This is Ulysses speaking to his men, from Dante’s Inferno:
Ye were not form’d to live the life of brutes
But virtue to pursue and knowledge high
This is Ulysses speaking to his men, from Tennyson’s poem, Ulysses:
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
This was happening in Ancient Greece, across Asia and all over many parts of the world long before the 13th century and Shakespeare. You can find evidence of introspection and free thought through all of recorded history. Kind of my point.
It has been happening around fires for a lot longer than that.
I don’t really see anything I would call anti-education from Republicans in 2024. No radical reimagining of what education is or trying to keep the door closed on any lines of academic pursuit. Republicans seem to be fine with living in a society where nobody’s stopping you from reading Genderqueer to your kid.
As long as they don’t ban people from spending all the money they want to learn about gender theory, bad political ideas written by men who didn’t want to get a real job, or spend years of study reflecting on a single author or narrow humanities subject, I see nothing bad that will come from no longer funding navel gazing with tax dollars.
If you would like to see anti-education policies in action, come visit Lewiston or ask a teacher here to describe their day to you. While you’re at it, ask them how long they plan to remain teaching at LPS.
Somehow, the party of science has ensured that practically no science is going to be learned by the majority of students while the adults find ways to spend $111 million this school year.
There’s two ways I see to make a decent chunk of change as a result of this dysfunction.
The obvious steps are to gain credentials and experience needed to become an administrator, making sure to practice your vocabulary for your entire career. Then, after becoming an administrator, do everything possible to ensure that the institution becomes as secretive as possible while doing nothing to improve education outcomes. Make sure you know all of the magic words that need to be said and practice applying them in vague platitudes. You’re going to need them.
We actually hired a superintendent with an established track record of producing the kind of turnaround that would benefit LPS. Mr. Finn lasted one year before he resigned and a local who knew how to play ball got the job. There is an odd absence of videos of school committee meetings during his tenure, if one were to go looking for them on the school’s youtube channel. Many heated arguments were had in those. An investigation was launched into him when the school committee composition changed. That’s about all that was made public.
The other way to get in on the action is through a nonprofit. At least one is funded directly through the school budget.
It happened then Ancient Greece ceased to exist and eventually became the Byzantine Empire. The Renaissance is called that because it was seen as a rebirth as ancient greek learning was rediscovered and early humanist philosophers sought to find compatibility between pagan knowledge and Christianity. It’s why Dante included figures from Greek mythology in the Divine Comedy. There’s a reason why the period between the fall of Rome and roughly the 10th or 11th centuries was referred to as the Dark Ages.
You would have difficulty finding an author prior to Shakespeare who used soliloquies the way he did. He gave this voice to even lowly characters which gave them an equal degree of humanity with kings.
If you’re a superintendent who wants to do the job the right way, you’ll have problems. It’s pretty much a political position and not an educational one. I watched a board of ed meeting in a town that is ranked close to the worst in the state. I worked there for a year. When a teacher asked the superintendent why they have a new five year plan every two years, the superintendent was quick to place the blame on everyone, teachers, parents and herself. But teachers and parents don’t come up with these plans. Of course she wouldn’t admit that she had no clue on how to fix things and wasn’t going to admit that the schools reflect the dysfunctionality of the community. I worked in one school where the superintendent’s directive was to pass as many kids as possible.
It’s about thinking about thinking and how we develop a sense of identity. John Locke, who developed a theory of mind, was an influence on the Founders. And identity and self are themes in Shakespeare.
In the world, we are all reduced to our perceived roles in society or identity. We are consumers, workers, voters, boomers, gen whatevers, Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives, black, white, Asian, gay, trans, etc. The question is, do we allow ourselves to make decisions based on these labels? Be they Republican or Democrat, Capulet or Montague. Rousseau, another influence on the Founders, said man is born free and everywhere he is in chains. When you pick a side, you merely pick the chains. I don’t see either side unshackling us from their chains of self interests.
The woke don’t. Do you consider that good company? You’re an American who has no sense of history or heritage. You think nothing relevant happened before you were born. Let them tear down statues of everyone. Let them erase thousands of years of culture and civilization. What does it matter? You owe the past nothing. It’s not even worth a memory. Then they win. There’s a new narrative and new culture. Will it be an improvement? I don’t think so. You don’t have to care because ultimately you are irrelevant. They don’t need you to actively help because doing nothing is just as good for them. I’ll defend the thousands of years of Western Civilization and Culture, a civilization that got us to this point, because I don’t want my children or grandchildren to be slaves. I want them to have more than the perception of freedom.
Back to Presidential affairs, I am a HUGE fan of Mark Felton as a youtube content creator. I’ve watched dozens of his short films about history and don’t ever recall him getting into modern politics. He’s very well-regarded with a complete set of bona fides to offer informed comment.
He gives a sobering look at the UK’s vulnerability to Russian attacks. I learned he’s not a big fan of Biden, and was stunned that he even made such a comment.
This is a pretty dangerous time for the world, in my opinion. Russia demonstrating their missile was kind of a big deal. Barring some unexpected event, the USA is likely to enter a period of military strengthening for the foreseeable future. Woke ain’t coming back and the rest of the world knows it. If something’s going to have to pop off sooner or later, right now might be looking better and better.
I’m not contesting that lessons can be learned from stories. Stories embody experiences, and share them. I would be careful with fiction, however, as its imagined and lessons are projected, but to each their own. If imaginary scenarios spur thought then fine. So does experience and living in general. And experience and living create the backdrop for stories to exist, not the other way around. You absolutely can think without Shakespeare, but Shakespeare never could’ve existed without thought and lived experience. And the reason classics become classics is because so many people identify with them through shared experience. But they do not gain experience from them. At most, perspective. And this perspective is an authors take on things, but who cares. He’s just an imaginative story teller with a personal opinion. Kind of like flamboyantly leftist Disney writers lacing homosexuality and whatever else in to children’s stories. They’re just gay weirdos telling stories.
A book I enjoyed was old man and the sea. Largely because I grew up fishing the gulf coast, including deep sea trips for the big fish. The overarching lessons embodied in the story were perseverance and determination, resiliency and pride. I can’t say the book taught me these qualities, but I recognized them as I read them playing out. What did teach me these qualities was hooking a massive tuna or grouper and fighting the fucker literally for hours, beyond any exhaustion I’ve felt in the gym. Sports taught these qualities. Overcoming defeat, honing and keeping an edge over opponents, playing & wrestling through pain for prides sake et cetera. Doing and experiencing instills these things. Business has been no different. Shakespeare’s personal take on universal experiences of self and existence means literally nothing, to me. Maybe people more inclined to follow, in general, find benefit in embodying another, but even then they cannot really identify without experiencing. Experience is the genesis of thought. Bards just sing about them. Ford created/altered experiences. You can argue whether or not industrialization was good or bad, but it ushered an era of prosperity never seen before. And that’s real life.
I decide what I want and work/angle to get it. I find limits and push them. After having an idea or desire, I’ve never thought to myself “wait, I am a white Texan consumer in that weird little pocket generation between X and Y, does this check my status?”
Ford did this too, granted on a significantly larger and more impactful scale. Shakespeare would’ve written stories about the things Ford did . Because productive action pushes the limits of thought and awareness.
Please describe these chains in context. And the proffered solution. Do we find the ever elusive garden of Eden and sneak back in?
. Because productive action pushes the limits of thought and awareness.