Lewis vs Haldane

By David Foster
Chicago Boyz Blog

J B S Haldane was an eminent British scientist (population genetics) and a Marxist. C S Lewis was…well, you probably already know who C S Lewis was.

In 1946, Haldane published an article critiquing a series of novels by Lewis known as the Ransom Trilogy, and particularly the last book of the series, That Hideous Strength. Lewis responded in a letter which remained unpublished for many of years. All this may sound ancient and estoteric, but I believe the Lewis/Haldane controversy is very relevant to our current political and philosophical landscape.

To briefly summarize That Hideous Strength, which is the only book of the trilogy that I’ve read: Mark, a young sociologist, is hired by a government agency called NICE–the National Institute for Coordinated Experimentation–having as its stated mission the application of science to social problems. (Unbelievably, today the real-life British agency which establishes rationing policies for healthcare is also called NICE.) In the novel, NICE turns out to be a conspiracy devoted to very diabolical purposes, as Mark gradually discovers. It also turns out that the main reason NICE wanted to hire Mark is to get control of his wife, Jane (maiden name: Tudor) who has clairvoyant powers. The NICE officials want to use Jane’s abilities to get in touch with the magician Merlin and to effect a junction between modern scientific power and the ancient powers of magic, thereby bringing about the enslavement of mankind and worse. Jane, though, becomes involved with a group which represents the polar opposite of NICE, led by a philology professor named Ransom, who is clearly intended as a Christ-figure. The conflict between NICE and the Ransom group will determine the future of humanity.

A brilliantly written and thought-provoking book, which I highly recommend, even if, like me, you’re not generally a fan of fantasy novels.

With context established, here are some of the highlights of the Lewis/Haldane controversy:

1)Money and Power. In his article, Haldane attacks Lewis for the latter’s refusal to absolutely condemn usury, and celebrates the fact that “Mammon has been cleared off a sixth of our planet’s surface”…clearly referring to the Soviet Union. Here’s part of Lewis’s response:

The difference between us is that the Professor sees the ‘World’ purely in terms of those threats and those allurements which depend on
money. I do not. The most ‘worldly’ society I have ever lived in is
that of schoolboys: most worldly in the cruelty and arrogance of
the strong, the toadyism and mutual treachery of the weak, and
the unqualified snobbery of both. Nothing was so base that most
members of the school proletariat would not do it, or suffer it, to
win the favour of the school aristocracy: hardly any injustice too
bad for the aristocracy to practise. But the class system did not in
the least depend on the amount of pocket money. Who needs to
care about money if most of the things he wants will be offered by
cringing servility and the remainder can be taken by force? This
lesson has remained with me all my life. That is one of the reasons
why I cannot share Professor Haldanes exaltation at the banishment
of Mammon from ‘a sixth of our planet’s surface’. I have
already lived in a world from which Mammon was banished: it
was the most wicked and miserable I have yet known. If
Mammon were the only devil, it would be another matter. But
where Mammon vacates the throne, how if Moloch takes his
place? As Aristotle said, ‘Men do not become tyrants in order to
keep warm’. All men, of course, desire pleasure and safety. But all
men also desire power and all men desire the mere sense of being ‘in
the know’ or the ‘inner ring’, of not being ‘outsiders’: a passion
insufficiently studied and the chief theme of my story. When the
state of society is such that money is the passport to all these
prizes, then of course money will be the prime temptation. But
when the passport changes, the desires will remain.

2)Centralized scientific planning. Haldane: “Mr. Lewis’s idea is clear enough. The application of science to human affairs can only lead to hell.” While denying that this is a correct statement of his views, Lewis goes on to say:

Every tyrant must begin by claiming to have what his victims respect and to give what they want. The majority in most modern countries respect science and want to be planned. And, therefore, almost by definition, if any man or group wishes to enslave us it will of course describe itself as ’scientific planned democracy’.

and

My fears of such a tyranny will seem to the Professor either
insincere or pusillanimous. For him the danger is all in the
opposite direction, in the chaotic selfishness of individualism. I
must try to explain why I fear more the disciplined cruelty of
some ideological oligarchy. The Professor has his own explanation of
this; he thinks I am unconsciously motivated by the fact that I
’stand to lose by social change’. And indeed it would be hard for
me to welcome a change which might well consign me to a
concentration camp. I might add that it would be likewise easy for
the Professor to welcome a change which might place him in the
highest rank of an omnicompetent oligarchy. That is why the
motive game is so uninteresting. Each side can go on playing _ad
nauseam_, but when all the mud has been flung every man’s views
still remain to be considered on their merits.

3)Democracy and conservatism. Haldane accuses Lewis of being anti-democracy, which accusation Lewis denies. He expands on his views:

I am a democrat because I believe that no man or group of
men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over
others. And the higher the pretensions of such power, the more
dangerous I think it both to the rulers and to the subjects. Hence
Theocracy is the worst of all governments. If we must have a
tyrant a robber baron is far better than an inquisitor. The baron’s
cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity at some point be sated;
and since he dimly knows he is doing wrong he may possibly
repent. But the inquisitor who mistakes his own cruelty and lust of
power and fear for the voice of Heaven will torment us infinitely
because he torments us with the approval of his own conscience
and his better impulses appear to him as temptations. And since
Theocracy is the worst, the nearer any government approaches to
Theocracy the worse it will be. A metaphysic, held by the rulers
with the force of a religion, is a bad sign. It forbids them, like the
inquisitor, to admit any grain of truth or good in their opponents,
it abrogates the ordinary rules of morality, and it gives a seemingly
high, super-personal sanction to all the very ordinary human
passions by which, like other men, the rulers will frequently be
actuated. In a word, it forbids wholesome doubt. A political
programme can never in reality be more than probably right. We
never know all the facts about the present and we can only guess
the future. To attach to a party programme -— whose highest real
claim is to reasonable prudence -— the sort of assent which we
should reserve for demonstrable theorems, is a kind of
intoxication.

This false certainty comes out in Professor Haldanes article.
He simply cannot believe that a man could really be in doubt
about usury. I have no objection to his thinking me wrong. What
shocks me is his instantaneous assumption that the question is so
simple that there could be no real hesitation about it. It is
breaking Aristotle’s canon—to demand in every enquiry that
degree of certainty which the subject matter allows. And not **on
your life** to pretend that you see further than you do.

Being a democrat, I am opposed to all very drastic and
sudden changes of society (in whatever direction) because they
never in fact take place except by a particular technique. That
technique involves the seizure of power by a small, highly
disciplined group of people; the terror and the secret police
follow, it would seem, automatically. I do not think any group
good enough to have such power. They are men of like passions
with ourselves. The secrecy and discipline of their organisation
will have already inflamed in them that passion for the inner ring
which I think at least as corrupting as avarice; and their high
ideological pretensions will have lent all their passions the
dangerous prestige of the Cause. Hence, in whatever direction the
change is made, it is for me damned by its _modus operandi_. The
worst of all public dangers is the committee of public safety. The
character in _That Hideous Strength_ whom the Professor never
mentions is Miss Hardcastle, the chief of the secret police. She is
the common factor in all revolutions; and, as she says, you won’t
get anyone to do her job well unless they get some kick out of it.

Professor Haldane’s article can be found here.

Lewis’s response appears in the essay collection Of Other Worlds;, edited by Walter Hooper; excerpts are on-line at this site. There’s also a Wikipedia article on Haldane.

