The Thanksgiving List
I came across this article about the five things that Rev. Jerry Falwell said he was most grateful for during this Thanksgiving Season. As I read through the five items I have to say that I agreed, without reservation, with each and every item. Read the complete article here.
Jerry Falwell's Thanksgiving
1. I'm thankful for my health.
2. I'm thankful for my family.
3. I'm thankful for President Bush.
4. I'm thankful for America's Founders.
5. I am most thankful to know the God of the universe.
Jerry Falwell's Thanksgiving
1. I'm thankful for my health.
2. I'm thankful for my family.
3. I'm thankful for President Bush.
4. I'm thankful for America's Founders.
5. I am most thankful to know the God of the universe.
posted by BigBubba at 12:18 PM
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53 Comments:
Dear Mr. Ducky, I have spent most of the holidays researching my family in Hingham, Rehoboth, Bridgewater, Boston, etc, on the internet. It was a most pleasant excursion. My great-grandfather graduated from Harvard in the early 1700s and pastored the Congregational Church of Rehoboth for more than 30 years.
It would be easy for one to read your tripe and believe that the descendants of the quality families of Massachusetts moved on and continued The Great Migration inland leaving Massachusetts to the nouveau riche and petite bourgeoisie.
I have confidence that there are still persons of quality in Massachusetts and I am probably related to them.
Today's Nietzsche quotes...
Wit is the epitaph of an emotion.
At times one remains faithful to a cause only because its opponents do not cease to be insipid.
Great indebtedness does not make men grateful, but vengeful; and if a little charity is not forgotten, it turns into a gnawing worm.
The growth of wisdom may be gauged exactly by the diminution of ill temper.
-FJ
Time to update your stereotypes of the typical "Christian"...
Patrick Hynes Column
-FJ
mr. ducky,
You're always claiming that people on the right hate sex. Here's a rebuttal for you...
Why the Left Hates Sex
-FJ
I read that Jennifer Morse article, and it's fair enough as a restatement of conservatives' position regarding homosexuality. Of course, it in no way refutes Ducky's claims that the Right fears sex.
But really, what is this "endless intervention into the most intimate details of people’s lives" of which she warns most ominously? I mean besides a little red herring for the kittens to chew on?
No gay marriage, no gay parents. Simple enough, end of story. The rest is just blather.
FJ, just curious--why the quotes around "Christian?" You take the Nitzschean view?
I put quotes around the word "Christian" to denote that left and right have different definitions and impressions as to what the word means. The Left has attempted to transform it into a perjorative. The article disputes that impression.
-FJ
And yes, I am something of a Nietzschean on the subject of Christianity...The word "Christianity" is already a misunderstanding - in reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross.--Nietzsche
aiiee, that's "Nietzchean" of course--though Jack Nitzsche does have a formidable catalog of hits and classics.
The article has very little to do with "gayness" and much to do about the fact that sex differences are "real". And anyone who seeks to eliminate these "real" differences is creating license for "endless intervention into the most intimate details of people’s lives" of which she warns most ominously?" in a vain attempt to create "equality" of outcomes in all spheres of human endeavor in opposition to nature.
You are right about one thing, the right does fear "unlimited" and/or "unrestrained" sex. For control of the sexual instinct and drive is a pre-requisite for civilization itself. Read Freud's "Totem and Taboo" or his "Civilization and Its' Discontents". Read Herbert Marcuse's "Eros and Civilization" to learn how the Left has deliberately "targetted" sexuality for its' own political purposes based upon a mis-applied neo-Freudianism.
Or/and haven't you ever heard of the "Oedipus" Complex and it's role in human sexual development and sexual "imprinting"? The environment necessary for "successful" resolution of the Oedipus Complex? The oral and other phases of human sexual development?
-FJ
...and of course, the correct spelling is Nietzschean
-FJ
Herbert Marcuse "Eros and Civilization", Political Preface written in 1966...
Eros and Civilization: the title expressed an optimistic, euphemistic, even positive thought, namely, that the achievements of advanced industrial society would enable man to reverse the direction of progress, to break the fatal union of productivity and destruction, liberty and repression — in other words, to learn the gay science (gaya sciencia) of how to use the social wealth for shaping man’s world in accordance with his Life Instincts, in the concerted struggle against the purveyors of Death. This optimism was based on the assumption that the rationale for the continued acceptance of domination no longer prevailed, that scarcity and the need for toil were only “artificially” perpetuated — in the interest of preserving the system of domination I neglected or minimized the fact that this “obsolescent rationale had been vastly strengthened (if not replaced), by even more efficient forms of social control. The very forces which rendered society capable of pacifying the struggle for existence served to repress in the individuals the need for such a liberation. Where the high standard of living does not suffice for reconciling the people with their life and their rulers, the “social engineering” of the soul and the “science of human relations” provide the necessary libidinal cathexis. In the affluent society, the authorities are hardly forced to justify their dominion. They deliver the goods; they satisfy the sexual and the aggressive energy of their subjects. Like the unconscious, the destructive power of which they so successfully represent, they are this side of good and evil, and the principle of contradiction has no place in their logic.
----
It was the thesis of Eros and Civilization, more fully developed in my One-Dimensional Man, that man could avoid the fate of a Welfare-Through-Warfare State only by achieving a new starting point where he could reconstruct the productive apparatus without that “inner-worldly asceticism” which provided the mental basis for domination and exploration. This image of man was the determinate negation of Nietzsche’s superman: man intelligent enough and healthy enough to dispense with all heros and heroic virtues, man without the impulse to live dangerously, to meet the challenge; man with the good conscience to make life an end-in-itself, to live in joy a life without fear. “Polymorphous sexuality” was the term which I used to indicate that the new direction of progress would depend completely on the opportunity to activate repressed or arrested organic, biological needs: to make the human body an instrument of pleasure rather than labor. The old formula, the development of prevailing needs and faculties, seemed to be inadequate; the emergence of new, qualitatively different needs and faculties seemed to be the prerequisite, the content of liberation.
