Practical Wisdom, Not Critical Thinking

Critical thinking is simply a bad label for practical wisdom. What gets taught as “critical thinking” has nothing to with thinking, life, let alone wisdom.

In other words, “critical thinking” is simply an invention of the education-industry to further enslave students’ minds (but that’s another topic).

Wisdom is even buried in the very root of the word “critical,” which derives from the Greek verb krinein, “to decide,” or “to judge.” Neither process is possible without wisdom, which is knowledgeable discernment.

To have the ability to judge or decide is not a skill – it is process of reflection, which in its root sense means, “to turn back” one’s thoughts and consider closely.

Practical wisdom, then, is to turn back and rediscover the habit of looking for meaning, value and for truth. Since humans are social creatures, we already possess the ability to think this way.

Only ideology makes us forget to follow our proper and true mental inclinations.

But given the way the educational system functions, ideals are never emphasized.

Practical wisdom is also “humanistic thinking,” which is concerned with the moral improvement of the individual and then, by extension, of society.

How can we rediscover the habit of practical wisdom? We can do so, by focusing on those aspects of our cognition that skill denies, such as, doubt, questions, ideals, symbolic thinking, the imagination, harmony, and moral judgment.

When we look for meaning and value, we begin with doubt, with hesitation, with being unsure, because we have to decide between two or even more possibilities.

Doubt gives us pause, which we often need in order to think things though.

There are two important characteristics of doubt: skepticism, which is a state of disbelief but also an invitation to view an idea or proposition carefully; and wonder, for we ask, how can this be?

Doubt is the very beginning of reflection, of turning thoughts over in our minds, because doubt allows the mind to open up to possibilities unknown.

Doubt breaks down the barriers of assumptions and launches us into the process of building anew. We must be courageous doubters in order to search for value and meaning.

Once doubt pervades the mind, we begin to ask questions. Most people fear questions because nothing uncovers ignorance (a state of mindlessness) faster than a question.

When we ask questions, we are not looking for answers but seeking, inquiring after, the truth (which is faithfulness to reality, both material and ideal).

As a result, there is a strong link between questions and freedom, because only people who are truly free can ask questions; those enslaved in any sense cannot ask questions, because questions have the potential of destabilizing the status quo.

Thus, questions are a threat to those in power. And as for enslavement, it comes in many forms – the most pervasive in our culture is the avoidance of complexity. We want everything to be simple.

And here is a strange conundrum: we live in a world that is highly complex and the technology we use daily is highly complex – and yet we put this complexity to simpler and simpler uses, such as language pared down to is bare minimum, as in a text-message. We all have skill with technology – but we are therefore thinking less and less with language.

Here’s an important question to ask – does a good worker need to doubt and ask questions? Or does a good worker simply need to employ skill and expertise? If we cannot formulate questions, are we truly free?

If we accept that questions are an inquiry into truth, then we are led into asking a rather famous question – what is truth?

In effect, truth is an ideal. It is not a material thing, but it is something that humanity greatly values.

An ideal is an idea that possesses value and meaning. There is no human culture which does not value truth.

Of course, there have been many attacks on the notion of truth – that it is a cultural construct, or that it is closely connected to individuality (hence the term, “truth is relative”).

We’re all familiar with the usual dull arguments – since we all have different ideas of what truth is, there is no universal definition of truth; and so every culture in the world creates its own truth; my truth cannot be your truth – and some people even more radically suggest that there is no truth; or put more bluntly, truth is only a matter of personal opinion. So, if truth does not exist, why bother looking for it?

Ultimately, these are dead-end arguments since they do nothing to advance thinking, nor do they help us to understand why the search for truth is essential to practical wisdom.

Briefly, to say that there is no such thing as truth, or that truth is relative, is a contradiction since we are being told that both these statements are indeed true – and should be universally believed, which makes no sense at all. How can anyone suggest that there is no truth and then expect us to take this statement as the truth?

We have only to look at the world around us – and we find that humanity continues to conduct itself with the idea of truth – people in all cultures want to be right and not wrong, they want to be good and not bad.

Truth should not be confused with belief (which can be personal) – we may believe one thing at one time in our lives and then come to believe something completely different later on in our lives.

For example, Nazi Germany believed in murdering Jews. Modern Germany does not believe this. Beliefs change – truth does not, because it is an ideal. So, in our example, the truth remains the same – murder is wrong.

We may misunderstand an ideal or misinterpret it, but truth does not change. This unchanging quality makes it an ideal. Ideals help us to choose and decide how we want to live our lives.

Ideals are intangible structures, blueprints, with which we derive meaning and value. Why do we feel good when we do good things? And why are we riddled with guilt when we do bad things? Why do we want to love and be loved? Why are we sympathetic?

These are all questions of ideals, of truth, of value, of meaning. Through ideals, we become educated in our goodness. And the truth is – we want to be good. Think of it – all those things that we cherish (love, kindness, hope, goodness, decency, etc.) are ideals.

When we say ideals are examples, we have begun to think symbolically. What does this mean? Simply that we get into the habit of looking for ideals by way of symbols, that is, examples. Light is a symbol for truth and goodness; its opposite, darkness, is a symbol for falsehood and evil.

