In my opinion, the greatest single failure of American
education is that students come away unable to distinguish
between a symbol and the thing the symbol stands for.
Introduction
It is no accident that modern education doesn't teach the
distinction between symbol and thing
— if it did, education as we know it would fall apart.
After that, after education reshaped itself to provide
actual knowledge instead of the symbolic representation of
knowledge, the society around us would be transformed.
But in the meantime, most "educated" people cannot tell the
difference between a fact and an idea, the most common
confusion of symbol and thing. Most believe if they collect
enough facts, this will compensate for their inability to
grasp the ideas behind those facts. And, because of this
"poverty of ideas," most cannot work out the simplest
conceptual questions, such as "why is the sky dark at
night?" (unless you are in a small minority, the actual
reason is not what you think — see more
here
).
As a result of this educational deficit, our individually
inspired sense of well-being, our direct participation in
those actions that assure our continued survival, our sense
that we must create our own reasons for living, have been
replaced by a kind of conceptual totalitarianism,
which has as its cornerstone a deliberate blurring of
symbol and thing
. This totalitarianism has several parts:
Commerce
Originally a convenient way to trade what you have for what
you don't have, commerce has been elevated to the status of
a moral principle.
People who could be grappling with more fundamental issues
are instead imitating Willy Loman, Arthur Miller's
character from
Death of a Salesman
, who personified the replacement of substance with symbol.
I am sure there are many definitions for the term "consumerism," here is mine:
consumerism is the voluntary suspension of disbelief in the value of material
goods
. In the grip of consumerism, we respond to advertisements for products
without once asking "if this product is so valuable, why do they pay to
advertise it?" This is an everyday statement of a well-established principle in
advertising — things of real worth are generally not advertised. Sometimes an
advertisement is designed to persuade you to switch between one worthwhile
thing and another (or one worthless thing and another), but no one pays simply
to make you aware of a worthwhile thing. What's the point? You already know
there are cans of oil, coat-hangers, Pez dispensers. No one needs to tell you
this.
But those caught up in consumerism lose this perception. They actually think
responding to advertising makes them better people. In this way, consumerism is
a confusion of symbols and things raised to a higher power — we respond to an
advertisement for a symbol, then the symbol (the product) turns out not to
represent the thing (value). Then the entire process repeats.
For people possessed of common sense, the cure for consumerism is simple:
overexposure. The more you do it, the quicker you recognize that consumer
products are symbols masquerading as things. But for those not endowed with
common sense, consumerism can be addicting, in the same way that marriage,
government and religion can be.
For a more complete treatment of this subject, read
Consumer Angst
.
Marriage
Early in our history, marriage simply didn't exist, in fact
it is a relatively recent development
(by "recent" I mean after the dinosaurs died and before
the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan show). Marriage was
originally conceived (no pun intended) as a way to signal
the presence of a special bond between two people. At that
time, marriage had no special significance itself, it was
merely a social signaling device, and to some extent it
also represented a contract with mutual obligations
. In those times marriage stood as a mere symbol for
something of actual substance — a relationship between
people that would have existed whether or not the symbol of
marriage was also present
.
Today marriage (the symbol) has become a thing in its own
right, in some cases (and in some minds) replacing the
thing it once only represented. It has become a
multi-billion dollar industry, and only the most perceptive
individuals remember that it was supposed to have
symbolized something more important, more fundamental than
itself — a particular kind of human relationship. This
reversal of symbol and thing has become so profound that
one commonly hears a remark like "Marriage is what I really
want!" as though marriage were anything more than a weather
forecast or a road sign.
Naturally enough, this confusion of empty symbols and
actual things has led to a rather well-documented
disenchantment with that institution, even though the
disenchantment is based on an error in perception. The
reality of a human relationship between people (usually) of
opposite sexes is quite different from the packaged
perception called up by the word "marriage," to the degree
that people often forget that they will have to build the
thing (a human relationship) after achieving the symbol for
the thing (marriage).
Then, after people waste precious time seeking "marriage"
and discovering that marriage is nothing by itself, they
complain they have been failed by "marriage." This is
advanced puppetry, and no one seems willing to follow the
strings.
But marriage itself (as it is practiced in modern times),
by virtue of having taken on a life of its own, is in its
turn a symbol for something more basic:
We live in a time where symbols for things have largely
replaced the things themselves
, and this tendency exists in direct proportion to people's
inability to distinguish between symbols and things.
