Tag: Socrates

Posted on

The wisdom of slowing down

Fresno Bee, September 10, 2023

Stop the mindless smartphone scrolling. Our souls long for a slower tempo.

Our world emphasizes speed. This is the age of artificial intelligence, smartphones and instant downloads. In this first-come, first-served culture, the early bird gets the worm. Who has time to ponder or reflect? We’re too busy flitting from one superficial thing to the next.

All of this speed and mobility may undermine our humanity. It contributes to loneliness and anxiety. Many good things require us to slow down, rather than speed up. Wisdom is not quick. Neither is love. The best things in life dwell in a time apart, lingering in slowness.

But artificial intelligence and related technologies push an ever more frantic pace. The speed of the stimuli on our screens can explain some of the negative mental health impacts of social media, video games and other technologies. Our brains are not meant to go this fast. Our souls long for a slower tempo. Human relationships need time to ripen, and genuine happiness is not instant gratification.

Now, sometimes speed is a good thing. Quick computers can churn through data and solve many problems. It is much more efficient to Google information than to go to a library and search the indexes of books on dusty shelves. Social media, online news apps and video games can be useful and fun. We can stay in touch with distant friends. We have immediate access to the latest news. And your phone contains multiple sources of instant gratification.

But moderation is needed. Scrolling for thrills is not the same as digging deep. We don’t build wisdom or friendships with a swipe on a screen. We need time for thinking, solitude and soul searching.

The novelist Milan Kundera lamented the lost pleasure of slowness in his novel “Slowness” where he suggests that we need time to “gaze at God’s windows.” He says, “There is a secret bond between slowness and memory, between speed and forgetting.” Speed causes us to forget who we are and what we value. We’re not sure where we’re going. But we’ll get there quickly.

Our bodies and brains evolved in a slower era. Our ancestors needed to think quickly on occasion to escape predators or hunt. But when the sun went down, they contemplated the stars and shared stories and songs. These ancient works of imagination unfolded at a pace that was rooted in the tempo of our beating hearts. With this in the background, it’s no wonder that most of the world’s wisdom traditions emphasize tranquility, patience, calmness and slowness.

The ancient sages took time to gaze deeply into God’s windows, and into their own souls. Socrates was well known for wandering and wondering. He would sometimes come to a halt as he walked through Athens, completely lost in thought.

In Asian traditions, the practice of meditation aims to cultivate slowness. The Buddha saw restlessness as an impediment to wisdom. The solution is to calm the mind and its restless agitation.

You don’t have to be Socrates or the Buddha to understand that many of the most meaningful human activities are best experienced slowly. This is true of grieving, making love and enjoying art. We can’t set a timer for grief or for love. The pace of these things transcends the frantic tempo of ordinary life, reflecting the patience of tender intimacy. To insist that Mozart or Shakespeare should speed things up is to misunderstand the nature of their art.

Philosophers describe things that are enjoyed slowly as “ends-in-themselves” valued for their own sake. These experiences represent moments of completion and fulfillment. Some people even sigh, and say of certain beautiful moments that they want them to last forever. This is also true of life itself. If you love life, you want it to last. Life is enjoyed for its own sake, and those who say that it is better to live fast and die young have probably not thought it over.

But the sages who have thought deeply about these things tell us that we need to relax our pace. The best and most important things — love, beauty and wisdom — are not quick or immediate. If you want to find these goods, you must slow down.

Read more at: https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article279063134.html#storylink=cpy

Posted on

What makes good people good?

Fresno Bee, September 3, 2023

I have had the good fortune to meet a number of good people. As director of Fresno State’s Ethics Center, I help organize an annual ethical leadership award, in collaboration with Fresno State’s Lyles Center and the Better Business Bureau. This year we are recognizing Pete Weber, a man who has dedicated much of his life to service. Among his contributions is his work founding the California Bridge Academies, an organization dedicated to lifting families out of poverty.

This is significant work. But what I am interested in here is the personality of people like Pete Weber. What makes good people tick? There are lots of good people in the world. What makes them good? And how can we learn to be like them?

These questions are ancient. Socrates puzzled over them. He suggested that goodness depends on knowledge. But if we don’t already know what’s good, then how do we know which teachers to listen to, or which models to follow? Maybe we are born with a kind of innate knowledge of the good. Socrates says that critical thinking can help reveal this. But he also hinted that we might need divine intervention to point us in the right direction.

