I watched this [Richard Drefuss on the teaching of civics - http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3690300743716658987], and wish to say on principle that I agree with the essence of Drefuss' ideas- that reason, logic, civility, clarity, and independence are indispensable virtues neccesary to sustain the impossibly rare 'miracle' of a free or even semi-free society. I do think that a society which does not teach people to think for themseles will inevitably degrade into the anicent pattern of authoritarian kingship- a pattern which I would as a feminist strongly identify with what Riane Eisler called a patriarchal 'dominator society', as well as with dogmatism and political statism.
But other elements typical of this kind of classical republican tradition makes me nervous. The notion that education is required for liberty is a true one, but Dreyfuss comes close to suggesting that this education overcomes not simply ignorance but some orginal inclination towards an easy tyranny, as if the young have to be rigourously pushed to an unattractive liberty they don't really want. Here I greatly disagree- I think that the human spirit naturally expands to use its talents if encouraged in them and treated with humanity, and that attempting to teach reason and freedom as if these are miserable rote lessons makes something unattractive out of what should be the fulfillment of the natural human desire for happiness. I believe psychological work on child abuse such as that of Alice Miller strongly supports the notion that it is obedience and dictatorship, not liberty and independence, which can only be instilled in a child by social hammering. And while I very highly believe education isneccesary for liberty it *must* be remembered that most of the pedagogy children recieve is deeply authoritarian and deeply part of the problem.
This is to me also a strongly feminist issue. It is often maintained by patriarchal historians that republican Rome maintained itself by a hard, militaristic code of civic virtue in which individual desires were sacrificed to family and society- while a later, imperial Rome lost its freedom in a feminised decadence. The truth is rather more complicated- imperial Rome may not have been democratic and was brutal in many respects, but there was significantly more liberty for women and comoners and well as a much more tolerant sexual morality, and I would argue for much of the imperial period life was happier than in the scarce, barracks-state from which Republican Rome inherited its morality- and further that the more liberated society of the Roman Imperium was the *fulfillment* of the best elements of the Republic, not its nemises.
One can easily see parallels here with Greek conservatives who mourned the moral and cultural laxity of the Athenian generations which produced the Golden age of poets and philosophers, or with contemporary neoconservatives and paleoconseratives who bemoan an American 'decline' in the 1960s which saw increasing centralisation- but also a more open, tolerant, less miltaristic and masculanised society with more respect for individual happiness and personal choice in family, relationships, and empoyment. If republican morality is used to claim that a free society must be a repressed and disciplned society then what it is claiing is that liberty is ade possible by unhappiness. Nor will its version of 'liberty' have much respect for artists, individualists, bohemians, drug users, sex workers, dissidents, freethinkers, or cultural minorities or social nonconformists of any type. And this is what those who are loudly patrioric do generally ean when they thump their suited-and-tied chests as liberty's defenders. If this is freedom, I'll see what slavery is selling these days
I very greatly distrust anything that suggests this classical republican reading of history, which suggests that to retain liberty we must buckle down and rigidly apply ourselves to defending (patriarchal) 'civilisation'. Actually, I think people are more tolerant and more respecting of liberties precisely to the degree they are liberated, healthy, and prosperous- and that the proper education for a free society is one where the development of talent is seen as the culmination of playful exploring of one's powers, as in the Montessori method. Socially we should be encouragaing not grim and dutiful seriousness but an *educated* pursuit of happiness which can learn to see seriousness, competence, and courage as enjoyable and a means of protecting and extending enjoyment.
Now this doesn't strictly disagree with Dreyfuss' statements, and I very much share his Enlightenment ideals. But the tone he uses is easily picked up by psychological authoritarians of the dinner table, classroom, and church pulpit with far less genuine interest in preserving liberal democracy than in maintaining an atmosphere where people in society maintain the social and moral order by doing what they are told. And pace too many 'libertarians' to count, I believe this is disastrous to liberty. Even if it were not, I am not willing to subject the young or old, or women or men, to an attitude of soul-confining discipline for some larger social good.
It *is* very much worth considering the social mores that produced our modern miracles, but many classical republican theorists would be shocked at the data of history. The unparalleled achievements of Athens, for instance, were made possible in the context of a rigorous education continued in social life by a spiritually competitive, intellectual ethos crossed with a cosmopolitan polity whose relative social and political freedom attracted the best minds from all over the Greek world. The social circles the great writers worked in hardly resembled civics classes- the symposia were literally 'drinking parties' spiced with wine, music, courtesans, and gay love affairs. Very similar cultural circumstances were repeated in the periods which actually produced the intellectual work of the Rennaisance and the Enlightenment. America's great expansion of social freedom occureed paralell to the 1960s counterculture- a period which incidentally saw the birth of the modern libertarian movement. And this is not merely a Western phenonenon- the intellectually most productive cultural centers of Babylon, Egypt, India, China, and Japan were all known for their distinct flavour of cultural 'decadence'.
Nothing in this need to contradict the rational ideals of the Enlightenment- in fact I regard the common alignment of reason with America's historic frowning Puritanism to be half a historical accident and half a fraud, and the linkage of Apollonian rationality and cultural liberation is equally if quietly documented. But it has been unfortunately typical of the kind of thinkers who consolidate successful revolutions and write the history books, (and teach civics lessons) to associate reason and clarity with a conservative culture of authority, discipline, and restraint- which was certainly the overwheming kind of message I got from civics classes in my high school, where the only real debate was the struggle between conservative parents at home and welfare liberal bureaucrats at school as to what ideology had first claim to the next generation's obedience. In my opinion our best defense against tyranny is to teach people to think for *themselves*- and this is inseperable from teaching people to question authoirty, follow their dreams, live their passions, and live by their own principles and personalities without shame. That to me is the genuine legacy of the Enlightenment, and the notion that stuffy civics teachers trying to make us good citizens for Father State are going to teach the principles of Socrates and Voltaire (neither precisely known in life for their conservative morality) is ludicrous.
Yes, we must educate the young in reason- but this must begin by the trusting and cultivation of bright, eager, curious, desiring minds. And I believe that when our civilisation finally admits what institutions in society naturally cultivate these kind of virtues they will be in for quite a shock. By all means, I agree that no society will preserve its freedom which does not teach the virtues of the free mind and the philosopher instead of those of the cringing subject of some Earthly or heavenly tyrant. But the kind of education this requires- while demanding in the sense of expecting the full use of the faculties of its students- has no resemblance to a moralistic civics lesson.
Yes, liberty can only survive in a civilisation which encourages and cultivates the heights and the ideal. But the way to respect that ideal is not to drag and lecture a reluctant and slothful human nature up to a politically neccesary standard better than its native desires. Nor- to be fair- can democracy be maintained without a high but humanistic standard with its own kind of demands. These kind of demands require not the sacrifice of happiness for neccesity and public duty but merely that we train and arm ourselves in body and spirit until we are capable of securing it- and sadly it has seemed more historically difficult for people to have the courage to seriously try to be happy than to yoke theselves to a collective morality of misery.
If we wish to encourage the moral ambition neccesary to sustain a free society, I suggest we look at our vrtues not as demands requires from the hous on the hill above, but as an ideal which will empower us as we manifest it from within. Then we will have the stature neccesary for beings capable of living in Liberty.
"Then the time came when the risk it took to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.î
- Anais Nin
love and strife,
Aster Francesca
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