Symbols give us something concrete, something material, which we can use to start thinking of an ideal (value and meaning), which cannot take on physical form.

The world over, water is symbol of life – and is it any wonder, therefore, that scientists looking for life on Mars are looking for water? The search for life in outer space is both symbolic and ideal.

We know there is life on the planet earth; and since there are planets in our solar system and in space, we have made terrestrial life into an ideal, assuming that life requires certain properties in order to exist – and it is this ideal that scientists search for.

But to think symbolically also means that we have to be imaginative. Imagination is the ability to see relationships between things and between ideas.

To use the imagination is to see the underlying truth of things. Thus, for example, to want freedom is an imaginative act, because it is insight into what we really value and what gives us meaning.

Freedom is a particular kind of relationship between the individual and society. To want freedom means that we see the essential purpose of life – to have freedom is to live as we see fit – and it also means that we see the truth of what it means to be alive.

Symbolic thinking is the process of uniting ourselves with ideals. Freedom is an ideal – and we individually unite ourselves to this ideal way of living: We want to be free.

Closely allied to symbolic thinking is the concept of harmony, which is the ability to see relationships even in things and ideas that may seem at first to be diametrically opposed to one another.

In other words, it is the ability to see how things and ideas fit together. All too often thinking involves an agonistic attitude – ideas need to be “argued (demonstrated)” or even “attacked,” and “defended.”

To look for harmony is a crucial aspect of practical wisdom, since a habit of seeking convergence and relationships advances thought, which means that relationships engender newer ideas.

These various aspects of practical wisdom are dependent upon the reason why we need to think in the first place.

Practical wisdom is about forming moral judgments that provide us with value and meaning, both of which suggest that we want to understand how we ought to live and what we ought to do.

Practical wisdom is about educating our moral character, through which we can discover how we ought to live in order to be good in a good society, and what we must do to be good in a good society.

Thinking, therefore, is never done in a vacuum. Thinking is always about context – and humanity’s context is the world.

And what is the world? It is the construct in which we live our lives – and as such, it is ideas placed upon the physicality of the planet earth to make our lives happy and fulfilling and to allow each of us to understand what gives us meaning and value.

Let us now start the process of rediscovery and come to understand what we ought to do to gain and possess practical wisdom so that we may know how we ought to live and what we ought to do in the good society.

 

The photo shows, “Portrait of the Artist Alexander Sokolov,” painted by Osip Braz, in 1898.

Humanism And Language

It’s often assumed that the discipline of the Humanities involves anything and everything that cannot properly be classified as a proper science.

It’s also commonly assumed that language is simply a method of communication – so that flapping your arms is the same as speaking. Or, you can draw something, since a picture is worth a thousand words. This is a very rudimentary understanding of language.

Before proceeding any further, it’s best to define our terms so that we don’t get mired in assumptions.

Turning first to language, we need to understand that it is thinking more than it is communication.

The founder of linguistic philosophy (Wilhelm von Humboldt) described language as the expression of thinking, peculiar to a people, even the most primitive of people, those closest to nature, as he puts it.

Thus, communication is only the most basic level of linguistic usage. The most intensive use of language is the generation of ideas.

The philologist Max Mueller extended Humboldt’s analysis when he called language as “the outward form and manifestation of thought.”

And Humboldt further defined language as the medium through which humanity encounters reality: “Man lives with his objects chiefly as language presents them to him.”

The philosopher, Ernst Cassirer, then proceeded to specify language as, first, the symbolic rendering of expressions, and second the engendering of discursive thought; or, in other words, reason.

Thus language is the principle which unfolds complexity in order to produce meaning, or what may be called abstract thought.

In brief, for Cassirer, language is the entelechy of knowledge, that is, only through language can knowledge reach its fullest potential. This obviously means that language has more than a denotative function – it’s extends far beyond communication.

To quote the Danish linguist Louis Hjelmslev: “A language is that into which all other languages, and even all other conceivable language structures may be translated. In language, indeed only in such, can the inexpressible be dealt with until such time as it is expressed.”

In other words, language, first and foremost is idea, because it contains all the infinite possibilities of ideas.

Given the intimate association of language with thinking and knowledge – why do we hear teachers referring to it as a “form of communication?” What purpose does this extreme simplification serve?

Can it be that those that teach do not know what they do?

Having briefly defined language, we may do the same for the humanities. Again, we encounter confusion, because the definition often used is simplistic.

The tendency nowadays is to view the Humanities as anything that is not science; and such muddling continues in the so-called “soft sciences” (like anthropology, psychology and sociology).

So, what are the Humanities? In a very straightforward way the Humanities have always meant the study of Greek and Latin – that is, the discipline of the Humanities has always been tied with the learning of language – because it was once believed (now no longer) that by learning a language, in a disciplined and structured fashion, a person became educated and refined.

This once meant that an educated person was one made fit to carry on the work of civilization, because language alone builds the mind, by way of very specific disciplines, starting with grammar, and then proceeding on to literature, philosophy, biography, history, and music. Yes, music, because music once meant thinking (rather than head-banging).