----
from Chapter 1, written in 1955...
The concept of man that emerges from Freudian theory is the most irrefutable indictment of Western civilization and at the same time the most unshakable defense of this civilization. According to Freud, the history of man is the history of his repression. Culture constrains not only his societal but also his biological existence, not only parts of the human being but his instinctual structure itself. However, such constraint is the very precondition of progress. Left free to pursue their natural objectives, the basic instincts of man would be incompatible with all lasting association and preservation: they would destroy even where they unite. The uncontrolled Eros is just as fatal as his deadly counterpart, the death instinct. Their destructive force derives from the fact that they strive for a gratification which culture cannot grant: gratification as such and as an end in itself, at any moment. The instincts must therefore be deflected from their goal, inhibited in their aim. Civilization begins when the primary objective — namely, integral satisfaction of needs — is effectively renounced.
The vicissitudes of the instincts are the vicissitudes of the mental apparatus in civilization. The animal drives be come human instincts under the influence of the external reality. Their original “location” in the organism and their basic direction remain the same, but their objectives and their manifestations are subject to change. All psychoanalytic concepts (sublimation, identification, projection, repression, introjection) connote the mutability of the instincts. But the reality which shapes the instincts as well as their needs and satisfaction is a socio-historical world. The animal man becomes a human being only through a fundamental transformation of his nature, affecting not only the instinctual aims but also the instinctual “values” — that is, the principles that govern the attainment of the aims. The change in the governing value system may be tentatively defined as follows:
from: to;
immediate satisfaction: delayed satisfaction;
pleasure: restraint of pleasure;
joy (play): toil (work);
receptiveness: productiveness;
absence of repression: security
Freud described this change as the transformation of the pleasure principle into the reality principle....
-FJ
More Nietzscheism's...
We have art in order not to die of the truth.
Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.
Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.
Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.
Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.
Fear is the mother of morality.
And of course my favorite...
Only sick music makes money today.
-FJ
That's funny coming from someone who doesn't understand the difference between culture and civilization.
-FJ
Emerson "Beauty" 1860...
The spiral tendency of vegetation infects education also. Our books approach very slowly the things we most wish to know. What a parade we make of our science, and how far off, and at arm's length, it is from its objects! Our botany is all names, not powers: poets and romancers talk of herbs of grace and healing; but what does the botanist know of the virtues of his weeds? The geologist lays bare the strata, and can tell them all on his fingers: but does he know what effect passes into the man who builds his house in them? what effect on the race that inhabits a granite shelf? what on the inhabitants of marl and of alluvium?
We should go to the ornithologist with a new feeling, if he could teach us what the social birds say, when they sit in the autumn council, talking together in the trees. The want of sympathy makes his record a dull dictionary. His result is a dead bird. The bird is not in its ounces and inches, but in its relations to Nature; and the skin or skeleton you show me, is no more a heron, than a heap of ashes or a bottle of gases into which his body has been reduced, is Dante or Washington. The naturalist is led from the road by the whole distance of his fancied advance. The boy had juster views when he gazed at the shells on the beach, or the flowers in the meadow, unable to call them by their names, than the man in the pride of his nomenclature. Astrology interested us, for it tied man to the system. Instead of an isolated beggar, the farthest star felt him, and he felt the star. However rash and however falsified by pretenders and traders in it, the hint was true and divine, the soul's avowal of its large relations, and, that climate, century, remote natures, as well as near, are part of its biography. Chemistry takes to pieces, but it does not construct. Alchemy which sought to transmute one element into another, to prolong life, to arm with power, — that was in the right direction. All our science lacks a human side. The tenant is more than the house. Bugs and stamens and spores, on which we lavish so many years, are not finalities, and man, when his powers unfold in order, will take Nature along with him, and emit light into all her recesses. The human heart concerns us more than the poring into microscopes, and is larger than can be measured by the pompous figures of the astronomer.
-FJ
Perhaps she needs to be sent to one of your re-education camps to learn the Modern Politically Correct terminology.
From the American Heritage Dictionary...
Traditionally, gender has been used primarily to refer to the grammatical categories of “masculine,” “feminine,” and “neuter,” but in recent years the word has become well established in its use to refer to sex-based categories, as in phrases such as gender gap and the politics of gender. This usage is supported by the practice of many anthropologists, who reserve sex for reference to biological categories, while using gender to refer to social or cultural categories. According to this rule, one would say The effectiveness of the medication appears to depend on the sex (not gender) of the patient, but In peasant societies, gender (not sex) roles are likely to be more clearly defined. This distinction is useful in principle, but it is by no means widely observed, and considerable variation in usage occurs at all levels.
-FJ
You just hate Peter Jackson because his heroes aren't common or degenerate enough for you. Too many courageous "aristocrats" saving the day. But you're right, he IS a hack. Too many freakin' common Hobbits playin' a critical role as well...a sign of the "sickness". And "Middle Earth", what a joke, the story should rest upon "Higher Ground".
Yes, "art's worst enemy" ARE the free markets which serve as proxy for the tastes of the MASSES. For their tastes are far too civilized, common and/or un-cultured.
There is a sickness in civilization that longs for its' own liberation and subsequent extermination.
