Harry Potter and the Recovery of Civilization
English-Speaking Peoples Being Rallied against the Dark Lords!
I have recently experienced four powerful signs that the tide may be beginning to turn against the dark lords of nihilist existentialism, Nietzschean power-mongering, positivist skepticism, Romantic sentimentalism, arrogant fundamentalism, and worldly materialism that singly and together have spread their curses over the Western world for nearly two centuries and that in the last several decades—with the more recently brewed dark witch’s cauldron of reductive feminism, surreptitious Marxism, dehumanized post-modern theorism, disguised racism, and anti-religious bigotry that goes by the name of political correctness—have seemed to be consolidating their tyranny. (The Eastern world has suffered from its own somewhat different curses, equally in need of dispelling.)
The signs are these, on order of increasing numbers of people reached by them:
1. I saw a production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure from which the illusory concept “problem play” had been utterly banished, as if by the wand of Dumbledore himself. The duke was heroic again, just, kind, masterful, inventive, daring, and merciful, his power once again revealed to be God-like and correcting (not cruel, weak, selfish, power-hungry, or corrupt, as the Lucios of the English departments of the world had been describing him for over a century). Isabel was just, merciful, loving, and courageous, a perfect match for the duke, (not prudish, cold, cruel, abstract, and hard, as several generations of readers and playgoers have been told). Marriage at the end was not conquest or compromise or accommodation but the triumph of love over vice, the sacramental kiss of justice and mercy. It was the Measure for Measure I have sometimes despairingly awaited for over 30 years of studying Shakespeare.
2. I read a book by a professor of English in an American university entitled The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature. In it, the author, Elizabeth Kantor, not only dismissed the depredations of the p.c. humanities departments of our institutions of so-called higher learning with well-formed sentences of Olympian simplicity and truth, but then turned to the works of literature themselves to show us why they merit to be studied in their own bright light, unscreened by the perverse shadowy overlays of the faddish –isms of the day. Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, and many more are released with McGonagall-like dispatch from the jinxes of race, class, and gender that have insinuated themselves into and usurped the high seats of authority belonging to reason, justice, truth, and love.
3. I find that the long dark road of unflinching investigation into human depravity has turned a corner in Cormack McCarthy’s novel The Road and revealed light. In this heir to All Quiet on the Western Front, Night, and other post-apocalyptic novels of the last century, we discover that the body and its survival instinct are not after all the deepest things in us, but that our core is free will and the possibility of a love that redeems us from death and the fear of death. It is a very dark book. I do not recommend it to children or to those who seek merely emotional titillation from stories of violence and death. But the book will reinforce the courage of those who can admit their craving for meaning even in the midst of the fear of the total destruction of culture and civilization and will reward that craving with unlooked-for avenues of redemption.
4. I have just finished the seventh book in the Harry Potter series and can finally say what I have been hoping to be able to say all along—that J.K. Rowling is the best children’s book writer since C.S. Lewis and in a sense (because less explicitly Christian) an even more universal one. Eschewing both smarmy sentimentality and ideal-dissolving skepticism, she has restored free will, moral choice, and the eternal battle between good and evil to the center of human concern in the imagination of the present generation of adolescent book-readers.
In every one of the novels Harry is faced with an agonizing moral choice, one in which doing the right thing requires a terrible sacrifice. Always the context includes the real possibility of getting it either wrong or right and the real potential for unexpected disasters and unimagined forms of help. In the last of the novels, in keeping with Rowling’s remarkable gift for aging her characters one year at a time, the challenges, the virtues needed to face them, and the sources of help are at their peak. I will not give away plot, but I will say that, among many other wonders, the final sentence of Chapter 35 gives the reader one of the greatest and most satisfying gifts to have been delivered by literature (children or adult) in many a decade. (Don’t skip ahead, or you won’t get it.)
In short, Rowling is Potter. She dares to challenge us to be good, even in this age of fear, cynicism, illusory entitlement, and media appeals to the lowest common denominator in us. And look at the sales figures! The adolescent readers of the world, buying and reading her books, declare that Dumbledore’s Army lives, despite the legions of negating Voldemorts who infest our media and English departments because they infest our own imaginations. We too, like Harry, have every moment a choice to make between our own temptations to fear, doubt, and despair and our own faith in the eternal meaning of justice, truth, and love. And like Shakespeare, Milton, Jane Austen, Dickens, Tolkien, and Lewis, Rowling has given our youth (and the youthfulness in us adults) a precious gift to turn the scale toward the good: the gift of a morally true and therefore healing story.
