High Culture? WTF? Part Seven

XXXII

Can we do it? That’s the question we’re asking ourselves here. And, if we can do it, how? Well, if we’re going to answer these two questions it might be good to make it as clear as possible exactly what we mean by it. Can we do it? Can we do what?

What does the it in the above question refer to? Well, in the first place, words don’t refer, people do. So, the right question to ask would be: What are you referring to in that question?

For an answer let’s go back to the end of Part Six and quote the last paragraph in full.

....since we can scarcely survive without continuous learning, change and growth, and since our most powerful institutions have failed us, the task and responsibility of keeping our social institutions in general and our teaching-learning institutions in particular alive falls with us. So, can we do it? And, if so, how?

In the above there’s a stated connection between survival and learning and social institutions and survival. So, the it in the question Can we do it? I am referring to is our ability to survive by turning our social institutions into learning organizations. And the justification and explanation for this need is that the principle function of our social institutions is as adaptational mechanisms.

Social institutions are how we adapt ourselves to the world and make the world adapt to us. If they don't work, we don't work.

XXXIII

So, can we do it? The short answer is, Of course we can! After all, look at what human beings have accomplished in the last 6,000 years in general and, in the geographical areas of Western Europe and North America in the last 500 year in particular.

So, yes, we can do it. We can turn our social institutions into learning organizations. That is, if we want to. And we want to.

The next question is, How can we do it? The short answer?

We can turn our social institutions into learning organizations by cultivating a radical sensitivity to problem-solving.

And the best way to cultivate a radical sensitivity to problem-solving is by cultivating an equally radical sensitivity to both the scientific method and the creative imagination. In short, the best approach to learning available to us is in the Arts & Sciences.

But not in our teaching-learning institutions as they exist today.

XXXIV

So, how can we do it?

First, before answering that, we have to get something out of the way. We have to face the fact that the three most powerful social institutions today, the Corporation, Government and University have all rendered themselves incapable of cultural renewal.

So, because it takes a far greater capital investment to revitalize a deteriorating institution than it does to start a new one capable of carrying out the same function (in this case, the function of the kind of learning necessary to all of our social institutions as adaptational mechanisms) then the best thing to do is to allow the Corporation, Government and University as they now exist, to go their declining way and instead start new institutions for the purpose of preserving and inculcating the values of High Culture and the attributes of wisdom so essential for our survival.

Now, can that be done? This I don’t know. Does anyone?

So then, our effort must be a gesture toward that goal of turning our social institutions into learning organizations. Because, clearly Google, the US Government and Harvard University, to use three obvious examples, are not at all interested in turning our social institutions into learning organizations. They’re interested in indoctrination and tyranny. Which is why as they exist today, those institutions and the elite that run them are the real cancer of the human race. So, treason against them is loyalty to humanity.

Now, of course, I’m being ironic. In fact, PRC International is itself ironic. And, though I practice a healthy scepticism I'm not cynical, and I'm definitely not sentimental, at all, and for a reason. Both cynicism and sentimentality are dead ends and, though death comes to us all, the interest here is in life, and that requires survival. But we want to do more than survive, we want to live by enhancing the quality of life. And the best way to do that is through continuous cultural renewal. In short, learning.

Note: I'm not being ironic about the fact that the hostile elite and the social institutions now under their control are the cancer of the human race and that treason against them is loyalty to humanity.

Learning is the #1 problem today and we’re here to solve it.

It sounds absurd that a one man educational consultancy at the bottom of the world is taking on that part of the world that doesn’t want to learn by dedicating this consultancy to cultural renewal through continuous learning, change and growth.

But, it’s not absurd. It’s ironic. Of course I'm not taking on the world. I'm responding to the world by directing attention to the relationship between Problem-Solving and Learning.

XXXV

So then, how can we do it? How can we develop a radical sensitivity to the problem-solving process?

The first step would be to identify some related problems to the problem of learning. Why, for example, is learning a problem?

Big question. Lots of answers.

So, in an attempt to simplify a complex matter and keep our idea of The Irreducibles front and center (so that we can test their relevance and usefulness) the most logical place to begin is with a discussion of the general cultural crisis of stagnation, which by no means is limited to our teaching-learning institutions but on the contrary obtains throughout our culture, whether we conceive of it as Western or international and worldwide.

Adoption without Adaptation

As to the latter, it’s obvious that as the undeveloped countries developed during the 20th and into the 21st centuries they have adopted, with little adaptation, the cultural patterns of the West, and in so doing have locked themselves into the problems of the West, particularly the problem of cultural stagnation, before which the West itself appears to be relatively helpless.

