The Procrustean Bed of Education

I’ve already commented on the growing trends in education and how they are destroying the minds of youth today. But, I’d like to continue this discussion with more earnest as the problem grows deeper and deeper. To illustrate my point this time, I propose to argue on the subject of school shootings, as they are the prime manifestation of the psychological damage our schools inflict on children and young adults across the United States. These shootings are not the result of movies, television, games, or violent music. Rather, they are the result of the schools themselves victimizing students’ minds and sense of self. Schools today, under the (mis)guidance of “socialization” and the mythical “normal person,” have constructed a Procrustean bed which bends, shapes, and breaks the minds of students.

To make my argument, I will first analyze and debunk the popular arguments for explaining school shootings. Then, I will explain the origin of the problem and why education is driving some teens to violence. Finally, I will comment in two sections on the negative effects of proposed solutions and explanations, which are predicated on fear and misunderstanding.

The Arguments of Pop Culture

It is standard fare for the media to blame school shootings, gang violence, and other anti-social behavior displayed by teens on America’s pop culture. Violent video games, satanic rock music, and the like have supposedly created a sub-culture of violence that breeds anti-social behavior in the youth today. Some even argue that the prevalence of guns in our country is also a contributing factor in teen violence. Such are the explanations given, and so measures have been taken to restrict and control music and entertainment, control guns, and even control the youth. Yet, the problem worsens. This section will counter the superficial arguments from pop culture.

First, let us analyze what kind of behavior and values teens learn through music. To be certain, many rock bands and rap bands have violent lyrics, and many teens try to emulate their favorite stars in dress and manner. But does this mean they try to emulate the lyrics? Note that even the musicians themselves, in most cases, do not practice the violent behavior referenced in their songs, so violent behavior can hardly be said to come from having them as role models. Instead of a surface analysis, to get at the values teens learn from their music we must examine where the music is displayed: the concert. What occurs at a typical rock concert? The concert is fundamentally a social experience. Teens and adults gather together based on a common interest, that being the music of the band. They talk with each other, share opinions on music and albums, and converse about topics related to the music they love. When the show begins, they join in collective cheer for the band on stage. They raise their hands together, jump up and down together, and even dance together. Sometimes, what is known as a “mosh pit” forms. It is not random brawl. Rather, many mosh pits have an implicit code of ethics. For instance, if a person falls to the ground in a mosh pit, he runs the risk of being trampled. Thus, as can be seen in practice, moshers will typically help a person back to his feet it he begins to fall. The mosh pit can be a dangerous place for everyone, thus everyone tends to take on the responsibility of keeping it as safe as possible by looking out for one another. Taken together, all of this engenders a kind of social mentality and group dynamic in which people cooperate with one another and have fun together. The concert is a place for individuals to gather and share their experience with one another, and to feel a sense of belonging to something larger. They feel they are not alone, and they feel good about the benefits and responsibilities entailed in belonging to that group, if only for as long as the concert lasts. Far from being anti-social, concerts can, for the most part, teach good social values and behavior. The concert is, in effect, the “socialization” that society values most highly. And, it is the music that brings these fans together to socialize.

Now, let us look at video games. When I was younger, the most popular edifices of video games were arcades. At the arcade, youths would gather to play games with one another. Some games pitted players against one another, sometimes the players cooperated against a computer controlled enemy. In either case, players would have to interact with one another, either to organize their collective strategy to defeat a game, or to organize a competition between themselves. Players would also share tips or tricks for certain games, or have conversations related to gaming. Ultimately, even those players competing against one another had to cooperate in some sense, and like the concert, they would have fun collectively. This, again, is not the violence or anti-social element supposed by the detractors of video games, but rather an experience of socialization. This occurs even outside of the arcade. Many home gaming consoles design their games for multiple players. Friends get together to compete or to join forces against the computer controlled foe. These games are also a way to meet new people, as a general interest in video games is enough to start a conversation, or to invite someone new to play along. University residence halls, churches, and several other gathering places often feature “game nights” for people to get together, play video games, and make new friends. This, again, is not anti-social, but socialization. It may be true that players are “killing” a fictional person on the screen, but they are cooperating and socializing with the actual people with whom they are playing.

