Thomas Stearns Eliot, in 1934
Photo by Lady Ottoline Morrell (Wikimedia CC public domain)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
In 1948, the poet and future Nobel laureate T. S. Eliot published a book entitled Notes towards the Definition of Culture<\/em>. \u00a0I\u2019ve always been struck by one particular passage in it:<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
. . . \u00a0[W]hether education can foster and improve culture or not, it can surely adulterate and degrade it. For there is no doubt that in our headlong rush to educate everybody, we are lowering our standards, and more and more abandoning the study of those subjects by which the essentials of our culture\u2014of that part of it which is transmissible by education\u2014are transmitted; destroying our ancient edifices to make ready the ground upon which the barbarian nomads of the future will encamp in their mechanized caravans.<\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I am, I expect, far more \u201cdemocratic\u201d than T. S. Eliot was. \u00a0I\u2019m certainly not offended by the attempt to \u201ceducate everybody.\u201d \u00a0(No surprise: \u00a0I myself come essentially from peasant stock, not from the economic or intellectual elite.) \u00a0But I do share his concern that we\u2019ve lowered our educational standards. \u00a0And not just in academic terms. \u00a0I think we\u2019re in danger of losing our culture, our common core (if I may use that term in a non-public-policy sense), our shared moral assumptions, and our civility. \u00a0And I surely don\u2019t believe that matters have improved in this regard since Mr. Eliot wrote his essay shortly after\u00a0World War Two.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Western civilization has been a very good thing, on balance. \u00a0Although flawed, it has given much to the world through science, political liberty and constitutionalism, the abolition of slavery, great literature, increasing respect for women, the rise of representative government, concepts of human dignity and equality before the law, magnificent art, deep philosophy, and many other contributions.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
But we\u2019re not doing a very good job these days of transmitting our science and literature and history to the next generation, and the greatness of much in the West is now little appreciated \u2014 and often, indeed, denigrated.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
For related reasons, a\u00a0passage from another great twentieth-century poet \u2014 the first stanza of William Butler Yeats\u2019s \u201cThe Second Coming\u201d \u2014 has also haunted me for years:<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Turning and turning in the widening gyre\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\nThe falcon cannot hear the falconer;\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\nThings fall apart; the centre cannot hold;\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\nMere anarchy is loosed upon the world,\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\nThe blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\nThe ceremony of innocence is drowned;\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\nThe best lack all conviction, while the worst\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\nAre full of passionate intensity.<\/span><\/div>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
I watch as many in the West lose their cultural self-confidence, becoming convinced that Western civilization has on the whole, been a force for evil \u2014 for racism, sexism, misogyny, violence, genocide, \u201chomophobia,\u201d exploitation \u2014 and become more or less paralyzed in the face of movements (such as the so-called \u201cIslamic state\u201d) that aren\u2019t merely flawed but are genuinely nihilistic and incomprehensibly evil.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u00a0 \u00a0 In 1948, the poet and future Nobel laureate T. S. Eliot published a book entitled Notes towards the Definition of Culture. \u00a0I\u2019ve always been struck by one particular passage in it: \u00a0 . . . \u00a0[W]hether education can foster and improve culture or not, it can surely adulterate and degrade it. For there […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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