I have recently experienced four powerful signs that the tide may be beginning to turn against the dark lords of nihilist existentialism, Nietzschean power-mongering, positivist skepticism, Romantic sentimentalism, arrogant fundamentalism, and worldly materialism that singly and together have spread their curses over the Western world for nearly two centuries and that in the last several decades—with the more recently brewed dark witch’s cauldron of reductive feminism, surreptitious Marxism, dehumanized post-modern theorism, disguised racism, and anti-religious bigotry that goes by the name of political correctness—have seemed to be consolidating their tyranny. (The Eastern world has suffered from its own somewhat different curses, equally in need of dispelling.)
The signs are these, on order of increasing numbers of people reached by them:
1. I saw a production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure from which the illusory concept “problem play” had been utterly banished, as if by the wand of Dumbledore himself. The duke was heroic again, just, kind, masterful, inventive, daring, and merciful, his power once again revealed to be God-like and correcting (not cruel, weak, selfish, power-hungry, or corrupt, as the Lucios of the English departments of the world had been describing him for over a century). Isabel was just, merciful, loving, and courageous, a perfect match for the duke, (not prudish, cold, cruel, abstract, and hard, as several generations of readers and playgoers have been told). Marriage at the end was not conquest or compromise or accommodation but the triumph of love over vice, the sacramental kiss of justice and mercy. It was the Measure for Measure I have sometimes despairingly awaited for over 30 years of studying Shakespeare.
2. I read a book by a professor of English in an American university entitled The Politically Incorrect Guide to English and American Literature. In it, the author, Elizabeth Kantor, not only dismissed the depredations of the p.c. humanities departments of our institutions of so-called higher learning with well-formed sentences of Olympian simplicity and truth, but then turned to the works of literature themselves to show us why they merit to be studied in their own bright light, unscreened by the perverse shadowy overlays of the faddish –isms of the day. Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, Jane Austen, Mark Twain, and many more are released with McGonagall-like dispatch from the jinxes of race, class, and gender that have insinuated themselves into and usurped the high seats of authority belonging to reason, justice, truth, and love.
3. I find that the long dark road of unflinching investigation into human depravity has turned a corner in Cormack McCarthy’s novel The Road and revealed light. In this heir to All Quiet on the Western Front, Night, and other post-apocalyptic novels of the last century, we discover that the body and its survival instinct are not after all the deepest things in us, but that our core is free will and the possibility of a love that redeems us from death and the fear of death. It is a very dark book. I do not recommend it to children or to those who seek merely emotional titillation from stories of violence and death. But the book will reinforce the courage of those who can admit their craving for meaning even in the midst of the fear of the total destruction of culture and civilization and will reward that craving with unlooked-for avenues of redemption.
4. I have just finished the seventh book in the Harry Potter series and can finally say what I have been hoping to be able to say all along—that J.K. Rowling is the best children’s book writer since C.S. Lewis and in a sense (because less explicitly Christian) an even more universal one. Eschewing both smarmy sentimentality and ideal-dissolving skepticism, she has restored free will, moral choice, and the eternal battle between good and evil to the center of human concern in the imagination of the present generation of adolescent book-readers.
In every one of the novels Harry is faced with an agonizing moral choice, one in which doing the right thing requires a terrible sacrifice. Always the context includes the real possibility of getting it either wrong or right and the real potential for unexpected disasters and unimagined forms of help. In the last of the novels, in keeping with Rowling’s remarkable gift for aging her characters one year at a time, the challenges, the virtues needed to face them, and the sources of help are at their peak. I will not give away plot, but I will say that, among many other wonders, the final sentence of Chapter 35 gives the reader one of the greatest and most satisfying gifts to have been delivered by literature (children or adult) in many a decade. (Don’t skip ahead, or you won’t get it.)