Why Health Care Will Never Be Equal

By N. Gregory Mankiw
The New York Times

EVERY morning, I take a small white pill that makes me think deep philosophical thoughts about the American health care system, the value of life, and the relationship between man and state. No, it is not some illegal psychedelic left over from the 1960s along with my tie-dyed T-shirts. But if you bear with me, I bet this pill will have the same effect on you.

The pill is a statin — a type of pharmaceutical developed over the last few decades to lower a person’s cholesterol. My father died of cardiovascular disease, and unfortunately I inherited his genetic predisposition. Yet I am hoping that modern medicine will help me avoid his fate. So like millions of middle-age men, I take my little pill every morning.

Here is the question I ask as the pill passes through my lips: Is it worth it?

Now you might be tempted to say, “Of course it is.” Most people would prefer to avoid an early death. If the wonders of modern science might put off the inevitable for a while longer, why not give it a shot?

And that is, indeed, how I thought about the decision when my doctor recommended the treatment. One thing I did not consider was the price. Like most consumers of health care, I was insulated from economic concerns. I knew that the insurance company — and, indirectly, all its policyholders — would pick up most of the tab. This arrangement, encouraged by the tax system, ensures that I get the benefit of the pills while paying little of the extra costs they generate.

An optimist might hope that my doctor, or someone higher up in the health care hierarchy, made a rational cost-benefit calculation on society’s behalf. To figure out whether my treatment makes sense, one would have to weigh the cost of the drug against the benefit of an extended life. And to do that, one would have to put a dollar value on my life — the kind of calculation that makes everyone but economists squirm.

Not long ago, I read that a physician estimated that statins cost $150,000 for each year of life saved. That approximate figure reflects not only the dollars patients and insurance companies spend on the treatment but also — and just as important — an estimate of how effective it is in prolonging life. (That number is for men. Women have a lower risk of heart disease.)

That estimate is, at best, approximate, but it certainly suggests that preventive care is not always cheap. The magnitude of the figure also brings to mind hard questions of political philosophy.

Imagine that someone invented a pill even better than the one I take. Let’s call it the Dorian Gray pill, after the Oscar Wilde character. Every day that you take the Dorian Gray, you will not die, get sick, or even age. Absolutely guaranteed. The catch? A year’s supply costs $150,000.

Anyone who is able to afford this new treatment can live forever. Certainly, Bill Gates can afford it. Most likely, thousands of upper-income Americans would gladly shell out $150,000 a year for immortality.

Most Americans, however, would not be so lucky. Because the price of these new pills well exceeds average income, it would be impossible to provide them for everyone, even if all the economy’s resources were devoted to producing Dorian Gray tablets.

So here is the hard question: How should we, as a society, decide who gets the benefits of this medical breakthrough? Are we going to be health care egalitarians and try to prohibit Bill Gates from using his wealth to outlive Joe Sixpack? Or are we going to learn to live (and die) with vast differences in health outcomes? Is there a middle way?

These questions may seem the stuff of science fiction, but they are not so distant from those lurking in the background of today’s health care debate. Despite all the talk about waste and abuse in our health system (which no doubt exists to some degree), the main driver of increasing health care costs is advances in medical technology. The medical profession is always figuring out new ways to prolong and enhance life, and that is a good thing, but those new technologies do not come cheap. For each new treatment, we have to figure out if it is worth the price, and who is going to get it.

The push for universal coverage is based on the appealing premise that everyone should have access to the best health care possible whenever they need it. That soft-hearted aspiration, however, runs into the hardheaded reality that state-of-the-art health care is increasingly expensive. At some point, someone in the system has to say there are some things we will not pay for. The big question is, who? The government? Insurance companies? Or consumers themselves? And should the answer necessarily be the same for everyone?

Inequality in economic resources is a natural but not altogether attractive feature of a free society. As health care becomes an ever larger share of the economy, we will have no choice but to struggle with the questions of how far we should allow such inequality to extend and what restrictions on our liberty we should endure in the name of fairness.

In the end of our day of philosophizing, however, we face a practical decision:

Who gets the magic pills, and who pays for them?

N. Gregory Mankiw is a professor of economics at Harvard. He was an adviser to President George W. Bush.

Endure Like a Daniel

By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily

Why so many Christians but so little impact?

Perhaps one reason is that we have been taught courage without endurance. We have learned only part of the lesson of the life of the Biblical prophet Daniel.

When I was a kid, there were only three things we really thought we knew about Daniel. First, lions had refused to act the part of an ancient ACLU and keep him from praying in public spaces. Second, young Daniel had gone to public school and refused to eat the King’s food. He had stuck to the moral code of the Jews in a pagan court despite the risks. Finally, Daniel wrote a blessedly short book (compared to endless Ezekiel) chock full of weirdly cool images that predicted the pattern of human history.

Over the years, though I have learned a good bit more about Daniel (and Ezekiel!), most of the lessons I have learned have held up. Daniel taught me that my faith, not the state, was my primary allegiance and that God is capable of protecting His children. God’s providence in history is not always easy to see in newspaper, but over the centuries His guiding hand is evident.

The strange beasts Daniel describes are still very cool.

“Dare to be a Daniel!” Christian culture told me and that was good inspirational advice. There are not too many better role models for a Christian heading off to college and graduate school like I was. Daniel studied astrology in the court of a pagan king. He studied paganism without becoming one. If there was ever a role model for those of us reading classics, Daniel is he.

However, my own overly short attention span caused me to miss something else important about Daniel. I heard sermons and Bible studies on autobiographical highlights, but those events comprise very little time in his long life. The verse that struck me recently came after his training as a young man in the Babylonian court. It read, “And Daniel continued even unto the first year of king Cyrus.”

Daniel could dare the lion only because first Daniel endured. He stayed at his post for decades serving a series of rotten rulers. He survived without becoming a sycophant, throve without thieving, and contributed to Babylon without compromising his status as a faithful Jew.

In many ways, these were greater accomplishments than surviving the lions.

Daniel was ready for the great moments of his history, but only because he survived the daily temptation to become less than Daniel. He began with a determination to serve his God and the tyrant that ruled his people and he accomplished both every day for years. The young man grew old, as he knew he must, waiting to see the fulfillment of God’s promise to redeem Judah. The Captivity wore down his body into old age, but it never crushed his princely spirit. The slave became the most valuable man in the empire and helped keep his people alive as a people when so many others disappeared in exile.

Daniel’s greatness may be beyond us, but his lessons are not.

When tempted to despair about present rulers, dare to endure like Daniel.

When tempted to compromise in small things, dare to endure like Daniel.

When tempted to weariness by pagan culture, dare to endure like Daniel.

When tempted to doubt God’s promises, dare to endure like Daniel.

When tempted to flatter our rulers, dare to endure like Daniel.

When tempted to withdraw from public life, dare to endure like Daniel.

Daniel did his duty, daily, faithfully, fully.

Can there be a generation this persistent in living Christian lives? Is there a generation that will live for Christ and so restore Christendom? These young men and women will be willing to grow old doing their duty. They will take the time to study, sink deep roots in difficult places, and get to know the elite of our present age so as to persuade even these wicked tyrants to a better course.

If Daniel can deal with Nebuchadnezzar for years, surely we can winsomely influence an anti-Christian human resources manager. If Daniel could thrive under Belshazzar, surely we can tolerate our hedonistic neighbor. If Daniel could wait seventy years for God’s deliverance, surely we can wait a bit longer to see His promises fulfilled in our lives.

