I had just finished another day of teaching and was on my way home when I spotted a hitchhiker. He was a university student and, once he climbed into my car, we found ourselves engaged in a lively conversation. He eventually asked me what I taught, and I responded by informing him that I taught ethics. Upon hearing this disclosure, my companion on the road exploded in uncontrolled laughter. He thought that in today’s world it is preposterous, even unthinkable, for anyone to assume he could lay out an ethical program for anyone else. I was suddenly cast as a creature from the dark ages, a time when people actually believed that there was a teachable code of ethics.
My enlightened passenger, a true representative of the new times, presumably knew better. Today’s world belongs to the individual who will figure out for himself how to conduct his life. We were only three feet apart in space, but we were eons apart in time. Was my liberal advisor a member of a progressive elite or was he a citizen of the ancient world of Pontius Pilate who, in scoffing at truth, was also dismissing the basis of ethics?
The ethical world has changed so drastically in recent years that it seemed I no longer had a respectable place to ply my trade. At least I could pick up citizens of the new world to let me know, without the benefit of old style courtesy, that I was passé. Old fogies do not warrant respect. I, however, was anything but discouraged. The experience served to deepen my awareness of how much ethics has changed from being altruistic to being individualistic, from being God-centered to being egocentric. I now inhabited a world where I would not be tolerated, but scorned. Yet my mission, in my humble estimation, remained legitimate. I would continue to teach philosophy as a love of wisdom. Nonetheless, my task will be far more difficult.
Teaching has a critical role to play in culture and in what kind of world the future will be like. Abraham Lincoln, presumably an old fogy, but one whose wisdom seemingly has no expiration date, said that “the philosophy of the classroom in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next”. If Lincoln’s words needed confirmation, it is offered by Professor Philip Carl Salzman who has taught anthropology at McGill University in Canada for some 50 years. During his long tenure, as he reports in the April 22-28, 2001 issue of The Epoch Times, he has observed a dramatic change in education. “The search for truth”, he writes, “the attempt to provide evidence before drawing conclusions, the willingness to engage in intellectual exchange, the tolerance of contrary views,” has been replaced by each person having his own truth, “favouring some sexes, races, and ethnicities over others” so that, consistent with the Marxist ideology, “Individual qualities are not important—category membership is”.
Salzman concludes, echoing Lincoln, that “Since universities are the training grounds for our social elites . . . we can expect, as we see currently in process, a more closed, despotic, and totalitarian society”. This is, indeed, a drastic change, but not one for the better.
The new world believes that it is liberal and progressive. The cold evidence, however, is to the contrary. Last year 264 policeman were killed in the United States, a leap of 96% over the previous year. According to the City of Detroit’s 2020 Crime Report, there were 327 homicides last year, a 19% increase over the 275 of a year ago. San Francisco’s communist leaning district attorney has declared that theft under $900 will not be prosecuted. As a result, shoplifting has increased to the point that Walgreens, to take but one example, is closing all ten of its drugstores in the city.
There are still sensible philosophers around, but since the powers at large deem them denizens of a discredited world, they are marginalized and their voices largely go unheard. How is communication possible between two worlds that have so little in common? Perhaps the answer to this question will have little to do with communication.
One hope lies in the likelihood that the ethics of the new order will collapse under the weight of its own contradictions. On the one hand, feminists are clamoring for equal pay. On the other hand, because of the presumed fluidity of the sexes, there are no real, stable women in the new world. If enough men identify as women, the issue of pay equity will disappear. Placing the races in antagonistic groups, will accelerate violence, which is still frowned upon. The rejection of the Western tradition will exclude the very notion of justice needed for the current “social justice” project. The sexes have been blurred, but the opposition to sex selection abortion continues. Mass Media lies cannot continue indefinitely without their being exposed for what they are.
When the new world collapses due to its own inner contradictions, the time may be ripe for the appearance of a re-invigorated Christianity and a heightened respect for reason. At such time, the natural law will once again be the basis of morality and the incomparable value of the Bible will be restored. Yet, much confusion and devastation will transpire before this hope will eventually be realized. In the meantime, the many who harbor this hope should not falter and remain faith to it.
At the close of his book, The Moral Sense, James Q. Wilson offers encouragement for all of us: “Mankind’s moral sense is not a strong beacon of light . . . It is, rather, a small candle flame, cast in vague and multiple shadows, flickering, and sputtering in the strong winds of power and passion, greed and ideology. But brought close to the heart and cupped in one’s hands, it dispels the darkness and warms the soul.”
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