In short, Rowling is Potter. She dares to challenge us to be good, even in this age of fear, cynicism, illusory entitlement, and media appeals to the lowest common denominator in us. And look at the sales figures! The adolescent readers of the world, buying and reading her books, declare that Dumbledore’s Army lives, despite the legions of negating Voldemorts who infest our media and English departments because they infest our own imaginations. We too, like Harry, have every moment a choice to make between our own temptations to fear, doubt, and despair and our own faith in the eternal meaning of justice, truth, and love. And like Shakespeare, Milton, Jane Austen, Dickens, Tolkien, and Lewis, Rowling has given our youth (and the youthfulness in us adults) a precious gift to turn the scale toward the good: the gift of a morally true and therefore healing story.
posted by G.Rap | 8:39 AM
11 Comments:
I am an avid reader of your blog, and I have never enjoyed - or agreed so much with - any entry as much as this one. Thank you, Dr. Rap, for writing it :)
-Whitney
Thanks for the comment, Whitney. It's good to meet with approval on such a subject, and I really appreciate your taking the time to write.
I loved the seventh book. It's captivating, and it's very "tight" in a way we haven't seen since book three or four. I wonder what happened in the 6th book, which I think has a good number of lines nearly as good as the one in chapter 35 that you cited, but also some of the most glaringly false notes in the series.
I find Rowling's fiction a lot more engaging than Lewis's from a plot/character perspective, but I don't think she is nearly as certain about which messages she wishes to convey, which perhaps adds even more excitement and unpredictability to her books. She occasionally glorifies cheap sentimentality, so it was good to see that some of her nobler messages won out in the end.
I am so happy to hear you are a fan of the works of J. K. Rowling. I have been disappointed year after year by teachers telling me that they can't stand the books or the author. Seeing how these books were the foundation for my adolescence (my age matched almost perfectly with Harry's as the books came out), it was always quite disheartening to hear an assumed expert on the subject of English and literature tell me that the Harry Potter books were anything less than what I took them for. What a relief to find a teacher who succeeds in avoiding the damaging blow to my childhood that so many others have made!
-Larissa
Thank you for reading The Road. It's one of those books that keeps me going in the face of what sometimes seems to be impenetrable darkness. This is the first time I've read your blog in years.
~Greg Hanoian
Dr. Rap, I just have one question to ask you that I don't think you have addressed as of yet in your blog (though I'm new to your blog and might have missed it in earlier posts).
I am an avid fan of Freud, Marx, Camus, and existentialism in general.
Why exactly are you so dead set against them?
You call this "one question"? It would take years of blogs to answer you thoroughly. But I'll give the short version here: Because existentialism is a major form of the modern world's war against the soul of man.
In various ways I admire the religious existentialists: Kierkegaard, Buber, and others. And _The Plague_ of Camus is an admirable book. But the spiritual vapidity of Sartre and Marx are insufferable, even without a full recognition of the disastrous consequences of the hoaxes they have perpetrated upon the world.
Freud is another matter, though he too is reductive and misleading about the nature of man. But he has some important insights, despite his psychological scientism, about patterns in the subconscious mind that shed valuable light.
And among those you list, Marx is in a category by himself, having been an immoral, selfish, and destructive human being in his own life as well as in the effects of his ideas. The notion that human civilization is a function of material reality alone, that Marx himself is merely such a function, is utterly absurd and contrary to the actual experience of life of every conscious human being, including the most devout of Marxists.
Perhaps it comes down to this: Either man is a mysterious being composed of body and soul, created in freedom to address the universe and his Maker with faith and virtue. Or he is the meaningless result of an accidental process of nature whose end, being irrelevant to the universe, must ultimately be irrelevant to himself.
Maurile has argued (at various points in this blog) that human meaning does not necessitate the presumption of a divine origin and purpose for man; I maintain that ultimately it does, though many find meaning in pretending that it doesn't. Freud, Marx, Sartre, Nietzsche, and the modern positivists deny any divine reality a priori. I say they are free to do so. But doing so is as great a leap of faith as belief in divinity. I choose the other leap because I think it alone can lead to a meaningful life.
If the existentialists are right, it doesn't matter which of us is right. If I am right (along with Buber and C.S. Lewis and Abraham Lincoln and Shakespeare and Dante and St. Francis and Maimonides and Aristotle and Plato and Socrates and Moses), it does.