-FJ
Jose Ortega y Gasset, "The Revolt of the Masses", 1930.
"THERE is one fact which, whether for good or ill, is of utmost importance in the public life of Europe at the present moment. This fact is the accession of the masses to complete social power. As the masses, by definition, neither should nor can direct their own personal existence, and still less rule society in general, this fact means that actually Europe is suffering from the greatest crisis that can afflict peoples, nations, and civilisation. Such a crisis has occurred more than once in history. Its characteristics and its consequences are well known. So also is its name. It is called the rebellion of the masses. In order to understand this formidable fact, it is important from the start to avoid giving to the words "rebellion," "masses," and "social power" a meaning exclusively or primarily political. Public life is not solely political, but equally, and even primarily, intellectual, moral, economic, religious; it comprises all our collective habits, including our fashions both of dress and of amusement.
Perhaps the best line of approach to this historical phenomenon may be found by turning our attention to a visual experience, stressing one aspect of our epoch which is plain to our very eyes. This fact is quite simple to enunciate, though not so to analyse. I shall call it the fact of agglomeration, of "plenitude." Towns are full of people, houses full of tenants, hotels full of guests, trains full of travellers, cafes full of customers, parks full of promenaders, consulting-rooms of famous doctors fun of patients, theatres full of spectators, and beaches full of bathers. What previously was, in general, no problem, now begins to be an everyday one, namely, to find room. "
-FJ
Mr. Ducky, what do you do with the trilogy? Include all the Elven songs and backstory, all of that? Come on, man--he did a good job. Lord of the Rings isn't made for the art house.
Farmer, give me a break with that stuff. The gay point is all she's got. The rest is academic at best, polemics at worst. Is anyone actually against equal pay for equal work? and conversely, does any sane person think you can send a 5'2" 100 lb lady up a ladder to save a 225 lb guy from a fire?
I'm very aware of what having pregnant women in the workplace does to productivity. Doesn't make it an insurmountable problem.
Yes norm there still are people like me who are against equal pay for equal work. Especially when it's a school teacher trying to explain why she deserves to be paid as much as a garbage man or truck driver. It "isn't" equal work. It's a money grab based upon an artificial "fairness" doctrine.
And there are many jobs which women should NOT attempt unless they actually HAVE the physical strength of a male. Infantry soldier, cop, firefighter, shipwright, garbageman, and anything remotely "dangerous" or carcinogenic.
And the whole idea of women in the workplace as a "good" thing has got to be turned around. It's the greedy DINK syndrome. People raising children should forgoe the second income. Why do you think there used to be a "marriage penalty"? It wasn't "good" for society to have women in the workplace. Men are "expendable", women are NOT. DINKS who earn over the poverty level should be double and triple taxed (bet there would be no advocates for homosexual marriage if THAT were still the case).
And finally, pregnant women should be at home preparing for the arrival of their child, not wasting their time in the workplace. Much as many people speak of the "rewards" of the workplace, all I can say is "vanitas". And the requirement for "lactation stations" in buildings is as ridiculous as requiring every publically accessible location in the world to be capable of accomodating the handicapped.
-FJ
Yes, FJ, I remember you are "all repression." Personally, I can't imagine any parent who is pro-"unrestrained" sex. Sex indeed requires restraint.
Thing is, I don't want your repression ramping up into a hysterical neurosis which you then transfer to me in order to quell your own ego. Capiche?
Ducky, all I'm saying is putting together an epic like LotR is a gargantuan task. I think he did the trilogy justice. The casting was great, almost no cringeworthy Hollywood-isms in the dialogue, stellar design team, a decent job of hewing to the spirit of the tale. No one's saying he's Godard, are they? I mean, come on--Titanic got a freaking Oscar! Peter Jackson's surely an improvement?
"Vanitas?"
Get off that high horse, FJ. The air's sure a bit rare up there, and it may be having an adverse effect on the oxygenation of your brain cells. Complain about DINK syndrome, yet defend our current economic system? Once again, having your cake, and chowing down, to boot. If I've misread you, you've got some 'splainin' to do.
And please buy a clue about teachers and commensurate pay with garbage collectors, would ya?
mr ducky,
I'll take your film criticism under advisement. My approach to film is much as Plato's was to theater. Ban the poets unless the tale is "instructive" and "virtuous". IMO, LOTR and Star Wars bordered on that category, but ultimately fell short. Perhaps that's why I'm a such big fan of "tragedy" and not very big on the "happy endings" of the "older" Euripides. And perhaps that's also why I enjoy the comedy of "Southpark".... especially the "Kenny REALLY dies" episode.
-FJ
Normy, I afraid I DO have a clue about commensurate pay. (Adam Smith, "The Wealth of Nations")...
The money price of labour is necessarily regulated by two circumstances; the demand for labour, and the price of the necessaries and conveniences of life. The demand for labour, according as it happens to be increasing, stationary, or declining, or to require an increasing, stationary, or declining population, determines the quantity of the necessaries and conveniencies of life which must be given to the labourer; and the money price of labour is determined by what is requisite for purchasing this quantity. Though the money price of labour, therefore, is sometimes high where the price of provisions is low, it would be still higher, the demand continuing the same, if the price of provisions was high.
---
The five following are the principal circumstances which, so far as I have been able to observe, make up for a small pecuniary gain in some employments, and counterbalance a great one in others: first, the agreeableness or disagreeableness of the employments themselves; secondly, the easiness and cheapness, or the difficulty and expense of learning them; thirdly, the constancy or inconstancy of employment in them; fourthly, the small or great trust which must be reposed in those who exercise them; and, fifthly, the probability or improbability of success in them.