The list continues for other facets of entertainment, such as movies, television, and so forth. The point is that, even though these forms of entertainment may depict pretend violence, they tend to result in real socializing with real people. This is not what is driving the youth to “anti-social” behavior, and it is not what is damaging their minds. Simply put, fun is not a psychological illness.

Origin of the Problem

It is telling that school shootings happen, by definition, at schools. These shooters do not go out and shoot up concerts, arcades, movie theatres, or television stations. They take their anger out on the schools. This is because, simply put, the schools are the problem. Look no further than the object of their hatred and revenge for the cause. What follows is a short history and explanation of how our school system attacks the psyche of young adults in America.

The problem has its early roots in the Third Great Awakening and the Social Gospel movement of the later 19^th century. These reformers sought to end the economic and social inequality in America and bring about a “heaven on Earth,” so to speak. Their radical position had an even more radical solution: not religion, but science and education. They believed that, by utilizing the sciences of statistical analysis and sociology, they could engineer society for the better. Education was especially seen as the primary force behind social betterment. Thinkers such as John Dewey argued that education should “socialize” students to be a part of a democratic society. Psychologists such as John Watson championed behaviorism as a basic model for conditioning people, especially with the use of fear, which had a profound influence on advertising and marketing. And, statistical analysts used the normal curve – originally meant to address discrepancies in astronomical observations - to organize statistical data and get a basic idea of society and its makeup. This last point in particular is of importance. By looking at all culture and society as a series of numbers plotted on the normal curve, scientists concocted an image of a “normal person,” the kind of person that represents the largest bulk of society. Of course, there was no such thing as a “normal person,” as most people had different reasons for falling along the chart in different areas. But, such was the superficiality of this “science” of society. The normal curve and its “normal person” dictated the course of policy in the United States throughout the bulk of the 20^th century, especially in education. Products were marketed to the “normal consumer,” social policies were designed to help the “normal citizen,” and education reforms were made to best educate (now, “socialize”) the “normal student,” including standardized tests and curriculums.

But, there is no such thing as the “normal consumer,” or the “normal citizen,” or the “normal student.” People buy certain things for their own particular reasons, people support policies for their own particular beliefs, and people seek education with their own particular skills and personalities. The result of the normalizing process, then, was to create what amounts to a Procrustean bed on which every buyer, every citizen, and every student must be made to fit. Of course, by definition, most people will fit on the bed with little or no strain. But, what happens to the outliers? What happens to the people who fall too many standard deviations, plus or minus, away from the norm? The Procrustean bed snaps them in half. This is what we are witnessing in our schools: the breaking of our youth on the rack of modern education.

Let us describe in further detail how this is done, drawing on elements of “normalcy” as well as “socialization.” Schools today are designed for the average student, the one of mediocre intelligence and ability. More and more, schools are dumping advanced placement and gifted learning programs in an effort to integrate the more intelligent students with the less intelligent. On the flip side, schools are also screwing with special education, which is intended to meet the specific needs of those who are below average in intelligence and ability. Instead, they want to “streamline” those students and integrate them into the standard, “normal” program. Administrators think that this will benefit everyone. Instead, it is a detriment to all. Struggling students cannot get the help they need without monopolizing the instructor’s time and efforts. If the instructor does not meet their specific needs, they do not learn. If the instructor does try to gear the basic curriculum towards the less gifted, the more gifted suffer, in an effect of bringing everyone down to the same level. This in particular can frustrate the most gifted and talented students, who will not be challenged in any way, and who will not learn the fundamental skills needed for them to allow their inventiveness to take flight. In either case, many of the gifted will still feel bored with an education system designed for the average, the “normal,” and their talents will go undeveloped.

Coinciding with this is an attempt at “socializing” students. Teachers are increasingly assigning group projects and group learning, rather than relying on lecture or individual work. Even grades are often given out to the group as a whole. Those who are most gifted, then, find themselves in a catch-22. First, they could let less gifted people in their group do a share of the work. But, since their work is of lower quality, it has the effect of bringing down the grade of the more gifted student. The second option is to take over, as the gifted student volunteers to carry the entire weight of the group. While this might be a noble gesture, the effect is that the less gifted students come to rely, even expect, the gifted students to do their work. This is to their detriment. Further, the gifted student does not receive the individual praise or congratulations for his hard work and social spirit. Instead, the praise goes to the group: the people who did absolutely nothing. So, no matter what he does, a gifted student must watch as others reap the rewards of his work while he suffers the punishments for the short-comings of others. This is the “group” mentality facilitated by our education system. For those in the middle, the average, group work is a good thing because it means they don’t have to take responsibility for poor performance, nor do they have to make an attempt at performing to par. Instead, they can exploit the gifted. And for the outliers, this “group” activity leaves them befuddled or totally disenchanted. Again, the normal will fit comfortably on the same bed that breaks the exceptional.

