not that kind of pie!
Last night, I attended a talk (not a lecture) by Prof. David Whalen at the Seattle Chesterton Society discussing John Henry Newman’s The Idea of a University.
Newman’s Idea doesn’t apply merely to academic life, though. He’s describing way a fully human life requires the mind, and the whole mind. Prof. Whalen put it something like this: we encounter the world as one, as a universe of reality; but in order to think about it, in order to understand it, we have to break it down into little pieces, like slicing up a pie. We can call those slices “economics” and “engineering” and “ethics” and, if we’re adventurous, can even use words that don’t begin with “e” such as “theology.” But it’s important to realize that each piece is just that – a piece, not the whole pie, not the whole of reality.
So it’s critical that we make sure that all the pieces are there, and that each piece is in the right place. Otherwise, our ability to understand and relate to the real world becomes distorted. If ethics is lost, other disciplines over-extend themselves to fill the gap: politics, economics, psychology, psychiatry – all of which touch on ethics, but none of which are really competent to describe human life in a particularly ethical way. And meanwhile, people grow more and more confused about how to act ethically.
A fully human life needs to make sure that all the different ways we understand the world really fit together, so that our understanding keeps in sync with the world itself.
The rubber meets the road
Newman describes an ideal education for a full human life. But he was aware that in his day, as in ours, that ideal is nowhere close to becoming a reality. Then, as now, people were increasingly focused on practical matters: making a living, increasing efficiency, solving problems. Schools were shifting their focus from educating for character to training for productivity. The human person was viewed a “resource” for economic growth.
Now, the fact is, economics is a real and important part of life. I need to put food on my table, and pay my rent, and keep clothes on my back. And our social structures provide a way to do that. But that way is founded on a narrow and limited idea of what human life is all about.
Newman, and other people I’m reading, promote a better way of living, one in which the economic and practical needs can be met without degrading the human person, turning us into mere cogs in the machine of “progress.” Progress toward inhumanity is no progress at all.
But how do we get from here to there? Or, as a reader on another blog I write for asks:
How do you take usury out of a market grounded on usury? How do you take materialism out a market grounded in materialism?
Looking for a solution
One proposed solution is called Distributism. The idea is to use the freedom we have as individuals and small communities to make small but significant changes in our own lives and in our immediate surroundings.
This looks to me like a real possibility: a kind of “Think globally, act locally” approach that goes beyond environmentalism. Our economy and government is massively corrupt; so, to the extent that is possible, I will minimize my interactions with corrupt businesses, use my vote and my voice to encourage more honorable government, and establish as fully human a life as I can in my own neighborhood.
The major obstacle, it seems to me, is my own sloth. This course of action would require me to work harder, to take risks, and to live without a number of luxuries I take for granted (things like cheap clothes or out-of-season food or super-fast internet). In other words, it’s easier to take the benefits of this skewed society and pretend that the detriments are not as harmful as they really are.
It’s easier, but it’s not really better. In the end I find myself less and less able to deal with reality, and my efforts increasingly backfire. So, today, my goal is to find some small way to refocus my perspective, so that I can take those small actions to make my life and the life of my community more human.
“Then, as now, people were increasingly focused on practical matters: making a living, increasing efficiency, solving problems. Schools were shifting their focus from educating for character to training for productivity.”
This is a fundamental problem with no solution in sight because there are virtually zero schools which teach children how to think. Even those I know who I expect would know better, still don’t get it when it comes time to send their children off to college, and among those who do send their children to undergrad schools that are formative in nature, I have often found those parents send the children off not understanding why those schools exist.
But on the other hand, how could they know why they exist when those who should be informing are instead running away from the same. With my own alma mater, TAC, for the past dozen or so years having done a splendid job of passing itself off as practical with glitzy newsletters and the like which drip of money and worldly prestige.
And of course men do need to make money to support their families, but that’s what graduate school is for, after one has been taught how to think through the issues.
“This looks to me like a real possibility: a kind of “Think globally, act locally” approach that goes beyond environmentalism.”