First, the wages of labour vary with the ease or hardship, the cleanliness or dirtiness, the honourableness or dishonourableness of the employment. Thus in most places, take the year round, a journeyman tailor earns less than a journeyman weaver. His work is much easier. A journeyman weaver earns less than a journeyman smith. His work is not always easier, but it is much cleanlier. A journeyman blacksmith, though an artificer, seldom earns so much in twelve hours as a collier, who is only a labourer, does in eight. His work is not quite so dirty, is less dangerous, and is carried on in daylight, and above ground. Honour makes a great part of the reward of all honourable professions. In point of pecuniary gain, all things considered, they are generally under-recompensed, as I shall endeavour to show by and by. Disgrace has the contrary effect. The trade of a butcher is a brutal and an odious business; but it is in most places more profitable than the greater part of common trades. The most detestable of all employments, that of public executioner, is, in proportion to the quantity of work done, better paid than any common trade whatever.
---
(I only included the first as an example as to "why" the garbageman sometimes deserves "more" than the teacher), especially when we start to take "supply" and "demand" into account.
-FJ
....and no I do NOT have much use for our current "economic system". The ratio of small to large businesses has been irrepairably tilted in favor of large, and our improved communication and transportation systems have completely "flattened" and "universallized" the marketplace into one big stupid dog-eat-dog pie.
-FJ
As Marcuse said The uncontrolled Eros is just as fatal as his deadly counterpart, the death instinct..
And so "balance" is needed between the two. Repression is JUST as necessary as love. And the wise man of the ages once discovered and applied THAT balance, although it has been largely lost to America in the last century. And that was the "original" heterosexual marriage for life contract... the bedrock foundation upon which ALL western civilization has been built.
-FJ
-FJ
OK, fj, I dig. But I'm thinking if you need to quote Adam Smith regarding garbagemen/teachers, you don't quite get it yet.
Knowing plenty of both, it's not a stretch to say teaching is right up there with police work in terms of the thanklessness, the paperwork drudgery, the labyrinth of regulations that must be followed at the risk of your job, the sudden stress. Maybe this burden is exacerbated by DINK syndrome and lack of educational follow-up in homes, but the burden on teachers, themselves, is pretty high. People point to "high" salaries and summers off, not realizing many of these teachers pay their own health care, work 9 hour days, and actually do work extra in the summers. Meanwhile they've got parents on one side and non-supportive administrators onthe other, not to mention the emotional investment they make with the kids. They deal with a level of stress a garbageman can't fathom.
So if you want to talk about the education system, or university teacher education, let's go nuts. But why single them out to begrudge them a living?
Grain-of-salt disclaimer: I'm considering scrapping the 9-5 and going back and getting my teaching certificate, but I look at the current state of things--and I can't quite bring myself to do it! You gotta do it for "love" (heh heh) because, man, I don't know that it's worth the money.
Yes norm, as Adam Smith says...
"Honour makes a great part of the reward of all honourable professions. In point of pecuniary gain, all things considered, they are generally under-recompensed, as I shall endeavour to show by and by."
and so it is you who I don't think quite "gets it".
And I don't "begrudge" teachers a living. I admire the 'H out of "some" of them and their willingness to forgoe the big bucks in order to instruct the next generation. But it's one thing to do something that's clean and neat and lot's of people want to do, and quite another to something dangerous, smelly, and Nobody wants to do. To say the jobs are "equivalent" is a gross misrepresentation, as are most "equal pay for equal work" and other "fairness" schemes. Smith points out "why".
But I also think they need to let teachers become more "independent". The "factory approach" to schooling doesn't work very well. We've got to get back to "tracking" kids based upon their abilities, and stop all these modern faddish "inequity/ grievance" based educational techniques. And the curriculum needs to be tailored to the individual classroom, not dictated by some administrator at "public school central".
-FJ
Norm, I have often thought about teaching, however, I got over it. Perhaps a private school or charter school. I confess I just don't have the temperment for dealing with the little dears.
Speaking of love, respect, profession, etc. ponder this. Back in the day when teachers were poorly paid they did a better job of teaching the little dears.
Honor? For teachers? You do remember the FPM forums, don't you? If you call that view of teachers "honor"....
But why stop with teachers? Why not lawyers? Accountants? Ad men? Actors? Lots of people lining up to do those neat, clean things. However, lots of Mexicans lining up to do dirty, smelly things.
As Smith said...
" first, the agreeableness or disagreeableness of the employments themselves; secondly, the easiness and cheapness, or the difficulty and expense of learning them; thirdly, the constancy or inconstancy of employment in them; fourthly, the small or great trust which must be reposed in those who exercise them; and, fifthly, the probability or improbability of success in them."
There are at least five different factors that account for salary differences...on "top" of supply/demand.
-FJ
and norm, as for FPM...
I think most of that discussion about university professors centered around the "dishonor" of politicizing the classroom and it's use as an "indoctrinating" center for "progressive" values that were antithetical to the classical "liberal" ones.
Scholarship was no longer a valued commodity at the university level. The focus today is more on "research" and the "advancement" of "new", as opposed to "old", ideas.
And the university environment has been corrupted and diminished by the adoption of the "German" University model...
Nietzsche, "The Future of our Educational Institutions"...
"Think of the fate of the Burschenschaft when I ask you, Did the German university then understand that spirit, as even the German princes in their hatred appear to have understood it? Did the alma mater boldly and resolutely throw her protecting arms round her noble sons and say: 'You must kill me first, before you touch my children?' I hear your answer--by it you may judge whether the German university is an educational institution or not.
