08-16-2020, 09:15 AM
For obvious reasons we are approaching the end of the line for the Silent. Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, and Joe Biden are among the last acts. There are no Silent leaders in the wings, so what follows will largely be Boom and X. I suspect that America will be more selective of the next Boom leader and end up, if we should get a Boom President, someone free of the vices of the economic elite of the Boom generation (the selfish greed, the arrogant rancor, and unprincipled ruthlessness) while seeking people who better exemplify Idealist virtues -- principle, decisiveness, and culture.
Put someone like me in values as Secretary of Education (I really have been a teacher, if 'only' as a substitute, but long enough to know how the curriculum dovetails and the consequence of inclusion and exclusion of certain material, which is far more than I can say of Betsy DeVos)... and I will push cultural richness as a substitute for mindless, costly hedonism from which people get no lasting improvement in their lives. Are you bored? Maybe you bore yourself, and it is your responsibility to evade boredom. So read! Listen to great music! Seek images of excellence, whether art or nature. Then not only will you not be bored; you will have something about which to talk and be less boring!
There is more to life than being prepared for the first job, which seems to be the current objective of American education. Those first jobs are almost never what someone keeps for five or more years. Yes, I know the right answer to the interview question "Where do you want to be ten years from now?", which is "doing exactly the job for which I am applying", even if it is as a fast-food worker. Of course every employer wants a five-year solution to any job opening. Is that employer right to expect such? Maybe in a time of rigid class stratification and a stagnant economy for the non-rich for the indefinite future. That will not last. I can think of jobs for which I could apply and be hired, but such jobs are those in which I might be thinking of sa complete exit from life itself if such is the only exit from such mindless, joyless work that offers only poverty of economics and experience.
Put someone like me in values as Secretary of Education (I really have been a teacher, if 'only' as a substitute, but long enough to know how the curriculum dovetails and the consequence of inclusion and exclusion of certain material, which is far more than I can say of Betsy DeVos)... and I will push cultural richness as a substitute for mindless, costly hedonism from which people get no lasting improvement in their lives. Are you bored? Maybe you bore yourself, and it is your responsibility to evade boredom. So read! Listen to great music! Seek images of excellence, whether art or nature. Then not only will you not be bored; you will have something about which to talk and be less boring!
There is more to life than being prepared for the first job, which seems to be the current objective of American education. Those first jobs are almost never what someone keeps for five or more years. Yes, I know the right answer to the interview question "Where do you want to be ten years from now?", which is "doing exactly the job for which I am applying", even if it is as a fast-food worker. Of course every employer wants a five-year solution to any job opening. Is that employer right to expect such? Maybe in a time of rigid class stratification and a stagnant economy for the non-rich for the indefinite future. That will not last. I can think of jobs for which I could apply and be hired, but such jobs are those in which I might be thinking of sa complete exit from life itself if such is the only exit from such mindless, joyless work that offers only poverty of economics and experience.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.