Government
Modern people may have a hard time remembering that
government was originally conceived as a method for
accomplishing as a group what individuals could not
accomplish alone.
In this hypothetical model, groups formed to achieve
specific goals, they learned how to work together, they
succeeded or failed
, but then the group dissolved and the individuals returned
to their natural lives
. In the modern version, just as with marriage, what had
originally been a symbol for a thing now seems more
important than the thing it originally represented.
Modern governments are to the efficient solution of common
problems as modern marriage is to natural human
relationships — in both cases, there is only a superficial
resemblance, and in both cases, what was once a symbol has
become a thing. Government has become so much a thing unto
itself that it is now essentially separate from human
society, to the degree that governments regularly pass laws
and collect taxes in the interest of, and for the
furtherance of, government itself — laws and expenditures
having nothing to do with the interest of the people the
governments were originally designed to serve.
One might think, reading my harsh indictment of government,
that I must side with those who blow up government
buildings. Nothing could be further from the truth — in
fact
, every fruitcake that blows up a government building
thereby assures an increase in governmental power
. This is because government's effects are mostly out of
sight (and mind), and to an average person those effects
are benign compared to the wholesale slaughter of innocents
whose only mistake was to be near (or in) that day's
randomly selected building. This is a fundamental truth
that Mahatma Gandhi recognized, but that we have largely
forgotten — violent opposition is the bread and butter on
big government's table.
The real solution to excessive governmental power is
education. People must learn the difference between a
symbol (government) and a thing (effective group action),
and they must come to believe in themselves and the natural
value of individual experience. If people educate
themselves to the point that they realize their own power
and capabilities, huge governments will lose their
audience. And make no mistake about it — big government
isn't just like show business, it
is
show business: no audience, no show.
In a "natural system," an idea or a group must justify
itself or dissolve — it cannot simply enforce its
continued existence without proving its value. If this
natural law were to be broken, if an idea or group was
allowed to exist without continually showing its worth,
then nature herself would step in and extinguish that group
— or, if necessary, the species to which that group
belonged. This would happen because a natural system is
defined by constant scarcity and fierce competition between
individuals, groups, ideas, and methods.
Some will argue that the natural system I describe is
brutal and unnecessary — it has little to do with modern
times, and going on about it constitutes worship of the
primitive. But I maintain that we must study natural
systems and apply what we learn, because no matter how
"advanced" we become, we will always be ruled by nature.
How do I mean this? After all, we in America appear to be
completely divorced from the requirements of nature. We
have more than we need, we don't have to struggle to
survive (even though we go on endlessly about our
"struggle," usually to get more of what is already enough).
But we do this by setting up a special, unnatural
relationship with nature — instead of experiencing nature
directly, we have created a hierarchy of experience. Those
at the "top" of the hierarchy of experience see nature on
television (and on the Internet). In particular, we see
natural laws played out in the lives of the modern
proletarians, people whose job it is to create a cheap
labor pool and then die quietly, gracefully, without
objection.
The modern proletarians, both in America and elsewhere,
represent the "bottom" of the hierarchy of experience (as
Americans see it, anyway). They experience the modern
version of a natural food chain, with (for example)
blue-green algae at the "bottom" and humpback whales at the
"top." And this is how nature reasserts herself in the most
modern context — a technical "food chain" in which many at
the "bottom" are allowed to assemble circuit boards for
computers "consumed" by those few at the "top."
The reason natural food chains don't break down is because
the creatures that make it up have no mobility — try
teaching calculus to blue-green algae, or, for that matter,
to a humpback whale. The reason technological "food chains"
don't break down is because in the same moment that an
individual realizes his position at the bottom of the "food
chain," he also realizes he can scramble to the top
(speaking as someone who did). George Bernard Shaw once
described religion as "what keeps the poor from killing the
rich" — our realization of upward mobility is the modern
equivalent, except that it has more intrinsic truth than
does religion.
Religion
The reason religion seems so appropriate a repository of
dreams compared to, for example, a used car lot, is only
because religions have been practicing longer.
The crude methods of the used car salesman, the appearance
of chrome and freshly washed metal icons, flags, balloons,
cannot compare with the sophisticated, "uptown"
presentation of a modern church. In a Western church you
see actual images of deities, some frozen in advanced
stages of suffering. Compared to this, a vintage Mustang, a
classic Ford Coupe, mere metal and oil, cannot compete.