"The student knew at that time at what depth a true educational institution must take root, namely, in an inward renovation and inspiration of the purest moral faculties. And this must always be repeated to the student's credit. He may have learnt on the field of battle what he could learn least of all in the sphere of 'academical freedom': that great leaders are necessary, and that all culture begins with obedience. And in the midst of victory, with his thoughts turned to his liberated fatherland, he made the vow that he would remain German. German! Now he learnt to understand his Tacitus; now he grasped the signification of Kant's categorical imperative; now he was enraptured by Weber's "Lyre and Sword" songs. The gates of philosophy, of art, yea, even of antiquity, opened unto him; and in one of the most memorable of bloody acts, the murder of Kotzebue, he revenged--with penetrating insight and enthusiastic short-sightedness--his one and only Schiller, prematurely consumed by the opposition of the stupid world: Schiller, who could have been his leader, master, and organiser, and whose loss he now bewailed with such heartfelt resentment.
"For that was the doom of those promising students: they did not find the leaders they wanted. They gradually became uncertain, discontented, and at variance among themselves; unlucky indiscretions showed only too soon that the one indispensability of powerful minds was lacking in the midst of them: and, while that mysterious murder gave no less evidence of the grave danger arising from the want of a leader. They were leaderless--therefore they perished.
"For I repeat it, my friends! All culture begins with the very opposite of that which is now so highly esteemed as 'academical freedom': with obedience, with subordination, with discipline, with subjection. And as leaders must have followers so also must the followers have a leader--here a certain reciprocal predisposition prevails in the hierarchy of spirits: yea, a kind of pre-established harmony. This eternal hierarchy, towards which all things naturally tend, is always threatened by that pseudo-culture which now sits on the throne of the present. It endeavours either to bring the leaders down to the level of its own servitude or else to cast them out altogether. It seduces the followers when they are seeking their predestined leader, and overcomes them by the fumes of its narcotics. When, however, in spite of all this, leader and followers have at last met, wounded and sore, there is an impassioned feeling of rapture, like the echo of an eversounding lyre, a feeling which I can let you divine only by means of a simile.
"Have you ever, at a musical rehearsal, looked at the strange, shrivelled-up, good-natured species of men who usually form the German orchestra? What changes and fluctuations we see in that capricious goddess 'form'! What noses and ears, what clumsy, danse macabre movements! Just imagine for a moment that you were deaf, and had never dreamed of the existence of sound or music, and that you were looking upon the orchestra as a company of actors, and trying to enjoy their performance as a drama and nothing more. Undisturbed by the idealising effect of the sound, you could never see enough of the stern, medieval, wood-cutting movement of this comical spectacle, this harmonious parody on the homo sapiens.
"Now, on the other hand, assume that your musical sense has returned, and that your ears are opened. Look at the honest conductor at the head of the orchestra performing his duties in a dull, spiritless fashion: you no longer think of the comical aspect of the whole scene, you listen--but it seems to you that the spirit of tediousness spreads out from the honest conductor over all his companions. Now you see only torpidity and flabbiness, you hear only the trivial, the rhythmically inaccurate, and the melodiously trite. You see the orchestra only as an indifferent, ill-humoured, and even wearisome crowd of players.
"But set a genius--a real genius--in the midst of this crowd; and you instantly perceive something almost incredible. It is as if this genius, in his lightning transmigration, had entered into these mechanical, lifeless bodies, and as if only one demoniacal eye gleamed forth out of them all. Now look and listen--you can never listen enough! When you again observe the orchestra, now loftily storming, now fervently wailing, when you notice the quick tightening of every muscle and the rhythmical necessity of every gesture, then you too will feel what a pre-established harmony there is between leader and followers, and how in this hierarchy of spirits everything impels us towards the establishment of a like organisation. You can divine from my simile what I would understand by a true educational institution, and why I am very far from recognising one in the present type of university."
-FJ
I love that Nietzsche excerpt! (though it's impossible to respect its self-pitying despair). It seems to me his notion applies across a broad spectrum...think of what happens to "genius" in the corporation.
FPM's main beef was with academe, but its disrespect filtered down to the teachers. Permit a moment of political incorrectness: we don't see it as a "manly" profession anymore (though it once was). Now it is seen as the province of nurturing, well-meaning motherly types (fine for the early years). And lest's face it, Education majors are typically not the brightest bulbs...Why? Because there's either no money or no "honor" in it--so the bright ones go elsewhere.
(so give up the Smith quotes, farmer--they just don't wash. It's too easy to make a case against yourself).
I maintain that liberals and conservatives are both culpable for what passes for education these days. Liberals have made a mess of the system but at least they're in there still trying (they're the ones still teaching Rousseau, fj). Conservatives unfortunately have a less "liberal" perspective on the mission. Education to them is merely job training. Some home-school--for better and worse--but mostly, they've given up.
There is a lot of good "radical" thought on education. But I doubt our economic system is prepared for it. Education has become a political football to punt back and forth in the so-called "culture wars." What happened to vocational training? it's just a tag, now. What's wrong with the trades? Why should everyone have to go to college? What about year-round schools, with shorter, more frequent breaks?
Just curious, fj, are you an academic? what's the story with your well of classics?
Another excerpt from same treatise...(of course instead of just getting snipets, you could read the entire discourse here)...Future of Ed. You'll notice I've "em-BOLD-ened" the links to "Smith" amongst other things...