And what are the results of this “socialization?” Let’s take a look into how students interact in a typical high school. Immediately, students can be seen fracturing off into “cliques.” The normal, the average group comprises the bulk. They present themselves as part of the “normal” group by wearing popular, “average” clothes, by listening to popular, “average” music, and by in all other ways consuming products targeted towards the “average” American (as marketing demographics understands the term). Whether they are average or not, this is the kind of look and identity they feel they have to portray in order to fit in with the normal, to “be normal.” Then, we have the outliers. Many of them shun popular brands, popular music, and even popular conventions of style. Some wear make-up (even boys), some wear black clothes, some wear trench coats, and so forth. They listen to “anti-social” bands, they play violent video games, or they watch violent TV. They seek an outlet, within their group and within their interests, for the anger they feel towards the “normal” kids, the average ones. It is important here to note that their behavior, in general, is not an expression of the individual identity, but a conscious or unconscious lashing out against the normal, against that which has imprisoned them and abused them. They are struggling, in these early years of identity formation, with a system that crushes their spirit because they are not “normal.” They are struggling with their fellow students who, every day, pick on them, make fun of them, beat them up, and make them feel inferior for not being part of the normal crowd. They are struggling with their teachers who force them to do busy work, who rarely give them credit for individual accomplishment, and punish them for the failings of others. They are struggling against the school administration that continuously pumps the ideology of self-annulment and self-sacrifice to the group, of subverting the mind for the sake of belonging, and that singles them out as trouble makers for not fitting the concept of the normal student. They are, in effect, lashing out against the Procrustean bed of the normal curve which has infected every facet of our society, especially our education.

This kind of social friction, this polarization of identity, this hatred and anger displayed towards one another, this tendency to fall into competing cliques: these are not signs of effective socialization. They are a far cry from any measure of social cooperation and harmony that can be found at a concert, at an arcade, or even (dare I say it) at a gun show, where no difference matters so much as that single shared interest. On the contrary, this is pure anti-social behavior, and it is found in its most stark form within schools. Schools are the problem. Schools are where we see the first symptoms of anti-social behavior, and schools are where we see the final, bloody results.

The Situation Worsens

Yet, the media, politicians, and experts continue to ignore the education system as a potential source of this behavior. Our government, our media, and our education system is controlled by the children of the Third Great Awakening: the baby boomers. They have neither the will nor capacity to challenge the “normal,” the founding principle behind mass culture and social engineering in general. Their generation is fixated upon the ideology of creating a “heaven on Earth” with their enlightened social “science.” They do not want to explore the deeper, cultural implications of events. They only want neat statistics that give them a surface impression of social phenomena. But it is not science which guides their decisions. Rather, it is an intense fear, which results in the mistreatment and marginalization of teens, especially those who fall outside the norm.

Today, many schools are run like prisons. Students have very little freedom to move about, security guards watch their every step, and some schools have even instituted the use of metal detectors. Furthermore, the faculty at these schools have become hyper-sensitive to the “warning signs” of violence, usually related to superficial signs such as dress, musical tastes, or even off-hand, generalized comments that use words like “kill,” “hate,” and so forth in an unspecific or figurative manner (Such as “We’re going to kill the other team next game,” or “Man, I really hate that guy.”). Even these words displayed on graphic t-shirts, or t-shirts that seem “violent” (subjectively speaking) in general are censored and their wearers are singled out as trouble makers. What was once considered merely eccentric behavior is increasingly considered potentially dangerous.

