Ancient and modern academics
Students, the people who make up the body of higher education, who are they? The etymology of the word comes from the Latin verb studeo- to be eager, keen, enthusiastic, a fair description of what the young learner should seek. Once the compulsory levels of education have been completed the enthusiasm for higher learning takes over, the pursuit of wisdom and knowledge is the end of higher education. Today that is gone, lost, higher education in morphing into higher training has become another compulsory obligation for the young person to fit the mold of society's demands.
Returning now to the great Allan Bloom's seminal work,'The Closing of the American Mind,' his first foray into the impoverishing of the student's soul starts with the future; our young. Bloom write in the late 80's thus had not yet seen the blossoming of Internet porn, musical porn (rap, hip hop, and R&B), or the never-ending War on Terror, and their effects on the young.
The Blank Slate
The understanding that children when born are wax to be impressed upon. In Bloom's context he refers to the lack of cultural tradition perceived in most American youngsters, and actually in their spiritual and deeper lives. Superficiality is what they bring to school, their minds are formed by public schools more intent on forming predictable citizens rather than thinking humans. Their cultural formation consists of activities and porno. It is worse than in Bloom's day, in the past Americans had some cultural formation (faintly) from Classical music and literature. Now, MTV and magazines form our ethos. A concrete example is in the past children dream of success in the literary or philosophic arenas, now the highest dream is of success in entertainment and business (both ephemeral and soulless endeavors.)
Bloom describes America's intellectual obtuseness, a halting of full humanity and the ability to experience the beautiful creating a lack of the ability to engage in civilization's continuing discourse. Said discourse these days is blatantly dead, killed by the social sciences and the atrophy of the mind. When did this happen? When science was oversold to compete with the Soviets in the great space race, to the detriment of the Liberal Arts which are necessary to give the student a deeper insight into their lives and potential. In the Sixties every concession was made in education except an education, it was the time of the final assault on inhibition, an overcoming of necessity in all aspects in human life.
The way this was done was by severing the ties to the immutable truths of the human experience, the books that preserve past traditions, and encapsulate the ethos, pathos, and logos.
The Books
Allan Bloom noted when as a professor he saw the decline of reading, the late Sixties (family and cultural life had taken a back seat to economic necessity.) Most reading of literature by young people is limited to the New York Times best sellers and a list of Classics grazed in High School (re: they read the Cliff's Notes.) Hardly anything reaching the level of King Creon's conflict with Antigone or Hamlet's dilemma, modern writing is geared toward reaffirming the nebulous ephemeral feelings of the modern mind. In this regard true Diversity is lost, the content is the same across all spans of reading while the shading of the covers comes in rainbow of choices. For a real taste of diversity read "The Epic of Gilgamesh" and compares the titular Character's dilemma to that of Achilles in "The Iliad." A true diversity of ideas leads to conflict, something that our economic principles would never allow.
Sameness can be reached in the midst of diversity by setting the bar low enough.
The Music
Remember that "The Closing" was written well before the proliferation of sexually driven club-type music in popular culture, even then his critiques of Rock music apply.
Bloom notes that one thing that marks out the young person of today is their obsession with music, they cannot be without it, almost as a personal soundtrack to the movie that is their life. Needs be it defines them in their social and personal attachments (emo, punk, goth, etc.) including those who "like a little of everything" i.e. openness to the point of indifference. The young live for music, it is not as if they can content themselves with a classic piece that satisfies the emotive needs from the past to eternity: The "Dies Irae" no matter the era still inspires dread and wonder. Music no longer forms a cultural continuity for reciprocation or a psychological short hand. All is rebellion, all is constant innovation.
In Plato's Republic a number of passages are dedicated to the musical education, and again in the Aristotle's Poetics musical types are described. Why? Because music is the taming by expression of those primal elements of the soul (love, hate, Eros, sadness, joy et al.) To both great philosophers music was the synthesis of two things: rhythm and melody, sine non qua. Music and dance are the barbaric expression of the soul, tamed in civilization to foster communal spirit and allay the terror of life, hence why Plato unified both in "The Birth of Tragedy...Out of Music." The same applies to education, domesticating the passions, not suppressing or cutting off that would deprive the soul of its' vitality. It is to give form to the chaotic forces of the soul for a higher purpose.