I apologize if I'm being a bit dense, but it seem to me you are quite a binary thinker. Despite Marx's groundbreaking criticism of capitalism, you completely reject all of his revolutionary ideas. Granted, many of them are based on false assumptions, but his essential functionalist analysis has been the basis for over a hundred years of sociological, political, and economic thought. You allow Freud some slack for his emotional atheistic world view, but not Marx. Both have been positive influences on twentieth century thought, and even though I do not subscribe to either's views at all, I acknowledge their importance and their contribution to the improvement of mankind's self-knowledge.
If your binary thinking were isolated solely to your distrust of nihilism and existentialism, I might forgive it. However, you seem to rigidly reject those things which do not fit into your personal view on the world. I see, for example, your view on drug use as an example of this hypocritical traditionalist mindset. I am not a drug addict, or even a drug user, yet I know that there is no real distinction between alcohol and all other mind-altering substances besides traditional moralist and racist legislation.
Likewise, your critical approach seems to rely greatly on this binary mentality. Things and ideas either jive with or offend your sensibilities, a sensibility deeply grounded in Judeo-Christian interpretations of morality. I do not personally deride others for their inexperienced ideas, but instead attempt to provide constructive arguments that will help them strengthen their arguments. Next time, maybe they will provide reason that contradicts and revises my own personal philosophy. You take other's ideas and say explicitly that they are wrong, then chide them for their naivety and belief in the lies of incompetents.
On top of everything, I have yet to read a compelling argument for organized religion, and indeed any sort of supernatural force. I would not consider myself atheistic, and I am generally against labeling as it encourages groupthink and prejudice. If I had to label, I'd have to go with ignostic, though even that term does not necessarily encompass my belief system. I'm tired of this “hedging your bets” mentality I've seen in many Christians:
“If the existentialists are right, it doesn't matter which of us is right. If I am right (along with Buber and C.S. Lewis and Abraham Lincoln and Shakespeare and Dante and St. Francis and Maimonides and Aristotle and Plato and Socrates and Moses), it does.” - G. Rap
While I'm sure this doesn't serve as the basis of your foundation, providing support for your faith by simultaneously name-dropping and providing a risk vs. reward analysis (inherently a materialistic practice), you weaken your argument and cheapen your faith. I do not believe that faith can be based in whole or in part on these arguments, as to have true faith you must have no doubt. With this idea of faith, however, we end up with many pushy people willing to do anything to coerce others into their same belief structure.
In short, you write as a propagandist. I do not criticize your ideas, only your methods. Many people read this blog, and as San Diego's private schools succumb to their own greedy expansionist policies, these intellectual white towers become increasingly the bastions of impressionable Bourgeois children with pseudo-intellectual delusions. They lack the critical thinking to actively develop their consciousness, and when bullied by an authority figure such as yourself, begin to worship you as a demigod.
I'm not writing this as an attack on you or your beliefs and ideas. I just don't like your tone. There are very often severe gaps in your logic that you simply gloss over and ignore, as many people who have absolutist ideas are wont to do. Absolute truth and absolute explanations are inherently impossible and reductive assumptions, as is the presence of an absolute moral code. I think you are an interesting person, with interesting things to say and a depth of literary knowledge I doubt I could ever personally command. I just think you need to lighten up a bit.
~Greg Hanoian
Here are my replies, sentence by sentence, to “Unmortgaged Polygamist”:
"I apologize if I'm being a bit dense, but it seem[s] to me you are quite a binary thinker."
I admit this is often true. Most people are. We think in either/or ways to clarify contrasts, and it is often useful. I don’t think it is bad in itself. At the same time, rising above binary thinking—seeking the third alternative, which sometimes requires a greater leap of imagination—is often a challenge, even when called for. In such cases, it is more helpful to show where binary thinking has led one astray than to condemn binary thinking in itself.
"Despite Marx's groundbreaking criticism of capitalism, you completely reject all of his revolutionary ideas. Granted, many of them are based on false assumptions, but his essential functionalist analysis has been the basis for over a hundred years of sociological, political, and economic thought."