And now we’re back to why one of the themes of PRC is irony. Because it hardly seems possible that any consultancy dedicated to the values of High Culture and the attributes of wisdom, as well as self-criticism without anxiety, can move the enormous and lethargic mass of the world. Especially since the rest of the world doesn’t even know I exist. Then again, what is best in us is high above us and, paradoxically, what is high above us is a view of what is best in us. And from this view what is best in us is an attraction to what is difficult. And the explanation for the attraction is exactly because it is so valuable to us.

Why is being attracted to what is difficult so valuable? Because it's exactly this attraction that solves the problem of living. How?

Because, more than anything else, acting on this attraction is what makes it possible for us to experience the sense of meaning, order, value and identity. Not only does it improve our chances for survival, it enchances the quality of life by giving us the opportunity to experience the fullest and freest expression of our powers. Problem-Solving Is How We Become Who We Are.*

*Which is why the hostile elite who control our social institutions refuse to teach it, because it would expose their intellectual, social and moral corruption, thereby undermining their power.

This is why people more interested in virtue signalling than problem-solving are so shallow. Worse, they're damaging to the culture they claim to care about, because their caring colonialism functions as an obstacle to the problem-solving process itself. Which is why such people are so dangerous whenever they get into positions of power, like they are now. Just look around.

In any event, and to return to the idea of being attracted to what is difficult, what we're attempting might be impossible of achievement, but it’s worth the effort because it helps us develop qualities that make life more worth living. But for this to happen we first have to cultivate a radical sensitivity to problem-solving.

And this I take to be a heroic position. Because it is. Which means it is time for all of us to become heroes of a culture crisis.

It can be done. And, as I can attest from personal experience, doing it has a positive effect on anyone attracted to what is difficult. By positive I mean healthy, in every way, physically, intellectually, psychologically, emotionally and socially.

That it can be dangerous to the individual who attempts it I won't deny for a second. But, as we shall see, those dangers can be avoided, and when they can't be avoided, they can be overcome.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, you've got to be in to win. And what we want to win is the freedom of choice over the tyranny of the hostile elite. To be able to do that today would require a restructuring of our social institutions starting with education. And now we’re back to the one thing that can rescue us from our current cultural stagnation, High Culture.

So, the most logical place to begin is with, as was said, a discussion of the general cultural crisis of stagnation, but that is best considered in terms of education in the Arts & Sciences.

In so far as academia is stagnant, and it has been now for over 50 years (some say longer), its cultural difficulties are subsumed and explained by the general stagnation. However, in the University during the 20th century and into the 21st there were two sources of cultural stagnation which were special to that social area and which need to be understood so that the general crisis and the possibilities of responding adequately to it may be more clearly disengaged from the weakness of the University in general.

XXXVI

To make myself as clear as I can, in what follows I will refer to the University in the past tense, for a reason. The University as it exists today and has for some time, is finished as a teaching-learning institution, let alone as an intellectual community.

So, barring a miracle, and it would take one at this point, no cultural renewal will come from the University ever again.

Still, as Santanya’s famous quote goes, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. So, we have to understand what happened so that we can respond more adequately to the problems that all of us are facing right now.

Those two sources were endemic and epidemic and we’ve already touched on them in Part Six. So, this time we will look at them again adding more detail to make the situation and its problem that much clearer. That way we'll better understand the value of the tools we intend to use in our effort to solve this problem.

XXXVII

Death Certificate - The University

Cause of Death: Endemic and Epidemic Infection

The effect of the endemic faculty infection was that the social role of university or college faculty members, more than any other social role, destroyed talent, innovation, and enterprise.

This should not have been the case. Indeed, the situation was so powerfully conducive to just the opposite that the destructiveness was little noticed. The faculty role was given more social protection (as in tenure) and more psychic insulation (as the very design of the campus indicates - they weren’t modelled after monasteries for nothing) than virtually any other social role.

So? What’s this got to do with problem-solving?

Everything! Throughout society, whenever we find psychic insulation and social protection as prime elements in the circumstances or social situation of a role, we invariably find associated with it the prime duty of problem exposure and solution postponement, for these are the necessary attributes of roles devoted to social management and, above all, to the examination and analysis of the failures of such management and the innovation and implementation of more adequate techniques of management when the inadequacy of established techniques is revealed by a changing historical situation.

So, when a society is working with relative smoothness, the task of social management is the reinforcement of such techniques and of those validational and explanatory activities which are the particular assignment of High Culture. At such times the task of High Culture is to resolve any incoherencies or to incorporate them with the appearance of logic into the current system.

