[MD] 42

[John Carl]

David,

It's a well known fact that the quality of education you get in an ivy
league school isn't that much better but it's the connections you make
which guarantee success in the financial/corporate universe.  That's kind
of scary because you need those same connections to get into the top
schools in the first place and that sounds like a hegemony to me.  If the
organizing principle of our civilization is opposed to freedom then
upsetting the cart seems like a good goal to me, rather than pulling it.




On Sat, Jan 18, 2014 at 5:37 PM, david <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:

> This is a tangential issue and nobody asked BUT please notice what Pirsig
> (via David Granger) is saying about relationship between academia and
> civilization....
>
> From Granger's paper, called "Dewey and Pirsig in Education":
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------
> The student[s'] biggest problem was a slave mentality which had been built
> into [them] by years of carrot-and-whip grading, a mule mentality which
> said, 'If you don't whip me, I won't work.' [They] didn't get whipped.
> [They] didn't work. And the cart of civilization, which [they] supposedly
> [were] being trained to pull, was just going to have to creak along a
> little slower without [them]. (ZMM, 175)
> Ironically, Pirsig thought, this is in direct contradiction to the
> academy’s claim that civilization “is best served not by mules but by free
> men” (ZMM, 175). And education is supposedly the means to this freedom.  As
> tragic as this slave mentality sounds, Pirsig saw that it is unavoidable
> only if one presumes that the cart of civilization must be propelled by
> something outside itself, by disinterested mule-selves. Whether these mules
> are in front of or behind the cart matters little here. In either position,
> they bespeak of stubborn, laboring beasts – the polar opposite of
> artistically-engaged human beings -- beasts that have no immediate
> investment in or sense of connection to the larger cart of civilization."
>
> ----------------------------------------------------
>
> As I read this, proper education is of no importance unless you're
> interested in maintaining civilization.  The academy, or rather the church
> of reason, supposedly says that civilization "is best served not by mules
> by free men" (free people) and it supposedly offers education as "the means
> to this freedom". And what does it mean to NOT be a mule? What does it mean
> to be free, to liberated by this education? I suppose it's just like the
> man says. This kind of freedom means that it totally matters whether you're
> "in front of or behind the cart" of civilization. In fact, you're an
> "artistically-engaged human being" with a personal "investment in or sense
> of connection to the larger cart of civilization." The mules say that all
> this "matters little". "The stubborn, laboring beasts," by contrast, "have
> no immediate investment in or sense of connection to the larger cart of
> civilization."
>
>
John:

I'm a little confused by the above.

David:



> Same as it ever was, I think we need throw out the money lenders. I mean,
> the church of reason has become corrupt in the same sort of way.


John:  Amen!

DB:


> For the most part, people think of higher education levels as the means to
> a higher income. Otherwise, most dads figure, college is a waste of money.
> That's not the kind of calculus that propers civilization forward,
> obviously. It's not crazy. Seems sensible, hard to argue with common sense
> realism. Blah, blah, blah, as everyone knows. But it's tragically
> narrow-minded and short-sighted and if everyone thought like that the whole
> freakin' deal would crap out in a hurry. In fact, that might be what's
> already happening. Or maybe that's just how stupid it is in America. Sigh.
>

John:  Sigh indeed.

DB:



> Look, I know we've all had some hell from bullies and tyrants at school.
> But that's not what Pirsig (or Dewey or Granger or any other serious
> person) is concerned about with respect to the church of reason or with
> respect to Western rationality. This is about some serious shit that is not
> terribly relevant to anyone's 5th grade teacher, you know? How can a
> democracy, like ours is supposed to be, with a bunch of mules voting? If
> the progress of civilization depends on the strength of free people to pull
> her forward, then what is the value of real education?
>
>
Or for that matter, what is the value of a civilization that depends upon a
few well-connected persons in the driver seats whipping a nation full of
mules?

Good piece David,

John