Teens are also badgered and abused by law. Curfews become increasingly strict, more controls are placed on video games, music, and movies, and teens are profiled as trouble makers do to their style of dress, hair, and so forth. The media, the government, and their parents increasingly beat into their heads that they are just children, they can’t handle their emotions, they can’t think for themselves, and they don’t belong in the adult world. They are treated with fear and suspicion everywhere they go, even in their own homes. They are kept from growing up, essentially, despite every biological development their bodies are making towards mature adulthood. In many ways, adolescence is the first stage of adulthood, not a stage of childhood. Yet, they are constantly marginalized by society. Their opinions are shouted down. Their preferences and tastes are ridiculed or demonized. They are not only ostracized by their “normal” schoolmates, they are ostracized by society at large.

What message of socialization does all this send? We expect teens to act with appropriate social conduct without granting them the same. We cannot expect teens to become socialized while at the same time marginalizing them. In past ages, cultures enacted “coming of age rituals” which welcomed adolescents into “adult” society, with all of the privileges and responsibilities that entails. Even today, we still have some semblance of those rituals, such as the Bar Mitzvah of Judaism, or even Confirmation in Christianity. But even these rituals tend to have lost their original meaning, and in any case they do not extend into secular society. Instead, our culture has concocted this developmental stage of adolescence as a stage of childhood, and therefore we have restricted rights and privileges to adolescents who, only a couple centuries before, would have been considered functionally adult. And now, with each new school shooting, the fear of teens grows. And, the irrational, fear-driven policies enacted only deepen the divide and exclusion of teens from the adult world. We cannot expect socialization to occur in this atmosphere; we can only expect the opposite result. When our whole culture is geared towards telling teens, implicitly or explicitly, that they are dangerous children who can’t be trusted to operate in society, it only follows that eventually they will come to accept this role.

How the Problem is Mistreated

When someone gets shot, stabbed, punched, or injured in some way, it is fairly common sense for us to explain the causes of the injury. The person with the bullet wound has the bullet wound because something shot him. The person who has the laceration on his torso was cut by something. The person has a bruise there because he was hit by some sort of blunt instrument or object. We do not assume that something is inherently wrong with the person, or that an inherent quality gave rise to his injury. We accept that the person was healthy, but was made unhealthy due to some outside occurrence, such as an attack.

This is not the attitude expressed towards teens that have been broken by the Procrustean standards of normalcy. No one recognizes that their minds, their spirits, have been brutalized, or that their sense of injustice at being injured is justified. Instead, the common position to take is that there is something wrong with them. They are sick. They suffer from mental illness and need to be put on anti-depressants or behavior modifying drugs. Certainly, they do suffer from an unnatural state, but a state brought about by the abuse they’ve taken, much like a wound from an attack. But that is not the conception of this “illness.” Rather, the belief is that it stems from their biology, from who they are. In essence, they are injured because there is something wrong with them.

To illustrate this point, I’d like to draw from a Newsweek article written by Sharon Begley after the Columbine school shooting.* In her article, “Why the Young Kill,” she argues that school shooters are genetically prone to violence, and outlines how this propensity becomes realized under certain conditions, such as neglect, but also such influences as violent games and music. Of these, she states, “Today’s pop culture offers all too many dangerous [ideologies], from the music of Rammstein to the game of Doom” (p. 179). She identifies these things, along with supposed easy access to guns, as contributors to violent personalities. “To deny the role of these influences is like denying that air pollution triggers childhood asthma,” she writes (p. 180). Thus, she implies that violence in pop culture can influence those already genetically susceptible to their influence. Thus, these troubled teens simply have a slight problem with their genetics which, under certain environmental conditions, produces violent behavior. Their injury is due mainly to their genetics, and the outer conditions are only a contributing factor. Imagine telling a stabbing victim that his wound was caused by genetics, and that the knife only enhanced his natural propensity to be cut!

Underlying her thesis is the assumption that there is something wrong with these teens, that they are abnormal. In discussing their supposed genetic vulnerability, she writes, “It is only a tiny bend in a twig, but depending on how the child grows up, the bend will be exaggerated or straightened out” (p. 179). By “bend” she means the abnormal genetic anomaly, and by “straightened out,” she means that the aberrant behavior will not manifest, hence a “normal” person will develop. I cannot think of a better choice of words. Drawing on my analogy of the Procrustean bed, it is the assumption of the media and so-called “experts” that these teens need to be straightened out, that their differences result from a defect that needs to be fixed. They need to be straightened out in the same way that the rack straightens out its victims. The only problem is, this straightening out requires an artificially imposed re-bending of this “bent” person in order to fit him to the shape demanded by society. The normally flexible joints of the mind are pulled and tugged ever straighter, stressing the ligaments, until finally they are dislocated and ripped out.

