Worthy Words, Part 15: John Dewey

John Dewey (1859 - 1952) was an American philosopher who is still commands the attention of graduate schools of education three quarters of a century after his death. One of Dewey's best known books, Democracy and Education, establishes the purpose of education early on:

Beings who are born not only unaware of, but quite indifferent to, the aims and habits of the social group have to be rendered cognizant of them and actively interested. Education, and education alone, spans the gap. (Democracy and Education, page 3)

In the context of Dewey's position, I refer to education to not only what occurs within a school building. I include what elders teach children. A modern society tends to overlook this essential detail pf spanning the gap between ignorance and learning cultural traditions. Consider some of societal expectations: respecting public property; tolerating people unlike ourselves; contributing to the greater good of the community through work, learning, and volunteerism; investing in quality and safe food and goods; and providing housing, medical, psychiatric, social, sanitation, and security services, among other provisions. 

Sure, technology continues to change us, but we still need each other to perpetuate our species. This basic reminder from Dewey should be part of a teacher's oath.   

Worthy Words, Part 14: Albert Einstein

When Albert Einstein received a human rights award from the Chicago Decalogue Society on February 20, 1954, he opened his acceptance speech with this comment:

You are assembled today to devote your attention to the problem of human rights. You have decided to offer me an award on this occasion. When I learned about it, I was somewhat depressed by your decision. For in how unfortunate a state must a community find itself if it cannot produce a more suitable candidate upon whom to confer such a distinction. — Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions, p. 34. 

If you think Einstein was attempting humility, think again. He was speaking at a time of McCarthyism, at a time not long after the Nuremberg Trials showed that following government orders or arguing tu quoque was insufficient grounds for defense against human rights violations. Yet, Einstein implies, too few people step forward to denounce government crimes and resist their creators and enforcers, and most who do arrive on the scene far too late.

Worthy Words, Part 13: Robert Frost

I have been rereading some of the poems of Robert Frost (1874-1963), perhaps for the first time in this millennium, so I am experiencing his work a quarter-century older, hopefully wiser, and certainly more curious about the human condition. Few poets can write as Frost does about our proclivity toward pensiveness ("Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"), our spirit of adventure ("The Road Not Taken"), our lament of passing time ("Nothing Gold Can Stay"), our tendency toward judging humanity ("Fire and Ice"), or our heartbreak in enduring loss ("Home Burial"). 

I came across a 2-stanza, 1-sentence, 8-line, 34-word gem, "Dust of Snow," from Frost's Collected Poems. In such a short space, he shows why critics universally regard him as a master of the American vernacular. From The way a crow / Shook down on me to save some part / Of a day, the verse seems like plainspeak, merely a matter-of-fact statement made in idle passing, until it repeats and repeats in the memory like a sacred credo. 

If you read these six referenced poems at the Poetry Foundation website (53 of Frost's are there), start with "Dust of Snow."

Worthy Words, Part 12: Robert M. Pirsig

Robert M. Pirsig's 1974 must-read masterpiece, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values, contains many worthy quotes, especially when he departs from his literal 5,700-mile round-trip motorcycle journey from Minneapolis to San Francisco with his 12-year-old son to explore quality and being. I suppose I can write several hundred blog posts quoting from this book, which has sold over 5 million copies. 

In an hour-long May 20, 1974 talk on the book at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Pirsig anxiously awaits an introduction and quotes a local Zen master by saying, "Whatever situation you're in, you should find yourself in it immediately." From that sentence, he commands my attention like few speakers can. 

Pirsig was interested in bridging Western and Eastern philosophical systems in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. His sentence underscores what no Aristotelian or Buddhist thinker would argue. We must be present to observe and to experience. We cannot be in the past or in the future. All we have is now. Fifty years later, this timeless quote remains infallible.

