Thoughts of the Day: Saturday 31 October 2020 (Happy Halloween!)

 

The Lost Tools of Learning

Dorothy L. Sayers

For we let our young men and women go out unarmed, in a day when armor was never so necessary. By teaching them all to read, we have left them at the mercy of the printed word. By the invention of the film and the radio, we have made certain that no aversion to reading shall secure them from the incessant battery of words, words, words. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are a prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects.

The Age of the Unthinkable

Joshua Cooper Ramo

Studies of food webs or trade networks, electrical systems and stock markets, find that as they become more densely linked they also become less resilient; networks, after all, propagate and even amplify disturbances. Worse, the more efficient these networks are, the faster they spread those dangers.

A Secret History of Consciousness

Gary Lachman

If we assume that what we see of the world is limited by our understanding of space and time, and that these limits are not necessarily fixed, we can use our existing perceptions as starting points for deeper, more inclusive ones.

Prometheus Rising

Robert Anton Wilson

Neither capitalist indust-reality nor socialist indust-reality have been able to give humanity what most of us really want: liberty and justice, freedom and the abolition of poverty, continued growth and continued security. In looking at capitalism vs. socialism, we are always confronted with a dilemma, not a choice.

The Federalist Papers

Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, James Madison

[T]here is, in the nature of sovereign power, an impatience of control, that disposes those who are invested with the exercise of it, to look with an evil eye upon all external attempts to restrain or direct its operations. From this spirit it happens, that in every political association which is formed upon the principle of uniting in a common interest a number of lesser sovereignties, there will be found a kind of eccentric tendency in the subordinate or inferior orbs, by the operation of which there will be a perpetual effort in each to fly off from the common centre. This tendency is not difficult to be accounted for. It has its origin in the love of power. Power controlled or abridged is almost always the rival and enemy of that power by which it is controlled or abridged. This simple proposition will teach us how little reason there is to expect, that the persons intrusted with the administration of the affairs of the particular members of a confederacy will at all times be ready, with perfect good-humor, and an unbiased regard to the public weal, to execute the resolutions or decrees of the general authority. The reverse of this results from the constitution of human nature. Hamilton, Madison, & Jay: The Federalist Papers (Optimized for Kindle) (Kindle Locations 1680-1689). Kindle Edition (Federalist No. 15, Hamilton).

If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland

Published in 1938, still timely

Reading Brenda Ueland’s If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit recreated for me the experience of sitting in the classroom of a wise teacher. In my imagination she’s older, has a bit of extra weight, and is dressed appropriately for the 1930s (when this book was published), looking a bit of the stereotype of the schoolmarm. Well, that’s my imagination; in fact, this early 20th-century feminist, Barnard College graduate, and writer was not at all dowdy when she wrote this book.  (I think, because of similarities of tone and vocabulary, my image merged into that of Dorothy Sayers.) Ueland did, however, live an active life until her death at age 93!

But a mistaken image of Ms. Ueland’s appearance is not so great a mistake as thinking that this book is only for “Writers.” It’s not, it’s for writers, those who don’t (necessarily) earn their living by the pen or aspire to popular acclaim. Instead, it’s aimed at those who want to express themselves—amateurs, like me. Another mistake would be to assume that her work only applies to fiction writers, but good writing and the ingredients it requires, applies to all writing, even legal briefs! So whether you’re aiming for the New Yorker or just a post on Goodreads, this book will help guide and inspire you.

The first benefit of this book is that of a pep talk, and for her guidance, she relies primarily on the great English poet of the Imagination, William Blake. Blake, along with the painter Van Gogh, provide Ueland with statements about the Imagination that she commends to her readers. Blake, with support from other such as Plotinus and George Bernard Shaw, serve as inspirational guides. But the great Russians, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Chekov are her models for writing compelling stories. All of this she shares with her readers with an infectious enthusiasm, as well she should if following the example of Blake. But while she encourages, she does not compel or prescribe. She respects the genius in each of us and advises writers that we cannot force the imagination. Diligence, yes; compulsion, no. So it’s not a cookbook or a guidebook, it’s an inspirational book with lots of models and insight about the process of writing.