And civilization meant moral freedom – those structures of virtue contained in Hellenism and Judeo-Christianity.

The Humanities, as promulgated by the education industry are so frayed and tattered by identity politics that Heaven only knows what they’ve now become!

The true Humanities must be based upon the understanding that education is only possible through language, since the creation of ideas is uniquely a human activity. This alone can justify the designation of “the Humanities.”

In this way, education used to be about understanding the exercise of moral freedom. Now it has become training for agitprop.

Because education has lost its mooring and become meaningless, it blindly promotes falsehoods as sound pedagogy. The worst being the notion of “learning styles,” and that absurdity known as, “right-brain” and “left-brain” learners.

Study after study has amply demonstrated that there is no such thing as “visual learning” or “auditory learning,” or kinesthetic learning. Nor does the brain function differently in left and right compartments.

And yet, these false notions are popular in educational institutions – and worst of all, entire pedagogies are built around them. Why?

As researchers have recently observed: “The contrast between the enormous popularity of the learning-styles approach within education and the lack of credible evidence for its utility is, in our opinion, striking and disturbing.”

Disturbing, because students are being taught falsehoods. What does education become when it is founded on pop-psychology?

And yet the popularity of these false views is enormous. They have become rock-solid truths because they are constantly repeated (thank you, Dr. Goebbels!). There is an entire industry that actively promotes this false dogma; careers are built upon it.

Why do teachers follow these falsehoods? Is it that they are useless without them? Or, do they not know any better (far more worrying)?

Studies also tell us that the only way possible for the brain to learn anything is through language.

Thus, the brain is Humanistic. It is built primarily for language, for thought, for ideas. And the world that we live in, the labor that we do, is a function of language, of thought, of ideas. The world that we inhabit is the product of Humanism.

To neglect or confuse Humanism with anything other than language is to deny the importance of thought. Far worse, it is the abandonment of ideas for the tangled jungle of feelings.

But then it’s always easier to teach feelings, rather than ideas. Such is the destruction of the mind, which is on full display in society. Is it any wonder that people now believe that it’s now far more important to feel than to think?

 

The photo shows, “Christ in the House of Mary and Martha,” by Henryk Siemiradzki, painted in 1886.

From The Trenches: Teaching Sociology?

Sociology is taught as social reform – identifying the problems of the world; and therefore, it has become mired in relativism. Students are given “case studies” that deal with this or that issue, with the intent of providing a “correct attitude” about society.

These attitudes pass as sociological education, which can be summarized in this way: Society is made up of oppressors and victims; and it is the job of the educated (“socially aware”) person to identify and condemn the oppressor and valorize the victim.

This may be laudable, but it is not education – and it is certainly not sociology, despite the focus of most textbooks.

A fundamental question, therefore, arises: what is the point of teaching sociology? The answer is a variation on a familiar theme – sociology is, in the end, social reform, the fixing of society. Do we need such reform?

Sadly, these fixes tend to be simplistic, if not downright naïve – the world changes as a result of complex ideas; never because of raised awareness. Raising awareness about cancer has not led to a cure; not even massive funding has helped.

Here is the crux of the problem – sociology is seen to be two contradictory things. First, those who teach it professionally perceive it to be a science. Those outside the profession see it as anything but science – because everything is sociology.

Mathematicians may hold varying and conflicting notions about the reality of numbers, but when asked to teach students, there is an immediate “common ground” – students must know the basic and fundamental ideas or principles of mathematics.

What is the common ground of sociology? There is none; there is just varying and conflicting perspectives (endless meta-theory).

Science does not teach perspectives – it teaches principles, ideas. Once students understand ideas – and make them their own – only then can they start thinking with them. If there are no ideas – there can be no thought; hence, the need for attitudes.

Possessing attitudes is not education – it is a deeply disturbing form of conformity; a conformity that passes for enlightenment, but is nothing other than personal feelings – and outside of feelings there is only ignorance.

Education fails miserably if it cannot allow an individual to transcend the confines of individual preference. The only way to do that, of course, is to intellectually equip the student to enter the world with ideas, not with attitudes.

But, for some reason, sociology cannot express its own “common ground.” One has only to look at the countless “Introduction to Sociology” textbooks in the marketplace. Typically, these textbooks seek to “stand apart” by some schtick that will make “the material” either “relevant,” or “engaging.” In other words, how to make sociology teachable?

The assumption is that education can be had via some sort of catchy, marketable trick, which will hook the student into learning something, anything, which can then be described as “sociology.”

Unfortunately, very few people now understand the fact (yes, the fact) that education – and reading – is hard work. It has nothing to do with enjoyment (that used to be called entertainment). Education is difficult work, which is why it is valuable.

Further, when typical sociology textbooks are analyzed (need we say, scientifically), not for content but for approach (or pedagogical usefulness), a consistent methodology emerges.

They invariably set out to define the many “systems” that are seen to hinder or even oppress the individual. Then these “systems” are rigorously critiqued through the lens of diverse (and at times contradictory) theoretical stances (always postmodernist in inclination).

And the result is a hodge-podge of meta-theory that provides to the student neither a clear understanding of sociology as a discipline with precise and marked parameters, nor a firm grasp of the nature of society or societies.