But, when a culture and its social institutions are in a condition of crisis, particularly when the crisis has developed to the point of stagnation, so great are the incoherencies - then the task of High Culture is to expose the incoherences and to generate novel systems of validation and explanation. Obviously, the social situation of the academic world calls for the exercise of these High Culture duties. Yet, just as obviously, the academic world did neither at all well during the 20th century. Almost no great innovative mode of explanation came from academia, and when it did, as in the case of Morse Pecham, it was easily ignored.*

*This statement needs to be qualified. Peckham himself was not ignored, certainly not by the students and by a number of his peers. On the contrary. From roughly let’s say 1950 to 1980 his lectures were standing room only and attracted individuals who were Right, Left and, like me, apolitical. The same could be said of his books. His book Man’s Rage for Chaos had a powerful impact on the New York Art scene and years later Brian Eno (musician and producer) cited Peckham as his second greatest musical influence, even though Peckham was a Cultural Historian. So, strictly speaking, Peckham was not ignored by students, teachers and those in the general public. He was ignored by the hostile elite who knew his ideas would completely undermine their agenda. Whereas the ideas of Noam Chomsky wouldn’t. And that’s why Chomsky’s is practically a household name and Peckham’s isn’t. But it's also why the agenda of the hostile elite worked against any genuine and lasting innovation in education and why the result was cultural impoverishment and the death of the university.

And now we’re back to why the University was such a spectacular failure and why the source of that failure was found in the endemic infection of academia, or, in faculty life.

XXXVIII

It had three aspects: Value - Freedom - Time

The Problem of Value: Since teaching is an Art and not a Science there’s no absolute way to determine the value of a teacher. How does the teacher know they are doing a good job?

Unlike other social roles, no validation is forthcoming from superiors, peers or students. And though it's nice to hear that someone likes what you do and how you do it (and of course I hear this all of the time and for obvious reasons), no teacher except the most naive can take more than temporary and therapeutic comfort from validation coming from their students.

In general, self-validation is by no means impossible. We are capable in theory of validating our own activities, having learned validational propositions and attitudes from our culture.

But this makes it clear that validation is a social activity. So, self-validation requires very firm and objective values. But no one quite knows what they are doing when they are teaching at the university level, and since it has always been privatized (except for unreliable subordinates), there is no system of validation which enables the teacher to validate their own performance.

That’s why so many teachers have concluded that their self-doubts are proof that they are good teachers. When, ironically, this is a rationalization that tends to vitiate the effectiveness of self-doubt and is obviously a strategy to deal with the absence of validation. A strategy, moreover, that diverts the energy of the teacher from their task into an endless and futile and time and energy-wasting effort to achieve validation.

However, there’s a bright spot here. Paradoxically, it’s based on a negative principle and that is the abandonment of the search for absolute validation. One of the benefits of this is that we develop a healthy suspicion and distrust of teachers who put too much emphasis on their personality, or who, to invert a superb phrase from recovery, put personality before principles, instead of principles before personalities, and to disregard completely any committed ideologue. Why? Because, in the first instance the teacher will put the needs of their personality before the needs of the student and secondly, because they will put their ideology before the search for truth and the acquisition of knowledge, both of which require a healthy emotional detachment, which these narcissistic personalities do not posses. And it’s exactly this addiction to personality, ideology and a corresponding addiction to moral pomposity, that has produced so many crackpots in the Univeristy. This is how the University became an Insane Asylum.

The point is, Good teaching can not be a direct aim. It can only be a by-product of intellectual and cultural vitality.

If you love what you do, if you love learning, change, and growth, and if you love not just acquiring knowledge, but testing it, and if you care about your students’ progress in this regard, and also, if you are capable of recognizing their uniqueness independently from your own, it's hard to be a bad teacher.

Paradoxically, this happy situation is based on two things:

1. acknowledging one’s imperfections (and the fact that the teaching-learning situation helps us learn to do this).

2. accepting the fact that absolute validation is not only impossible of achievement, but undesirable as a pursuit.

This is why I constantly encourage those I work with to use everything they hear or read here, or anywhere, as a theory.

The idea at PRC International is to force our ideas to the wall, dig deep into their pockets and, if they yield nothing of value, cut their throats without mercy. Or, self-criticism without anxiety, which is the opposite of self-doubt, and a lot healthier.

This is how paradigms are broken. And it's what the University should have taught us all to do, but didn’t. In short, this is why the University is dead. But, above all, this is why it is exactly because Knowledge Is Power that it’s a threat to the powerful.

This explains why, as many have long suspected, the powerful actually worked to destroy The Mission of the University, which was to impart knowledge and remove ignorance.

XXXIX

The second aspect was The Problem of Freedom.

Human behavior may be considered as having two aspects, any behavioral bit manifesting both - Directions and Performance.