We are an age where every Christian with a keyboard and an Internet connection fancies himself a prophet. We cast doom casually, but forget that few are called to issue jeremiads and the few that are called will weep like Jeremiah wept for the people he loved. Too many times we should endure and love our enemies, but instead we hurl the easy truth at them and leave. Duty sometimes demands such a prophetic role, but most often our duty is like Daniel’s: we must be patient and persistent.

I pray this year that God grant me the gift of Daniel during these trying times.

Imagination Takes Flight

By Neil Clark
The American Conservative

The life and mind of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

What moves me so deeply about this little prince sleeping here is his loyalty to a flower, the image of a rose shining through his whole being like the flame of a lamp, even when he is asleep. I found him to be more fragile still. Lamps should be protected with great care: a gust of wind can extinguish them.

In one of the more poignant moments of Michael Jackson’s memorial service, actress Brooke Shields, a close friend of the pop star, said that Jackson was not “The King”—the title he appropriated—but “The Little Prince.” She quoted the above passage from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s famous book, along with its most memorable lines: “It is only with one’s heart that one can see clearly. What is essential is invisible to the eye.”

The fact that nearly 70 years after its publication The Little Prince is mentioned at the funeral of one of the most famous men on the planet is a testament to its enduring popularity and the universality of its themes. It is also a tribute to the remarkable French aviator-poet who disappeared 65 years ago on a reconnaissance flight over the Mediterranean.

Saint-Exupéry’s work, with its bird’s eye view of humanity, contains some of the most profound observations on the human condition ever written. “A person taking off from the ground,” he said, “elevates himself above the trivialities of life into a new understanding.”

Born into an old French family at the turn of the century, he enjoyed a privileged upbringing. According to his biographer, Curtis Cate, Saint-Ex’s passion for aviation was stimulated when he was 9, when his family relocated to Le Mans, the city where American flying pioneer Wilbur Wright had moved a year earlier. At the age of 12, he was taken up in the air by a flying ace, and the event moved him so deeply that he wrote a poem about it.

He trained to be a pilot, but after breaking his skull in a crash gave in to pressure from his family and took a desk job in Paris, working as a production supervisor at a tile-making company. But at the age of 26, he returned to the air, becoming one of the pioneers of early postal flight. The job, which entailed opening up new routes in Africa and South America across mountains and deserts, was extremely hazardous, but Saint-Ex, bored of the artificiality of Parisian society, had found his calling. “Despite the dangers of the work, and in a sense because of the dangers, the next five years were to be the happiest and most secure of his life after his exile from the magical domain of childhood,” writes William Rees, one of the writer’s English translators.

Saint-Exupéry’s flying adventures also provided a rich source of writing material. His first book, Courrier Sud (Southern Flight) appeared in 1929. But it was the publication of Vol de Nuit (Night Flight) two years later that made his name. The book, which became an international bestseller, tells the story of an airmail pilot sent to deliver mail in life-threatening weather conditions. The theme of brave individuals putting their lives on the line for the common good and achieving fulfillment through a sense of duty resurfaces throughout Saint-Exupéry’s work.

He contrasted the selflessness and heroism of the early air pioneers with the pettiness of those left on the ground. In his 1937 memoir, Terre des Hommes (Wind, Sand and Stars), there is a wonderful passage in which he relates the time when he and his radio telegrapher were lost over the sea with their fuel running out. With their lives in mortal danger, they received a delayed message from a government official at Casablanca airport, from where they had taken off, which stated, “Monsieur De Saint-Exupéry, I am obliged to advise Paris to take disciplinary action against you for banking too close to the hangars on take-off.” Saint-Ex responds,

It was true, I had banked too close to the hangars. It was also true that a man was doing his job by getting angry. In an airport office I would have received such a reproach with humility. But here it reached us where it had no right to reach us. It was out of place here among these scattered stars, this bed of fog, this threatening taste of the sea. We held our destiny in our hands with the destiny of the mail and of our vessel, we had trouble enough just steering to stay alive, and that man was purging his petty spite on us. Yet far from being annoyed Neri and I felt a vast and sudden exultation. …We read once more that message from a madman who claimed to have some business with us, and tacked towards Mercury.

In Terre des Hommes, Saint-Ex also relates the story of the pilot Guillaumet, who crash lands during a snowstorm in the Andes. Guillaumet walks for five days and four nights “with no ice-axe, no rope, no food, scaling passes fifteen thousand feet high, crawling along vertical walls with bleeding hands and knees and feet in forty degrees of frost.” All his exhausted body wants to do is sleep, but he knows that if he stops walking, he will die. What keeps him going is the responsibility he owes to others: “If my wife believes I’m alive, she’ll believe I’m on my feet. My comrades believe it, too. They have faith in me. I’m a cowardly bastard if I don’t keep going”.

Guillaumet’s greatness, says Saint-Exupéry, lies in his sense of responsibility—“responsibility for himself, for his mail, for his comrades. To be a man, is, precisely, to be responsible. It is to know shame at the sight of poverty which is not of our making. It is to be proud of a victory won by our comrades. It is to feel, as we place our stone, that we are contributing to the building of the world.”

After France’s armistice with Nazi Germany in 1940, Saint-Ex emigrated to the United States, and it was in a rented Long Island mansion that he wrote his most famous work, Le Petit Prince. The novella has been translated into 180 languages and has sold more than 80 million copies, making it the 14th bestselling book of all time. But to evaluate The Little Prince in facts and figures goes against its very message.

The book’s inspiration was Saint-Ex’s astonishing experience in the desert following a crash in 1935. He and his co-pilot survived four days in the Sahara, with only one day’s supply of liquids. On the third day, they started to hallucinate and see mirages. But on the fourth, they were rescued by a Bedouin tribesman.

The Little Prince tells the story of an aviator who also crashes in the desert. A prince emerges from a far away planet and tells him about his travels through the asteroids. There the prince met six characters: a king; a “conceited individual” desperate to be admired; a drunkard who drinks to forget that he is ashamed of drinking; a businessman who claims to own over 501 million stars; a lamplighter; and a geographer who never leaves his office to see the beauty of the world. The prince finds them all absurd—all except the lamplighter. “That man would be despised by all the others, but he is the only one who doesn’t seem ridiculous to me. Perhaps it is because he is not only concerned with himself.”

In The Little Prince, Saint-Ex doesn’t merely express his contempt for selfishness and materialism, he shows how life should be lived. It’s the Prince’s encounter with a desert fox, whom he meets and befriends, that proves most illuminating. The fox instructs, “Men have forgotten this basic truth. But you must not forget it. For what you have tamed, you become responsible forever. You are responsible for your rose.” It is he who utters the book’s most famous line: “On ne voit bien qu’avec le coeur.”

Sadly, Saint-Exupéry did not live to see the extent of the book’s success. His belief in “contributing to the building of the world” led him to volunteer to fly reconnaissance missions for the Allies. On July 31, 1944, at the age of 43, he set off from an airbase in Corsica never to return. His disappearance remained a mystery for years, but in 2000, wreckage of his plane was found in the sea near Marseilles, and in March of last year, an 85-year-old former Luftwaffe pilot claimed that he had downed a plane of that description, on that date, in the area where the wreckage was found. The pilot also claimed to have been a great admirer of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s writings.