For example, trying to find a simple (yes, simple) definition of “culture” becomes an exercise in frustration. All these textbooks offer is endless examples of culture, followed by tedious ramblings in dead-end areas, like “cultural studies” and “media studies.”

And what does the student take away from all this? Who knows? Empiricism, the science behind sociology, is nowhere in sight.

The second problem with teaching sociology in our time is the fact that science has been abandoned in favor of relativism. And this has meant a loss of objectivity.

Sociology is now rife with a partisan mentality, which suggests that only those inside can properly study and explicate the forces at play in society.

Thus, for example, ethnicity can only properly be studied and explained by ethnic minorities. Anyone trying to study or comment on ethnicity from the badly labeled “dominant group” is simply someone trying to maintain existing power-structures that favor his/her dominance.

In this way education becomes social action. And yet we all know that the world is far greater in complexity than this one-dimensional attitude.

Certainly, it is the nature of all societies to include and exclude, which may be examined by ideas, such as, class, anomie, family, institutions, crime, roles, hierarchy, labeling, and socialization. These ideas have existed for as long as human beings have chosen to live together.

But can our students clearly and simply define these ideas? Have these ideas become part of their thinking? Do they understand the empirical basis of these ideas? Can they use these ideas to rise above the malaise of our civilization – relativism?

Sociology once more needs to teach from the common ground of empiricism. It must abandon relativism, which has effectively sabotaged the Humanities and social sciences.

Students no longer look for an education. But then education also used to mean knowing the basis of your goodness.

Who knows what goodness is, say the relativists? Despite that, the majority of human beings on this planet still want to be good.

Science does not need to be relevant, or engaging, or interesting (we only have to keep mathematics in mind).

Now that sociology has wandered away from its own discipline, as it tries to be all things to all people, it can only promote agendas, whether political or personal, and therefore it will rightly disappear. Who needs more attitude.

 

B. Hughes teaches sociology at college.
The photo shows, “Après l’office à l’église de la Sainte-Trinité,” painted in 1900, by Jean Béraud.

Nationalism, Patriotism, Populism: The Return of Reason

Why are populism, nationalism and patriotism despised? Why are they vilified by the establishment elite (namely, the media, the entertainment industries, the universities, the so-called intellectuals, and the scoffing punditry)?

Why are populism, nationalism and patriotism readily equated with “fascism,” “Nazism,” “racism,” “xenophobia,” “the right-wing?” Of course, these are trigger-words purposely deployed to elicit the highest emotional response from the public, in order to build and then solidify consensus. This is classic demagoguery.

Such rabble-rousing is on full display in the recent issue of Academic Matters, a Canadian journal that seeks to delve into things “of relevance to higher education,” and which is used by university professors to preach to the choir.

The topic at hand is labeled, “the populist challenge” which, in typical fashion, is described as, “The disconnect between the expertise of the academy and the common sense of broader society.”

For these experts, “common sense” is defined as, “celebrity-induced ignorance,” which is the true enemy, and which needs to be destroyed: “That is why it is so disturbing to see politicians take the position that experts are irrelevant, answers are obvious, and that questioning common sense assertions of the populist right is akin to sacrilege.”

{For the naïve, “politicians” is code for President Trump, and Trumpism).

The various experts called upon to guide each other along in tackling “the populist challenge” on campus and therefore in society all write like enthusiastic revolutionaries, issuing the call to action.

Of course, there is the usual alarmism: International students will stop coming, and that cash-cow will run dry. Nationalism will destroy the free circulation of knowledge.

Then come the solutions, which are predictable and unimaginative (but what else would you expect from privileged “experts,” who cannot understand a very basic fact – that it’s the populists who pay their high-powered salaries).

The breathless, but suitably vague “remedies” to fight the grand threat of populism include:

  • Better working conditions for everyone
  • More opportunity and benefits for everyone
  • More empowerment of citizens to work through their differences
  • More access to higher education
  • All campuses must be made into even better safe spaces for everyone

With such myopic solutions, can victory be far?

Time for a bit of common sense – if you want something done right, don’t ask professors.

Here is a sample of the expertise that we are asked to blindly imbibe:

“Right-wing populism threatens the future of higher education, but remaining passive and retreating to a disinterested vision of the university will actually strengthen the attacks, Faculty have a responsibility to work in solidarity to fight back against these threats.”

“The danger is not so much that we will all be drowned in a tsunami of alt-right populism, but that otherwise sensible politicians (and leaders, including university presidents) may be spooked by this great illusion and do the populists’ work for them.”

“…the academy must counter the pseudo-populist narrative with an even more compelling narrative.”

“We watched with wry humour as the UK exited the European Union and we sat in stunned terror as the US elected Donald Trump.”

“The surge in racism on university campuses is part of a broader right-wing awakening across the country. University administrators must counter these developments, or the credibility of their institutions will suffer.”

“The last twelve months have seen a great shift in the North Atlantic political landscape, with only Canada immune (so far). Nobody in universities saw it coming….There has been a surge of support for ethno-nationalism of the blood-and-soil kind, fearful of global openness and resentful of globally connected persons, whether migrants, traders, or cross-border professors and students…Donald Trump is bristling with threats to wage war on a long list of internal and external enemies; he is trying to turn those threats into policy.”

