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.
