Alan: To get a quick handle on the wreckage of America's educational system and the obstacles that must be cleared in order to "right what's wrong," Howard Zinn's "A People's History Of The United States" should be an integral part of the American History curriculum at every American high school.
In recent decades -- at least since Ronald Reagan's "Me Generation" -- "American citizens" have morphed into "Consumer Units" whose overarching guidance is the dictum: "S/he who dies with the most toys wins."
Psycho-spiritually, our devolution into corporately-conditioned "consumer units" has been as drastic as what "the pods" achieved in "The Invasion Of The Body Snatchers."
Consequent besottedness - a sure sign of America's abject surrender to materialism - is most common among conservatives (which is why they are inordinately driven to drone on, by way of compensation, about their "lofty principles").
On the other side of the aisle, a large (and growing) number of "liberals" and "progressives" prefer life-enhancing experiences -- service projects, travel, immersion in "the natural world" -- to the "things" that All-American "Merchants Of Materialism" pimp to "consumer units" mimicking prostitutes who sell a simulacrum of "love" to people who never learned the difference between pleasure and joy.
In recent decades -- at least since Ronald Reagan's "Me Generation" -- "American citizens" have morphed into "Consumer Units" whose overarching guidance is the dictum: "S/he who dies with the most toys wins."
"Americans are fucked. They've been bought off. And they come real cheap: a few million dirt bikes, camcorders, microwaves, cordless phones, digital watches, answering machines, jet skis and sneakers with lights in 'em. You say you want a few items back from the Bill of Rights? Just promise the doofuses new gizmos." George Carlin
"There is just enough bullshit to hold things together in this country. Bullshit is the glue, that binds us as a nation. Where would we be without our safe, familiar, American bullshit? Land of the free, home of the brave, the American dream, all men are equal, justice is blind, the press is free, your vote counts, business is honest, the good guys win, the police are on your side, god is watching you, your standard of living will never decline… and everything is going to be just fine— The official national bullshit story. I call it the American okie doke. Every one, every one of those items is provably untrue at one level or another, but we believe them because they're pounded into our heads from the time we're children. That's what they do with that kind of thing—pound it into the heads of kids, ‘cause they know the children are much too young to be able to muster an intellectual defense against a sophisticated idea like that, and they know that up to a certain age children believe everything their parents tell them. And as a result, they never learn to question things. Nobody questions things in this country anymore. Nobody questions it—everybody is too fat and happy. Everybody's got a cell phone that'll make pancakes and rub their balls now— Way too fucking prosperous for our own good. Way too fucking prosperous, Americans have been bought off and silenced by toys and gizmos. And no one learns to question things." George Carlin
"Shopping and buying - and getting and having - comprise the Great American Addiction. No one is immune. When the underclass riots in this country, they don't kill policemen and politicians, they steal merchandise. How embarrassing." George Carlin
Favorite George Carlin Shticks
Psycho-spiritually, our devolution into corporately-conditioned "consumer units" has been as drastic as what "the pods" achieved in "The Invasion Of The Body Snatchers."
Consequent besottedness - a sure sign of America's abject surrender to materialism - is most common among conservatives (which is why they are inordinately driven to drone on, by way of compensation, about their "lofty principles").
On the other side of the aisle, a large (and growing) number of "liberals" and "progressives" prefer life-enhancing experiences -- service projects, travel, immersion in "the natural world" -- to the "things" that All-American "Merchants Of Materialism" pimp to "consumer units" mimicking prostitutes who sell a simulacrum of "love" to people who never learned the difference between pleasure and joy.
"Education" And "Instruction" Are Antipodes
Although traditional American History textbooks should remain part of high school curricula, Zinn's book - which, like any book, is imperfect - should stand alongside them to provide counterpoint.
Imagine if American History curricula (preferably in an obligatory two-year high school sequence rather than a perfunctory single semester course) were designed so students could "pass" only if they learned "how to think" - a significant demonstration of which would be a 20 page essay comparing and contrasting Zinn's "A People's History" with a mainstream text such as James A. Henretta's "America's History." (If American History were taught as a two year sequence, the first year could be based on a mainstream textbook and year 2 on Zinn's "A People's History" which, by the way, is also available in an edition designed for young people).
Much of America's cultural upheaval and social degradation is due to the fact that "the deplorables" cannot fathom what "thinking" (and its educational run-up) entail.
At the same time, "The Dimwitted" are imbued with an intuitive sense that "thinking" threatens to upend their simplistic "sound bite" worldview and so they belittle thinking (and its cultural/political implications) as "elitism" when, in fact, richly-contextualized thinking is the very activity that makes "homo sapiens"... well ... sapiens.
The Dunning-Kruger Effect:
Stupid People Don't Know They're Stupid
Currently, my 18 year old son, Danny, is walking The Appalachian Trail from north to south. And the only book in his pack is "A People's History Of The United States."
Here is an online copy of Zinn's landmark volume: http://www.historyisaweapon.com/zinnapeopleshistory.html
"A Republican Lawmaker Is Trying To Ban All Books By Howard Zinn From Arkansan Schools"
Rick Santorum's Vilification Of "A People's History Of The United States"
Fact-Checked By Pulitzer Prize-Winning PolitiFact
16. A People's War?
19. Surprises
Finally, I must mention a singularly important book by 20th century Spanish philosopher, Jose Ortega y Gasset.