“A positive political alternative to the rise of demagogic populism will require a vibrant vision of democratic society and the empowerment of individuals to work through these differences. Universities should not be just observers, but engaged participants.”

By their own words, they condemn themselves, such is the betrayal of the “intellectuals” that Benda wrote about many years back. The tone of each article is defiance, a self-important, self-assured declamatory stance, hurling bravado from high up in the moated Ivory Tower.

Perhaps they should stop indoctrinating and return to the grand-old tradition of education, which has long fallen by the way side.

There is also a sense that things are not going their way any longer:

“But, friends, we are losing. We are losing when it comes to reason and critical intelligence and civility. We are losing when it comes to the basic justification of what we do. We are losing on defending universities as forces for good.”

Is this palpable fear?

These experts know that the jig is up, and the people have cottoned on to their self-serving pronouncements. They also know that fear is wondrous snake-oil to unite the misguided (aka, students).

A bit more common sense: Do not bite the hand that feeds you.

These remarks of “experts” may hold fragile undergraduates in utter thrall, but for the rest of us, they simply come across as hysteria from members of the establishment who know that no one is listening to their self-serving exclamations, uttered to safeguard their franchise.

They also know that so bankrupt are their inducements that they have no power to make people return to the poverty and enslavement to elites promised by their version of globalist indoctrination.

In fact, such professorial whiffle, such “coughing in ink,” only confirms a harsher truth – these experts belong to a past that has no purchase in the future of humanity.

Perhaps they should try to explain why they teach the subjects that they do, and how they sleep at night knowing their drivel puts thousands upon thousands of young people into immense student debt.

Here are some facts that these experts will always fail to understand (since their paycheck depends on not comprehending):

  • Nationalism, populism, patriotism have nothing to do with fascism, xenophobia, and all the rest. It is the people’s demand (at long last!) for a better form of government, namely, a re-energized nation-state.
  • If you fear populism, you have abandoned your own humanity.
  • If you fear nationalism, you have destroyed your own soul.
  • If you fear patriotism, you have no home to call your own.
  • If you fear “blood-and-soil,” you fear love itself, because to love another, you must first love yourself – unselfishly and purely.

“Blood” is not racism; It is the acknowledgement of our common bond as humanity, which is expressed as community.

“Soil” is the sanctity of place, without which strangers cannot be made welcome.

Both these terms are used to conjure up the ghost of Nazism (Godwin’s Law), but such necromancy is just shallow thinking.

To confuse nationalism with fascism is to admit utter ignorance of history:

  • Nationalism is the true root of liberal democracy, for it clearly defines self-determination, and declares power to be the privilege of the people. Fascism denies both, and in this way it is more akin to the leftism of the universities, than to liberal democracy.
  • Populism is the true root of liberal democracy, for it asserts that people have the right to choose who will rule over them. This choice often means many different political parties. Populism is also the right to question those in power. Fascism is a monolith, which needs conformity on all levels – thought, deed, and personal behavior, which is what universities now teach.
  • Patriotism is the true root of liberal democracy, for it defies dictatorships of all kind, by defending the right of the independent nation-state to exist and enjoy its freedoms.

One has only to look to Pericles’ famous Funeral Oration to understand the spirit of generosity that flows from patriotism, nationalism and populism. Fascism abhors all three, because devotion should not be to “blood-and-soil,” but to the glorious and fearless Fuehrer.

The establishment elite are quick to equate nationalism with “xenophobia,” and “racism.” This too shows an unfamiliarity with the history of ideas.

Nationalism, which is always grounded in a strong nation-state, cannot exist if it practices xenophobia or racism, because nationalism promotes other people to create their own nation-states. This is true tolerance, where all of humanity exists as equals, free to pursue self-determination in their own nation-states.

The charge of xenophobia and racism becomes perverse when we realize that those that utter it advocate a political system that is full bondage to the whims of unelected, globalist governing bodies, such as, the UN, and those that oversee the various supranational trade agreements.

The establishment elite are the true xenophobes and racists because they collapse economies, nurture poverty, traffic in children, fund discontent, destroy nations and kill millions – all in the name of ideology, all in the name of building a grand world order, in which they shall be kings.

Did not these professors and so-called thinkers celebrate the Arab Spring, which unleashed untold suffering in that part of the world? They should rightly fear populism – because they have been justifying with their pronouncements the annihilation of entire populations.

The world these experts advocate – multinational companies, unlimited free trade, no borders, massive population replacements – has no provable benefits for anybody (other than themselves). Everybody suffers the same.

Remember what globalism has done already:

  • It has destroyed most of Africa and the Middle East.
  • It has created itinerant populations (known as refugees) who wander about seeking economic benefit.
  • It has lashed together unequal partners into a European Union that is ultimately unsustainable because it is utterly dysfunctional.
  • It has created and let loose the scourge of Islamofascism.
  • It actively promotes race-baiting by making people live as strangers in lands they once called their own.