"I believe I have already hinted at the quarter in which the cry for the greatest possible expansion of education is most loudly raised. This expansion belongs to the most beloved of the dogmas of modern political economy. As much knowledge and education as possible; therefore the greatest possible supply and demand--hence as much happiness as possible:--that is the formula. In this case utility is made the object and goal of education,--utility in the sense of gain--the greatest possible pecuniary gain. In the quarter now under consideration culture would be defined as that point of vantage which enables one to `keep in the van of one's age,' from which one can see all the easiest and best roads to wealth, and with which one controls all the means of communication between men and nations. The purpose of education, according to this scheme, would be to rear the most `current' men possible,--`current' being used here in the sense in which it is applied to the coins of the realm. The greater the number of such men, the happier a nation will be; and this precisely is the purpose of our modern educational institutions: to help every one, as far as his nature will allow, to become `current'; to develop him so that his particular degree of knowledge and science may yield him the greatest possible amount of happiness and pecuniary gain. Every one must be able to form some sort of estimate of himself; he must know how much he may reasonably expect from life. The `bond between intelligence and property' which this point of view postulates has almost the force of a moral principle. In this quarter all culture is loathed which isolates, which sets goals beyond gold and gain, and which requires time: it is customary to dispose of such eccentric tendencies in education as systems of `Higher Egotism,' or of `Immoral Culture--Epicureanism.' According to the morality reigning here, the demands are quite different; what is required above all is `rapid education,' so that a money-earning creature may be produced with all speed; there is even a desire to make this education so thorough that a creature may be reared that will be able to earn a great deal of money. Men are allowed only the precise amount of culture which is compatible with the interests of gain; but that amount, at least, is expected from them. In short: mankind has a necessary right to happiness on earth--that is why culture is necessary--but on that account alone!"
"I must just say something here," said the philosopher. "In the case of the view you have described so clearly, there arises the great and awful danger that at some time or other the great masses may overleap the middle classes and spring headlong into this earthly bliss. That is what is now called `the social question.' It might seem to these masses that education for the greatest number of men was only a means to the earthly bliss of the few: the `greatest possible expansion of education' so enfeebles education that it can no longer confer privileges or inspire respect. The most general form of culture is simply barbarism. But I do not wish to interrupt your discussion."
---
"For centuries it has been an understood thing that one alluded to scholars alone when one spoke of cultured men; but experience tells us that it would be difficult to find any necessary relation between the two classes to-day. For at present the exploitation of a man for the purpose of science is accepted everywhere without the slightest scruple. Who still ventures to ask, What may be the value of a science which consumes its minions in this vampire fashion? The division of labour in science is practically struggling towards the same goal which religions in certain parts of the world are consciously striving after,--that is to say, towards the decrease and even the destruction of learning. That, however, which, in the case of certain religions, is a perfectly justifiable aim, both in regard to their origin and their history, can only amount to self-immolation when transferred to the realm of science. In all matters of a general and serious nature, and above all, in regard to the highest philosophical problems, we have now already reached a point at which the scientific man, as such, is no longer allowed to speak. On the other hand, that adhesive and tenacious stratum which has now filled up the interstices between the sciences--Journalism--believes it has a mission to fulfil here, and this it does, according to its own particular lights--that is to say, as its name implies, after the fashion of a day-labourer.
"It is precisely in journalism that the two tendencies combine and become one. The expansion and the diminution of education here join hands. The newspaper actually steps into the place of culture, and he who, even as a scholar, wishes to voice any claim for education, must avail himself of this viscous stratum of communication which cements the seams between all forms of life, all classes, all arts, and all sciences, and which is as firm and reliable as news paper is, as a rule. In the newspaper the peculiar educational aims of the present culminate, just as the journalist, the servant of the moment, has stepped into the place of the genius, of the leader for all time, of the deliverer from the tyranny of the moment. Now, tell me, distinguished master, what hopes could I still have in a struggle against the general topsy-turvification of all genuine aims for education; with what courage can I, a single teacher, step forward, when I know that the moment any seeds of real culture are sown, they will be mercilessly crushed by the roller of this pseudo-culture? Imagine how useless the most energetic work on the part of the individual teacher must be, who would fain lead a pupil back into the distant and evasive Hellenic world and to the real home of culture, when in less than an hour, that same pupil will have recourse to a newspaper, the latest novel, or one of those learned books, the very style of which already bears the revolting impress of modern barbaric culture--"
You are right norm. Conservatives have abandoned culture for money, and liberals, while still trying, are incapable of overcoming their love of "freedom" to work in a fashion contrary to their own beliefs that might actually benefit their students... by providing structure and rigourous academic discipline. Someone needs to convince students to acquire "culture" INSTEAD of the means to earn one's daily bread. To study the "Great Books" instead of getting an MBA. Instead, the incompetent "Left" tires to shunt them into political action and to redress what they (the Left) view as "societal failings" without giving them the tools they require to redress them (The Great Books).
And no, I'm no academic. I'm simply an autodidact who came to the classics and philosophy at mid-life in reaction to what one might call a "mid-life crisis"...
How did you approach your study in reaction to this "crisis"? One thing lead to another, or did you follow any sort of program? You must have been pre-disposed in some way toward the classics and antiquity.
I was predisposed with a love of history, and fortunate enough to have been exposed to a certain remarkable college professor who was a leading "psycho-historian" in his day (He didn't want you to learn what Hitler did, he wanted you to understand why Hitler did what he did in Freudian terms).
