Unchanging things: some Sunday thoughts

In Aristotles' Rhetoric, he complained that "young men" are "fickle in their desires." His teacher, Plato, wrote in Republic, "In a democratic state the schoolmaster is afraid of his pupils and flatters them."

Roughly 2.200 years later, Cambridge University student Kenneth John Freeman wrote that Plato's broader "indictment" was that "children now love luxury; they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for elders" — a quote now commonly misattributed to Plato's teacher, Socrates. 

A decade after Freeman, Episcopal priest Bernard Iddings Bell hissed similarly to Plato and Aristotle in a 1927 Atlantic article that college students were "drifters into conformity," "falsely democratic dogma has destroyed among us respect for trained intelligence," and "we are manufacturing mental and ethical jellyfish."

Then came the Episcopal priest's deeper, and anticipated, grievance. "The usual institution of higher learning finds it easier to ignore this problem ... because the facing of it inevitably involves religion" — the key to all enlightenment, rectitude and morality. With his original emphasis, the “ignoring of religion is fatal to the real purpose of education.”

Two years earlier than Bell's piece, Atlantic op-eder Charles Sheldon, minister and theologian, penned a rather unorthodox view: that "teaching [the young] lessons about how to live a good and moral life ... can be found in religion but not exclusively there." And bringing us really up-to-date, The Atlantic's Isabel Fattal concurs, writing that her Orthodox Jewish education in 1-12 helped her in tackling "theological" questions, but that type of learning "is far from the only method."

I have always believed that religion in youthful eduction is the least preferable method and potentially a dangerous one, in that it involves indoctrination of what John Locke called the tabula rasa mind — a "blank slate." There exist more than "2,200 religions, churches, denominations, religious bodies, faith groups, tribes, movements, ultimate concerns, etc.," and they've been bickering with one another, often violently, since the advent of the second religion. 

This has been so because the young and ignorant are indoctrinated to believe only theirs' is the true religion. That's fine with me, as long as they resist hustling and foisting their belief on others. But that's a difficult mission when one has been told that he or she thinks essentially as God thinks, unlike folks who possess souls doomed to hell while corrupting their young.

Think 9/11 and its geographical origin's perpetual sectarian violence. Christianity has no cause to feel superior, since not many decades ago its Protestants and Catholics were slaughtering one other with indoctrinated glee. Today it's nearly as bad, as some Christian schools teach modern science as an evil hoax and in general "educate" their charges into a life of continuing ignorance.

Whose lives go on to vote for charlatans like Donald J. Trump. Among Trumpism's many vile beliefs and shallowest of thinking is that "morality" taught by the nation's religions (meaning backwoods Protestantism) is an absolute must. Without their browbeating and tsk-tsking, how else can not only merely children but all adults learn to lead a life of blissful virtues? You know, like Donald. 

For nearly half of this country's population, things haven't much changed since ancient Greek philosophers set out to set society straight. I'll repeat with my own emphasis that I suppress quivering with angst at the religious as Hitchens did. For him, quivering became as habitual as thumping the Bible is among some. I choose to tremble and combat Trump and Trumpism's wholly counterfeit virtues.

I'll finish by also repeating a thought I've expressed here before. If one wishes to understand or sharpen one's morality, or what I call ethics, one should spend a few days reading Shakespeare's plays, every one of them. There will be found commentary on the entire gamut of human frailties and merit. The activity will, in addition, be among the most delightful of life — reading the English language's greatest writer.

And maybe trade childrens' religious indoctrination for the playwright and philosopher's expansive observations, all of them grounded in reality. Leave wondering about the afterlife for when the encounter arrives a moment before. Until then, enjoy the present. That's my take on these omnipresent questions, not a think as I do or you'll be damned. 

Comments

[Anne J]

Is there any particular work of Shakespeare you would recommend to start with? I did read Julius Caesar and Macbeth in high school, and I enjoyed them, but I don't like the ending of "Romeo and Juliet".

[PM]

"Hamlet," of course, is his most deeply introspective work of universal themes, Anne. For kicks I enjoy "Richard III" for its expert machinations. "Richard II" too. And if you seek really bloody skulduggery, go for "Coriolanus." Otherwise "Measure for Measure," described as one of Shakespeare's "problem plays," a mixture of comedy and tragedy, so difficult to define. Yet I love these just as I do all his other works, even "Henry VI," which he scarcely collaborated on — but you'll recognize the parts he wrote for their brilliance, part of its enjoyment. Only "Hamlet" would I recommend as a must, given its modern cultural high presence. As for the others, take your pick. You won't be disappointed. I and four-hundred years of worshipping at his altar guarantee it.