“Perhaps it was just as well that Saint-Ex died when he did, being thus spared the spectacle of a world which would have pained him even more than the one he had actually experienced,” wrote Curtis Cate in 1970. I’m sure Saint-Ex would think even less of the world of 2009. Like the German social philosopher Erich Fromm, he feared that global capitalism and mass-production techniques would destroy the human spirit and turn us all into money-obsessed automatons.

He would also have been dismissive of the frequent misuse of the word “freedom” by liberal democrats and neoconservatives. “Real freedom consists in the creative act,” he wrote in 1938. “The fisherman is free when his instincts guide his fishing. The sculptor is free when he sculpts a face. But it is nothing but a caricature of freedom to be allowed to choose between four types of General Motors’ cars or three of Mrs. Z’s films. Freedom is then reduced to the choice of a standard item in a range of universal similitude.” He saw clearly that modern capitalism, in its tendency toward monopoly and greater standardization, by making man serve the economy rather than the other way around, actually reduces freedom.

The man who wrote, “there is only one form of wealth, that of human contact” would be aghast at a world in which friendship, like almost everything else, has been transformed into a commodity, with “friends” becoming something we collect on websites, only to be deleted when we grow tired of them.

He would also be deeply saddened at the advance of militant atheism, the world’s newest religion. For Saint-Ex believed that without God, human brotherhood—the ultimate aim—was impossible. “I am appalled by the difficulty of having authority derive from something else than God,” he wrote. “One needs seeds from above.” Cate writes, “Although he was not a regular church-goer Saint-Ex was imbued with a Christian philosophy of love; a philosophy of love recast in a kind of Platonic mould.”

From 10,000 feet above, Saint-Exupéry gazed down on the world, observed the “scattered lights” of humanity across the globe, and came to the conclusion, “We must surely seek unity.” In these grasping, narcissistic times, when Western societies have arguably never been so lacking in a spirit of camaraderie, and when division is the order of the day, we urgently need to rediscover the ideas of a man of whom it was said, “He wasn’t of this world” and to learn the Little Prince’s fundamental truth: what is most essential is invisible to the eye.

Rebuilding Some Basics of Bethlehem: Christian Hedonism

By John Piper
Desiring God

One of the marks of our church is the aroma of Christian Hedonism. This is the biblical truth that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. The basis for this is deep, and the implications are as high as infinity and as long as eternity (both directions).

One place to see the basis is Philippians 1:20-21, where Paul says his “eager expectation and hope [is] that . . . Christ will . . . be honored in my body . . . by death. For to me . . . to die is gain.” His passion is that Christ be magnified in his death. Paul’s explanation is that for him “death is gain.” The reason death is gain is that to die is “to depart and be with Christ” (verse 23).

Therefore, Paul believed that Christ is magnified by his being so satisfied in Christ that leaving everything else behind in death is not loss but gain. So he says in Philippians 3:8, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”

So I conclude: Christ is most magnified in us when we are most satisfied in him—especially in suffering and death. Hence the banner of Christian Hedonism flies over our church: God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

The implications of this are pervasive. One of the biggest implications is that we should, therefore, pursue our joy in God. Should! Not may. The main business of our hearts is maximizing our satisfaction in God. Not our satisfaction in his gifts, no matter how good, but in him. Here are eight biblical reasons to pursue your greatest and longest satisfaction in God.

1) We are commanded to pursue satisfaction.

Psalm 100:2: “Serve the Lord with gladness!” Philippians 4:4: “Rejoice in the Lord always.” Psalm 37:4: “Delight yourself in the Lord.”

2) We are threatened if we don’t pursue satisfaction in God.

Deuteronomy 28:47-48: “Because you did not serve the Lord your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart . . . therefore you shall serve your enemies.”

3) The nature of faith teaches the pursuit of satisfaction in God.

Hebrews 11:6: “Without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.”

4) The nature of evil teaches the pursuit of satisfaction in God.

Jeremiah 2:12-13: “Be appalled, O heavens, at this; be shocked, be utterly desolate, declares the Lord, for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water.”

5) The nature of conversion teaches the pursuit of satisfaction in God.

Matthew 13:44: “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.”

6) The call for self-denial teaches the pursuit of satisfaction in God.

Mark 8:34-36: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?”

7) The demand to love people teaches the pursuit of satisfaction in God.

Hebrews 12:2: “For the joy that was set before him [Jesus] endured the cross.” Acts 20:35: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

8) The demand to glorify God teaches the pursuit of satisfaction in God.

Philippians 1:20-21: “It is my eager expectation and hope that . . . Christ will be [glorified] in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain (final and total satisfaction in him).”

Therefore, I invite you to join George Mueller, the great prayer warrior and lover of orphans, in saying, “I saw more clearly than ever, that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord.” In this way, we will be able to suffer the loss of all things in the sacrifices of love, and “count it all joy.”

Defend the Innocent

By John Mark Reynolds
Scriptorium Daily

Some New York-area rabbis are planning to bring weapons to High Holy Day services this month to guard against terrorist threats. In June, a Kentucky pastor invited his congregation members to bring their firearms to church to celebrate the Second Amendment.

Do weapons belong in worship? Should clergy be armed? Do the Ten Commandments trump the Second Amendment?

Weapons do not belong in worship, but they sometimes belong on those who go to worship. Church is not generally the right place to celebrate our civil rights, though we may thank God for them, but it might be the right place to urge citizens to exercise them to protect the innocent.

For Christians, armed force is not the job of the Church as Church. Whatever the provocation, Christians learned from their own history that crusades are not the right response to it. It is inconsistent with our primary message. The Church is about Jesus and Jesus came to heal the sick of soul and body. Christian churches have always built hospitals and came to regret it when they built armies.

We learned to leave usual exercise of military power to the state. While this is the normal state of affairs, Christians are not foolish enough to believe that the state will always do its duty. As responsible and wise leaders of the community, it might be the rare job of ministers to suggest that the time has come for responsible groups of citizens to take on a burden that the state is shirking.

While the Church is pacific, its members need not be pacifists. Letting the innocent die waiting for an impotent state to act is cowardice, and courage is a virtue.

Have we reached a point where reasonable people in the Jewish community feel that the government cannot protect them in their houses of worship on their holiest day? God forgive our nation if this is so.

As an outsider, I am hesitant to judge this situation. Wicked men have made the Jewish community their special target for violence and promises by Western governments of protection have often proven empty words.

If our government really can no longer provide sufficient deterrent to such evil, then no man should rush to condemn the actions of the rabbis. The rabbis, after all, are not posing a threat to society by arming themselves defensively, but are merely doing a job they feel society is failing to do. New York is in no danger from these rabbis, but should consider that her rabbis feel in danger from the perceived failure of New York to provide adequate protection. It is a dangerous course the rabbis have chosen, but in horrid times dangerous paths may be the safest or only paths.

Christians, at least, should not hastily condemn those who act to defend fellow human beings that the state cannot defend. A Christian minister who does not urge his members to defend the weak and the powerless has missed part of the message of Scripture. We are personally called to love our enemy, but love does not demand that we allow our enemy to do mortal damage to his own soul and to the lives of others by harming the innocent.

A Christian man should choose to turn the other cheek, but has no right to force innocents to turn their cheeks. We have a right to choose martyrdom, but must not allow the wicked to force martyrdom on the weak and the poor because we refused to act. A Christian fights for the right of other men to choose their own destiny. He never arms himself for personal vengeance or to impose his faith on others, but he must fight to protect the poor and the powerless.

This is not just a Christian tradition, but is an American tradition.