And so I was in the midst of reading Will Durant's "Story of Civilization" history series (chronologically) when I happened across a little book he had written called "The Story of Philosophy". From that point on, I abandoned all "secondary" sources (like Durant) and vowed to read only "primary" ones. I also adopted a "chronological" and "naive" approach... starting with Plato... but then backtracking as I flushed out his many "references" to events and people of his day (and by naive, I mean I read them "uncritically" and took what was said "literally"). It was a kind of "total immersion" approach... remarkably similar to the Great Books curriculum at St. John's.
Needless to say I "went" wherever the moment, and my interest, and the "web" led me.
After the Greeks, I went on to the Romans, Rousseau, back tracked to Machiavelli, etc.... trying to read all I could from all the interesting philosopher's Durant had profiled in his book. And once I focused in on someone interesting, I tried to read EVERYTHING they had written... including their plays, letters, essays, poems, everything I could my hands on.
I ended up learning more in the past four years than in my entire previous lifetime (including a BS and MS). My only regret is that I didn't start fifteen years earlier. For I feel that I was "uneducated" up until the point I began to pursue a truly "liberal" education.
-FJ
...and what "advances" would those be, mr. ducky? Separation of supply and distribution? LOL!
-FJ
Mr. Ducky, I believe that it is a reasonable point of argument. I will use 1963 as a point in time. Up to the year 1963 teacher pay was low. The profession was viewed as a low paying public service. Despite that teachers were honored every bit as much as doctors, lawyers and other well paid professionals. The American public education system peaked in 1963 and began a downhill slide. While the educational system was sliding downhill it was passed by teacher pay going in the opposite direction - up.
I have said it before and I will say it again. My first wife learned reading, 'ritin' and cipherin' sitting under a tree by the Han Gang. No building, no chair, no desk, no chalkboard, no computers, no nothing.
The public school progressive liberals constantly scream about how money and more bells and whistles will solve all their problems in educating our little dears.
A good solid oak paddle and iron discipline could save thousands of dollars in the public school system.
I received my last licks the last semester of my Senior year. I had my fun, but, when I walked up on the stage I was educated.
Farmer John, I have thought about following the Great Books reading plan for a classical education. My problem is that when I get going my mind is like the ping pong ball demostration of how atomic fission works. With a mind going off like that it is difficult to focus.
I really regret not taking Latin in High School. I have been studying it a little trying to increase my knowledge. I think that having a knowledge of Latin is a very good thing intellectually.
Norm, speaking of women in the workforce. Big Bubba is big. Really big. Been big all of my life. Only six foot tall, but a real, real big six foot.
I always observe with interest armed women wearing uniforms in public. I try to visualize them taking me out without resorting to lethal force. I try to psyche myself out and become fearful. I just can't make it.
What's that all about anyway? Putting petite women out there to control a world that can turn deadly violent in a heartbeat. In an era that emphasizes police using deadly force as an extreme last choice that would seem to be their only choice. I just don't understand, Norm.
I am really fascinated by movies of beautiful, curvy, petite women beating the heck out of really big dudes. What a laugher. Do people really believe that is going to happen? Oh, brother!!
BB,
Sounds like you've got the "perfect" mind for a "Great Books" like autodidactic Program. Only instead of "moving on" to the next book, you need to follow each and every one of those little ping pong balls to wherever they may lead. It isn't enough to simply "read" the book... like in the Nietzsche essay on education. For he is much like Plato and states at the outset of his work…
"I am well aware of the nature of the community to whose serious consideration I now wish to commend that conversation--I know it to be a community which is striving to educate and enlighten its members on a scale so magnificently out of proportion to its size that it must put all larger cities to shame. This being so, I presume I may take it for granted that in a quarter where so much is done for the things of which I wish to speak, people must also think a good deal about them. In my account of the conversation already mentioned, I shall be able to make myself completely understood only to those among my audience who will be able to guess what I can do no more than suggest, who will supply what I am compelled to omit, and who, above all, need but to be reminded and not taught."
And so when Nietzsche says, as in the passages I referenced previously…
"Think of the fate of the Burschenschaft when I ask you, Did the German university then understand that spirit, as even the German princes in their hatred appear to have understood it?"
You must do some research. What was the Burschenschaft? What was it before 1820? What is it now?
Or when he says...
"The gates of philosophy, of art, yea, even of antiquity, opened unto him; and in one of the most memorable of bloody acts, the murder of Kotzebue, he revenged--with penetrating insight and enthusiastic short-sightedness--his one and only Schiller, prematurely consumed by the opposition of the stupid world: Schiller, who could have been his leader, master, and organiser, and whose loss he now bewailed with such heartfelt resentment."
Who was Schiller? Kotzebue? How do these people and events relate to the Burschenschaft.
Only when you’ve discovered the answers will you experience that “aha!” moment and understand the message Nietzsche was attempting to convey.
And the more you know, the more the “epiphanies” start rolling, one after another, and you can no longer stand to put the book down. You become driven, like I was, from book, to book, to book.
-FJ
I wish I had learned Latin too. Fortunately, I learned a little Espanol... latin "lite". So at least I don't need to look up "all" the words in my Latin-English Dictionary.
-FJ
And I'm afraid I read much as the Straussians do... for a discussion of what I mean, Strauss wrote a book called Persecution and the Art of Writing
A frank discussion of his "method" can be found here Here
I don't claim that EVERYTHING Strauss claims about the subject is true, but I have read of few of his "analyses" on the works of Plato and Machiavelli, and have found them extremely insightful.