The argument is not persuasive unless one assumes that in that hundred years, the sociological, political, and economic thoughts based on Marx have been valid and done good to the world. Obviously there are some ways in which that is so. In any powerful idea, there will be some good. My response to Marx is based on the overwhelming destructiveness of his ideas when put into practice by devoted Marxists, and on their foundation in materialism. His advice to “follow the money,” for example, is good advice, so long as one realizes that there are other motivations in human life besides money. But to the extent that he has helped bestow upon us a civilization that measures everything in terms of money, economics, class, power struggle, and materiality, I think I am not being unreasonable to reject his overall influence.
"You allow Freud some slack for his emotional atheistic world view, but not Marx. Both have been positive influences on twentieth century thought, and even though I do not subscribe to either's views at all, I acknowledge their importance and their contribution to the improvement of mankind's self-knowledge."
Importance, yes. Contribution to improvement? Not compared to American free enterprise, I think. The argument might be more convincing if my critic gave even one example of Marx’s “contribution to the improvement of mankind’s self-knowledge.” Marx’s predictions about capitalism and communism were dead wrong. How have we really benefited from a century of belief in his ideas?
"If your binary thinking were isolated solely to your distrust of nihilism and existentialism, I might forgive it. However, you seem to rigidly reject those things which do not fit into your personal view on the world."
One man’s reason is another man’s rigidity. Rigidity is not itself an evil. If I am shown where I’m wrong and persuaded, I’ll alter my thinking. And what is meant by “rigidly reject”? Are the borders of our opinions to be so porous that all ideas will remain equally right and equally wrong at the same time? Or, to avoid binary thinking here, perhaps my critic will explain which kinds of things not fitting into one’s personal view on the world one ought to reject rigidly, which unrigidly, and which not at all.
"I see, for example, your view on drug use as an example of this hypocritical traditionalist mindset. I am not a drug addict, or even a drug user, yet I know that there is no real distinction between alcohol and all other mind-altering substances besides traditional moralist and racist legislation."
I object to the joining of “hypocritical” and “traditionalist.” Or are there are some “traditionalist” mindsets that are not “hypocritical”? Some traditions are good, some not. To reject all traditional mindsets as “hypocritical” is to be guilty of mere prejudice.
As to there being no difference between alcohol and other mind-altering substances, my experience over many years suggests that the effects of drugs and alcohol on young people tell a different story. Of course abuse of alcohol is destructive. But proper use of alcohol by mature adults is not, whereas there can be no proper use of such drugs as LSD, Ecstasy, cocaine, heroin, and so on, except (in the case of methamphetamines and marijuana) under competent medical supervision. This opinion is based on a combination of the traditional moral principle that one is not permitted to harm oneself and the empirical evidence that such drugs in any amount are harmful. My own observation of the long-term effects of marijuana, for example—detachment, recumbency, and paranoia—persuades me to be opposed to recreational use of that drug as well as of the others. I also oppose recreational (as opposed to sacramental) use of alcohol by minors.
What this opinion or the laws against drugs have to do with racism I cannot imagine.
"Likewise, your critical approach seems to rely greatly on this binary mentality. Things and ideas either jive [sic] with or offend your sensibilities, a sensibility deeply grounded in Judeo-Christian interpretations of morality. I do not personally deride others for their inexperienced ideas, but instead attempt to provide constructive arguments that will help them strengthen their arguments. Next time, maybe they will provide reason that contradicts and revises my own personal philosophy. You take other's [sic] ideas and say explicitly that they are wrong, then chide them for their naivety and belief in the lies of incompetents."
I am not sure from the above what is wrong with being “deeply grounded in Judeo-Christian interpretations of morality.” And I at least believe I am trying to present constructive arguments. If my critic believes my arguments are not constructive, I would say he is free to demonstrate as much with his own arguments. My question here is who is deriding whom?