The founding Revolution of our great Republic saw Christian ministers urge their congregations to protect the rights of the oppressed and resist the demands of tyrants. Whole volumes exist of sermons preached in favor of the cause of American Independence and justice. Some ministers actually led their congregation to enroll in the patriot’s cause and fought with their members. After all, any true pastor was a gentleman and citizen before he was ordained a minister.

Abraham Lincoln sought and received invaluable aid, both here and abroad, from Evangelical ministers and other religious leaders in the Civil War. Such preachers urged their congregations to take up arms in the struggle against slavery on the side of freedom. They provided important arguments that helped defeat the sophistry of others who argued in favor of the tyranny of race-based slavery. Some churches even provided money and arms for the Union.

No church or religious group should take these steps lightly and mainstream American religious groups have never done so. At the time of the Revolution a tyrant king had ignored all reasonable pleas and was imposing his unjust power by unlawful force. At the time of the Civil War the Constitutional order enshrined the injustice of slavery and all attempts to check it had failed. Unjust men were creating a social order to perpetuate race-based slavery on this continent forever.

It is a sad day when civil government cannot provide the protection and justice that should be given to men and women, but sad days do occur this side of paradise.

This idea is found throughout Sacred Scriptures. Ever since God used Queen Esther to give them the right to bear arms in their own defense, Jews and Christians have recognized that when the state fails us, we have the obligation to protect His innocent followers from injustice.

The ideal is for the ministers of justice, government officials, to protect the weak and innocent. It is the job of the due civil authority to protect just citizens from the ravages of the unjust, but sometimes government fails. Government is our first line of defense against the wicked, but Biblically and under the American Constitution not the last line of defense.

At the founding of the Republic, two great thinkers, Hobbes and Locke, offered competing visions of the state and power. The philosopher Thomas Hobbes argued that only the state could exercise supreme sovereignty, but the Founders of the United States rejected Hobbes’ vision of the leviathan state that must be obeyed.

Instead, the Founders followed the advice of the Christian apologist and philosopher John Locke, who argued that in some circumstances the state could fail the people and that the people would have to assume the powers normally given to the state. Locke warns against extremists, who beset us still, who would lightly use this power. He outlines careful restrictions on when the rest of society may have to assume power normally reserved to the state, but he allows for it in theory. For a family, a church, or a community to defend itself is the last resort and a powerful indictment of the government.

I hesitate to say that the situation in New York calls for such steps, but the fact that seemingly serious men and women believe it does suggests something is seriously wrong. We must not condemn their actions without careful consideration, because Americans have always admitted the possibility that the state will fail us. Citizens of all faiths should demand that the government act to secure the safety and peace of the synagogues of New York from the perils they face.

If it is reasonable to believe that the government cannot or will not protect the Jewish people of New York, their religious leaders are to be commended for taking steps to protect them. They follow the noble tradition of Judas Maccabeus in doing so. A show of force might, after all, deter bloodshed as it did in the days of noble Queen Esther.

After all, the ability to defend the innocent sheep often deters the wolves from attack.

No American that saw 9/11 is foolish enough to believe that mad and wicked men cannot abuse these rights. Many on the fringes of both the right and left will call for armed struggle not as a last resort, but to sate their desires for tyrannical control. Any check and balance on the power of the state can be abused. We live in an imperfect world and while religion may improve men, it does not make them angels.

This is why power must not be reserved only for one group, one part of society, or one class of people. We are best protected when family, the religious man, the state, and individuals all share in power. The greatest danger is when only the state is armed and the citizens, the church, and society as a whole are supine before its tyranny. The last century saw mad private citizens and groups kill their hundreds, but mad states kill their millions.

Better to take the risk chosen by the Judeo-Christian West and allow for armed families, citizens, and social groups, than to bring on the certain abuse of power of a tyrannical state that has a monopoly on lethal force.

Armed citizens, religious and otherwise, may behave badly, but unarmed and supine citizens will guarantee a more certainty in justice.

We Are a Rude Awakening

By Marilia Duffles
The American Spectator

I'm wrestling with my amateur version of a great philosophical paradox: if rudeness is so pervasively commonplace throughout society, does it cease to be rudeness?

It started when I went to our local bookstore this week to hear the nattily suited Howard Dean talk about his book, Howard Dean's Prescription for Health Care Reform, and ended up riveted instead by a rich display of rampant rudeness. Knees, backsides and hand-bags took swipes at me as people rushed towards the empty seats in my row with nary an "excuse me" being uttered.

A perfectly healthy middle-aged man refused to offer his seat to a woman well in her 80s. But she, too, cut a wholly unsympathetic figure by repeatedly refusing my offer of a seat because she preferred, I realized later, to stand and glower at him rather than to sit comfortably.

And there were others who obviously felt Dean was interrupting their talking. During question time, a woman politely mentioned that she was supportive of Obama's health care quest even though she had voted for Nader. Well! Like slings and arrows, loud boos and sibilant jeers shot through the airwaves with flaming disapproval. Dean immediately waved the parentally punitive index finger as he loudly exclaimed, to his great credit, I might add, "No, no, no, there will be none of this behavior"!

These are not spittoon using yahoos, these are not the sans culottes of the third estate.

No, the audience here is a consistently thick slice of Washington, D.C.'s Ward 4, whose fame spiked recently in a profile by the columnist David Brooks. Row after row of quills (quasi-intellectual liberals) in their shabby best, laser-beaming their eager intent to clap whenever the champion of the day verbally reinforces their ideology and to hiss whenever their orthodoxy is challenged.

Don't get me wrong, I am not wielding a partisan slap. My intellectual curiosity has an open-door policy to many a topic, issue and argument.

Shifting over to the rudeness taking place in town-hall meetings. I felt sorry for Congressman Barney Frank having to stand up for both issue and self as he humbly battled the babbling rabble-rouser who kept belligerently interrupting him. I can't recall his being treated this way when he faced the personal scandal in the early '90s. On the other side of the coin was Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee's appallingly rude choice to answer her cell phone in the middle of a constituent's polite question. No clearer statement of her disdain for those who elected her could possibly have been made if she were to use a megaphone. She should have been upbraided.

And we can't forget Dick Cheney crassly telling Senator Leahy on the Senate floor to go f--- himself. But now, Cheney's spirit seems to have found a new home in Obama's press secretary, Robert Gibbs, who stands in full-fledged arrogant armor beating down reporters with sword-sharp condescension so thick you can see the self-righteous contempt dribbling from the corners of his mouth as he blames the heretofore Obamadulating media for the public option losing support.

All this violent visual volley reminds me of the one in the infernal landscape of Hieronymus Bosch's painting, "Garden of Earthly Delights." So what the hell is going on? Why aren't we minding our manners? Have Emily Post and Miss Manners lost their relevance? What is making us humans behave so badly?

You could say it's gotten too crowded; too many rats in the same maze vying for the same trough or microphone. Or it could be that there is raging fear behind the rudeness. Fear is always behind anger, psychologists say. Fear of losing control, of being dominated by government regulations, suffocated by a multi-trillion dollar deficit. It all sounds plausible.

But these hypotheses fail to probe the masses for an organic etiology.

Humans have an unwritten code of ethics, a moral code, that's been wired into our brain, as neuroscientists have been discovering, that serve as the underpinnings of rules of social behavior. Even chimps, our primate cousins, abide by rules like reciprocity and fairness, as the great Emory primatologist and psychologist, Frans de Waal, has observed over decades. Chimps trust when they receive generosity, express resentment when others don't share and swiftly punish those who behave selfishly.

