©'82 rrk
To classify perceptions for simplification is a temptation devoutly to be avoided; nevertheless, it seems inescapable when one views today's schools. The convenient microcosm whets the appetite of thought—after all, schools are made up of "classes". However, the point to the ensuing argument is that objectives in all of society hinges on the processing of youth.
Unfortunately in this modern world youth comes already processed and prepackaged, and instead of ripping open the package and delving into the contents, officials fear disturbance, as the timid opening their Christmas gifts treat the wrappings as more important than the gift.Three Classes
Putting aside exceptions to the argument, there are basically three mind-sets of today's youth. There is only one that can truly survive in order to pursue what is significant on the philosophical plane of education.
Though they never lift a finger, except the middle, nor sweat a brow these who are truly a minority—for lack of a better term, revelationists or spiritualists—say life is a transitory stay. They loathe life as it is and long for the apocalypse—the miracle sent through the mail enveloping a radiant new world complete with ribbon, seal and card signed, "God, with Love." Though ripe for drug addiction, it is really immaterial, since they are already addicted to fantasizing.
Then there are those who gape at the world as a tramp at a pie cooling on the sill of an open window, waiting to abscond with the prize. These are the sensualists who find pleasure in stripping the earth of its fruits. They impudently pursue and take happiness without even awareness of the noble Jefferson; for in truth, they are in mad pursuit from themselves, from what may very well be "another"—perhaps a spiritualist on a primitive level—locked within who would otherwise rattle his beads and invoke malediction.
Thirdly there are the materialists, superior in many ways, who nevertheless strive ignobly for material gains and thus through lack of vision thwart the coming of a brave new world through which man moves in dignity as he struggles for excellence—the true meaning of Jefferson's phrase. The irony here is that only through the attainment of body comforts can the great multitude—barring the preordained exception of thoughtful ambition—ever become aware of a life beyond the Super Bowl and Disney World.
Spiritualist
Were this true pursuit achieved, the spiritualist on the sublime level would hold up this example of untold treasures of near perfection and still proclaim to his God that man's job is complete and it is time to open the firmament and receive the prodigal child before it is relegated to a computer chip. From another perspective the spiritualist is authoritarian. If he turns not to God, he bends his knees to the state for his welfare. He is incapable of accepting egalitarian responsibility to the state, not unlike his abysmally weak acceptance of free will bestowed upon him by his God. Nay, he fails to comprehend the social contract with either; for he is unwilling to defray the cost of interaction in the affairs of state, preferring instead to cloister himself in universities and monasteries just as his God dooms him to purgatory for his sins of omission in the vitality of right action.
This is evidenced in the modern school scene wherein he poses as an ivory tower intellect concerned only with the pretext of learning for its own sake whereas in truth he is concerned only with self aggrandizement through pearl spinning, rather than interaction with other selves of the real world.
Sensualist
On the other hand, in the attainment of modern gain, the sensualist womanizes the earth and takes from her succulence. He knows not of the refinement of the senses, nor the gratification of the mind. He perceives the ambience of life as the streets of harlots. In the pretentious act of giving he takes away. This class—by far the largest—is an illustration brought on by society and the school, which fosters these pimps and harlots while rewarding them with learning for absorption, but failing to teach them to give back and thereby relegating them to orphanage and entitlement of little more or less than their consumption and thus third class citizenship. As a student the sensualist violates law of purposeful learning by short-circuiting curricular demands while seeking peripherals virtually useless to those who wish to go beyond the palate and muscle tissue. These are the young men and women who redesign the school in their own image of sexuality and bondage. This collective body waits out its term and then is let loose with a diploma that reads: "License To Self-Destruct".
Materialist
The materialist is the nucleus of the others of which all of humanity in varying degrees is a part. It is the materialist for whom one must be realistically concerned; he holds the key—spirit cannot be regained without first restoring the heart to the kingdom of near perfection. It is through this window one must gain access to the moral duty of a "noble discontent" as he struggles for the final aim of his existential awareness and thereby casts a shadow of the perfection that lurks in the true kingdom of the human spirit. Hostility to this emphasis is understandable as each is wont to protect his own territory of achievement and some fare not much of a cut above the sensualist.
For there is no guarantee that the materialist will readily understand the duality of his belief, even though he recognizes responsibility to the other, it stems more from fear, rather than love, of ethics and justice.
Argument
The other camps would argue that to attribute a kind of hushed volition and quiet but busy mind of direction to materialists mired in a universe of clay is sentimental rubbish or a remnant of Vatican conscience or pagan superstition. Nonetheless, failure to recognize a material struggle that goes beyond animal survival and sensual thrills to the transformation of sublimated emotions and intellect born of earthiness is a contradiction of a rational animal. The spiritualist in touching the robes of divine schemes, while God laughs up his sleeve, is absolutely nihilistic in denying this existential origin. Though a different path taken the same holds true for the sensualist who sees in the growth of things, ever more to take in the pseudo-advance of his standard of purposeless living, without ever regarding these as tools to hack out of the box of material grasp.
"Let them eat cake" from the lips of the spiritually aloof is not the philosophic posture of those who see the duality ingrained in materialism which nurtures the spiritual complement of man. As a youth in school he is perceived as an activist who believes learning is for both the good of the individual and of a just society. Admittedly it is tempting to cast off conscience when faced with shortcomings of fellow beings. All possess the instinct of the ostrich—ah, for the return to the sandbox! [Witness the low vote.] Still, there are physicians who do not abandon their patients, teachers who are dedicated to their students as scientists to their research, unique politicians to their constituents, and parents to their children.
There is one powerful argument, however invalid, to deter man from achieving this pragmatic niche—that is, Jefferson's purpose of pursuit—in the grand scheme of a truly better aim in life. The argument comes from the aspect of nihilism in all three camps. In the darkness of today's drug addiction, of which no philosophy in relative degree is immune, it is imperative that the narcotic sub-society be recognized for what it is—a contradiction. It is but a living suicide. Whether one "survives" through it or not, one is dead.
Ivan Karamazov posed to his brother the excruciating paradox of existence: would Alyosha have created the universe had he been God? Alyosha naively answered no; but in reality there was no choice. The undeniable fact is the universe is. However nightmarish it appears, is IS. Drugs or any other activity leading to the denial of existence, annihilates the partaker's truth of himself in his existential struggle to become, not high, but a higher being.
The modern school itself is in a sense a pusher of addiction wherein the major share of the collective body waits out its term and then is let loose to contribute only that which is consumed in a never ending addictive cycle, totally unaware of otherness. It is time to face up to the remote chance that there may be a better world out there if a better world is created within by a universal commitment to make what God could not.
Copyright © 1999 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: November 9, 2003 .