If I've "latched onto" what Hedges is saying it is because I looked at it in the light of the larger discussion including what Franks and others were saying. I still think for a reader wholly unfamiliar with Hedges who just picks up this book, it is going to be a bit of a challenge to pull out his true feelings and the complexity of it given some of his language. You have probably figured out by now that I like to swim about in lots of information and ideas until I can put it together in a way that makes sense to me--some people call it hardheaded. ;)
We have churches where pastors disparage the intelligentsia but where are the great thinkers of the Christian community? The Lewis? The Chesterton? At what point did we decide that we could bow out of the discussion and leave it the academics, then complain that we don't have a voice in academia? The Church cannot have it both ways. It cannot disengage from the culture, put up walls, and isolate itself and then curse that very culture and its institutions for being "un-Christian."
I caught Joel Osteen on Piers Morgan last night and while he's not my favorite preacher (for many of the reasons Hedges specifies) I did think it interesting in light of what I wrote last week that while he was trying to stick to a message of love and redemption the host kept badgering him to give his opinion on several sticky political issues as well as endorse a candidate. Has this now just become part of the culture? Must all ministers go all Pat Robertson and take us into the voting booth with them? Or is it just more fun for these personalities to discuss politics than nearly anything else?
In chapter 2 (most of which is unquotable) I'm back to the guy with the dolls. Aside from being creepy and disturbing in the extreme, he says some very interesting things. Some of them I mentioned in a previous post, but among comments like "They all have personalities" (Sure pal, so do my dining room chairs.) and "...there is direct eye contact" (a window to her soul to be sure) he says "Their eyes are adjustable." I couldn't help thinking he could be talking about more than his dolls.
That comment could be more or less be used to sum up what Hedges is trying to point out about the culture. Our eyes are adjustable. By the media. By advertisers. By the education system. By the government and corporations. They constantly divert our eyes from things that need a good looking over. But as you pointed out it is all so much "bread and circuses." They tell us where to look, decide what is important, and dictate what we think and talk about at any given time.
If we're unhappy women we need "retail therapy" (which often has the odd effect of depressing us somehow). If that doesn't work, television ads compel us to ask our doctor about this pill or that, as you are so rightly pointing out on your blog, are probably deepening other problems. Unhappy men of course need the right beer or car and all can be made well. Yet underneath, deep down, we know we have been had. As Hedges says on p. 38 "Our favorite hobby, besides watching television, used to be, until reality hit us like a tsunami, shopping." I've often thought that "buyers remorse" is really just an unexcavated feeling that there should be more to life. And there should.
We'd hope that education would supply some of the depth and richness we sense is missing. Hedges doesn't give us much hope for that either, if we are defining "education" only in the form of a college experience:
"Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge, The University of Toronto, and the Paris Institute of Political Studies, along with most elite schools, do only a mediocre job of teaching students to question and think. They focus instead, through the filter of standardized tests, enrichment activities, AP classes, high-priced tutors, swanky private schools, entrance exams, and blind deference to authority, on creating hordes of competent systems managers."
And in the next paragraph: "The elite universities disdain honest intellectual inquiry, which is by its nature distrustful of authority, fiercely independent, and often subversive." (p. 89)
As if on cue this week Kathleen Parker penned an article about the under-education taking place on college campuses. Here are some excerpts:
"Gains in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing skills are either 'exceedingly small or nonexistent for a larger portion of students."
"Thirty-six percent of students experience no significant improvement in learning (as measured by the Collegiate Learning Assessment) over four years of higher education."
"Most universities don't require the courses considered core educational subjects--math, science, foreign languages at the intermediate level, U.S. government or history, composition, literature or economics."
"Only 5 percent require economics. Less than 20 percent require U.S. government or history."
I'm asking the same question as the journalist: "How can one think critically about anything if one does not have a foundation of skills and knowledge?" If no one understands economics then will it really matter if (as you pointed out recently) so few of the people commenting as "experts" on television news are actual economists? If we have no grasp of history how will we know that those in power use the same tactics over and over? Or that single minded people who are persistent and refuse to sit down and be quiet can make a difference? Or to recognize lies and illogical arguments when they are presented?
Or is having a population that DOESN'T know all of that, the point?
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While I'm writing this the news is coming across that Steve Jobs has passed away. A college drop out who changed the world and made all of this possible for us.
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