You might say that good behavior is the building erected from the neural scaffolding of morality. From these moral rules both manners and laws evolved. Edmund Burke, the provocatively thinking 18th century British politician, thought laws don't hold a torch to manners: "The law touches us but here and there, and now and then but manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a constant, steady, uniform, insensible operation." Manners, he said, either sustain or destroy morals.

There's no more vivid illustration than the Victorian society depicted in Jane Austen's novels where day-to-day civility of refined and graceful manners -- the curtsies, turned up pinky fingers at tea-time, bowing of the head upon meeting -- visually profess an adherence to entrenched moral values that were -- in Burkeian fashion -- reinforced by the exigencies of royal conduct that, in turn, trickled down to Queen Victoria's subjects themselves.

Their kinder, gentler social world certainly makes Plato's "society is the soul writ large" ring true.

Respectful manners of yesteryear came easy because they came from within, from the heart. The zombied "have a nice day" politeness is, sadly, characteristic of today's social world. Being genuinely respectful and solicitous of one another is literally heartfelt because it taps into empathy, a moral emotion that is literally and figuratively at the heart of the moral brain. Empathy makes it possible to put ourselves in others' shoes, to feel their pain, and to do for others as you would have done to you.

Another 18th century figure, the Scottish philosopher and economist Adam Smith, very astutely viewed empathy as the backbone of a code of ethics that keeps society running smoothly. In point of fact, his Moral Sentiments has served as the philosophical fulcrum beneath much of the neuroscience research on morality.

Astonishingly, Emily Post, who had neither philosophy nor even a tid-bit of neuroscience at her dainty fingertips, declared that "manners are a sensitive awareness of the feelings of others....no matter what fork you use". What's more, as Mark Caldwell points out in his book A Short History of Rudeness, Post brilliantly observed that when society misbehaves, good behavior and morality come "unglued from each other". With this she unknowingly laid out the neural architecture and dynamics of the moral brain that neuroscientists are proving today. Without ever having to take off her white gloves.

Similarly, has our behavior come "unhinged"?… From the wellspring of moral values deep within our brain?

Yes. Let's simplify. Our moral neural circuitry, that scaffolding inside our brain, has been short-circuited by the self-centered, self-besotted ways we have come to acquire in full force. The pleasure associated with satisfying our newfound solipsistic cravings is trumping our moral code and "telling" us that our views and our needs -- to show we're right, to exhibit dominance, to get what we want and now -- are more important than anyone else's. It's the new dopamine fix and the addiction is to self and self alone.

Inward, narcissistic focus means we don't focus on others. We can't be bothered to understand how others feel because we are devoid of empathy and a lack of empathy is the sine qua non of antisocial or sociopathic behavior. The extreme on psychology's continuum or sliding scale of diagnoses has the Ted Bundys of the world -- whose lack of empathy was so severe he could kill without remorse -- while the other end of the scale holds the rude-ites -- who hurl insult and injury in various forms of rudeness without any compunction whatsoever for the effect it has on others.

Emily Post's insightful wisdom, yet again: Unconsciousness of self is not so much unselfishness as it is the mental ability to extinguish all thought of one's self, like turning out the light. Perhaps she read Plato who warned society against becoming so self focused as to be void of the glue that holds it together.

So we live in a society that is Platonically coming unglued, falling apart. E pluribus unum was the de facto motto of the United States until 1956 when Congress adopted "In God We Trust" instead. But now it might as well be erased from our currency, too, as it no longer has any purchase. It is now all about unum.

But is this phenomenon particular to our society alone? Take Asia and South America. There is a palpable levity felt long before reaching Tokyo's Nareda Airport when gate agents at the departure gate bow solemnly to passengers as they walk onto the jetway towards the plane. There is no personal, cheesy chit-chat blaring from the galleys and interrupting your dreams. Onboard a Japanese airline, the calming blanket of silence is more somnolent than any Ambien experience. And the flight attendants are truly embarrassed if you have to ask for something they haven't anticipated. A truly empathic experience that stays with you after you leave the airport and throughout the land of the rising sun.

Below the equator, in Brazil, there's even a word -- not found in the English language -- that uniquely conveys the empathy one feels for his brethren. Coitado means "poor thing" but when it's not enough to express, Brazilians go a step further and say pobre (poor) coitado. There is a palpable solidarity of humanity in the land of samba -- a chronic awareness of the needs and plights of others -- that comes with a very visible and critical mass of empathy. You can get a taste of it in the unbridled warm hospitality that even the American Airlines ad says Brazilians are the warmest people. Empathy is truly the social lubricant, and it also explains why Brazilians -- even the poor -- are extraordinarily cheerful people.

So why are we so self-focused? The great entertainer, the television, now virally aided and abetted by the Internet, has torn into our social fabric with a dollar-chasing commercial enterprise that puts the self, raunchy and rude behavior, and, of course, violence, on a pedestal.

Emily Post's gentle reader is now the coarse viewer absorbing vulgarities as social mores. I need point no further than the pathological smut broadcast as normal conduct in: Megan Wants a Millionaire, Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?, Big Brother, I Love $, Keeping Up With the Kardashians, My Redneck Wedding, The Girls Next Door, cosmetic surgery makeover shows, and so much more. And, lest we forget, the biting and gratuitous rudeness of Simon Cowell.

If ratings are an indicator, it is clear that viewers are captivated by the antisocial behavior and enchanted with the neurotic focus on the self and instant fame. The Arts & Entertainment Channel used to live up to its name but began to lose viewers until Dog the Bounty-Hunter (trash extraordinaire) brought it out of its rating doldrums to the number one spot.

Who is watching this stuff? Millions, sadly. But, more to the point, there remains a chicken-and-egg conundrum: Did the show satisfy the cravings of society or did cravings lead to the shows?

It is self-evident that the first estate, the elected elite, has also been glued to the screen, if their behavior is any indication. Or could it be that the sundry coarse indiscretions of Clinton, Foley, Sanford, Ensign, Spitzer, Craig, and so on, served as inspirational content instead.

In spite of all this mess, we seem to be pre-occupied with being a great country. Can we even be great behaving like this? One thing is certain, we have met our enemy and, indeed, it is us.

The History of the Necktie

...

Despised by all but the most inveterate masochists, the necktie traces its origins to the uniforms of 16th century Croatian mercenaries in the employ of King Louis XIII of France. In a sartorial choice that has baffled and dismayed people ever since, upper-class Parisians adopted the mercenaries’ knotted scarf, which they called a “cravat” – a mispronunciation of the word “Croat” probably caused by a restricted larynx.

The cravat eventually “evolved” into the modern necktie, which was eventually paired with an outfit consisting of a heavy jacket and flimsy slacks, a design that guarantees that its wearer will be uncomfortable regardless of the ambient temperature.

Education Normal

By Mark T. Mitchell
Touchstone Magazine

“Are you ever afraid that homeschooling your kids will make them, um, oddballs?” We were staring into the campfire. The kids had all been tucked more or less comfortably into their sleeping bags, and we parents were savoring the opportunity to talk. With the cool night crowding us closer to the fire, the conversation was lively, though tinged by a reflective mood.

As anyone who is the parent of small children will know, the conversation eventually turned to kids. Soon we were talking about how to raise godly children in a culture that, in many ways, seems intent on undermining their faith. And not only their faith. Many of today’s cultural forces create impediments to a sound education as well as a solid faith. These must be resisted. But that persistent question remains.