Worthy Words, Part 11: Bertrand Russell

In Religion and Science (1935), Welsh Nobel laureate and philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872 - 1970) wrote three sentences that draw a clear line between the essential distinction and value of science and religion. Here is the first:

A religious creed differs from scientific theory in claiming to embody eternal and absolutely certain truth, whereas science is always tentative, expecting that modifications it its present theories will sooner or later be found necessary, and aware that its method is one which is logically incapable of arriving at a complete and final demonstration. (page 14)

Russell posits that science builds on observable facts, while religion emerges from unprovable beliefs. Science continues to reconsider the validity of its own theories based on new empirical evidence, but religion professes to know eternal truth drawn from unimpeachable prophets. Russell's detractors who point to his self-proclaimed agnosticism sidestep the fundamental truth of his comparative statement. 

Russell does credit religion for its serving as basis of societal good in this next sentence:  

In the best of saints and mystics, there existed in combination the belief in certain dogmas and a certain way of feeling about the purposes of human life. (page 17)

What good is science without understanding its usefulness in making bearable life on this planet? Religion, Russell implies, has the potential to serves that purpose. Nevertheless, this final sentence unveils his viewpoint of the historical tension between science and religion: 

No real excellence can be inextricably bound up with unfounded beliefs; and if theological beliefs are unfounded, they cannot be necessary for the preservation of what is good in the religious outlook. (page 18)

Logic and ethics, not dogma, ultimately stand as the determining factors of what is good, how we should live, and why we should conduct ourselves as we do.

Worthy Words, Part 10: Carlos Fuentes

The great Mexican writer, diplomat, and professor Carlos Fuentes (1928 - 2012) had a lot to say about a broad range of topics, ranging from literary legends to politics, business to social class, national identity to cultural myths. Fuentes's  soul-searching, humorous, and compelling memoir, "How I Started to Write," appears in his 1990 essay collection Myself and Others: Selected Essays, in part a remembrance of his initial experiences in the United States as the child of a Mexican diplomat stationed in Washington, DC. 

The North American world blinds us with its energy; we cannot see ourselves, we must see you. The United States is a world full of cheerleaders, prize-giving, singin' in the rain: the baton twirler, the Oscar awards, the musical comedies cannot be repeated elsewhere; in Mexico, the Hollywood statuette would come dipped in poisoned paint; in France, Gene Kelly would constantly stop in his steps to reflect: Je danse, donc je suis. [I  dance, therefore I am.] (page 5)

Americans can argue all they want about whether that national energy still exists, but it surely does to people outside of the USA. As the son of Maltese immigrants and with close familial ties in three continents, I have often tried to see the country I was born, raised, and reside in, the United States, from the eyes of outsiders. Fuentes's words remind me that Americans love a parade, exude creativity, and focus more on doing that leads to results than on reflecting purposelessly for its own sake.

Three paragraphs later, Fuentes doubles down on his view of the USA:

As a young Mexican growing up in the U.S., I had a primary impression of a nation of boundless energy, imagination, and the will to confront and solve the great social issues of the times without blinking or looking for scapegoats. It was the impression of a country identified with its own highest principles: political democracy, economic well-being, and faith in its human resources, especially in that most precious of all capital, the renewable wealth of education and research. (page 6)  

I refuse to get jingoistic or nostalgic, so I'll conclude with these words: If only we Americans could live up to that praise ...  

Worthy Words, Part 9: Theodore Roethke

These are the first 4 lines of Theodore Roethke's 24-line sestet "In a Dark Time": 

In a dark time, the eye begins to see,

I meet my shadow in the deepening shade;

I hear my echo in the echoing wood—

A lord of nature weeping to a tree. 

Writers have described this poem as Roethke's exploration into psychological suffering or mental disturbance. Roethke did, in fact, contend with manic depression. And lines such as "What's madness but nobility of soul" and "My soul, like some heat-maddened summer fly, / Keeps buzzing at the sill" can incline readers toward interpreting the poem as the poet's plunge into despair.

After reading "In a Dark Time" more than a dozen times over the past 40 years, I see the poem from an entirely different perspective. For sure, its beginning movement is one of descent, into the mind, an attempt to resolve mystery, into the soul, a quest for harmony with one's existence and the natural world. But its ascendancy staggers the imagination. How else could I see a poem that concludes with these lines:

A fallen man, I climb out of fear.

The mind enters itself, and God the mind.

And one is One, free in the tearing wind.

The poem does more than take my breath away. It shakes my spirit to its core. I urge you to read and reread "In a Dark Time" at the Poetry Foundation.