Since this is a short book, I’ll keep my review short. But if you’re a writer, even a casual one, or an artist in any medium, this book can provide you with inspiration and guidance that will be well worth your time and which I anticipate that you will enjoy. 

Brenda Ueland undated photo

Dorothy Sayers undated photo

While these women don't look so much alike, both published in the 1930s, and both wrote about creativity and imagination and referred these qualities to the Holy Ghost.

Back to the Future: The Lost Tools of Learning by Dorothy Sayers

Mining the Tradition for "new" ways of learning

In a 23 page essay written in 1947, Dorothy Sayers argues for the relevance and use of the Trivium, the classical and medieval foundation of education based on Grammar, Dialectic, and Rhetoric, taught in the order just listed. Is Sayers simply an old-fashioned fuddy-duddy? (Or as she suggests she’ll be branded, a “reactionary, romantic, mediaevalist, laudatory temporis acti (praiser of times past)” (The Lost Tools of Learning (Kindle Location 25) Fig. Kindle Edition. I think not. Her complaint is one that many can sympathize with: “although we often succeed in teaching our pupils “subjects,” we fail lamentably on the whole in teaching them how to think: they learn everything, except the art of learning.” Id. 77-78. As Sayers points out, Grammar, Dialectic, and Rhetoric are not “subjects” in the usual school sense, but the means of learning subjects. She summarizes the function of each in this educational scheme: 

The whole of the Trivium was, in fact, intended to teach the pupil the proper use of the tools of learning, before he began to apply them to “subjects” at all. First, he learned a language; not just how to order a meal in a foreign language, but the structure of a language, and hence of language itself—what it was, how it was put together, and how it worked. Secondly, he learned how to use language; how to define his terms and make accurate statements; how to construct an argument and Logic and Disputation. Thirdly, he learned to express himself in language—how to say what he had to say elegantly and persuasively.

Id. (92-97)

Most people know Sayers as the author of the Lord Peter Wimsey detective novels, a series of classics in the English detective genre. But besides this successful career, and working as a single woman in advertising, she also was a major translator and commentator of Dante’s Divine Comedy and a Christian apologist of the first order (The Mind of the Maker, for instance). Thus, when it comes to valuing this medieval tradition, she knows whereof she speaks. 

Following the tradition, she argues that at some age (pre-puberty), students should be introduced to Grammar by way of learning an inflected language. She suggests Latin (no surprise). She argues that younger (late elementary) children will benefit from the repetition and mechanics of learning a grammar. It’s not the higher order thinking of logic or rhetoric, but it’s a fundamental. I must note that in my own experience, I never liked or learned any grammar to speak of until I was forced to do so in taking Spanish beginning in high school. (This doesn’t mean that English teachers didn’t teach grammar. My failure reveals that I suffered the double-whammy of not-so-smart and stubborn.) In her scheme—or rather the tradition that she endorses—she seems to adhere to an intuitive Piaget-like sequence. She writes:

I recognize three states of development. These, in a rough-and- ready fashion, I will call the Poll-Parrot, the Pert, and the Poetic—the latter coinciding, approximately, with the onset of puberty. The Poll-Parrot stage is the one in which learning by heart is easy and, on the whole, pleasurable; whereas reasoning is difficult and, on the whole, little relished. At this age, one readily memorizes the shapes and appearances of things; one likes to recite the number-plates of cars; one rejoices in the chanting of rhymes and the rumble and thunder of unintelligible polysyllables; one enjoys the mere accumulation of things. The Pert age, which follows upon this (and, naturally, overlaps it to some extent), is characterized by contradicting, answering back, liking to “catch out” (especially one’s elders); and by the propounding of conundrums. Its nuisance-value is extremely high. It usually sets in about the Fourth Form.

Id. 158-164

 She concludes with that most challenging age bracket:

The Poetic age is popularly known as the “difficult” age. It is self-centered; it yearns to express itself; it rather specializes in being misunderstood; it is restless and tries to achieve independence; and, with good luck and good guidance, it should show the beginnings of creativeness; a reaching out towards a synthesis of what it already knows, and a deliberate eagerness to know and do some one thing in preference to all others.