Books versus TV

Are we raising kids who won’t fit in? I have asked this of myself regularly over the past few years. My wife and I are educating our three boys at home. We don’t watch television (only an occasional video). We emphasize books. We read to the kids and make them memorize poetry. We pray together on our knees. In many ways, our kids are culturally ignorant. They don’t know about Disney World. The other day, my five-year-old asked, “Who is Mickey Mouse?”

So I guess the answer to the question has to be yes. But the “yes” is a qualified one, for when one considers the concept of “odd,” one should ask, “compared to what?” This moves us in a helpful direction, for if “normal” is merely what everyone else does, then what is normal changes with the times. What is odd in one time might not be odd in another. On the other hand, if “normal” refers to a proper way of being human, and if human nature is unchanging, then what is odd, in the sense of being opposed to the majority, may in fact be normal.

As we consider exactly what, in our culture, sets the odd kids apart, it seems to me that the clearest and brightest line can be drawn when we ask the following question: Will your kids be raised primarily on books or on television? To put it another way: Will your children be educated in a logocentric environment, where the written and spoken word is the primary conveyer of meaning, or will they ingest most of their information through electronically generated images?

Now, of course, emphasizing books over television is not the entire story, for books vary in quality and there are plenty of books that cultivate misshapen virtues and a cynical view of life. But I think it is safe to say that parents who make the effort to emphasize books as a way of life will generally be those who have been powerfully moved by books themselves. They have experienced the wonder and joy and goodness of certain books and will introduce these to their children even as one introduces a family member to a much-loved friend.

But setting the content of the books aside (for only a moment), those whose minds are shaped by an ongoing encounter with language will develop mental habits that include patience, perseverance, the ability to think abstractly, and an imagination that does not require the constant stimulation of external images. The imagination of the reader (guided by the author) creates the images, whereas the child raised on television merely imbibes what has already been fully rendered by the camera.

More than Rules

There are two facets to educating a child well. The first is to recognize that education is not merely the accumulation of facts, but that it has an unavoidably moral aspect. A suitable education must do more, therefore, than simply teach facts, even moral facts. Education must seek to cultivate the moral imagination of the child, for reducing moral education to a list of rules is bound to fail.

For one thing, just as it is impossible to make laws to cover every conceivable situation, so, too, it is impossible to create a moral code that does the same. The complexity of human life precludes the sort of detailed arrangement that would reduce moral and legal reasoning to the mechanical application of myriads of rules. Judgment is a necessary part of moral decision-making, and judgment must be cultivated through practice. And an important part of this practice comes through encounters with historical and literary characters.

Another reason why moral education cannot be reduced to a set of rules is that lists of rules fail to move the imagination. They do not elicit the aid of that spirited part of the soul of which Plato writes. Consider which of the following would educate a young person more effectively: (1) a rule stating, “Be brave,” or (2) the story of Leonidas at Thermopolyae or Henry V’s St. Crispin’s Day speech.

Stirring a child to aspire to noble thoughts and deeds is a central role of education. The example of Our Lord is instructive: He educated his disciples by telling them stories.

Centered on the Word

The second facet of a sound education is developing in the child a logocentric view of reality. Holy Scripture is accessible only to those who are literate. God has revealed himself through the words of Scripture, wherein we read that “In the beginning was the Word.” Christ is the Logos. God did not give us a Sacred Picture Book. He gave us words by which we, via our imaginations, can gain access to eternal truths.

This is not to say that we cannot and do not employ visual images to depict sacred truths, for the telling of a parable is itself an exercise in creating a mental picture that illustrates what is true. But if our children are raised primarily on visual images, if they do not cultivate the mental disciplines necessary to access truth via language, then the Holy Scriptures will remain opaque, the creeds and confessions of faith will be meaningless recitations, and hymn lyrics will be merely pleasant-sounding rhymes to accompany occasionally pleasant-sounding music.

While the ultimate aim of education is to cultivate the souls of children toward godly virtue, a secondary but related end is the preservation of civilization. The foundations of our civilization, so long in their development, bought at such a high price, are being attacked in many quarters and are simply ignored or taken for granted in others. If we ignore the past, if we fail to grasp the invaluable and delicate gift we have received, if we fail to pass this love on to our children, then civilization itself is in jeopardy.

And our particular civilization, for which the spoken and written word has been such a central part, cannot be perpetuated by those who are not both literate and loving. That is, stewards of our civilization must possess well-cultivated language faculties capable of grasping complex and abstract ideas and concepts. But the ability is not sufficient, for these stewards must also have a deep love for that which they have inherited. Their well-formed moral imaginations will not be duped by cheap goodness or half-truths or paltry beauties. They will love that which is best and seek to improve that which is wanting.

Normal Children Needed

If a proper education is to accomplish or at least to seek to accomplish these tasks, then a normal child is one whose moral imagination is well formed, whose soul is oriented toward a love of logos and the Logos, and who knows and loves the best of his own civilization. Such a child will, perhaps unwittingly, become a steward of the good, the true, and the beautiful. In a world where normal is considered odd, such children are desperately needed.

Several years ago, when I was away at a conference, my wife took our three young sons out to eat. It was a family restaurant; still, apparently so families wouldn’t have to talk with each other, televisions were positioned at strategic points around the room. Now, children who don’t watch much television seem almost hypnotized when they encounter it. It is extraordinarily difficult for them to ignore. So with the television hovering overhead, my wife struggled to maintain a conversation with three young boys who were craning their necks to see the screen.

Somewhere in the course of dinner, an episode of The Simpsons came on, and this episode just happened to include a spoof on Homer (the Greek poet, not Bart’s dad). Our oldest son, Seth, who was six at the time, soon pointed and exclaimed, “Mom! That kid is pretending to be Odysseus!” He didn’t know Bart and Company, but he did know Homer. Score one for normal.

Must Try Harder

By Susan Hill
Standpoint

Secondary school is rather like a funnel. The pupil enters at the wide end and is presented with a timetable containing a lot of subjects but as the years proceed, the number of subjects decreases. At GCSE, depending on the school, it has come down to between five and ten, in the sixth form only three or at most four are studied to A Level. Eventually, the pupil is squeezed out of the narrowest point accompanied by one or perhaps two subjects to be studied at university.

For "academic" pupils, at least, the funnel analogy still holds good. My daily timetable in c. 1956 looked something like this:

First Period: RI or Scripture — first because God comes first.

Period 2: Maths — early in the day when the brain was supposedly sharpest.

Period 3: English.

These were the same every day and for Periods 4 and 5 Geography, History, French, Spanish, Latin, Physics, Chemistry and Biology alternated. In the afternoons came the less-regarded Music, Art, Domestic Science — and Sports. This might be recognised in general outline by a pupil today, though God no longer takes pride of place, virtually no state school offers Latin and there are some new subjects, principally IT and PSHE, aka sex lessons.

The principal difference is that schools then were not dictated to by government, let alone political correctness, in the way they are now. And it is in relation to those things, as well as to the attitudes and prejudices of the teaching unions and examination boards, as well as to the general dumbed-down social ethos, that things in schools after the age of 11 have gone badly wrong, so that we have betrayed several generations of young people.

