Skip to main content

The Passionate Intellect: Incarnational Humanism as The Hope for Education

     The Stoic "objective" "Rationalistic" university bequeathed to by the Enlightenment, may have met its match with the Stoic coolness, laid back "whatever", and disconnected demeanor of the modern, common university student. Of course there are a few universities passionately committed to genuine learning and some students at every school who care deeply and passionately about learning. There are those when asked, "why are you at university" give the only right answer and that is "to become educated." Over recent years, when I ask my Freshmen why they are here, you get the range of consumer answers, and only rarely the answer of one consumed with a desire to know.

Popular posts from this blog

How Twitter Killed Tolstoy or Why You Will Likely Not Finish this Blog

     My favorite fictional Professor, aptly described the end of learning. Faber, tells how his class went from Sven Birkerts The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age The Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction Alan Jacobs Slow Reading in a Hurried Age David Mikics Words Onscreen: The Fate of Reading in a Digital Age Naimi S. Baron My own experience parallels that of Professor Faber. With declining Liberal Arts majors and distracted Great Books students.... Our lives have become as thin as the thinnest flat screen TV. There is a hollowness to our public discourses and our private conversations. It is not surprising how the tone, texture, and content of our verbal exchanges mimic posts on our dominate social media or the headline stories Of course, the title of this blog could have been any of the following: How Instagram Killed How Vine Killed How Facebook Killed How Google+ Killed How LinkedIn Killed
Read more

My Interview with William James on the New Atheists

      Ok , I begin with a disclaimer. This is not an actual interview in the technical sense. Since William James passed from this world in 1910, many decades before I was even born, it is not possible that I interviewed him. However, here is what really did happen. After spending the last few months pouring over key books by Professor James, it caught up with my unconscious mind and I did indeed dream that I met him and we talked. The following is an imagined conversation based on significant engagement with some of his writings and an unusual dream.  Robert Woods: This is a most unexpected honor to meet you Dr. James and be able to ask you some questions about some things you have written. William James: My pleasure. I am glad to discover that some are still reading my writings. Woods: I think what most impresses me about your education is that you are a philosopher and psychologist, but were trained as a physician which gives you an extraordinary ...
Read more

Faith, Hope, and Love in a Culture of Death: Lois Lowry's The Giver as Film

Let's begin with the film's single greatest obstacle: the culture Philip Rieff described as "the death culture" is not likely to assemble en masse to pay for viewing a morality tale. A central message in this film is that we have become "shadows." Indeed, those immersed in our death culture do not likely have ears to hear and eyes to see the hollow selves we currently are. In a time such as ours, where very little if anything signifies, it is not probable this movie will be understood. At one key moment The Giver declares, "we are living a life of shadows, of echoes." This sentence captures the essence of the death culture. Add to that the following minor problem of our nearly national obsession with spectacle, as evidenced in news shows and recent popular YA movies such as The Hunger Games and Divergent . It is clear our current death culture is taken with the dystopian novel and dystopian movie version of said novel as long as it provides ...
Read more