Modern religion is not a concept, it is a process. You
don't evolve or sit in repose, you proceed. From the moment
you encounter religion, you are in motion toward a goal.
There is no rest for the wicked, because rest is itself
wicked. But if you accomplish everything that religion
places before you, expecting to be left alone at the end of
the process, you instead discover you must go out and
persuade other people to join up and commence their own
process.
This is something religion has in common with Alcoholics
Anonymous — after you are in remission, you must go out
and find other alcoholics and "bring them in." For AA, the
real reason for this is because, without that secondary
goal, the members might slip into drinking again (as
recounted in a well-known, possibly mythical story). In the
same way, for the religious person, without the secondary
goal of proselytizing, he might lose interest in what is,
after all, a rather shallow belief system.
I would like to report that religion (the symbol) once
served the purpose of introducing people to a natural quest
for meaning in life (the thing), only later to become
distorted, but this would be disingenuous — so far as I
can see, religion has always been a diversion from the
actual quest, fed at times by personal selfishness, at
times by a desire for power, but only coincidentally by a
desire to provide a context for individual spiritual
experience.
Most western religions begin their indoctrination by
asserting the basic evil of individual experience and the
absolute necessity of the religion itself. This is simply a
convenient way to accelerate a process that replaces the
thing (spirituality) with the symbol (religion).
This assertion, this statement that individual experience
doesn't count or is actually bad for you, is the most basic
assertion of western religious experience. It conceals (not
very well) a belief that individual experience is secondary
to group experience. Thus, to the degree that it influences
modern people, it is a totalitarian belief system. One
person is in charge — the person who can most convincingly
assert his connection with a deity.
But religion in all its manifestations can never do more
than symbolize the reality of individual religious and
spiritual experience. Western religions are much more
worldly than many others, having debased even the symbol
they are responsible for. Instructively, the sad present
state of Western religion can be summed up by saying
"Television is better."
That's an interesting test. Why not evaluate your most
prized belief — by comparing it to television? In the case
of Western religion, the experience is such that people
prefer television. I hope you see the connection — both
television (as it is embodied in America) and Western
religion (ditto) promise something they can't possibly
deliver: an enriching experience. The only difference is
that television provides so many colorful images so quickly
that the average person finds he prefers the empty promise
of television to the empty promise of religion.
The negative side is that television and religion entrain
people to trust external value systems, to rely on a
fraudulent report of their own needs. And in this way
television is worse than religion. Why — because it has no
moral compass? No — it is only because television has a
larger audience. Religion has no moral compass either,
contrary to common belief. Or, to be more specific,
religion has had the same moral compass all along, but the
moral landscape's magnetic poles have reversed, leading
religion's travelers astray. What was sinful is now
virtuous and vice versa (to use the hackneyed language of
religion).
As just one example, having a large family used to be a
virtue, now it is no longer so, and it is about to become
"morally wrong," if that expression can have any meaning in
the minds of intelligent people. In the real world, very
soon, to bear one child will guarantee the death of another
child — that is nature's math, not mine. Unfortunately,
religion is using the same moral compass in the modern
world that guided it through ancient times, but under
nature's law there is no permanent solution to life's
problems — we must change how we act in life, because life
itself changes.
In a larger sense, religion's power to conceal this fact
(overpopulation) shows the power of symbols to
conceal the very things they are meant to reveal
. And, once again, it shows the inability of people (the
symbol's recipients) to see the difference between symbol
and reality.
None of this is to say that spiritual experiences are
fraudulent. That is a question I am not competent to answer
one way or another (except for myself). Answering this
question about religion is much easier — religion has
validity only to the degree that we are all identical, can
have meaningful spiritual experiences inside a building,
listening to the rantings of someone who pretends
attachment to a deity, and who needs us more than we need
him.
To a person capable of original thought, religion as a
belief system represents as much of an obstacle as does
government — a rigid system of facts, no ideas, no
openness. But the biggest threat to religion and government
(as practiced in modern times) are the laws of nature, a
place where constant change is more than just a fact of
life — it is a requirement.
Science
Science is by far the most misunderstood modern human
activity, and the one whose essence is most poorly conveyed
to students.
And yet, in order to comprehend the modern world, one must
also comprehend science. We are surrounded by the fruits of
scientific thought, but we don't understand the process by
which these things are created, and more importantly, we
don't understand the limitations of science. And, as with
so many other parts of the modern world, we have replaced
the reality of science with a symbol that is more a
caricature than a reflection.
