In part one of the Widow's Challenge, I spoke of the clash between liberal society and cultural relativism/ identity politic.
The question I pose now is: Has education become a co-conspirator in the plot to assassinate the beliefs enunciated in the Declaration of Independence?
To put it another way: Does our current societal values, which are reinforced by the mulitculuralistic and diversity-oriented programs and curriculum changes here at the College, help us to make the right decision vis-a-vis the widow? No.
By living in a system that is more afraid of intolerance than error, we are stripped of the educated virtue that the university is supposed to help us arrive at. Instead of dealing with the real questions that divide us (see my previous article) we affirm that everyone is o.k.
This affirmation, the equivalent of moral and intellectual capitulation, does not instruct us to the problem of the widow where moral calculation is needed. It does not provide us with a guide to answer to amorphous but important questions of life. Instead of arriving at an answer, we can only feel and nod our heads.
If the widow's right to life and self-determination, which are Western values, are more important than the beliefs of the natives, then we should impose our cultural standard on others who do not value human rights.
If our value of human life is not universal, then enforcing our values in this society would be, at best, a crime or, at worst, an act of imperialism.
I was reading a New York Times article on some Southern Baptist preachers who were telling their congregations about other religions, namely Islam, compared to Christianity. By criticizing another belief system, these preachers transformed from merely being religious, to being "intolerant" of other religions.
The New York Times opined, "They are a threat to our religious pluralism." The dominant spirit of the age, caught so well by the trendy political fashion plates at the Times, is this: be open (read: do not think) to all kinds of men, "life-styles" and ideologies. The only enemy is the person who is not open to everything.
If the point of life is to empty our minds of thought, what then, is the point of education? Many of my friends here and the well-intentioned and ubiquitous diversity advocates all allege that education, especially at the university level, functions to rid the world of prejudice and bias.
Dr. Evelyn Hu-DeHart went further and claimed that not only was the university supposed to cleanse the mind (of the evil prejudices of American society), but the classroom was to become a place of social activism (as opposed to old-fashioned learning) where one challenges the "hegemonic paradigms" of the age, stigmatizes our history (because it was racist and gender-oppressive), and causes us to continue the revolution of the sixties.
With what does this education of which they speak replace prejudice? We are taught to doubt the act of belief (as merely prejudice) before we believe anything. Did it not take Socrates and Descartes entire lifetimes to learn to doubt and to judge?
An education and a value system based on value-free conflict-resolution and anti-bias socialization can not help us solve the dilemmas that have plagued mankind for centuries; being vs. nothing, good vs. evil, eternity vs. time, freedom vs. necessity, and reason vs. revelation.
Instead of teaching us how to decide whether the widow should live or die, we are reduced to no-fault choices without consequences such as disapproval, punishment, guilt or excommunication.
Rather, we need our prejudices because they are maps about the way things are. The act of prejudice, as Nietzsche observes, imposes an order on the chaos by becoming (or creating) divinations of the order of things.
It follows then that the road to knowledge -- isn't that what education is all about -- is traversed through being wrong and held responsible.
If error is the enemy, instead of conflict, then it alones points to truth and therefore deserves our respect. A great teacher, Allan Bloom, once said, "The mind that has no prejudices at the outset is empty."
Education's goal, then, is to reduce error and not conflict, to help us live the good and virtuous life, but not the easiest, and finally, to show us a world in which we can put our questions and philosophize, instead of simplifying the world into a dogmatic relativistism where thinking is the enemy.
This is the challenge of the widow question and of our college today.