"On top of everything, I have yet to read a compelling argument for organized religion, and indeed any sort of supernatural force. I would not consider myself atheistic, and I am generally against labeling as it encourages groupthink and prejudice. If I had to label, I'd have to go with ignostic [sic], though even that term does not necessarily encompass my belief system. I'm tired of this “hedging your bets” mentality I've seen in many Christians:"
Where there is faith in God, there may be compelling arguments for organized religion. But I repeat that there can be no “compelling argument” for belief in God. Belief in God is a response to compelling spiritual experience, which may then be supported by arguments. Argument may prepare one for a spiritual awakening, but no one can prove to anyone without faith that he ought to have faith. This is because “to prove” means to show the truth of some proposition in light of more fundamental givens that are believed and shared by the arguers. And the existence of God and of the duty to worship him are propositions that are themselves fundamental. Nothing more fundamental exists in terms of which these could be “proven” as secondary principles. They are premises, not conclusions. One either believes them or does not. No science, empirical evidence, logic, or dialectic can turn one from a skeptic into a believer. Neither, of course, can the existence of God or the duty to worship him be disproven by science or empirical evidence or logic or dialectic. Faith is not, by definition, subject to proof. If it were, it would not be called faith but knowledge.
"'If the existentialists are right, it doesn't matter which of us is right. If I am right (along with Buber and C.S. Lewis and Abraham Lincoln and Shakespeare and Dante and St. Francis and Maimonides and Aristotle and Plato and Socrates and Moses), it does.' - G. Rap
"While I'm sure this doesn't serve as the basis of your foundation, providing support for your faith by simultaneously name-dropping and providing a risk vs. reward analysis (inherently a materialistic practice), you weaken your argument and cheapen your faith."
I was not offering that sentence as any kind of proof. I was merely pointing out a simple truth. If the Existentialists are right that there is no “essence” of man and no God and no meaning but what we invent for ourselves, then it doesn’t matter in any way outside our own interior feelings whether we believe in God or not. It is merely a matter of personal preference. We are part of no ultimate meaning larger than ourselves. If I am right that there is such an external reality of which each of us is a part and which judges our parts in it, then everything we do matters profoundly.
My list was not to drop names. It was merely to illustrate who belongs to the company who share my belief on this matter. The ones who belong to the other company are Hobbes, Nietzsche, Darwin (late in his life), Freud, and Sartre. I prefer the former company and believe them to be better company. Others may prefer the other, and they are entirely free to make their choice.
As for risk vs. reward analysis, one does not (cannot) believe in God just because it is a better risk. Pascal’s wager can make sense only to one who already believes. Faith, as I said above, is not an invention of the self. It is a response of the whole self to irresistible experience, to vision. And the fact that my critic finds “risk vs. reward” analysis to “cheapen” my faith is a sweet admission of his own recognition of the difference between cheapened and non-cheapened faith and of his valuing the latter more highly. This suggests to me that without realizing it he may be on a path toward faith himself. In any case, my intention was not a “risk vs. reward” analysis. The point of my comment is that under the existentialist banner, truth can’t possibly matter. Only under the belief in some absolute ground of meaning outside ourselves can it possibly matter whether what we believe is true or not.
"I do not believe that faith can be based in whole or in part on these arguments,"
Agreed, as I said above.
"as to have true faith you must have no doubt."
This is simply false. Nearly everyone who has ever had faith has also had doubt. Men are not gods. Doubt, as many wise men have said, is the other side of faith. To say that “to have true faith you must have no doubt” is to reveal ignorance of what the faithful mean by faith.
"With this idea of faith, however, we end up with many pushy people willing to do anything to coerce others into their same belief structure."
It is true that “pushy” behavior arises from the fear of doubt by those who think as my critic does, namely that if they have doubts, that must mean that they have no faith. To avoid that fear, they pretend they have no doubt themselves and go off to persecute others who express their doubts. This is the source of most of the fanaticism in the world. However, to lump together such people with all believers is inaccurate and foolish. As Pascal pointed out, human beings live between total certainty and total ignorance, and the relation between right reason and true faith is an ongoing discovery. The greatest minds at work on the problem philosophically (Maimonides, St. Thomas Aquinas) recognized that faith was not the antithesis of reason but the fulfillment of it. Yet the relation between them is not easy to comprehend. It takes years of work and study and some degree of inspiration. In any case, to imagine that doubt and faith are pure opposites, that no one with doubts can really have faith, is to engage in a degree of binary thinking that is breathtakingly simplistic, particularly in light of the critic’s earlier comments.
"In short, you write as a propagandist."
C.S. Lewis, in _The Abolition of Man_, distinguishes between propagation and propaganda. I believe I am in the former category, or at least that’s where I try to be. Propaganda means trying to get others to believe what you don’t believe yourself in order to make use of them for selfish ends. I don’t think I’m guilty of that. I am exhorting others to see things as I strive to see them, not pretending I never have doubts but at the same time trying to articulate as clearly as I can my reasons for believing and arguing as I do.