The myths Americans believe about science and scientists
are almost too numerous to list — I will touch on just a
few.
Science myth #1 — The purpose of science is to discover
truth.
Science, unlike law and religion, does not even pretend to
be a source of absolute truth — and this is one of
science's great strengths. The highest product of science
is not truth, it is theory — the best theory we can devise.
When practiced correctly, science is a paradoxical mixture
of discipline and free-wheeling imagination. A productive
scientist begins by developing a new insight into an old
problem (or by posing a new question never before asked) by
imaginatively creating alternatives to existing theory,
then the scientist presents his findings in a way that pays
respect to all the things that can go wrong when we express
a new idea.
Instead of presenting a new idea by saying "I think this is
true," as one might expect, a scientist analyzes the
available data and shows how well his theory corresponds to
that data. And, perhaps more important, in most studies a
scientist includes a number that represents the probability
that his result came about by chance.
To those untrained in science, this might seem like bending
over backward with skepticism, but it is actually a very
efficient way to separate good theories from bad (or
meaningless) ones. Here is an example. Jerry flips a coin
eight times and all eight times the coin comes up heads.
Jerry, who is not trained in science, says "The coin came
up heads eight times out of eight, therefore it will always
come up heads. I have discovered a new truth about this
particular coin."
Jerry's friend Susan, trained in science, says "I have
examined the coin, and it seems normal. Therefore it is
most likely that the coin has provided a statistically
improbable result. The probability of getting eight heads
in eight flips is 1/256, which is unlikely but not
impossible."
Jerry scratches his head. "I studied some math in school —
does your result mean that if I flip the coin again, the
chance that it will come up heads in that toss is 1/512?"
Susan responds "That's called the 'gambler's fallacy' —
actually the chance you will get heads in any single coin
flip is always 1/2. But the chance you will get
all heads in a series of nine tosses
is 1/512."
This everyday situation is one reason why many people
believe in extrasensory perception (as just one example).
Someone will announce "I successfully predicted 12 coin
tosses in a row, therefore I am psychic." A scientist, by
contrast, will ask a few questions and (as likely as not)
discover either deception or a result that can be explained
by everyday statistics. In the case of the psychic,
typically he might discover that the person carried out
thousands of experimental runs to achieve the reported
result, and will then explain that if one sat through 4096
such tests, the probability of achieving 12 correct
predictions in a row in one of those tests
solely by chance
would be equal to 1/2 (in everyday language, an "even
chance").
Or the psychic might say "Well, there was a negative result
in the middle of the 12 correct answers, but I didn't count
that — I wasn't feeling psychic just then anyway." This is
one of the ways by which science differs from ordinary
human behavior — in science, you count all the events, and
you don't offer silly explanations when the data don't meet
your expectations.
This example doesn't mean that psychic ability does not
exist, or that scientists as a class don't believe in
psychic phenomena. It only means that scientists have not
succeeded in producing reliable evidence for psychic
effects. No self-respecting scientist would say "Psychic
events are always false," instead he would say "Show me the
evidence."
Science myth #2 — the best science comes from addressing a
specific problem.
When science addresses a particular problem, it is called
"applied research." When scientists are free to work on
anything they care to, it is called "pure research." And,
contrary to popular belief, pure research is the source of
most important scientific results.
Scientists love pure research, but politicians hate it.
Pure research costs the same amount of money as applied
research, but yields fewer short-term results. In the long
run, however, pure research creates new fields of science
and technology, while applied research can only add to an
existing body of knowledge.
The laser, the computer, the transistor and integrated
circuit which make the modern computer possible,
television, rocketry, our present understanding of the
universe, all these resulted from scientists being given
permission (or giving themselves permission) to think about
anything they cared to, to be "undisciplined."
But the majority of research funds come from government and
corporations, and those funding sources almost always
expect short-term results — applied science. This might
explain why, in spite of the fact that there are more
scientists living and working today than have existed in
all of human history, there are fewer fundamental
discoveries being made than, say, 50 years ago.
