The truth does not reveal itself to idle spectators.
Stepping outside the intellectually serious circle of my teachers at Chicago into broader academic world, it struck me as an industry hostile to thinking.
Process becomes more important than product.
What the hell is going on? Is this our society as a whole, buying more education only to scale new heights of stupidity?
Tocqueville foresaw a "soft despotism" in which Americans would increasingly seek their security in, and become dependent upon, the state. His analysis must be extended to our time: the softly despotic tendencies of a nanny state are found in the large commercial enterprise as well, and indeed a case could be made that it is now outsized corporations, more than government, that exercise this particularly enervating form of authority in our lives, through work.
-some thoughts culled from Matthew Crawford's Shop Class as Soulcraft
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It sure seems that way apropos of education. I ought to check out Alexis de Tocqueville. His name keeps coming up more and more. Take care, Julian
ReplyDeleteHighly recommend de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. Not something I've read cover to cover, but I dip into it on a periodic basis. Observant man.
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