Nationalism, patriotism, and populism – these are the way forward for the world.

The worldwide experiment of a socialist utopia, under globalism, has bitten the dust at last, leaving behind in its wake misery and devastation and the lamentation of the innocent.

Only nation-states embody both love and the law. Within both of these lies true justice.

Therefore, patriotism and nationalism and populism become extensions of the family, where both love and the law are first expressed and experienced. This is why a country is not a spot on the map, but it is home, it is fatherland, it is motherland.

Because nationalism understands both love and the law by way of the family, globalism will always fail against it, for it can offer nothing in its place.

No one wants to be a vagabond. Everyone needs a home. To conclude, some words of G.K. Chesterton:

From all that terror teaches,
From lies of tongue and pen,
From all the easy speeches
That comfort cruel men,
From sale and profanation
Deliver us, Good Lord!

 

The photo shows, “The Reply Of The Zaporozhian Cossacks,” 1878-1891, by Ilya Repin.

Of Universities And Soul-Murder

Have universities gone the way of the spittoon? Does anyone still need them? Why do students go into mountains of debt to keep these institutions in business? What do they offer that is worth so much investment?

There are countless explanations and discussions seeking to demarcate the nature of higher education in our time. The vast majority of them can be boiled down to two arguments.

First, there’s the call for more or better funding because universities aren’t doing enough, aren’t inclusive enough. More cash might put “education” right. Of course, no one explains what “enough” really means.

The second argument seeks to align higher education with supposed market needs, where degrees become “jobful.”

“Jobful” being that seamless fusion of education and guaranteed future employment – you go to college so you can get a job.

Both of these arguments, however, labor under an unquestioned assumption – that society still actually needs what colleges and universities continue to supply.

But it’s precisely this given, this uncritically accepted supposition that must be thoroughly questioned. Has higher education gone off the rails?

First, what do students pay for when they go to get higher education?

The most popular courses are the Humanities, which do everything but worry about humanity, let alone employment. Their focus is political training of the youth, which they do by offering:

  • A Marxist-postmodernist mindset. Literature, history, philosophy, and all of the many distortions of these once noble disciplines (such as, sociology, anthropology, gender studies, political science, cultural studies, communications, media studies, psychology, and so on) – are all taught by way of a deep anti-west prejudice.
  • A professoriate that is radically left-wing, which holds up socialism as the great tool by and through which utopia is to be built. Little do they realize that if they actually succeed in bringing such a utopia about, they would be the first ones lynched from the nearest lamppost, since they all belong to the highly privileged 1 percent.
  • A plethora of so-called “applied courses,” which supposedly “prepare” graduates for immediate employment. The reality is far harsher. Most graduates with such degrees end up as retreads (those forever taking yet more courses to get a job). How many journalists does society need? How many lawyers? How many social workers? How many MBAs?
  • A vicious cycle of poverty, as graduates struggle to manage huge student debts. Is training in Marxist ideology worth it?

This is truly soul-murder.

Humanities remain the bread-and-butter of higher education, since that is where the majority of the students end up. This “education” strips the graduate of all independence of thought, rendering him/her an atomized creature.

The universities know these humanities degrees are worthless, which mold individuals to live in perpetual conflict with society, since said society will always fail to live up to the socialist ideals of the collective, the all-powerful political machine, high taxes, and the expansion of the working poor,

Isn’t it about time that people saw through this scam? Do parents really want their children becoming some version of the Social Justice Warrior?

On the other hand, there are also the sciences, which are often divided into two types:

  • Theoretical science (mathematics, physics, astronomy), which seeks to add to scientific knowledge, and which often has no immediate practical application.
  • Practical or empirical science (health, chemistry, biology), which investigates cause-and-effect in nature in order to devise solutions for various problems.

The sciences have retained their traditional role, because they cannot do without discipline, merit, and talent. There is no postmodernist leveling of the playing field here.

Thus, the sciences have not abandoned truth (though this does not mean that attempts have not been made).

That said, “jobfulness” has infected the sciences also, so that theoretical science now takes a backseat to empirical science. Students would rather be doctors or pharmaceutical researchers than mathematicians or astronomers.

Theoretical knowledge has been made subordinate to instrumentalism, so that ideas are only important if they have direct, practical application. Utility is greater than wisdom, and thinking has declined.

Although science has remained true to its root, it is ultimately inadequate to care for the complexities of life, because it cannot answer any questions concerning the soul.

Thus, “jobfulness” creates soullessness in higher education.

Is there not a deep hunger for the good in life? To live a good life is to possess that soul-wisdom which gives you happiness, even in an empty room.

There is this story told of Stilpo the philosopher. When his city of Megara was captured by the Macedonians, their king, out of respect for the philosopher, offered him compensation for the loss of property. But Stilpo refused, saying that no one had carried off his learning, no one had taken away that which made him a man.

Education is not about acquiring physical things – it is about possessing a treasure that cannot rust, that cannot be looted, that cannot be lost. Education is a treasure of the soul.

Human beings need good ideas, because life is inherently about the practice of goodness. If you do not know how to practice your individual goodness within the larger goodness of society, you will be lost, you will be disgruntled, you will be unfulfilled, because without goodness, you cannot be human.