Someone might say "That's because everything has been
discovered already" but this is certainly not the reason —
there are many fundamental unanswered questions, questions
waiting for creative minds. As just one example, we can
describe gravity, but we can't explain it. We can predict
gravity's effects well enough to launch a spacecraft to
Mars so that it will arrive when and where we expect, but
we have yet to produce a meaningful explanation for gravity
and add it to our understanding of the universe. Gravity is
only one of many questions modern science could address,
except that no one will pay for the work — it's too
"theoretical." So, instead of exploring nature's secrets,
we pay to find (as one $65,000 study discovered) that
people who are young, rich and healthy are happier than
those who are old, poor and sick.
Science myth #3 — science can only be practiced by
scientists
Contrary to this commonly held belief, science is the moral
property of all thinking people — it is an indispensable
tool for sorting out reality. Practically any activity can
benefit from the application of scientific reasoning
skills. Even automobile mechanics regularly apply a kind of
science to their work — they replace one part, then
replace another, but never two at once, so that a
particular result can be traced to a single cause.
Scientific reasoning can also protect us from some of the
outright stupidity of modern times. For example, let's say
an advertisement appears on TV that says "Use my $39 secret
method and make a million dollars in only a few months!" A
scientifically trained person will take this description of
reality and place it next to several other descriptions,
one of which is "If his method can make a million dollars,
why is he selling it for $39?"
Here's another good application of scientific reasoning —
you see a book that tells the stories of 40 successful
stock investors, all multimillionaires. The book promises
to reveal their investment secrets (there are any number of
such books available). But, trained in science, you
consider all possibilities, not just one. You quickly
realize that, if there are millions of people who invest in
stocks, hundreds of them will become multimillionaires
by chance alone
(and hundreds of others will go broke by chance alone).
You realize you can program a computer to model a stock
market and investors, and, even though each portfolio is
randomly traded and the computer "market" goes up and down
randomly (without gradually increasing in value over time
as the real market does), the program will churn out a
certain number of wildly "successful" investors. You see
that, in spite of the mechanical nature of the computer
model (no system, no secrets, random trades), a certain
number of "investors" will increase their holdings ten
times over (this computer experiment can be easily
performed).
This is not to say that a successful system for investing
is impossible in principle, only that most have
common-sense explanations, and that consistent success in
the market is more likely the result of chance than genius.
Also, common sense tells us if there really was a sure-fire
method to win in the market, the creator of the method
would be reluctant to reveal it, because most methods fail
if they are widely practiced. In general, if you see a book
filled with sure-fire methods (even just one), it is most
likely that the author's secret sure-fire get-rich-quick
method is to sell a million copies of his book.
The general rule for a scientific thinker is to consider
all explanations for an effect, not just the one that first
springs into view. This works for everyone, not just
professional scientists. A professional does this to
protect his scientific reputation — normal people do it to
protect their life savings.
Education
"If a foreign government had imposed this system of
education on the United States, we would rightly consider
it an act of war." — Nobel Prizewinner Glenn T. Seaborg
In the first paragraph of this article, I asserted that
education could reshape itself "to provide actual knowledge
instead of the symbolic representation of knowledge." In
this section I will provide the meaning behind these words.
Modern education could serve to clarify the difference
between symbol and thing, except that much of modern
education depends on just that confusion — you aren't in
school to acquire knowledge, you are there to get a degree.
And
mistaking a degree holder for an educated person is
possibly the commonest confusion of symbol and thing in
modern times
. Do you need proof? Okay — Dan Quayle not only went to
college,
he graduated
.
The true goal of modern education, stripped of all
pretense, is to provide
a reasonable outward appearance of scholarship
— this is an easy task, it can be done on a small budget,
and virtually anyone can be shaped to fit into the costume.
As a result, we have "educated" people who know there are
three branches to the American system of government, but
can't explain why. We have "educated" people who know what
inflation is, but can't explain what causes it (more on
this below).
A more direct example. Please answer this question: How
many colors are there in a rainbow?
The correct answer is that
the question is meaningless,
because a rainbow is a continuum of colors beyond
counting, including invisible "colors" called infrared and
ultraviolet beyond the red and violet ends of the band.
Nevertheless, questions like this are part of the present
school curriculum, and a question like this one is included
in the science category of the Trivial Pursuit game cards,
a game supposedly designed for adults.
But even meaningful questions of this kind carry a hidden
false message —
education means knowing the right answers.
If we have answers for all questions, we believe we are
educated. We fail to realize that
correct answers are only symbols that represent knowledge,
they are not themselves knowledge
.