Christians would likely agree. A Christian account of moral education tends to hold that we need God to give us the moral law. And because we are sinners, we also need grace, the support of a good religious community, and forgiveness when we fail. This idea can be traced back to Augustine, who suggested that human souls are fundamentally disordered and in need of the grace of the Christian “inner teacher” who guides us toward the light.

All of this is complicated by the fact that people, cultures and religions disagree. Those who think we need help from the gods to be good may still wonder which gods we should turn to.

A different approach is more concrete and intuitive. We might begin by consulting our own experience of the good people we know. If you think about your role models and mentors, you will likely discover some common truths about good people. They are stable and sincere, patient and kind, generous and caring, courageous and truthful.

We can look at moral exemplars and generalize from their model. Good people exhibit virtues like loyalty, honesty, and compassion. We can list the character of good people, and then follow their example.

But there is also something mysterious in the presence of goodness. Good people have a kind of aura or charisma. Their goodness can be felt, even if it is difficult to describe.

This sense of the other person’s goodness is intuitive. We respond to their goodness spontaneously. Their presence resonates with us, and leaves us feeling inspired and energized. It’s hard to explain. But we can feel the presence of moral excellence.

Philosopher Ruth Grant puts it this way, “It is exceptionally difficult to define goodness or the good life, but it may nonetheless be possible to recognize it when we see it.” This may sound mysterious and even incoherent. But it also seems right.

And yet, our intuitions are limited and sometimes confused. Some people admire cult leaders or are seduced by wicked deceivers. This is why we need to go beyond intuition and think critically about goodness. In our complicated world there are diverse experiences and manifestations of the good. And charismatic liars can pull the wool over our eyes.

Critical thinking provides a remedy. Careful reflection shows that there is a common thread of goodness in the world. This involves the kinds of virtues discussed above: kindness, truthfulness, and the like. Good people serve others and build them up. They are modest about their achievements. And they are honest with themselves and others.

To discover these truths about goodness, it helps to meet good people. We can study their stories, and learn from them. No one is born knowing how to be good. We need mentors, models, and teachers.

Of course, we also need to think critically. No human being is perfect. We all have flaws. And we can improve. We do this by seeking out good folks, learning from them, and then looking carefully in the mirror.

Fresno State’s annual Celebration of Ethics event will be broadcast on KSEE-TV at 7 p.m. on Sept. 6. More information: https://www.celebrationofethics.com/

Read more at: https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article278870059.html#storylink=cpy

Posted on

The Wisdom of Secular Education

School of Athens

Right-wing commentator Dennis Prager said at a recent “Moms for Liberty” conference: “There is no such thing as a secular institution with wisdom… That is why the stupidest institutions are the most secular: the universities.”

He’s wrong. The wisdom of secular universities is found in their reluctance to teach wisdom. That may sound like a paradox. But it is an approach to teaching that is as old as Socrates.

I am a professor of philosophy—a “lover of wisdom.” But I don’t teach wisdom. I think that what I teach may help students develop wisdom. But I would never presume to teach wisdom. I can teach about the world’s wisdom traditions. But I do not have the right to teach wisdom in my role as a secular professor.

Prager’s critique of secular education

Prager is a frequent critic of secularism, and of public education. He is not happy with what secular schools teach about racism, gender, and religion. Prager wrote, in a column in July 2022: “When America was more religious, wisdom was taught to young people. This is another reason to fear a thoroughly secularized America—we are producing a nation of fools. The proof lies in our universities. The most secularized institution in America is the most foolish institution in America.”

Really? American universities lead the world in research and creativity. People come here to study from across the globe. American universities are not stupid or foolish.

But Prager is right that secular universities do not teach wisdom, in his sense. He thinks that wisdom implies the specific content of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

But it is not the job of a secular university to instill the values of a specific religious tradition. This does not make universities foolish or stupid. Rather, secular universities refrain from teaching wisdom because in a diverse society grounded on liberty, we leave wisdom to the private sphere. If you want wisdom, go to a church or temple. But if you want knowledge, go to a secular school.

Secular universities should be neutral, inclusive, and pluralistic. They ought to disseminate knowledge, without staking a claim about wisdom. They ought to train students in the art of sifting and winnowing. They should teach skills in scientific method, critical thinking, and hermeneutics. But knowledge and critical thinking skills do not produce wisdom.