What teens do not get is a feeling that someone understands them, that someone connects with them, and the reassurance that there is nothing wrong with them. Instead, writers like Begley assert, “An adult can often see his way to restoring a sense of self-worth… through success at work or love. A child usually lacks the emotional skills to do that” (p. 180). What a dismissive, insensitive mode of understanding! How is a teen supposed to restore self-worth when every success in school is devalued, when HE is devalued as a person for the sake of the group? How is he supposed to find love in a society that fears and shuns him? How is he to have self-worth in the first place when, because he lies outside the fictional “normal,” he is constantly told that he is aberrant, weird, sick, or dangerous? It’s easy to say that all teens need is to be loved, but our society is not set up for that. Our society has been, over the last hundred years or so, engineered to love only those who fit into the normal range of the curve. Everyone else is ignored, picked on, punished, or generally treated as inferior. This is especially true with the public education system, which comprises a large chunk of teens’ social experience. Their minds have been tortured by the normalizing and self-annulment of modern schools. Their potential for individual identities has been assaulted, their needs left unfulfilled, and their talents left to languish underdeveloped. They have been stretched to the breaking point, a point which a few have crossed. There is nothing inherently wrong with them. They have been injured grievously, yet they receive no care or sympathy for crimes committed against them. All they hear is that there is something wrong with them.

Conclusion

So, it is not segments of pop culture or even guns which break the minds of teens. Rather, it is the Procrustean bed of modern education, based on socialization and the fictional “normal,” which has so abused young adults that it has socialized them for destructive and anti-social behavior. The fears and superficial reactions of society only exacerbate the problem as we further marginalize and mistreat the youth in America. We continue to blame the victim, and teens who fall outside the norm have no where to go for understanding. So, they turn to video games, music, and sometimes even gangs, among other things, as an outlet for their feelings of disenfranchisement and rage. In some cases, such as music and video games, this can result in a positive social experience, perhaps even enough to get them through the difficulties of adolescence. In other cases, like gangs, it’s not so positive, and actual violence may result. In any case, these are all symptoms of the same causative force, a lunacy we’ve inherited from faux philosophers and pseudo-scientists of society and education. If we continue on this path, I can only see more devastation to come. I don’t mean just school shootings. Rather, I’m worried about those who have had their minds broken, but did not go so far as murder/suicide. What will happen when they grow up and are responsible for running our country? 20^th century social engineering has created a Frankenstein monster, and I can’t predict good things to happen when it gets loose.

*Begley, Sharon. “Why the Young Kill,” Newsweek, May 3, 1999. Referenced from reprint in - Fass, Paula S. and Mary Ann Mason, ed. Childhood in America, New York: New York University Press, 2000, pp. 177-180. All page citations from the Fass/Mason.

Further reading: In addition to names and sources mentioned above, I recommend reading Robert Fogel’s The Fourth Great Awakening and Oliver Zunz’s Why the American Century? to get a background of the history behind what I’m discussing.

The End of The Golden Age: Part 1

Intro:

The Golden Age of Islam, roughly from 800 to 1200 c.e., saw the greatest flourishing of philosophy, mathematics, and the natural sciences the Islamic world had ever known. While Europe languished in the Dark Ages, Muslim (and some Christian and Jewish) thinkers of this era translated ancient Greek philosophy and science into Arabic, expanded upon the ideas contained, and made lasting contributions to human thought. For instance, Muhammad ibn Musa Al-Khwarizmi was a well known mathematician whose work with quadratic equations gave us the term “algebra,” from the title of his book on the subject (al-jabr), and even his name was taken as the basis for the word “algorithm.” Other thinkers such as the Banu Musa worked in pneumatics and the studied the flow of air and water. Their principles on the concentric siphon would not be matched until almost a thousand years after their death. And even modern chemistry owes a debt of gratitude to Arab “alchemy,” especially ibn Zakariyyah Al-Razi (Rhazes) who developed a method of distillation and extraction that is little different than the methods we use today.