"Frog Hospital" And "Pax" Discuss Rednecks, Ignorance And Conservative Christianity
("The Revolt Of The Masses" is discussed following the first Trump meme)
With remarkable accuracy (and prophetic insight), "The Revolt of The Masses" details how the economic empowerment of "the masses," (absent any engaged understanding of economics, politics, history and social dynamics), would lead, inevitably, to uneducated people's contempt for the cultural subtleties-and-interactivities that birth, nourish and sustain civilization.
Instead, the under-educated masses view the world with tunnel-vision intensity, blindly clamoring for more "purchasing power" to acquire "things" that satisfy their visceral drives for food, sex and comfort, with negligible understanding of the sprawling socio-political-economic-and-cultural matrix that makes civilization possible.
Instruction And Education Aim At Antipodes
http://paxonbothhouses.
Ortega y Gasset argued that the growing political and economic power of 'the aggressively ignorant' would make them increasingly contemptuous of the "elitist" rubrics-and-restraints that comprise the foundation of civilization.
In Ortega y Gasset's view, "the masses" -- drunk on purchasing power and the presumptuous (often quasi-solipsistic) individualism it breeds -- would become contemptuous of any guidance, statement, suggestion or obligation set forth by educated people whose breadth-and-depth learning, coupled with their commitment to The Common Good and The General Welfare, enable "the educated" to perceive the indispensable rubrics of social and political cohesion, not to mention the linchpin communitarian goal of "the greatest good for the greatest number" - and not "just me and my almighty, fact-free opinion."
That way lies destruction.
I will contrive a single-sentence to epitomize "The Revolting Masses":
Increasingly confined to dug-in "ideological silos," "the uneducated masses" -- motivated first-and-foremost by their wallets, their loins and the acquisition of pleasurable "stuff" -- cleave to social, economic and political postulates that prioritize their own opinions, passions and beliefs over knowledge and facts.
Yet it remains true that the successful operation of any modern democracy obliges society to rely on scientific knowledge which, unlike opinion, can be corroborated (and uinversalized) by The Scientific Method.
For those who would minimize the importance of The Scientific Method -- often arguing, as St. Paul did, that "the wisdom of the world is folly before God" -- let's be clear: Every electronic device, every motorized vehicle, and every surgical procedure on which the lives of "the masses" depend, owes its existence to The Scientific Method.
Note well: no one's God will save humankind from self-destruction if The Scientific Method is not held in the same sacred esteem as religious postulates themselves.
However, when religiously-predicated personal views seek to impose themselves on The Body Politic, they "universalize" theocratic/autocratic impulses that are intrinsically inimical to democratic governance.
"The terrible thing about our time is precisely the ease with which theories can be put into practice. The more perfect, the more idealistic the theories, the more dreadful is their realization. We are at last beginning to rediscover what perhaps men knew better in very ancient times, in primitive times before utopias were thought of: that liberty is bound up with imperfection, and that limitations, imperfections, errors are not only unavoidable but also salutary. The best is not the ideal. Where what is theoretically best is imposed on everyone as the norm, then there is no longer any room even to be good. The best, imposed as a norm, becomes evil.”
"Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander,” by Trappist monk, Father Thomas Merton
More Merton Quotes
If people who seek to impose their non-factual (or, increasingly, fake-"factual" and even anti-factual) opinions-and-beliefs on The Body Politic were to admit their core hostility to scientifically-informed Democracy, we would at least have an honest debate.
As it is, most American Christians are not interested in honesty-and-truth, at least not when these qualities contradict their religious and ideological passions.
Insofar as conservative Christians are responsible for spearheading the recent right-wing assault on knowledge and factuality (mostly to protect their "literal" understanding of The Bible or to validate their diehard passion for "salvation assurance"), it has become crucial that a "critical mass" of Christians subscribe to a new kind of "Christian Science" in which scientifically-demonstrated "findings" will be considered central to humankind's understanding of the world, and, correlatively, beliefs-and-personal-opinions will be held in such a way that the verb "believe" is central. Belief will no longer masquerade as certain knowledge and believers will no longer publicly deny scientifically demonstrated data, facts and information.
In our commonly-apprehended world of sensory experience, scientific evidence is primary.
Similarly, for this new generation of "Christian scientists," scientific evidence will be considered a necessary prelude to the formation of an individual's political, economic and social views.
Obama’s 2006 Speech on Faith and Politics: Abraham Prepares To Kill And Immolate His Son
Thomas Aquinas, widely revered as Catholicism's guiding theological light, summarized the interaction between science and faith. Arguing against those who said that natural philosophy was contrary to the Christian faith, Aquinas writes in his treatise "Faith, Reason and Theology" that "even though the natural light of the human mind is inadequate to make known what is revealed by faith, nevertheless what is divinely taught to us by faith cannot be contrary to what we are endowed with by nature. One or the other would have to be false, and since we have both of them from God, he would be the cause of our error, which is impossible." "Aladdin's Lamp: How Greek Science Came to Europe Through The Islamic World," by John Freely
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Jul 4, 2015 - One or the other would have to be false, and since we have both of ... dictum in his text "Tantum Ergo" which I'm sure you sang thousands of ...
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