Fantasy
The professor had thought about this decision for months. He
had been close to following through on his plan a dozen, or more,
times, only to lose courage at the last minute.
Now, once again, he was staring his demons down in the middle
of the night. A faculty meeting had been scheduled for the morning,
and he wanted to speak his heart to the assembly.
Yet, the message of his heart had real consequences for him, as
an individual. Moreover, there was no assurance anyone else would
go along with him on the matter.
In fact, he very likely would be like the sound of one-hand
clapping at the end of the day. The only question remaining is
whether there was going to a right-handed or left-handed clap.
Based on hundreds of conversations he had with fellow
colleagues across the years, he knew that in their heart of hearts
many faculty members thought as he did. However, there often is a
huge divide between the thinking of something and its doing.
Sometimes this is for the better. Sometimes it is a source of
shame.
He had rehearsed the situation in his mind’s eye so frequently he
feared a great deal of spontaneity and passion might have been lost,
and these two factors could play an important role in helping to sway
some of his colleagues to accompany him on this, perhaps, quixotic
quest. Nonetheless, he went through the process one more time.
Following the usual order of such meetings, new business would
be sought from the chairperson. That would be the time to stand up
and be counted.
He would turn around, face his friends and associates, and begin
to speak. He would search for his rhythm, perhaps stumbling a little
at first – an orator he was not.
“My fellow colleagues, I stand before you today as an individual
who is being haunted. The ghost of my conscience has been keeping
a vigil for quite some time, hoping I would summon up the necessary
resolve to do that which is needed.
“I remember how excited and happy I was when the idea of
being a teacher first trickled into my consciousness. I was captivated
by the idea of helping people to find themselves -- to learn about
issues of identity, purpose, meaning, truth, integrity, commitment,
justice, and happiness ... all the issues which tug at the core of our
beings ... the issues which bed down with us at night and rise with us
in the morning.
“But, today – and, really, for some time now – the original idea
which seemed to be calling to me, asking for my service, seems to
have been transformed into something entirely different ... as if I
have been under attack from an ‘invasion of the body snatchers’ that
has taken my soul from me, and left something else behind ...
something which looked like me, talked like me, acted like me, and,
yet, something from which a certain dimension of humanity had been
lost or removed.
“In high school I was fortunate enough to have spent time with
one of those rarest of specimens – a teacher who actually knows
something ... not about information, or this or that set of data, or how
to do experimental work -- which, to a greater or lesser extent, all of
us have an understanding of sorts ... but a teacher who not only
knows about life but has a deep, passionate insight into all that life
encompasses.
“That teacher taught me a great deal ... much of which, I am sad
to say, has been put on a shelf to gather dust along with my books
and journals. There is one teaching, however, which keeps coming
back to me and which, more and more, makes looking in the mirror
a very difficult activity for me to do.
“The teaching – as all great jewels of wisdom are – was both
simple and profound. More specifically, I was urged by this high
school teacher not to attend the circle of any learned individual
unless that person requests me to give up five things in favor of five
other things – namely, I should be asked to give up: doubt in favor
of faith; hypocrisy in favor of sincerity; worldliness in favor of
asceticism; pride in favor of humility, and enmity in favor of love.
“I regret to say that, in many ways, I have turned into precisely
the kind of learned person about whom my high school teacher had
warned me to stay away from. And, I would like to share with you,
briefly, some of why I feel this way.
“Skepticism can be an important tool which enables one to cut
away a great deal of theoretical drivel, but it is a tool with a blind
spot. The nature of that blind spot is we are very rarely ever
skeptical about skepticism, nor are we as skeptical about our own
ideas, opinions, theories, ideas, priorities, and values, as we tend to
be in relation to the ideas, and so on, of others that challenge our own
cherished beliefs.
“All too frequently, skepticism is a device for attacking someone
or something, rather than serving as just one tool, among many,
which can be used for helping to uncover the truth. The goal is not to
end with skepticism but to use skepticism, judiciously, as a mode of
transportation toward wisdom, and, then, as necessary, modify our
use of skepticism in order to refine our search for truth rather than
throwing the baby out with the bath water, as we inevitably end up
doing when we insist that the one unshakeable tenet of faith which
everyone must adopt is to be skeptical about anything and everything
... even the truth ... even wisdom.
