Paul Freedman was Probably Right

An essay from my blog. I think it needs some polishing.

I was homeschooled with the help of my wonderful mother, hundreds of books, and online courses. Due to several factors, this was a better option than either public or private school. I started online college courses in my early teens and immediately fell in love.

One of these treasure troves of knowledge was a Yale Open Course taught by Paul Freedman (notable for his brilliance and odd hair) on the Early Middle Ages. Though I did learn a great deal about the Vandals and the Byzantine Empire, something he said about the present day stuck with me.

In the middle of one of his lectures, he was discussing how the decline of the Roman Empire happened. A key characteristic of the Middle Ages was the loss of ancient science, culture etc. and the lack of education for those not of noble blood or part of the religious order. Suddenly, he turns to what history might say about our present times:

“What if some future historian is scandalized at the fact that in order to get into Yale a hundred years ago you had to know Greek and Latin. If you look at what those gentlemen C students had to study, or were responsible for, in say, 1925, it’s extraordinary. It’s not very impressive in the sciences, but the decline of the humanities, if by decline we mean things like knowledge of classical literature, is stunning.

Somebody may decide in a few hundred years that the Dark Ages began in about 1950. And that those pathetic people in, say, 2011 impressed with their little technological toys, nonetheless didn’t know anything. Now I don’t actually believe that. There are some people who do. There’s a philosopher at Notre Dame named Alasdair MacIntyre who really believes that the Dark Ages began a long time ago, and we simply don’t know. We simply refuse to recognize this.”

There it was. We could be in another dark ages and not know it.

Isn’t this overly pessimistic? Maybe, but I think there is evidence to support the idea. In spite of the fact that almost all knowledge is freely available to anyone with a computer or smartphone (we should remember that not everyone is) and that facts have been democratized, do we value wisdom and learning? Art? Culture? All the things that make us more human? From today’s president to the way we run our schools to our willingness (or lack thereof) to pay artists, the signs are everywhere in this country.

At first, this sounds a little trivial. We have so many other problems in the world. How does a crumbling culture compare to war and disease and prejudice and the fact that our planet is melting?

Phrased that way, it doesn’t. But the items on the above list (with the exception of disease) are either directly or indirectly related to ignorance. In and of itself, lack of knowledge is a sad injustice, but it can be easily controlled by others for their own ends and used to keep whole populations under sway. And due to an unfortunate quirk in our biology, the unknown ‘Other’ often inspires hatred and distrust �" leading to racism, xenophobia, and a host of other evils, which are then propped up with false information. It is the same with other prejudices �" they spring from the fear of the Other and are then used by the powerful to become even more powerful.

This is a component of many wars, because to gather popular support, those at the top must inspire hatred for the enemy and suspicion of unknown people and cultures, and this often leads to death for many. The method is also quite convenient when stripping the rights of fellow citizens who happen to be different in some way.In the case of rapid human caused climate change, a combination of poor access to full information and fearful denial made many susceptible to the cover ups of the fossil fuel industry for decades.

But that’s talking about knowing in general? What about the humanities?

A hint lies in the word itself: human-ities. They are key to staying civilized: history stores our past and helps us learn for the future, literature grows our emotional intelligence and leads us to think about our lives, philosophy (ideally) encourages us to pounder our ethics and how we want to live. I could go on and on.

What to do? I’m not sure what the answer is on a grand scale. But one can value culture and keep learning, support scholars and artists, help preserve valuable things, and hopefully pass the idea on.

Author's Note

I started wonderfully, but I feel like my agrument was not throughly constructed and that I got rather rambly. Also, I'm not sure if starting with the personal anecdote strengthens or weakens the piece.

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[Margaret M.]

Yes, I noticed ponder was spelled wrong and now I can't edit. Oh well.