Goodness alone defines us, because it gives us value in this world.

Understanding and developing your goodness into maturity is the true purpose of education, either in the Humanities or the sciences. This is what once made education invaluable to life.

But the education of today has nothing to do with goodness, and therefore it has become profoundly anti-human. All it can offer is nihilism.

The professors have prostituted themselves to falsehoods and lies – that is why they can only speak about “social justice” (which is nothing other than that old Marxist fable about the “redistribution of wealth”).

These professors have no wisdom to offer their students, since they have no goodness to call their own. They only know the grisly tussle of politics, and what they preach they themselves do not want – otherwise, they would have long rushed to the few Marxist “paradises” that still remain on the earth. They proclaim Marxist austerity for all, while being paid by the prosperity of capitalism.

Of course, tenured faculty remain the most privileged group in society.

Universities are also severe socialist enclaves, maintained within a free society, paid for by the free market, which are given free license to murder the souls of the youth with nihilism. Why?

Why do we continue to maintain these Moloch-institutions?

Where is the outrage from parents, especially, given the high cost in actual dollars that every student has to incur in order to offer up their souls for slaughter?

We need to begin judging universities harshly. We must reject their appeal to expertise, because they have none. The Humanities, as taught today, have nothing to do with expertise. They have everything to do with brainwashing.

This tyranny of the education-industrial-complex needs to be broken, because nothing can reform it, given its strength and its backers (who have their own agendas).

Should it not be the concern of every parent to keep the minds and souls of their children safe from the wounding and destruction that the universities offer?

Here are some ways to move forward:

  • Seek out only those institutions that conform to the moral values of your family. They certainly exist. Here are some of them: New Saint Andrews College, Thomas More College of Liberal Arts, Our Lady Seat Of Wisdom College, Wyoming Catholic College, and there are a few others.
  • Do not automatically send your children off to university, as if that is an ultimate good which will benefit your child. There are other options.
  • Pool resources and start creating your own institutions of higher learning. This is not impossible to do. It only requires persistence and determination. There are enough disgruntled professors out there who are always looking for ways to escape the tyranny of their universities. Take the next step after home-schooling.
  • Remember, all colleges and universities exist because of the goodwill of the people. Remove this goodwill and these oppressive institutions will fall. Every sensible parent should work to bring about the fall of these modern-day Babylons.
  • Withhold your tax contribution earmarked for public education. Give this money to those institutions which conform to your values. This requires courage, but it’s important to dry up the money flowing into these institutions.

The higher education-industry-complex exists in opposition to your society, and to your civilization. Isn’t it time to dismantle it?

A few words on education itself, since it’s important to have a proper understanding of it in this age of mass confusion.

Walter Lippmann made this crucial observation many years ago: “We have established a system of education in which we insist that while everyone must be educated, yet there is nothing in particular that an educated man should know.”

This is the dilemma of the entire modern educational system – the insistence on education for all, without any explanation of what education should be. It is truly the blind leading the blind.

Before the fog of postmodernism, education was about building the good human being. Yes, good. Not the efficient human being, not the compliant human being, not the robotic, party-member human being – but the good human being.

This meant that education was about the care of the soul, which is the practice of self-discipline and integrity, which is the nurturing of restraint within freedom, which is using wisdom to fashion understanding, which is living within the bounds of obligation and responsibility.

How many times do we hear, “I am proud to…, I am proud of….” How little (perhaps never) do we hear the phrase, “I am humbled to…, I am humbled by….” This readiness to display pride, this inability to declare humility is the greatest failing of higher education dished out by the education-industry-complex.

Only through the efforts of parents will education again be aligned to its true root, which is morality, as found in the wisdom of Greece and Rome and Judea. This is the root that nourished western civilization, a civilization which has become the desire of all the world.

In other words, western civilization cannot be anything other than Christian. If we move towards a post-Christian mind-set, then our societies will be cut off from the root and will become everything but civilized and everything but western.

Is it right that we should let this civilization be destroyed by the tyranny of the university elite, who care nothing for the souls of their students?

Let us finally start afresh and return education to its true purpose.

The English philosopher, A.N. Whitehead observed: “The essence of education is that it be religious ….A religious education is an education which inculcates duty and reverence ….The foundation of reverence is this perception, that the present holds within itself the complete sum of existence, backwards and forwards, that whole amplitude of time, which is eternity.”

Higher education needs to return to its true root, which is the care of the soul. Once we understand how to care for the soul, only then can we know how to educate our children, who can then walk into life and build the good world.

 

The photo shows, “Sunday Reading At Country School,” 1895, by Nikolay Bogdanov-Belsky.

Freedom Of Speech?

There has been a lot of news recently about free speech on university campuses.  Typically, one group of students invites a high-profile speaker to give a talk and another group of students agitates until the speaker is shut down.

But it’s not just high-profile speakers who are getting shut down on university campuses. Students are being silenced, too. But not all students, just those who don’t conform to the accepted ideologies that now dominate university campuses. My story is just one example.

