Preface for Those Not Reading Part I and II
Cultures must adapt to change or they die and the good news is that “high” (complex) cultures adapt well. Chinese culture has gone hundreds of years at a time without a major failure. But Chinese history also teaches us that sometimes the system collapses and one ends up with Mao.
Moral errors, sins in the Biblical language, debase a nation and righteousness exalts it. Usually a culture or nation is a mix of directions: some things are pushing the culture into destruction and some into a golden age. There is no way to gage the impact of particular errors, but some seem worse than others in producing a culture that cannot recover from her own mistakes.
I am assuming that it is better to live in a high culture, despite failures, than in chaos and that the aftermath of chaos is almost always worse than what came before the collapse. There is no Golden Age in the past and there will not be a Golden Age in the future until King Jesus comes and takes direct rule. We will know beyond doubt when that happens. Come quickly, Lord Jesus!
Until then we are in a school of souls and every tribe and nation must muddle along with a mix of the good and bad just as individuals do. This is not to despair. We fight the evil of our time and hope that the mistakes we make are outweighed by the improvement. Just now the United States of America (with much of the West) has gone morally mad when it comes to sexual morality, but we are less likely to condone (on the whole) prejudice and bullying.
Will we muddle through this time of change as the World War II system fades and a new one is born? We probably will, but there are some key mistakes we should not make. We should not despair, but instead take hope. Many things can be worse than what we experience and there is work to be done. Let’s do it by embracing the middle way between utopianism either on the right or left and nihilism.
Perhaps the most common element to cultures that don’t make it is an intellectual class that stops being intellectual and falls for “intellectualism.” The intellectualist doesn’t build things, do scientific investigation, teach students, or read hard books and discuss them, but instead collects credentials and tries to turn his or her hobbies into work. The intellectualist instead teaches little, researches little, and keeps ideas insulated from the world outside school.
Intellectualists have time to be part of the establishment (right and left) where they act as the court jester in the ancient sense of the term. They are paid to speak “hard truths” to their betters in return for grants, but are careful not to go too far. Chanting “occupy Wall Street” while drawing a check paid for by a previous generation of people they call “robber barons” in class is amusing to the elite. They criticize the system as if nihilistic, are above creating new structures (which would expose their ideas to reality), but are excellent at exposing flaws. They are tolerated, because they never attack the power structure seriously. The difficulty is that the continued failure to educate the next generation in rigor while trapping them in dead end “intellectualist” discussions comes with a high cost.
The people who should serve as leaders, builders, and creatives instead act as cynics, unholy fools, or simply do not matter.
Intellectualism: Parasites of Ideas
A culture has a grave problem when those who should lead society fall into intellectualism. First, intellectualism is lazy. The intellectualist knows what is true, because his social set has decided the issue. If you wish, try engaging an intellectualist on sexual morality. If from a conservative Christian background, the intellectualist will just say that “we know this is true” and block further conversation. If from most of the intellectualist community, they will call you a bad name and block further conversation. An intellectual will rarely block ideas, even ones she or he thinks is wrong. An intellectualist gets mad at any contrary opinion.
An intellectualist will have few friends who disagree strongly on something he thinks is right. An intellectual invites and enjoys criticism. Intellectualists on the right tend to work conservative media and include frauds like David Barton. Intellectualists on the left are often in University posts, but also refuse to correct errors or engage thoughtful critics. An example of a conservative intellectual is Professor Robbie George. He has many friends and engages his critics, admits when he is wrong, and writes with care. An example of a more liberal intellectual is Ronald Numbers, an intellectual historian who engages critics respectfully.
Intellectualists will not do primary research themselves or if they do read primary sources, they ignore all conversation about the text that does not fit their interpretation. I have met Plato intellectualists who will reread all of Aristotle on Plato rather than admit a particular point in their ideological read of Plato.
Intellectualism is fairly harmless when it natters about Plato, but harmful when it cuts off the intellectual growth of the next generation. Despite his conviction by the Athenian democracy, it is not Socrates that corrupts the youth, but the man who will not engage in Socratic investigation.
Read a Book and Grow a Garden
There are two solutions to intellectualism.
First, we need a greater focus on reading, writing, numeracy, scientific thinking, and virtue. We can and should push much of undergraduate education out to our communities where the k-16 school, properly funded, can serve as lighthouses of hope and leadership.