Or, Culture and Society. Now self-directed activity is of course perfectly possible - and, as with the housewife, very common (is this why feminists don’t like them?) - but like self-validation it depends upon a rich, complete, firm, and well-transmitted set of directions. These directions are almost entirely absent from the role of University teacher. This is why there’s very little that deserves the name of the culture of the University teacher. Now in the absence of such directions, a more general principle must be adopted and generated, a principle we have already mentioned.

And that principle is that Good teaching cannot be a direct aim.

Good teaching can only be a by-product of intellectual vitality.

The third factor is Time, and though it is so closely related to Freedom as to be almost the same thing, it is nonetheless worth distinguishing. Since we have already mentioned the factor of Time in Part Six, we’ll touch on it briefly here so as to add something to this factor not mentioned previously. As we said before, the problem of Time highlights the fact that the University teacher leads an unstructured life. And an unstructured job for which one is paid is as much of a social anomaly as a life of freedom. An unstructured life is for most people such an unendurable burden that its destructiveness is incalculable.

This would explain why the rate of alcoholism among university faculty has always seemed to be, on the most reliable accounts, considerably, very considerably, higher than among the population as a whole. The consequence of this lack of structure is that most teachers either idle their time away or structure their lives by inventing make-work in order to give themselves the impression that they are really earning their pay. Maybe this is the real reason why so many of them become activists and crackpots!

These are the endemic infections of the body academic. The epidemic infection is much more easily recognized, though it is true that it only infected some institutions and not all of them.

The policy mentioned in Part Six known as Publish-and-Perish.

This epidemic began in the 1920s. Lacking a means of distinguishing a good teacher from a bad, administrators noticed that those teachers who were also publishing scholars and scientists had the reputation of being the most effective, or at least the most attractive, teachers. The lesson seemed clear.

To create good teachers, whatever it might be, one had but to reward publishing, since publication provided social validation for the existence of intellectual vitality. To reward on the basis of publication - which became the consequence, in spite of lip service to “good teaching” - appeared to ensure the encouragement of intellectual vitality and certainly made the task of handing out rewards and rank and salary much easier.

The result, however, was far different. In spite of complaints, faculties in which this policy was instituted were in fact much happier, not because intellectual vitality was encouraged, but because more binding directions were given and an embarrassing freedom was curtailed. At last, faculty people had something to take up their time, and the policy was used by faculties to force a reduction in teaching hours and student load. Further, since those who published were rewarded, they shortly became the managers within the faculty, only too eager to maintain a system from which they had profited and which, they discovered, could be mastered without too much difficulty. The result was a humanistic and scientific scholarly technology. Keep that in mind when reading your next scholarly, peer-reviewed article.

Instead of intellectual and cultural vitality, one had the endless imitation of a limited number of scholarly paradigms. But, the build up in publication had a still further effect. When any intellectual activity confronts a public, the effect is professionalization. The irony of professionalization is that when it happens the profession loses its intellectual vitality. Of course!

There are three reasons for this:

1. The individual's interest turns away from the intellectual activity and becomes focused on professional status.

2. They are equally interested in institutional status - in the academic world, of their department and university.

3. Perforce they became interested in recruitment, the result having been since WWII until the 1970s, for example, (which laid the foundation for all that followed) the professionalization of undergraduate studies, with scandalously disastrous results.

The obvious result was a rigid system of Haves and Have Nots.

Moreover, there was a further consequence which bears directly upon the problem that this entry is attempting to respond to.

Any educational reconstruction requires risk-taking and above all the creation of new curricula and new courses. So long as there was but one system of rewards, through publication, anyone who attempted the risks of educational reconstruction wasn’t rewarded, but punished, since the time necessary for such reconstruction would have to have been taken away from time reserved for writing and publication. So, any attempt at educational reconstruction would have to have recognized both the endemic and epidemic infections. But that didn’t happen.

What did happen was a system with a built-in economic principle which resisted any change in the direction of encouraging intellectual vitality instead of cultural stagnation. But, there was yet another problem, one that would eventually render the situation irreversible. That was the emergence in the late 60's (though it first appeared in the 1930's), and growing quickly every decade after that, of the various forms of Critical Theory. All of which we dealt with in our previous entry CRT? WTF?

And now we’re back to our two questions:

Can we do it? And, if so, How? We answered the first question with a confident Yes, and the second by saying that We can turn our social institutions into learning organizations by cultivating a radical sensitivity to problem-solving. Adding that the best way to do this would be by cultivating an equally radical sensitivity to both the scientific method and the creative imagination.

But, it's obvious that this answer needs to be extended and clarified. So that's what we'll do next in Part Eight. Until then!