Wisdom vs. knowledge

Wisdom is about meaning, value, and purpose. It is a matter of the soul, the conscience, and our fundamental beliefs. Universities can and should include courses that teach about the varieties of opinion about wisdom and the meaning of life. But no secular university professor should presume to grade and evaluate students based upon the condition of their soul. That would be obnoxious, and it would violate the spirit of open inquiry that is essential to the secular pursuit of knowledge.

The pursuit of wisdom is different from the pursuit of knowledge. In religious traditions, teachers of wisdom provide definitive answers about meaning, value, and purpose. The teachers of religious wisdom aim to transform the souls of their disciples. They inspire, admonish, and guide their pupils toward a vision of the good life.

This is not what university professors should be doing. University professors teach knowledge, and methods for discovering it. But they should avoid any attempt to peer into the soul of a student. They may inspire students to seek knowledge. But they should not pick sides in cultural, religious, or spiritual struggles.

The pursuit of knowledge is, of course, part of wisdom. Wisdom requires knowledge. Ignorant and stupid people are not wise. But wisdom is not simply the accumulation of knowledge. And there are knowledgeable people who lack wisdom. Wisdom is a virtue or character trait. It is more a way of being than a pile of facts.

Wisdom involves judgement, discernment, and a sense of justice. Wisdom is about what we do with our knowledge, how we apply it to solve problems, and how we construct a life of meaning and value.

The Socratic model

An important model for the contemporary secular approach is Socrates. Socrates never claimed to be wise. He was a questioner, and a gadfly. He did not pontificate about the meaning of life, apart from suggesting that to be fully human is to think. This what he meant when he said, “the unexamined life is not worth living.” Socratic wisdom is a lifelong commitment to the ongoing labor of thinking. But this is an open-ended kind of wisdom that avoids picking sides in cultural or religious squabbles.

And now, finally, let’s return to Prager’s contention that when America was more religious, wisdom was taught to young people. He’s probably right. In a homogeneous world young people are often trained to conform and identify with a specific answer to life’s questions. Some may call that training wisdom. But it is narrow and limiting.

Such a narrow training in wisdom is not appropriate for a world that values liberty, free inquiry, and diversity. For that world—our world—we need a secular, Socratic approach. The secular approach is oriented around the Socratic “love of wisdom,” and a process of arguing and inquiring that is open-ended. Secular universities do not teach wisdom. Rather, they teach us how to decide for ourselves what is wise.

Posted on

Pondering ghosts and spirits at Halloween

Fresno Bee, Oct. 30, 2022

Halloween is a haunting time. This is the spooky moment when ghosts appear. But ghosts and spirits are always with us, especially for those who grieve and mourn.

Students occasionally ask me if I believe in ghosts. And they have shared their ghost stories with me. I recall getting a chill from a story told by an older woman who said she often saw her dead husband in the room where he used to practice music.

Philosophers have often wrestled with ghosts. As Socrates was preparing for his death, he told a ghost story. He explained that “polluted souls” are unwilling to move on to the next world. These restless shadows haunt graveyards, too in love with their bodies to leave them in the grave.

Most scholars think Socrates was making a point about enlightenment. Virtue and wisdom should teach us to accept death so we can avoid becoming unquiet ghosts. At any rate, this ancient tale reminds us that ghosts have long haunted human experience.

But do ghosts really exist? Well, the seer of ghosts has clearly experienced something. They are not lying. But what is it that they see?

One possible explanation is that ghosts are figments of the mind. For those who grieve, the dead are strangely present. Our dead remain with us. They wait on the edge of consciousness. And then something triggers their appearance — a smell, a song or a familiar place.

Most ghostly apparitions are probably products of memory and imagination. These ghosts don’t conjure themselves. We bring them to life. They are after-images of the dead, which linger with us so long as memory endures.

I heard a talk recently by a philosopher who recounted her mother’s decline into dementia. Her mother’s world was inhabited by hallucinations — spirits, she called them. The philosopher suggested that ordinary reality is only a small step away from the hallucinatory. Could it be that the “reality” we inhabit is actually a hallucination? Our experience is a projection of the mind and an interpretation of the stimuli it receives.

Photons hit our eyes and sound waves tickle our ears. These stimuli are woven together by the brain, which produces an image of the world. That image can be disturbed by other stimuli throbbing through our minds — memories, fear, hopes, and dreams.

Usually, consciousness takes charge of this process, keeping us focused on a stable set of images and appearances. But when consciousness relaxes its grip, things get weird.

This can happen in dementia. It can occur when we drink alcohol or use other drugs. Anxiety and exhaustion can disturb consciousness. And spooky shadows can appear at midnight in October graveyards, when the leaves rustle in the autumn wind.