“I keep asking myself – what do I have faith in these days? I
have plenty of beliefs, opinions, understandings, and interpretations
... but do I have faith in any of these things, and the answer,
unfortunately, is ‘no’.
“I end up giving my students a hodgepodge of half-baked
theories, pieces of information, the latest fad in methodology, and try
to convince them that they are, now, educated. And, if they are so
foolish as to not accept my concept of an educated person, well, insult
is added to injury because I assign them grades in order to be able to
punish them for the rest of their lives if they don’t see things my way.
“My high school teacher taught me that faith is not blind ... in
fact, it must not be blind, for if it is, then, it is mere belief, not faith.
Faith is probing, inquiring, curious, exacting, relentless, critical of
ignorance, dynamic – but faith can do something which skepticism
and doubt cannot do ... faith can embrace and love the truth when
that truth becomes manifest. Faith can live in harmony with doubt,
but the reverse is not true.
“I teach my students to doubt everything, to have faith in almost
nothing. By doing this, I perpetrate a great injustice against my
students.
“I speak with my students about wisdom, justice, truth, morality,
and, yet, very little of what I teach is put into practice by me. I teach
them – do as I say, not as I do, and why would anyone in her or his
right mind want to follow someone who is a hypocrite and fails to
practice what is preached.
“Like so many places of worship – and, indeed, academia has
become the new home of the high priests and priestesses who
promulgate a theology of rationalism – I give my sermons, and, then,
as soon as I leave the classroom behind me, all that has been
mentioned is forgotten. Rarely do I want to examine the gulf
between what I say as a teacher, and what I do as a teacher.
“To give just one example, I know grading to be an inherently
immoral act which is antithetical to all we know about how and why
people learn. We grade people because we want to be able to control
them and to use them for our purposes – grades are the great stick
we hold over every student’s head which says, in effect, if you don’t
accept our idea of what constitutes an educated person, you will be
punished and your lives will be adversely affected.
“Yet, I continue to assign grades. Why? Not because I believe
grading assists learning – which it really doesn’t and there is much
experimental data to prove this that we conveniently hide -- both
from our students as well as ourselves.
“I assign grades because I fear being losing my job. I continue to
assign grades because I want my students to put aside the lesson of
skepticism and to have faith in a system which cannot stand up to
critical scrutiny. I assign grades because I wish to continue to have
the privilege of being a hypocrite and be paid very nicely for being
so.
“I have forgotten how to be sincere with my students or my
colleagues or with the world in general. My life is buried in so many
lies to myself and others that I seem unable to interact with anyone
anymore from my heart rather than from a personal agenda
concerning my own career and self-interests, and too bad for
everyone else.
“Part of my role as a teacher is to counsel students. I counsel
them about how to create a career – how to make the decisions which
will enable a student to have a good chance of obtaining those
positions that will lead to advancement, higher-pay, more power,
enhanced social status, professional competence, and so on.
“I counsel them about the academic version of the good-life. I
counsel them that everyone should aspire to more money, more
possessions, and so on, and never have an answer for how a world of
limited resources is going to be able to supply everyone’s
expectations, or how we are going to solve the environmental
problems which accompany elevated demands for goods and
services, when we cannot even deal with the ecological damage which
is accruing presently.
“Instead, I teach students that life is a zero-sum game in which
there are winners and losers, and if you want to be the former or
avoid being the latter, then, you have to position yourself at the
expense of fellow human beings. I tell students this is a basic law of
life, but I hide the skeptical slide rule from view so that they won’t
begin to question whether life really must be played as a zero-sum
game, or critically reflect on what the inevitable end-game of such a
process must be.
“I don’t counsel my students about gaining mastery over their
egos, emotions, or desires. I stoke the fires of ambition, selfishness,
greed, or fame -- yet I, and others, consider me to be a responsible
human being for doing so.
“How could I do otherwise since I don’t have mastery over
myself. I counsel people according to what I know and, much to my
deep regret, what I know is not true self-discipline ... a discipline of
abiding by the truth, a discipline of being fair, kind, generous,
compassionate, empathetic, tolerant, forgiving, and loving of others,
a discipline of modesty and moderation ... but, rather, what I know,
and, therefore, what I counsel is ambition, selfishness, greed and
career recognition.