In a recent interview, a corporate recruiter said "We need
people who can
deal with ambiguity
... Schools must produce students with higher-order
thinking skills, and this must be done for all students,
not only for the elites."
Corporate and business leaders complain more and more about
their younger workers' inability to deal with the ambiguity
of real-world situations, and it renders young people
unable to compete once they leave the classroom.
This problem arises from the determinism of the present
educational system — we are teaching people
what to think
instead of
how to think
.
Entertainer Steve Allen recently said, "We need a fourth R
to go along with the traditional three R's of education —
Reading, Writing, 'Rithmetic, and Reason." But such an
educational change would be revolutionary rather than
evolutionary, because schools have
never
trained students to think for themselves.
The cornerstone of reasoning ability is a grasp of the
foundations of academic subjects, the ideas that lie behind
the "answers." In our next example, it is not enough to
know that the energy in a moving object is proportional to
its mass times the square of its velocity. Memorizing this
formula is only symbolic education, but knowing what it
means in the everyday world can be useful — or lifesaving.
Fact 1: "The energy in a moving object is proportional to
its mass times the square of its velocity."
Fact 2: "If a car going 20 miles per hour requires 20 feet
to stop, that same car going 40 miles per hour will take 80
(not 40) feet to stop."
Memorizing Fact 1 (and many others like it) will get you a
diploma. But if you don't understand the idea behind the
fact, you will not be aware of Fact 2, which could kill you.
And guess how many Americans know their cars take four
times more distance to stop when they double their speed
(disregarding reaction time)? Virtually none.
It might as well be an atomic secret
.
What conclusion should be drawn from this example?
-
Fact 2 should be included along with Fact 1 in the
education of American students.
-
Students should be educated in such a way that they
understand
why
fact 1 is true, and therefore any number of other
dependent facts (such as Fact 2) will become obvious.
This is true about education in general, and experience in
general
: For each fact there is an underlying idea, and it is the
idea that creates scholarship, not the fact
. A fact only symbolizes a particular example of an idea.
But this distinction has been lost — in modern education,
we have replaced idea-based training with fact-based
training.
One more example. Why is the nighttime sky dark? I want to
emphasize that the correct answer to this question is known
(within the uncertainty of well-established scientific
theory), but practically no one outside certain narrow
specialties knows that answer, including science students.
This is (once again) because students are provided only
with facts, and no one attempts to knit those facts into a
coherent whole, neither students nor professors.
Here are some possible answers to the question "why is the
nighttime sky dark?" (they are not correct):
-
Because stars other than the sun are too far away to light
up our sky.
-
Because dust clouds out in space block the light from
other stars.
The problem with answer number 1 is that there are a great
number of stars in every direction, more than enough to
provide full coverage of the night sky, so wherever one
directs one's gaze, the surface of a star should be lying
in that direction. So, barring any other considerations,
the entire night sky should blaze with the brightness of
the combined surfaces of all those stars.
The problem with answer number 2 is that, over a long
period of time, the energy from the stars should heat the
dust clouds to the same temperature as the stars themselves
(a well-established physical principle), so that after
billions of years, no matter where one looked, one would
either see the surface of a star or a dust cloud heated to
the temperature of a star, in every direction, including
the direction of our own sun.
The correct answer, according to current theory, is that
the universe is expanding. There are a great but finite
number of stars in an ever-increasing volume of space, thus
preventing the average temperature from rising very far. In
fact
, for centuries the dark night sky provided the answer to a
question no one knew how to ask
.
Click here for a full explanation
But, once again, even though specialists now know why the
night sky is dark, virtually no individuals can provide
this answer. We are unable to answer this or many other
questions of a similarly obvious kind, we are unable to
apply fundamental principles to specific everyday questions
for the reason that we do not understand those fundamental
principles
. We suffer from a poverty of ideas.
Most Americans are educated in name only — we do not have
the comprehension of ideas that would be required to think
for ourselves, and we also are not trained or encouraged to
do this. Not only are we unable to think creatively, we
don't even possess this expectation,
and this is not an accident
.
There are many vested interests that prefer us as we are —
in government, religion and in corporate America. Think how
much more trouble we would be if we could think for
ourselves. Not only would we be much more difficult to
govern (to the degree that politicians would have to
explain their actions), we would be much more alert to the
public stupidity that so often surrounds us.