But do ghosts exist? I suppose that depends on what we mean by existence.

Someone I love died recently. She’s been with me in my thoughts. She “exists” in a sense. Grief does strange things to our experience of reality, time and self. Grief is the presence of an absence. It is a distressing emptiness. That emptiness has a reality of its own. It afflicts us. But we also hate to let it go because it is the place our loved one used to be.

We tend to think that existence is material. Rocks and steel exist. But what about thoughts and dreams and memories? Those things are real, aren’t they?

One of the most famous lines from “Hamlet,” occurs after Hamlet has just seen a ghost. He says, “there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.” The poet is suggesting that life, experience, and existence are more complex and mysterious than we know.

There is more to life than our bodies. There are memories, dreams and ideas. There is also literature, philosophy and religion. These things free the soul from the body. They allow our minds to wander. They introduce us to ghostly presences such as Hamlet and Socrates. These “people” are, after all, creations of art and literature.

Thinking is an uncanny game of ghosts. Memory and art are conjuring acts that put us in touch with spirits. We might even say that to be human is to be haunted.

Posted on

Teaching and learning require love and play

Play learning

Fresno Bee, August 21, 2022

The headlines talk of failing schools, teacher shortages and lost students. There are controversies about religion, race, gender and sexuality in the schools. In the background is anxiety about violence. Education has become a battleground.

One solution is to simply ban controversy. In Texas, a school district removed controversial books from the library, including “Anne Frank” and the Bible. In Wisconsin, a school board banned flags, badges and slogans, including Pride flags, Black Lives Matters banners, and We Back the Badge signs. And here in Fresno, Bullard High School is planning to ban cell phones. An article in The Bee connected the cellphone ban to the controversy about racist photos taken on phones at Bullard High last year.

Schools have become a breeding ground for controversy. But let’s not turn schools into spiritless places where burned out teachers and disengaged kids go through the motions of education. That old Pink Floyd video comes to mind, in which students plod into a meat grinder.

We are so focused on controversy that we often miss the good news. So here’s a bit of good news. A recent study by Paul E. Peterson and M. Danish Shakeel concludes that kids are learning more now than they did 50 years ago. They analyzed data stretching back to 1971 that shows improvement since then in math and reading. This echoes the fact that IQ scores have also improved over time.

Their study notes that this improvement is true across demographic categories. The researchers admit that COVID was a recent setback. But they conclude, “Contrary to what you may have heard, average student achievement has been increasing for half a century.”

And yet the prevailing image is demoralizing. Perhaps we are too focused on nitpicking diminishing returns. As things generally improve, you start to freak out about small setbacks and minor blips. But all of this nitpicking can be disheartening.

It might help to remind ourselves that kids are innately curious and that teachers love to help them learn. The culture war approach to school misunderstands teaching and learning. War destroys things. It doesn’t build them up. Teaching and learning come from a place of love, empathy, creativity and play.

This is an ancient truth about teaching and learning. Socrates thought love was the guiding spirit of education. He challenged his students to think about difficult things. And he chastised them when they went astray. But he also loved them and believed that his students had the potential to improve.

Teaching and learning require a playful spirit. Mechanical and compulsory training may work for animals and for human beings forced to master monotonous tasks. But human beings learn the best and highest things through play and exploration. Plato thought that we are most fully human when we are free and at play.

Only humans engage in sports, games, drama, storytelling, art, and music. These are all forms of play. They require practice and discipline — but they are supposed to be fun. Scientific exploration and philosophical speculation are similar. They are ways of playing with concepts, ideas, and with the world itself.

Play involves intense concentration focused on activities we love for their own sake. Genuine play is not done in order to produce some external result or because some coach forces us to do it. Rather, authentic play is self-motivated and free. We play with ideas and explore the world because we are curious and because exploration and creativity are enjoyable. Playing and learning are ends-in-themselves. We do these things because we love them.

That’s the key to teaching and learning. Teachers love teaching because they enjoy playing with ideas and sharing their love of learning with their students. And students learn best when they fall in love with a subject that inspires their curiosity and their innate desire to explore.

The good news is that kids are learning better now than they were a half century ago. Of course, there is more work to be done. But let’s stop freaking out and turning schools into battlefields. It’s impossible to learn or teach in a war zone. Education occurs best under conditions of peace, when playful and curious spirits are given the freedom to question, create, and think.

Read more at: https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article264669234.html#storylink=cpy