“I’m proud of my academic accomplishments, and therein lies
the problem. Instead of being humble before my own ignorance,
instead of having humility in light of all the many things which I
don’t know or understand, I have wrapped my pride about me like
a coat of armor to keep the truth of the matter from penetrating my
inner being.
“My pride is the roar of a delusion which signifies nothing of
importance. My pride is the actor who childishly refuses to give up
center stage and who needs to bask in the adulation of others to feel
alive and have a sense of identity – an identity which withers away
into nothingness ... a terrible, empty nothingness ... as soon as one
leaves the glow of the spotlight.
“ I loved my high school teacher for, among other things, his
humility. He was the wisest of human beings, and, yet, he lived a
dance of elegant humility. My pride is a dance of not-so-quiet
desperation which seeks to be remembered, if not loved, and the
likelihood is that neither will be the case.
“My high school teacher used to say that “poverty is my pride”,
and although arriving at an understanding of some of what he meant
by that statement has taken considerable time, I have come to realize
he was talking about his sense of self-awareness. He was devoid of
ego, and, yet, he was incredibly aware of life.
“He was happy with his impoverished sense of self-absorption.
He was content with his anonymity.
“My sense of self is a sin with which none other can compare. It
gets in the way of everything, including my ability to teach students
about the importance of humility and the dangerous sickness which
is inherent in pride.
“Pride does go before the fall. The ego knows this but is in love
with itself and does not wish to let go of its delusions, and, therefore,
fights tooth and nail – both against oneself and others – to hold on to
pride, because for the ego there is nothing worse than the fall into
sincere humility and selflessness.
“Finally, against the advice of my high school teacher, I have
been teaching my students the subtle nuances of enmity, rather than
love. I have taught them to hate one another as they vie for grades,
jobs and recognition. I have taught them to hate and ridicule
approaches to truth which are different from mine. I have taught
them to hate faith, sincerity, self-mastery, truth, and humility. I have
taught them to pay lip-service to diversity but harbor a subtle sub-
text of contempt, arrogance, and superiority concerning other ways
of life, other forms of wisdom, other ways of acquiring truth. I have
taught them to hate that which is trans-rational and to force fit the
universe into square holes of rationality, irrespective of whether, or
not, the universe fits. I have taught them to hate themselves and sell
their souls for grades, careers, and acclaim – to forget finding out
who they really are or what the purpose of life is or what their
essential potential is ... I have taught them that these are all frivolous
pursuits which can be fooled around with once the important matters
of life – such as career – have been secured and life has become
materially comfortable. In short, I have taught them to hate learning
and tried to convince them that education and real learning are one
and the same, when they are not and have not been for a very long
time.
“So, where does all of these considerations leave me? I feel there
is only one conclusion which can be drawn from the foregoing and
that is I must resign my post from the university, and I implore
others of you who feel as I do to do so, as well.”
When the time arrived for this latter portion of his comments to
be put forth -- the part concerning his decision to resign, the
professor hoped there might be others who would stand with him ...
perhaps, if enough faculty members listened to their conscience, as
he was trying to, a movement in the direction of bringing sanity,
morality, and justice to the halls of higher learning might become
established.
But, the professor also realized this was just a fantasy and, in all
likelihood, no one would stand up with him ... just as he, probably,
would never give the talk which he had rehearsed in his mind so
many times ... not because what he felt was untrue, but precisely
because it was true. Just as the law usually has nothing to do with
justice, education often has nothing to do with truth, for few people
wish to pay the costs associated with following a curriculum
committed to seeking, and, God willing, finding, as well as applying
to their own lives whatever truths have been discovered.
For all too many people, truth, pursuing truth, and living in
accordance with truth are but a fantasy – better to stick with the
realities of doubt, hypocrisy, worldliness, pride, and enmity. The
professor’s high school teacher would have been saddened by this
truth, but his high school teacher would have understood and,
despite everything, he would have retained a tolerant, loving,
empathetic, encouraging compassion for the professor, hoping upon
hope that the professor would find it with himself to be a better man
than he had permitted himself to become.
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