-FJ
Knowledge of Latin will quickly expand knowledge of Spanish. English words that originate in the Latin language have a very regular structure for converting the English word to the correct Spanish word. Some examples,
tension - tension
position - posicion
passion - pasion
compassion - compasion
remission - remision
passion - pasion
all of the Spanish words have an accent mark in the last syllable.
contrite - contrito
arid - arido
objective - objetivo
ignorant - ignorante
Bubba, with regard to teachers/low pay: those days, even as they included the baby boom and "mass-"everything, we were more homogenous as a culture--"uni-cultural" as I've said before. The time you mention marks the end of the momentum of the shared experience of the Depression and WW II. This may have been the last moment of the country pulling together. When people have a more-or-less shared set of values, it creates an easier basis from which to instruct them.
I believe this is also why it seems the school systems abroad seem to be more effective at laying that basis. To be sure, they are generally more strict.
I have no problem with "progressive" education, in theory. I don't even have a problem with "multiculturalism" as a personal interest pursuit. I do have had a big problem with "multiculturalism" as an educational agenda.
Similarly, I think the gentler techniques they teach teachers for discipline trumps humiliation and fear any day. The problem is, what do you do when they're not effective. That's where you run into problems, because who is the Authority?--parents suing schools, administrators playing C.Y.A., and the teachers take the brunt of this.
To wrap up what can't be wrapped up in a nutshell: We've got to re-assert an American "culture," we've got to re-establish schools as moral training grounds, too, and not be afraid to mention You-Know-Who on occassion, we've got to have certain expectations of PARENTS and an understanding that when in school, the school has the authority over the child.
We can start with uniforms.
Thanks in no small part to discussion here, I've been delving into the Nietzsche and the Plato and ping-ponging like mad.
However, I can't help but think of the old Steve Martin joke about studying philosophy in college: your first year, your hand is in the air all the time. By the end of your last year, you can barely find a reason to lift your finger off the desk!
Steve must have read the chapter on the "Academic Chairs of Virtue" from Nietzsche's "Zarathustra"... for it is a subject destined to put one to sleep...
One cannot simply study "right" opinion and ignore "true" opinion. For it is this dichotomy that keeps one awake.
-FJ
Farmer, I think what the Wild and Crazy Guy meant was that--rather than put him to sleep--the 4th year philosophy student is paralyzed by agonizing over coming up with a justification for whether it is "right" or "true" to even raise his hand.
Good point. You're probably "right". ;-)
-FJ
What's your source for the dichotomy of "right" and "true" opinion? Doesn't Plato/Soc use these interchangeably?
"Socrates"--almost makes you nostalgic for the old days at FPM. Almost.
I maintain that Socrates, Donal, and uptownsteve had a little love triangle thing happening.
No, I don't believe Plato uses them (right/true) interchangably. He is EXTREMELY precise in his word selection... but I have to admit, I'm not so sure that his translators are quite as precise.
My source for this dichotomy lies in two of Plato's dialogues, his "Meno" with the parables of Larisa and the portraits of Daedelaus...and his "Theaetetus" when he expresses three different "wind-eggs" of concepts...one involving true opinion coupled with "Knowledge"/ rational explanation, and the other of right opinion coupled with "Knowledge of difference".
But I think the contemporary philosopher Mortimer Adler explains things a little more simply (although not precisely or in exactly the same terms) as the dichotomy of Is vs Ought which requires a vision of the form of the "Good", and perhaps a "true opinion" curved or bent so as to achieve a desired outcome. (ie - Socrates 1st principle..."it is better to suffer an injustice than commit one" might serve as a basis for "right opinion" (or Kant's "treat people as ends unto themselves, not means to an end)... while Aristotle's 1st principle... "the same attribute cannot at the same time belong and not belong to the same subject and in the same respect" might apply to "true opinion")
But you be the judge. It requires a little thought to resolve the paradoxical differences. And it is in resolving the paradox that the "aha moment" arrives and nails down a corner of the portrait of Daedeleus.
-FJ
And again, I think you may be right about the FPM "menage".
Norm, ever since I can remember I have had a fascination with other cultures, and the cultural diversity of this nation. We have defined ourselves as a multicultural society with diverse interests ever since we first set foot on this continent. It has always been with us if someone had the intellectual discernment to spot it.
Political correctness, diversity, multicultural has all become the salvation intellectually challenged progressive educators. It is their "great discovery." They are fond of these issues because they were able to define and totally control them in the school environment once they made their discovery. They couldn't pull off claiming they invented the wheel, or like Algore, the Internet, but their "great discovery" had always been just below the radar. Like a hidden magnet under a table causing pins on the table top to move, diversity, or multiculturalism always had a pull on our culture and society. It just didn't rise to the level of becoming a public school subject or a college level specialization. Here in San Antonio I never needed a multiculturalism class to recognize Mexicans, Belgians, Germans, etc.
Think about it for one moment, Norm, if you are an intellectually challenged progressive educator would you prefer to stake your professional career on those issues, or the more complex issues of English Lit, History, Sciences, etc. Nowadays it is all about the political stuff, smoke the for real stuff, and you don't have a prayer since God is no longer part of educational picture.
It is a classic tactic of the bureaucrat of limited capabilities to create easily controlled situations with plenty of obscuring smoke to point to with pride as an accomplishment.
I am looking for a huge increase in the home schooling movement and private Christian schools if something isn't done about the public school system. I believe that it could reach a point where high property taxes cannot be justified because of a lack of students. Home schoolers have for years been making the public schools look inadequate based on SAT scores. It will get worse.
Home schooling is on the cusp of becoming very sophisticated thanks to the use of satellite transmissions for educational programing.
Thanks for the heads up mr. ducky. Schumpeter looks interesting. Wiki Bio
-FJ
Did you have trouble with your test scores Mr. Ducky? I am not surprised.
Big Bubba
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