Id. 164-167

Thus, this first stage isn’t so unlike contemporary schooling in that students learn to read, write, speak, calculate, and observe (science). But Sayers identifies this crucial difference: “The difference be felt rather in the attitude of the teachers, who must look upon all these activities less as “subjects” in themselves than as a gathering-together of material for use in the next part of the Trivium.” Id. 206-208.

As to the next stage of learning, Sayers writes:

It is difficult to say at what age, precisely, we should pass from the first to the second part of the Trivium. Generally speaking, the answer is: so soon as the pupil shows himself disposed to pertness and interminable argument. For as, in the first part, the master faculties are Observation and Memory, so, in the second, the master faculty is the Discursive Reason. In the first, the exercise to which the rest of the material was, as it were, keyed, was the Latin grammar; in the second, the key- exercise will be Formal Logic.

Id. 221-224

The final stage, beginning around age 14, Sayers suggests, is Rhetoric, which ties knowledge together. This contrasts with Dialectic (logic), which parses knowledge into discreet bits in order to best test it. Here we must appreciate that Rhetoric means the study of persuasion, not fancy speech or (necessarily) deceptive speech. The tradition follows Aristotle and not Plato on the utility and importance of Rhetoric, something we should do as well. Sayers suggests that the poetic impulse, the desire to persuade (and I’d add, seduce) comes to the fore at this stage. Having received the mechanics of language through Grammar and the crap-detector (my term, not hers) of Dialectic, the student can put it all together in persuasive prose and poetry. 

So why follow this prescription? Sayers, remember, worked for an ad agency and then she published this essay just following the Second World War. She writes: 

[W]e let our young men and women go out unarmed, in a day when armor was never so necessary. By teaching them all to read, we have left them at the mercy of the printed word. By the invention of the film and the radio, we have made certain that no aversion to reading shall secure them from the incessant battery of words, words, words. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are a prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects.

          Id. 132-136

Is this not true today—and more so? 

What is the end of education? Let Sayers have the last word:

[T]he sole true end of education is simply this: to teach men [sic] how to learn for themselves; and whatever instruction fails to do this is effort spent in vain.

Id. 328-329

So is this a Quixotic quest? Probably, but Sayers makes a strong argument. People argue about school curriculums because they shape the future. The curriculum must change as the culture changes, but perhaps some aspects shouldn’t be altered nearly so much. Sayers adds a lot of thought to the issue. In a future essay, I’ll address an even more comprehensive (but I think largely consistent) curriculum offered by William Irwin Thompson that is used in at least one K-12 school today. The search continues.

Favorite Books & Authors About Christianity

I limit this list to authors who lived during my lifetime (Maurice Nicoll just makes it) and who wrote about Christianity. The list has no particular order other than I started with more recent authors I’ve read (or listened to) and then I looked around my study. The list is much longer than I intended, but I can vouch for all of these books.

Mark Johnston, Saving God: Religion After Idolatry. I’ve said a lot about this book, so I won’t say more here except to say that there’s a lot more that I could write.

Karen Armstrong, A History of God and The Case for God. I have said of History that I think that every Christian, Jew, and Muslim should read it. As to The Case for God (which I will review soon), I say simply that everyone should read it. Monotheist, Eastern religious practitioners, non-believers: everyone who wants to understand the religious traditions. This makes the “Christian” list here because it focuses on Christianity more than any other one religion, but it is broadly comprehensive.

Northrop Frye, The Double Vision. See my recent review. In addition, his two books on the Bible, The Great Code and Words with Power are the longer works behind The Double Vision that are most worthwhile. By the way, Professor Frye, one of the great literary critics of the 20th century, was also Rev. Frye, an ordained minister of the United Church of Canada.

Gerald May, Will and Spirit. I have several of his books, and they are all worthwhile. Like most of the authors on this list, he relies heavily on the mystical tradition of Christianity for his inspiration. In addition, he was a practicing psychiatrist.

Helen Luke, From Dark Wood to While Rose. Helen Luke was grounded in the Jungian tradition, and this book of hers on Dante’s Divine Comedy is a superb guide for beginners and those who want to contemplate some of the choicest morsels of this great work (not just the sensational punishments of hell that seem to attract so many readers). A truly lovely book.