Schools should be driven by those doing the research and teaching and not by administrations. This will mean increasing funding for teachers and decreasing funding for administration. Family breakdown has made teaching harder and so we must make sure that teachers have sufficient time to deal with students coming from broken families and communities.
As much as possible, education should stress doing: teach gardening, read a book, make a film, learn woodworking, plumbing, other languages. We should avoid “screen time.” Whatever merit there is in screen technology, young adults are already getting more hours of it than anything else. Oddly, this is a generation that needs recess more than ever, but recess (even for college students!) without screens or guided entertainment.
Let’s return high school and college sports to students, but encourage them to play as we do.
A good discussion (the heart of Socratic education) is doing something that must be done in the real world. If you cannot discuss well, then you will not live well. Whatever the virtue of consuming information (as one does in a lecture), we all consume enough.
Finally, the intellectualist passes tests and gets credentials. The actual skill may be marginal. If one has “units” in a language, but cannot use the language, then an intellectualist might be impressed (“He took Arabic!”), but the restaurant will not be when he cannot place an order.
This return to rigor must not narrow fields of study. One (of many virtues) of the old World War II system is that it has become a study of contributions of groups deemed “unimportant” in the past. Applying the same rigor and expanding the questions asked is good and not bad. No school should move away from this as a goal, but we must also begin by doing something well. In our school, we begin with English, because that is the language of the nation where we find ourselves. We get a good grounding by grade twelve in Latin and ancient Greek literature, language, and culture, because of the historic influence (for good and bad) on our nation. We favor Christian texts to start, because we are Christians, but then make sure that the whole church, East and West, is given a voice. The older the student, the wider the field of focus, but the goal is not “yet another curriculum plan,” but sending a student out able to do a lifetime worth of widening experiences.
The intellectualist never leaves school or he will cease to think. The intellectual leaves school, because she wants to think and do. She wants to grow her own garden, do her own experiments, write her own books, make her own films, raise her own family.
At the graduate level, we need to eliminate “credentialing degrees.” Staying in school for some of the most productive years of a person’s life, when she or he should be starting the new thing the culture needs, is deadening. Any graduate degree that is merely providing a “union card” as the chief motive for existence must go.
We need products of rigorous undergraduate education to go out and do things and then perhaps return to school. Of course, in the hard sciences, mathematics, or for those pursuing a career in research, continued education is necessary, but let’s not make those degrees into “credentialing” programs.
Weaker graduate programs should close and throw support to stronger ones. We need fewer, but better doctoral programs in Christendom. We don’t need a multiplication of programs or sub-specialties.
If you are not in school, thank God, support your local public and private schools and keeping growing.
What of those of us who work outside of education? What do we do?
First, we must avoid confusing the true expert and intellectual with the intellectualist. Intellectual frauds can flourish when we make this mistake. Nobody should ever dismiss true expert opinion lightly. We must assume our intellectuals can be trusted while looking for the signs of intellectualism.
Second, if we are to disagree with the experts, then we must do our homework. We must not simply select public voices who agree with us and cut ourselves off from other opinions. This is a great way to become prey for intellectualist grifters who market themselves as “public intellectuals” to serve up what we wish to hear.
Third, we need to find experts we do trust and listen to them even when we do not like what they have to say. For example, in the debates about homosexual behavior, it was obvious decades ago that biology plays a role in sexual orientation. Those who believe acting on homosexual desire is wrong needed to listen to the experts they could trust. Many did not and still have not. This did great harm to our society.
Fourth, we must keep growing mentally. This means one hour of reading for every hour of screen time. Read books by scholars in their area and avoid those who make a living selling ideas to the general public.
Finally, do something. Start a school. Plant a garden. Adopt a kid. Let’s not despair or give up intellectual activity to those who simply use it to posture and preen. Let’s read, write, and think!
We can live in better times if we embrace hope, reject despair, encourage the intellect, and do something!
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This series is based on lectures prepared for The Saint Constantine School college program. It is part of the Constantine Strategy to serve our time with wisdom, virtue, and joy for Christ and His Church. I gave a shorter version of this talk to the Thrive Apologetics Conference. Part I, Part II, Part III.
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