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What was it that one learned through a great books curriculum? Certainly not "conservatism" in any contemporary American sense of the term. We were not taught to become American patriots, or religious pietists, or to worship what Rudyard Kipling called "the Gods of the Market Place." We were not instructed in the evils of Marxism, or the glories of capitalism, or even the superiority of Western civilization.
As I think about it, I'm not sure we were taught anything at all. What we did was read books that raised serious questions about the human condition, and which invited us to attempt to ask serious questions of our own. Education, in this sense, wasn't a "teaching" with any fixed lesson. It was an exercise in interrogation.
To listen and understand; to question and disagree; to treat no proposition as sacred and no objection as impious; to be willing to entertain unpopular ideas and cultivate the habits of an open mind — this is what I was encouraged to do by my teachers at the University of Chicago.
It's what used to be called a liberal education.
The University of Chicago showed us something else: that every great idea is really just a spectacular disagreement with some other great idea.
Bret Stephens's speech warrants a full read. It makes valuable points that we all need to hear, even on SN.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aristarchus on Wednesday September 27 2017, @08:11PM (2 children)
Does my memory fail me, or is ical our assigned member of the Latter Day Saints? You are not going to convince her, Azuma. Nothing can defeat Mormon nice.
(Score: 2, Informative) by lcall on Wednesday September 27 2017, @08:23PM
A Mormon male. I give away software which lacks some things (like a demo video and slick installer or mobile support) but what it does have works very well (extremely fast & flexible personal knowledge organizer with a tutorial & docs; interchange features coming; AGPL):
http://onemodel.org [onemodel.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday September 27 2017, @08:32PM
Oh, Mormons are different. Whacky, but different. Most of them have three afterlife destinations, those being the Celestial, Terrestrial, and Telestial realms; as I understand it most Mormons don't have a Hell proper. Their religion is also a Masonic con-job, and there's documentation to back it up, but as my own experience shows, religion grabs people powerfully.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...