Garry Wills. Here it’s hard to pick. I’ll start with one of the two first books by Wills that I read: Bare Ruined Choirs about the (then) contemporary Catholic Church. It’s Wills at his journalistic (as well as philosophic) best. Since then, I’ll pick out only two more titles: Heads and Hearts: American Christianities about the history of Christianity in America and What Jesus Meant, his take on the significance of the life, death, and teaching of Jesus. Very short, but quite worthwhile. (See also his What Paul Meant and What the Gospels Meant.

Jacob Needleman, Lost Christianity and What Is God? The former is his investigation, reflection, and fantasy of the possibilities of Christianity from his perspective, and his perspective is greatly influenced by the tradition of Gurdjieff. His more recent (2010) book, What is God? is an autobiography of his struggle with the idea and practice of God. As always with Needleman, he writes for a general audience, not trained philosophers, and he always incorporates his personal experiences and those of his students.

William Johnston, The Mirror Mind: Spirituality and Transformation. This, and other works by Jesuit William Johnston reflect his time in Japan and his encounter with Zen practice there. In a theme that will run throughout this list, I believe one of the truly fertile encounters in the 20th century has occurred when Buddhists and Christians have shared perspectives. Although Thomas Merton doesn’t have a work on this list, he is certainly among the most well known person in this dialogue, but Johnston, I believe, along with others, has added a great deal in this and several other books.

Kenneth Leech, True Prayer: An Invitation to Christian Spirituality. This book, by an Anglican minister, takes the reader into the world of the earliest Church Fathers to find some essential insights.

Anthony De Mello, Awareness. Like his fellow Jesuit William Johnston, De Mello published a number of books. De Mello spent time in India, and so his perspective is flavored more by his Hindu and Moslem milieu. However, De Mello is a delight to read. I think several years after his death and after the publication of this book, someone at the Vatican decided that De Mello was too far out and put some kind mark against his book. Yeah, it’s that good.

Alan Watts, Myth and Ritual in Christianity and Behold the Spirit. Alan Watts, when he wrote both of these books, I believe, was an Anglican (Episcopalian) priest. This eventually proved too confining for the free-spirited Watts, but these two books delve deeply into the tradition. Already heavily influenced by his reading of Eastern traditions, these books shed great light on the Christian tradition. If you want to understand what’s going on in the Trivium, read Myth and Ritual.

Stephen Mitchell, The Gospel According to Jesus. By now, Mitchell, a poet and translator, has translated and commented upon just about every major spiritual classic from around the world. His take on Jesus is sensitive and well considered. He, too, is greatly influenced in his reading by Eastern perspectives.

Polly Berends, Whole Child/Whole Parent and Coming Home. In both books, Berends is first and foremost a mom. She studied under the tutelage of European émigré Thomas Hora, who brought to Berends a unique blend of psychotherapy, existentialism, and scriptural understanding. Throw in Berends very down to earth experiences of parenting, and you receive a unique and enlightening spiritual perspective.

Dom Aelred Graham, Zen Catholicism. After our friend Hedecki stayed with us, I started reading about Buddhism, and I began through books by Roman Catholics. Graham’s book was one of the first, if not the first, that I read about Buddhism. (Actually, Huston Smith’s chapter in his book, The World’s Religions was the first book that I turned to.) This Benedictine shared an insightful perspective on the two traditions that I’ve always found very useful.

James W. Jones, In the Middle of This Road We Call Our Life and The Mirror of God: Christian Faith as a Spiritual Process—Lessons from Buddhism and Psychotherapy. Although we might call these psychology books (too literate for self-help), their perspectives are deeply informed by Christianity and other traditions. If a spiritual practice doesn’t touch our daily life, what’s the point? Jones brings this perspective to light with clinical accounts.

Dorothy Sayers, Dante’s Divine Comedy: Translation and Commentary and The Mind of the Maker. This woman, most famous as an English detective novelist, provided a fine translation and a first-rate commendatory on Dante, among the greatest of poets. To understand his Christian masterpiece, you would be hard-pressed to find a better commentary and notes to guide through a reading. The Mind of the Maker is a series of very literate essays.

