Kevin, my social-friend,
Whoa! [Keanu Reeves Moment]
What college wouldn't appreciate having someone like you in its gears. After
teaching a term of Pirsig (*Zen*) and Huxley (*Brave New World*) and after
having the class vote unanimously that they preferred not to read the
required Orwell (*1984*), what a breath of fresh discourse your posts are.
BTW: Rather than give them a terribly cursory introduction to Orwell, I
dropped it, out of frustration, and concentrated on Huxley and Pirsig,
thinking I was a more proactive,empathetic professor.
Of the fifteen in the class, guess how many actually read Huxley. (4: and I
mean in order to pass the class)
And guess how many knew what Gumption Desperation was. (1)
And guess how many actually did a cogent comparative analysis of the two.
(2)
Let's not figure out the statistics on this one, okay? And one young woman
even went so far as to suggest, "Maybe I'm sheltered, but I don't want to
think Huxley's world is close to ours." [I will now pause while you all
collectively pick your jaws up from the floor, as you realize this was a
sophomore in college. . . and a relatively bright young woman, too]
And guess how many said, "I just want to pass" or words to that effect. (5)
I should hasten to add these students took the class as a required elective
for their major, which will place them firmly in our managerial structure,
and here is where I will pat Kevin on the back--Though we professors at my
college argue as persuasively as we can that people should be treated as
individuals (free wo/men rather than goats, as Pirsig points out), an aching
number of our students are intrigued by the Good Life (La Dolce Vita)
only--getting all "good things" of life, RIGHT NOW, preferably from someone
else's pocket. . . .
Christopher Lasch, in 1978 or so, suggested that America is particularly
good at raising a culture of Narcissists. Sadly, I see his point even more
today as we hurtle forward in a rush of self-aggrandizing fortune. (I also
teach *The Fountainhead* in that same class I wrote about earlier--cross
your fingers, folks--I'm going to try again in five weeks.)
BTW: Kevin, if you haven't read E. F. Schumacher's *Small Is Beautiful* you
might want to. I used to use it in my Ethics course along with Rand and
Pirsig.
As Patrick McGoohan, my hero, said,
"Be seeing you."
Jeff
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