Here's an example — former President Gerald Ford actually
persuaded many Americans to wear a button reading "whip
inflation now!" Imagine this happening in a society of
educated people — the immediate reaction would have been a
nationwide call on government to stop printing dollars not
represented by goods and services (the real cause of that
inflation) and then someone would have added "those buttons
you are printing — 'whip inflation now' — tell the lie
that inflation is the fault of the private sector.
Therefore, because the buttons tell a lie and are printed
at public expense,
they are themselves inflationary
, because they expend public resources and create no new
wealth."
But, as it happened, no one said anything. The people in
government were certain the rest of us would swallow the
lie that we were responsible for inflation, and government
was right — we did. This is why inflation can continue at
the whim of government
— virtually no one realizes that governmental policy is
the most frequent cause of inflation
.
Inflation is really quite simple — it is a measure of how
many goods and services a dollar can buy, and how that
changes with time. When the relationship between dollars
and goods and services changes, so that a dollar buys fewer
goods and services, the result is called inflation.
In most cases, inflation is caused by a governmental
decision to print more dollars than there are goods and
services — this is a calculated bet that the extra dollars
will create a psychological effect and actually increase
the size of the economy, thus making the dollars actually
stand for something. But very frequently this money
printing only causes private value to flow into the hands
of the government (through one of several methods) or it
simply causes people to lose trust in paper money.
For this and other reasons, if a change takes place so that
we are motivated to learn creative thinking skills, we
should not expect any help from government (although to
refuse earnest help would be equally stupid). We should
anticipate a lot of resistance from many quarters. But in
the long run, after all the emotional reactions have
expired, we will be more productive, more effective, and
less prone to follow charlatans both inside and outside
government. Most important, we will finally deserve the
label "educated."
And we will know why the sky is dark at night.
Conclusion
Most of us are unable to sort out reality — we can't
distinguish between a thing and a symbol for that thing
. This springs from several causes. One cause is that we
are isolated from the natural world, where the distinction
between a thing and a symbol is more obvious. Another cause
is our educational system, which simply reflects the
intellectual laziness of the society in which it is
embedded. A third cause is resistance on the part of vested
interests — if we could think creatively, we would be
difficult to govern, and advertisers would have to appeal
to reason instead of emotion.
We see the effects of this confusion of symbol and thing
all around us:
-
We seek "marriage" as though that quasi-legal institution
were the same thing as a worthwhile human relationship.
-
We seek "education" as though knowledge could be injected
into us like a vaccine without any investment on our part.
Failing at this, we then trust the statements of people who
possess white, rectangular sporting event trophies called
"diplomas."
-
We seek "religion" as though any worthwhile answers to
fundamental spiritual questions could be delivered in
encapsulated form, outside the direct experience of nature.
-
We trust the findings of "science" as though science's
principal value could be meaningfully delivered to people
who don't understand science (it cannot).
-
We trust the wisdom of "government" as though, without
direct participation by all of us, government could be
anything but a dumping ground for aging juvenile
delinquents.
There are many other examples. The solution to the problem
is to cast away a basic precept of modern times — that
wisdom can be bought and sold as though it were a toaster
. It can't be bought — it must be acquired through
personal experience.
As to the question of training people for meaningful,
skilled lives in the modern world, educators must begin to
impart thinking skills. This means training students to
know facts,
but also to know the ideas behind those facts
. To say it another way, educators must stop teaching
what
to think and start teaching
how
to think. This means forming a partnership with students,
so the latter realize they are the most important part of
the process.
There is another way of saying this, a somewhat darker way.
As a species, if we decide that facts are good enough, if
we abandon our pursuit of ideas, we thereby replace the
human intellectual adventure with a system of fixed
beliefs, and all human progress will cease. Eventually
nature will deal with us as she deals with all inflexible
species — we will vanish from the earth.
As an individual, relying only on facts assures that you
will be marginalized — and left behind. If you think the
world is just fine the way it is, then you may become a
"fact consumer" and no one will notice. If, instead, you
want to make a personal mark on the modern world, you must
have ideas —
ideas are the fuel of modern times
.
When it comes to a choice about personal values, "the
meaning of life," the acquisition of wisdom, no one is an
expert (which means everyone is, which means you are).
There is no simple scientific, technical, or religious
solution to the problem of shaping an individual human
being — all an honest teacher can do is make a list of
obviously flawed methods, say "these don't work," and then
silently point toward the horizon of all known experience.
Our past and present lie about us in comical repose, and
our future lies beyond that horizon.
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