Maurice Nicoll, The New Man. Nicoll died in 1953, so he just made it to the wire. This book is deeply influenced by the perspectives of Jung and Gurdjieff that Nicoll made his own. Nicoll attempts to make sense of the Gospels as a guide to real metanoia (change of mind/heart). Very interesting and thought provoking. See also his book The Mark.

Andrew Greeley. Unsecular Man and No Bigger than Necessary. Greeley was a prolific writer, not all of it top quality, I think. However, these two books proved to have a lot to inform me. Unsecular Man is about the abiding human quality of religious expression and ties. Remember, Greeley is a professional sociologist (UChicago trained, I believe), as well as a born writer. As to No Bigger, it’s a defense and promotion of Catholic social and political thought, which I found quite persuasive. As a guide to economic, social, and political arrangements, Greeley argues the Catholic tradition has a lot to offer. I found it quite eye-opening back when I read it around 1980.

Robert Short, The Gospel According to Peanuts and The Parables of Peanuts. The first book (Gospel) I received from someone named “C” for Christmas, 1970, and the second one is inscribed to “Spook” from this same “C” July 1971. (Isn’t it wonderful to have girlfriends who buy you books?) These books were fun in one sense because they were filled with Charles Schulz’s Peanuts cartoons, but strange and wonderful because they spoke of Karl Barth, Kierkegaard, Elliott, Luther, Bonhoeffer, and Camus, among many others (and innumerable Biblical references). This theology was deeply rooted in the Protestant tradition of the mid-20th century. Heavy and serious stuff, lightened with wonderful cartoons. High and popular culture complimenting each other.

Rene Girard. I will just share his name here, as I’ve read many shorter pieces by him about Christianity and his unique take upon the significance of Christianity. (See earlier posts.) I haven’t carefully read his Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World, his big work on Christianity. I should. Beat me to it and you’ll be the better for it.

Chris Hedges, I Don’t Believe in Atheists. Hedges is a modern-day prophet. He thunders against war and oppression, American fascist religion, and he scoffs in this book at the “New Atheists” for their naiveté as much as anything. (Johnston calls them—Dawkins, Hitchens, and Harris—the “undergraduate atheists” because they base their arguments on texts read as undergraduates and have skipped crucial texts that would have come in graduate school). In any event, Hedges pulls no punches on any topic, and he does confront you, even as he goes after the subject of his book or article. He is a modern prophet, and you don’t think that you’ll read him for casual consideration. Sometimes I find him too much of a downer, almost too cynical, but maybe that’s how prophets have to be.

Jack Miles, Christ. The former Jesuit brings his erudition, following his Pulitzer prize-winning God: A Biography, to the Gospels. Mile presents a compelling consideration of the Gospel message and its meaning.

Reinhold Niebuhr. Moral Man and Immoral Society and most else of what he wrote. You thought I was going to forget Niebuhr? I think that he is in some sense the 20th century reincarnation of St. Augustine. His perspectives of politics and society are unparalleled for their insights. He, too, is not easy in the sense you can step away from reading him feeling smug and self-satisfied. I don’t know if Niebuhr’s voice would be heard today, as he’s too unwilling to suffer the foolishness of both the Right and the Left. Always highly recommended.

Special Addendum:
Two Buddhist get a special shout out:
1. Thich Nhat Hahn, Living Buddhist, Living Christ. This Vietnamese Buddhist monk, who now lives in France, I believe, but who travels and teaches throughout the world is a wonderful voice of love, compassion, and mindfulness. In this book, he displays those traits in comparing the traditions of Buddha and Jesus. A wonderful work.
2. Alan Wallace, Mind in the Balance: Meditation in Science, Buddhism, and Christianity. Wallace is a former Tibetan Buddhist monk who also has studied physics and holds a Ph.D. from Stanford in Religious Studies. He is among the foremost Buddhist scholar-practitioners around. He wrote this book for his stepdaughter, who’d been raised and practiced as a Christian. He undertook this book to show the intersection of these three traditions (as well as some philosophy) to show how all can contribute to a deeper interior life.

Okay, enough now. Go read a book.