One group silencing the opposing group is not coming to an agreement, it’s dictatorship

I’m an undergraduate student at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo. I’m also a member of the campus LifeLink Club. We are a pro-life club with no religious affiliation. We don’t use graphic pictures or loud, angry language; we practice calm, respectful dialogue.

I am a naturally peaceful and easy-going person; my friends and family can attest to that. If the pro-life club was the type of club that was aggressive and forceful, I would not be a member, much less the president.

In October of last year we planned a teach-in to motivate discussion. We got approval from our students’ union to use a grassy, outdoor area known as the quad. In early morning, we set up 10,000 small pink and blue flags with each representing 10 abortions that take place in Canada each year.

When classes began, we caught some people’s attention. I was encouraged throughout the morning by the genuine interest and respect of my fellow students.

But beginning in the afternoon the mood turned. Employees from my university’s Diversity and Equity Office, an official administrative body whose mandate is the fair treatment of all students on campus, placed a sign on the walkway leading to our display. It read: “Warning: Anti-Choice display ahead.”

we were censored because our ideas…contradict the new dogma of my university

I was dumbfounded. Why was a warning needed? We were peaceful and polite. And why had this “non-partisan” office of my university referred to my group as “anti-choice” when the term that neutrally describes us, and how we describe ourselves, is pro-life?

The DEO hangs posters across my campus insisting that students use “proper terms” when addressing the groups it explicitly supports, but went out of its way to apply a negatively torqued label to ours.

I had left during the morning to go to class and that sign was what I saw when I returned. I knew immediately that it had not been written by someone in our group, and if those who disagreed with us were putting up signs, the afternoon was not going to be as peaceful as the morning. I wasn’t very far off.

Displays like our flags are now prohibited

The sign from the DEO seemed to have the effect of enabling other students whose desire was not respectful dialogue to come out and harass us.

Some came and began to pull out our flags, yelling profanities and insults. Others spit on our club banner and the flags

I knew that there would be those at my campus who would disagree with our views, but I never anticipated such a degrading response to pink and blue flags.

Though intimidated, I and other LifeLink members stayed calm – as we’ve been trained – and tried to get our opponents to talk to us, but with little success. Special Constable Services were called.

One of the male students damaging our display, quoted in our campus paper, excused his behaviour saying, “The officers are here (telling me) you have to respect their rights and I’m like … I don’t because frankly, this is harmful.”

In the hours and days following the attack on our display, I heard that notion a lot. I heard that my group – despite being the ones subjected to verbal abuse, intimidation, vandalism, and spit – were the purveyors of harm and, as such, it was legitimate for our freedom of expression to be quashed.

Everywhere I went on social media, there was someone posting about how our display was harmful and downright terrible. There were multiple people who wrote that our group should never have been given club status and that we should get off campus.

There were those who were supportive as well, but it is hard to see the silver lining when so much hate is being directed at you because you stood up for what you believe in.

That day, to mediate the “harm” of our actions Laurier’s Centre for Women and Trans People added to their hours of operation but, on Facebook, cautioned attendees “you may have to walk past the protest to get in. Please stay safe…” Alternatively, they said, “If anyone needs a place to hang out with social justice values, the DEO is open.”

Students are being silenced

About a month later the president of the Students’ Union joined the chorus condemning LifeLink. He issued a public letter to the campus saying we were wrong because, “the adversarial tone of the event evoked a confrontation which eliminated the possibility of respectful dialogue and created an unsafe environment for all students.” Furthermore, he promised to work with the Diversity and Equity Office and other university organizations “to ensure this does not happen again.”

True to his word, within a couple of weeks the Students’ Union changed the rules on acceptable practices by campus clubs. Displays like our flags are now prohibited. Instead of trying to make successful discussion happen in the future, the university went in the complete opposite direction and further restricted what our club can do.

To be clear, LifeLink members did not have an “adversarial tone”; we made no one feel “unsafe” — records of the event show that is the case. In fact, when the university’s special constables arrived to monitor the event, they raised no objections to our conduct, issued no warnings, offered no interference, and, in fact, commended members of our group for their restraint in the face of harassment and intimidation.

Again, these were university’s officials. They observed our behaviour and only commented negatively on those for our harassers. And yet our tone was adversarial? We were the ones making people feel unsafe?

The argument of when life begins is far from being closed. I know many Canadians hold the same views as our club, as seen by the annual March for Life on Parliament Hill in Ottawa each May.

Most people shy away from the topic because it’s controversial, but this should not mean we stop talking about it altogether. One group silencing the opposing group is not coming to an agreement, it’s dictatorship. The last time I checked, Canada is a democracy and each citizen has a right to his/her opinion and a right to express that opinion, even if it opposes that of the majority.

Plainly, we were censored because our ideas and conduct, though respectful and lawful, contradict the new dogma of my university. I came to Wilfrid Laurier University to get an education and I sure got one. I’ve learned disagreement now equals harm.

More specifically, I’ve learned that certain campus factions with a strong ideological agenda are manipulating language and the concept of victimhood to silence opponents … and no one, least not the Students’ Union that theoretically claims to represent us all, is trying to stop them.

 

[Photo shows flags at the Quad, Wilfrid Laurier University]