The unacademic pupil, whose practical talents and potential were once recognised and catered for both in secondary modern school and via apprenticeships, is forced, resentful and struggling, into the same funnel to emerge at a low-grade university doing media studies or tourism, until they drop out or leave ill-equipped for employment other than the sort which could have been learned in a week "on the job" — if at all. That is one sort of betrayal. But what about the more academic pupil: bright, interested, motivated, who should not only be heading for a high-flying career earning a good salary, but has the potential and desire to become a well-rounded individual with a broad general knowledge, the ability both to study one or two things in depth and an interest in many wider aspects of culture and society? Yes, they still exist, emerging overwhelmingly from the independent sector, simply because with the demise of most grammar schools, the door has been slammed shut on bright but poor pupils.

What has happened?

Many things, and addressing the intellectual poverty of the secondary school curriculum does not change social attitudes — primarily poverty of aspiration. Once, a decent education was the only route for working-class children to a "good job with prospects". Parents encouraged their children to work hard at school for this reason alone and there was also a general respect for learning and the learned, which died gradually from the 1960s onwards. Too many parents have no ambitions or aspiration for themselves or their children. That schools have dumbed down at the same time, discipline has weakened and respect for teachers vanished altogether has compounded the felony. Yet ask most parents, even the feckless ones, "Would you like your child to become a High Court barrister or consultant brain surgeon?" and few would answer "No." The general lack of respect for learning also means that the bright ambitious child in many a state school is both held back in mixed-ability classes, where everything is brought down to the lowest common denominator for the benefit of the least able pupil, and bullied mercilessly for wanting to study and having aspirations. Well, even Billy Bunter and his mates sneered at "swots" but it is more widespread and pernicious now. Teachers do not stamp hard on this form of bullying, usually because it is simply not recognised as such.

Perhaps low expectations on the part of some parents, their offspring and even teachers are unsurprising. But when the entire system has lowered its expectations and watered down the curriculum in line with that, that is shocking indeed and it is time to protest. Because not giving young people the opportunity to be stretched intellectually, to broaden their horizons and enrich themselves as far as possible is the worst betrayal of all.

What is to be done? Attitudes need to be changed. But these ships have a very wide turning circle and the watering-down and thinning out of the curriculum has gone on for so long that nothing will change overnight. But a start could be made.

So let us make a start and address the problem of modern digital versus traditional analogue. I am talking about joined-up education. Information and skills have been put before knowledge. The acquisition of knowledge simply for its own sake has become despised not merely by those who bully "swots" because they don't know any better, but by governments and those in authority who certainly should. Of course children need to acquire basic skills. Knowledge must be applied, essays written, projects completed, jobs done. But the sheer excitement of learning has been lost. Digital learning means that children are given information in unrelated gobbets. They read a couple of chapters of a book, learn about the rain forests or the Holocaust and other fashionable topics, flit about tasting world religions. Even examination questions are in multiple choice box-ticking format and short sentence answers required, rather than formally constructed essays. But the more digitally one tries to read and learn and respond, the more fragmented becomes the brain and one's learning. The analogue in this context is not just something almost obsolete: it is an essential way of acquiring knowledge.

We need joined-up academic subjects. Yes, it is important to study certain historical periods in depth but not to uproot them from their contexts. The Roman occupation, the Renaissance, the two World Wars, can be properly understood only in terms of the whole great flow of our island's history, otherwise they become islands themselves. The line of history can be shown clearly on a well-designed and attractive chart, just as the shape of the British Isles can be on a map. There is a lot to be said for visual aids.

It is always most saddening to see one's own subject being downgraded and to learn that many, perhaps most, first-year English undergraduates passed their exam without having read a single whole book, so that when confronted with the requirement to read an entire Victorian novel of 800 pages they turn white with shock. Yes, separate sections have to be analysed for exam purposes, but what beats reading the whole? Why would those reading English not want to read the whole-many wholes?

The problem lies back in the funnel. The end is the narrow segment leading to the exam, but during that progress we have lost sight of the whole joy and purpose of education. Knowledge, expanding our intellectual horizons, helps to make us full, rounded human beings able to explore both breadth and depth. Learning is a joy for its own sake. We were put here to learn. That charming cliché "life's rich tapestry" expresses a great truth. The more we know and understand, the more enriching our experience of that tapestry.

I cannot comment on the maths and science curriculum, but it is worrying that these rigorous subjects may also be watered down if only because engineers must rely on accurate mathematical calculations or innumerable things will collapse, killing us all.

But although I am not a classicist I am delighted I was obliged to study Latin to A level. It seems strange that it has been banished from the timetable as "irrelevant" because if nothing else it is good mental exercise, a satisfying puzzle, and the popularity of brain exercises and sudoku surely indicates the desire to challenge the mind in an enjoyable yet rigorous way. Yet whereas most puzzles are like knots — untie them and you lose interest — classical languages lead to some of the greatest literature, magnificent civilisations, fascinating history and wise philosophy. If ever there was a great world to conquer metaphorically, it is the classical one. Bring that back and you challenge the young mind in the most exciting ways.

Bright young people who aim for academia know when they are being short-changed and they find it frustrating. I wish they would complain and loudly because it would have a far greater impact than when their elders do it for them. Of course, they do not know what they should learn nor should they choose their own curriculum, but the best of them know that when adults talk about not giving them knowledge which is not "relevant", they are being patronised. Just as teenage patois changes weekly, what is deemed relevant to themselves by one generation of pupils will be dismissed by the next. It is wrong to pretend that they know best and it does them no service.

The debate continues about whether it is useful to learn things by rote. The young brain absorbs and what it absorbs remains for good. Not only times tables, chemical formulae and foreign language verbs are easily learned by heart, but whole long poems and pages of prose. After the age of 20, the ability to learn by heart and retain that learning decreases markedly. It pays to do it when it comes easily. But rote learning has its dangers and the ability to parrot answers does not necessarily imply any understanding of them, as my head full of chemical formulae testifies. This is an area where things have improved. But the pleasure of having a mental store of poetry is considerable and can see one through many a tedious journey in later life. Great verse is enriching, even ennobling, and if some of it seems useless to us when young, it may well become increasingly relevant as we age. To open up the treasure chest of great poetry going back many centuries to the young is to give a pearl without price and it need not be at the expense of the modern, though it should exclude the merely trendy. For my English Honours degree I had to study English literature from the Anglo-Saxons to 1880, but everything written thereafter was regarded as optional so it was possible to get a starred A without having read a word of it.

That was ridiculous and the school curriculum must include poetry by Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney, the great contemporary writers — but not only theirs. Dryden and Byron may be hard going but Chaucer, Donne, Henry Vaughan, Coleridge and Tennyson need not be. (Chaucer is not difficult once the basics of the language have been grasped and untying that knot is great fun.)

There is more to great poetry than any of this, but answering the question "Why?" is never easy. It seems like a cop-out to say, "I just know" but that is almost what Marilynne Robinson does say in one of the best replies to "Why?" I have ever read. In her recent novel Home, Glory, a former teacher, remembers her pupils asking, "Why do we have to read poetry? Why Il Penseroso?" and her reply is, "Read it and you'll know why. If you still don't know, read it again. And again. People have always made poetry. Trust that it will matter to you...It is like a voice heard from another room, singing for the pleasure of the song, and then you know it too, and through you it moves by accident and necessity down generations."

That is true of other things too, things which do not have immediate "use", true of myths and legends for example, from our own country and from round the world. If young people do not hear and learn poetry, myths, legends and ancient stories or read great fiction or see great plays they are being betrayed, short-changed and impoverished but they do not know it, they must take it on trust, as previous generations did. Not all of them will understand. But that is no excuse for not trying.