However, this dedication to philosophy and science seems to have waned, prompting many historians to question: why did the Golden Age of Islam come to an end? The older school of scholarship offered various explanations, ranging from blaming Islam as being anti-science to singling out the Muslim philosopher Al-Ghazali as the one who destroyed the discipline with his book, The Incoherence of the Philosophers. In the past, I have even used the latter argument, and indeed Al-Ghazali’s work seems that way upon initial reading. However, I have since come to the conclusion that answering the question demands a closer look into the intellectual climate of the era and a more historical understanding of the thinkers in this time period. By examining the nature of their writings, not simply the content, one can see a concern for certain trends in Muslim philosophy. And, these trends may indicate to us what exactly happened to end this so-called “Golden Age.”

What follows is a single section of a larger essay, broken into smaller parts with each analyzing a different theme that may have contributed to the changing intellectual climate of the Muslim world. At this point, they are preliminary musings, and the reading should take them as opinion articles, not scholarly history. I will be writing mostly from memory, so citations will be limited. However, I will try at the end of each section to highlight a few critical texts that the reader can explore in order to make his own judgments. I will post each major section separately so that readers can concentrate on specific points and so that replies can be more precise. Each section will relate to my main theme and question: “What ended the Golden Age of Islam?”

Part I: Neo-Platonism, Al-Ghazali, and the End of Metaphysics

I will start this section with Al-Ghazali, who lived from 1058 to 1111 c.e. To some, his book The Incoherence of the Philosophers spelled the demise to come for philosophy in the Muslim world. Certainly, the title of this major discourse on the subject would seem to imply such a motive and such an end. But, we must remember that the Arabic word for “philosopher” at this time was not used as loosely as we use it today. Rather, it was a term that applied most accurately to a specific group of thinkers who followed the influence of Aristotle, Plato, and the works of such Muslim thinkers as Al-Farabi and Avicenna (ibn Sina). Al-Ghazali was not refuting philosophy in general, but the ideas of those particular philosophers. It is my argument that the demise of philosophy truly has its roots with them, not Al-Ghazali. By taking the ideas of Aristotle and merging them with Neo-Platonism and the mystical ideas of Avicenna, these philosophers removed the protective barrier of distinction between theology and metaphysics and infused the discipline with untenable assertions while simultaneously divorcing philosophy from real application. If anything, Al-Ghazali attempted to restore the barrier and uphold practical science and reason (and faith) against the pernicious influence of Avicenna’s corrupted and irrational metaphysics. It was, however, to no avail.

Let us first examine Al-Ghazali’s attitude toward philosophy and science. In his book Freedom and Fulfillment, he gives his opinion on various disciplines. On the topic of mathematics, Al-Ghazali has no qualms as such. He does, however, cite a disgust for the tendency of mathematicians to assume that, since they are using the same basic logic as metaphysicians, the conclusions of the metaphysicians must also be as accurate, and therefore they can be trusted as truth. Al-Ghazali finds fault only with this point, and rightly so. On the topic of physics and the natural sciences, Al-Ghazali again finds no fault with the disciplines themselves. Indeed, he is known for praising the natural sciences throughout his works. But again, his single issue with them is the same issue he has with the mathematicians. Getting deeper to the core of philosophy, Al-Ghazali examines the nature of the ethicists and their field of inquiry. He does not find anything wrong with it, but states that it is a basically useless field, since it only reiterates truths found in revelation.

Finally, Al-Ghazali comes to metaphysics, and the bulk of his writing in this book and others is directed towards criticizing the metaphysicians. His qualms with their ideas stem from two major reasons. First, he finds them irrational, and in the Incoherence he sets himself to the task of demolishing them with logical argument. It is worthy to note that his arguments are strictly logical, indicating that he clearly had a high respect for formal reasoning. His second major objection to the metaphysicians is that their ideas contradict Islam. This last category of objection has gotten the most attention since the time of his death and on into the present time. It would seem in many of his ideas that he is trying to “make room” for faith, miracles, revelation, and religion in general within the context of philosophy. I do not believe this was the case. It seems, rather, that Al-Ghazali saw the metaphysicians as stepping into territory where they did not belong, namely theology. Al-Ghazali’s admiration for science, logic, and the philosophical mentality clearly indicates that he believed those things had a proper place in intellectual life. Yet, the metaphysics of Avicenna, Al-Farabi, and others attempted to describe the nature of God, the afterlife, and the creation of the universe. To Al-Ghazali, it was inappropriate to apply philosophy to these areas, which clearly belonged to theology and above all, religion. Of course, the ethicists were treading on the same ground. But, what made them different in Al-Ghazali’s mind is that the ethicists were simply repeating what could be learned in revelation, whereas the metaphysicians were creating their own image of God, the spirit, and the universe based on their faulty principles. It is here that Al-Ghazali found exception, and thus his criticisms and ideas were about “making room for God,” in metaphysics, but excluding that brand of metaphysics from the room altogether. It was not a motive for inclusion, but for exclusion.