"I do not criticize your ideas, only your methods."
I don’t see what “methods” are objected to, unless “binary thinking” is a method, in which case the critic is at least as guilty as I.
"Many people read this blog, and as San Diego's private schools succumb to their own greedy expansionist policies, these intellectual white [sic] towers become increasingly the bastions of impressionable Bourgeois children with pseudo-intellectual delusions."
Well, this is a fairly sweeping generalization about our independent schools. I would be the last to say that greed and pseudo-intellectual delusions are not present in San Diego independent schools. But where are they not present? Surely no one can think the public schools are free of the same? Or the government? Or the airwaves? This kind of attack is mere prejudice. As a teacher I am busy every day trying to counteract greed and pseudo-intellectual delusions, and also ignorance and selfishness and fear and many other human weaknesses, with values and knowledge and intellectual honesty and the wisdom of the past and of the present. I certainly cannot claim to be infallible in these efforts, or in my writing of blog posts. But I deny the implied accusation that as teacher or writer I am fostering greed and delusion.
"They lack the critical thinking to actively develop their consciousness, and when bullied by an authority figure such as yourself, begin to worship you as a demigod."
I believe, at least, that I am trying to foster critical thinking and to develop the consciousness of my students. Whether and how well I may be succeeding I leave it to a higher judge than myself or my critic to determine. What the critic’s evidence for my being worshiped may be I cannot imagine. I will leave it to my students to testify whether I am a bully or wish to be worshiped as a demigod. Whatever degree of authority I may have in the eyes of my students can have come only from their own experience of my words—really the words of the great writers I teach and of my own teachers—as illuminating to their lives.
"I'm not writing this as an attack on you or your beliefs and ideas. I just don't like your tone."
Luckily, no one forces you to suffer from my tone. You are free to dispense with it as you please.
"There are very often severe gaps in your logic that you simply gloss over and ignore, as many people who have absolutist ideas are wont to do."
ALL people are wont to have gaps in logic. We are fallible all. And a blog post is obviously a limited medium. It is not possible to say everything relevant to any topic, or to be always a perfect dialectician. I appreciate being shown gaps in mine when they appear, and I hope I am willing to correct them. But they must be shown logically. That the critic makes different assumptions from mine is not sufficient proof that my arguments are false, nor are his obvious prejudices reasonable grounds for condemning mine.
"Absolute truth and absolute explanations are inherently impossible and reductive assumptions, as is the presence of an absolute moral code."
Except that one? This is hilariously ironic. The absolutism of asserting an absolute moral foundation to reality is not admissible, but the absolutism of asserting that there is no such foundation is not? More breathtaking logic.
Let us make some careful distinctions. To believe that fundamental values are universal and absolute is not the same as believing that all values are absolute or as pretending to know how to apply those values in every case. To believe in an absolute moral code is not to say that all moral choices we make in life are black and white. It is only to assert that there is solid foundation of values upon which we stand in trying to make the best moral choice in particular, often confusing, cases. Once again, I refer my critic to Lewis’s _Abolition of Man_, which sets out the argument far more thoroughly and eloquently than I can do in a blog comment.
"I think you are an interesting person, with interesting things to say and a depth of literary knowledge I doubt I could ever personally command. I just think you need to lighten up a bit."
I feel confident that my students will understand my saying that my only response is :-).
I'm not going to get into a full-blown blog war with a counter-response to your response. I'd just like to make a clarification regarding connotation and denotation:
Propaganda, n.
1. The systematic propagation of a doctrine or cause or of information reflecting the views and interests of those advocating such a doctrine or cause.
2. Material disseminated by the advocates or opponents of a doctrine or cause: wartime propaganda.
3. Propaganda Roman Catholic Church. A division of the Roman Curia that has authority in the matter of preaching the gospel, of establishing the Church in non-Christian countries, and of administering Church missions in territories where there is no properly organized hierarchy.
~Gregory Hanoian
If Unmortgaged Polygamist intended those definitions by the word "propaganda," I have no objection to being called a propagandist. I thought he meant the word to have its usual negative connotation.
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