Actually, environmentalism, more properly understood as getting back to the earth, (not hugging trees), is a good place for most people to start. Because doing so separates us from marketed materialism while not being too counter cultural or being too much of a burden.
And a better adage from the past is tune in, turn on (Catholic wise), and drop out.
“This is a fundamental problem with no solution in sight because there are virtually zero schools which teach children how to think. ”
The problem here is that you can’t teach people how to think. Not, at least, without heading straight long into indrodication schools (Communist, Nazi, etc). Not a soul on the planet will tell you they don’t know how to think, even if their life is a long string of screw ups. And who gets to judge whose thinking is “right”? (After all everyone must think to act, even if poorly.) Other than practical matters of social order and universal natural law, I think humans might be best to leave that judgment to God.
The problem here is that you can’t teach people how to think.
But you can teach people how to avoid thinking thoughtlessly, for lack of a better phrase.
What I mean is, you can teach someone the rules of logic, and give them opportunities to practice. You can engage someone in debate, ask them questions, challenge their assumptions, and point out the weaknesses in their thought. This doesn’t guarantee that they’ll learn how to think well, but it gives them lots of chances to develop their native thinking ability.
On the other hand, I think what love the girls is saying is that most schools these days don’t provide many opportunities for kids to develop their ability to think well and critically. Most parents don’t either. This doesn’t guarantee that the kids will grow up to be dullard couch potatoes, but it makes the kids pull themselves up by their own intellectual bootstraps, as it were, and it lets otherwise smart people slide by without reaching their potential. That’s a loss, both to the person and to society.
“What I mean is, you can teach someone the rules of logic, and give them opportunities to practice. You can engage someone in debate, ask them questions, challenge their assumptions, and point out the weaknesses in their thought. This doesn’t guarantee that they’ll learn how to think well, but it gives them lots of chances to develop their native thinking ability.”
Of course you can teach someone the rules of logic. Notice however, they are your (or someone elses) rules of logic. I’ve noticed that almost everyone thinks logically if you can imagine the other person’s point of view. (This includes the IRS!)
You can ask others questions, but by definition these must come from your cultural background. And the act of questioning to find “weaknesses in thought” creates a framework that suggests that you may have a superior line of thinking from the get go.
From my point of view, there’s no way out of the idea that logical thinking is in the eye of the beholder. George Lucas got it dead on with the line “The Truth very much depends on your point of view”
So I stand by my statement: you cannot teach others to “think” unless we spend time going headlong into indoctrination. All people think spontaneously and creatively on their own. It maybe that their illogical or weak thinking is simply something that you don’t understand or agree with. Very dangerous stuff, this “logical” thinking.
Amy writes : “you cannot teach others to “think” unless we spend time going headlong into indoctrination.”
I suppose that depends on what is meant by “indoctrination”. Was Plato indoctrinating his students? Or was he making them free to be able to think clearly? Those who put him to death considered it indoctrination, while it has since been traditionally considered he was freeing them to be able to think clearly, so that if communism, nazism, etc. had been presented to them they could have seen the errors in the underlying premises and rejected it.
Further, truth does, and yet does not depend on one’s point of view. What is considered beautiful does vary from person to person, and culture to culture, but yet the variation is within a limit. That limiting entity would be the Platonic Form so to speak which is not variable, while the variation would be caused by what is differentiates people and cultures from each other.
On the other hand, virtue does not vary. But what can vary is our capacity to understand them and accept them. Some men consider human sacrifice to be a virtuous act, but that doesn’t make it so because virtue is not dependent on men, but is beyond men, just as the Platonic Form is beyond men. What we say is that the man is somehow blinded so that he thinks an evil is a good.
“I suppose that depends on what is meant by “indoctrination”. Was Plato indoctrinating his students? Or was he making them free to be able to think clearly?”
Only the students can tell me. Both is a possibility.
Many highly intelligent men trained in the ways of Plato fully embraced Communism and Nazism and more importantly, the systematic killing that went with each system. If asked, they would have told you they were completely logical in their conclusions.
Plato offers us a specific of thinking tools. What we do with them is up to us. And just as importantly, they are not the only valid set of tools we could choose to use.