Today I have been listening to a lecture from Biola University by Victor David Hanson. (You can listen to it here.) Dr. Hanson discusses an idea that is relatively new to me: the fact that we have exchanged the tragic vision of life (that man's life is hard and short and we make decisions based on that fact) for the therapeutic vision (that we are victims and deserving of relief from the daily chaos.) Education at one time had a goal of helping us to come to a higher wisdom in dealing with the difficulties of life, but now education's goal is to lead us to a predetermined therapeutic end where we can be liberated from the tragic and given an "enlightened" utopian vision. The problem is, of course, that this utopian view doesn't reflect the reality of the world.
Fascinating...
1 comment:
I might put this on my own blog, but it fits here. :-)
"This morning I have been trying to think about heaven, but without much success. I don't know why I should expect to have any idea of heaven. I could never have imagined this world if I hadn't spent almost eight decades walking around in it. People talk about how wonderful the world seems to children, and that's true enough. But children think they will grow into it and understand it, and I know very well that I will not, and would not if I had a dozen lives. That's clearer to me every day. Each morning I'm like Adam waking up in Eden, amazed at the cleverness of my hands and at the brilliance pouring into my mind through my eyes--old hands, old eyes, old mind, a very diminished Adam altogether, and still it is just remarkable. What of me will I still have? Well, this old body has been a pretty good companion. Like Balaam's ass, it's seen the angel I haven't seen yet, and it's lying down in the path."
From *Gilead,* by Marilynne Robinson, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004, pp. 66-67
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