Modern music, your top 40, rock, and hip hop is a perversion of this necessary function. As Bloom put it, the appeal is to one motivation: sexual desire, not love or Eros. It gives the young immediate gratification in the realm of that which healthy societies tell them to wait for when they can understand its' place. Now is the worst, hip hop and club music has totally divorced melody (the higher) from rhythm (the lower) if there is even rhythm to be found. It has become pure beat, a beat evocative of sexual intercourse, the higher is gone and all that is left is empty copulation for immediate gratification. On the wall of their cave the young now have MTV projecting sex. Dance today is evocative of that, individual participating in writhing motions alone or engaging in dry humping when they seek a partner.
This is the terminus of the sexual revolution: empty actions devoid of meaning take the place of real lasting relationships. Our culture today is one of an endless spring break, though some yearning might manifest for the stability of a steady that only lasts as long as it is convenient.
Their Relationships
The most important and longest section, important because the collegium of college insists on relations among peers and superiors. This has devolved into a herd mentality, in the macro it means attending sporting events and going to class en masse, note how when it comes to school's reputation the herd sporting events prevail as a distinguishing mark, not the great minds a school had produced (as a test of a college ask what innovators it has produced.) A lack of real intellectual interaction produces Self-Centeredness among students. Bloom describes them as "nice" a word lacking an indication of nobility or morality, nice is what customer service people offer.
Relationship is something with a tenuous effect on the young, at best. Religion, background, social origin form no impact on their acquaintances or future plans. It is self-centerness at their basic core, in contrast to the Christian ethic of selflessness, the self-sacrificing heroic. Everything is available to them for immediate consumption: sexual partners, drugs, alcohol, and music: as the advanced Left calls it "Self-Fulfillment." The ideas that stood between the Cosmic Infinity and the Individual are gone or irrelevant: country, religion, family, ideas of civilization have been rationalized so that they are unimportant. When a child goes to college that is the severing point of the familial connection, no longer as in the past are they expect at any point, in adulthood, to live under the same roof as the older generation: social security and retirement plans have seen to it. Even more ironic that the current economic collapse has forced an re-introduction of that age old connection.
Whereas in Bloom's time the student entering college indicated a severing, because the system provided an open-ended future where the individual -spiritually unclad and isolated with the possibility of being anything they want- could move off on their own. Connections and relationships between the parent and child are being forced by necessity aggravating the dreams (the empty nest) and weaknesses (the young are inexperienced) of human nature: shattering the promise of evolution which would free us from the turmoils of life.
Sex, the great lubricant of college socializing. Young women preening and posturing for attention, and young men strutting to mindless beat of Lady Gaga's self-aggrandizement. We come to the final act of our drama, the great social experiment. To quote Bloom directly: "Sex and its' consequences -love, marriage, and family- have finally become the theme of the great national project, and here the problem of nature, always present but always repressed in the reconstruction of man demanded by freedom and equality, becomes insistent." The academic world provides a vacuum of morality to test these hypothesis, as well as a battleground between the three factions, two aligned against the one; Progressive Feminism, Corporatism, and Tradition.
The immediate promise as fed to prospective students is the liberation of being on their own and free to engage new people for sexual exploration and ultimately sexual exploitation. On both the macro and micro levels the liberation of generations of repression unleashed not a lion but a house cat, but that realization is only after much damage has been done to society and the person. The students are not forming relationships based on long lasting traditions but merely engaging in the rutting habits of herd animals, grim and unerotic. In fact the only reality they may carry with them for the rest of their lives is not marriage or all around good memories but some incurable STD.
As the student progresses to a so-called responsible adulthood, it replicates the language of the sexual revolution from a "living naturally" (i.e. having no-strings attached fun in college) to "self-definition," "self-fulfillment," "establishing priorities," "fashioning a lifestyle" (i.e. finding no-strings attached fun with a financial commitment.) All terms for explaining away any actual living of life and continuing a cultural tradition. In effect it makes them the perfect corporate slaves: only the immediate gratification for sex and things informs their psyche, the greater ideas of children, family, and culture have been rationalized into neat little boxes.
These students have been liberated from their bonds, but not brought forth into the light. They stumble in darkness and stupidity within the confines of their cave, self-assured that their liberation has resulted in them being happy. They end up a King Creon, alone weeping in dust, they are no longer zealous for wisdom but seek the means to stop that bitter weeping.
Let us hope that the Cathedral of Learning can hold out against the total encroachment of the modern world.
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