This particular point is repeated in the famous work of historian/philosopher Ibn Khaldun. In his introduction to history, the Muqaddimah, he bemoans the fact that metaphysics and theology, that the speculative and the revealed, somehow became intertwined and confused with one another. He argues that originally, logic was brought into philosophy in order to defend the tenets of Islam against the arguments of unbelievers (there is historically validity for this assertion). But, somehow it devolved into speculating on the nature of God and reinterpreting religion based on supposedly rational grounds. This, he argues, is not only a negation of the religion, but a misuse of logical reasoning and philosophy. Philosophy, argues Ibn Khaldun, is meant to sharpen the mind so that one can determine a good argument from a bad one and use one’s own mind to come to decisions. He believed that applying reason to mathematics and the sciences was in fact the best expression of philosophy, and it is a testament to his respect for reason that he attempted to create a rational understanding of history in his works. Like Al-Ghazali, I believe Ibn Khaldun saw the Neo-Platonic metaphysics of Avicenna and others as a misuse of philosophy altogether. Although, only Al-Ghazali seems to have written lengthy treatises on the matter.

What of the Neo-Platonists? Do they really deserve this kind of criticism? From a philosophical standpoint, I think Al-Ghazali and Ibn Khaldun were on target. Avicenna’s metaphysics is so thoroughly mystical that it would have made Auguste Comte groan with profound disapproval, had he been born yet. Avicenna started from Aristotle, true, but he began positing a host of new ideas that incorporated, among other things, a sort of mind-body dualism, successive layers of spirituality between God and the physical world, and so on. It was enough even to raise the ire of that great, Andalusian rationalist Averroes (Ibn Rushd). Although ostensibly his book, The Incoherence of the Incoherence was meant as a refutation of Al-Ghazali’s book, Averroes spent a good amount of time discrediting the ideas of Avicenna as non-Aristotelian and irrational. In several points throughout the book, it seems as if he comes to a sort of implied agreement with his arch-foe Al-Ghazali. In several cases, when addressing a particular criticism leveled by Al-Ghazali, Averroes simply states that the criticism is only valid for Avicenna, not of Aristotle. Indeed, much of Averroes’ life was spent commenting upon the works of Aristotle and purifying them of the mistakes and Neo-Platonic influences they had received in the East. That entire region seemed to be rising against this perceived pernicious influence of the Eastern philosophers around Averroes’ time. Unfortunately, however, the damage was already done.

Before Averroes, Ibn Khaldun, and other Andalusian scholars could begin challenging Avicenna and re-asserting the value of reason, it seems as if thinkers were generally becoming sick of the whole problem of philosophy. Some groups ran with the ideas and took them to extremes, such as the Nizari Ismai‘li “Assassins,” much to the chagrin of their neighboring Muslims. Other groups, such as the Sufis, seemed to offer a more purely mystical path that provided a way out of the contradictions and obtuse reasoning. Finally, the old religious scholars who simply practiced reason as a didactic approach to theology (called the mutakallimun) were replaced with the Ash‘arite school of philosophy which was essentially an anti-philosophy: that is, their goal was to use reason only to demolish the arguments of philosophers. They eventually did such a good job that later scholars essentially considered the matter settled. Philosophy was done, and so was everything that had anything to do with it. Al-Ghazali’s urging for Muslims to continue to pursue science and reasoning was ignored; only his refutations were studied. Ibn Khaldun’s true innovation, a scientific approach to history, received no credit from others. Instead, scholars were content to simply study his theories rather than his method, and instead of building upon it they simply accepted it as given (it would take hundreds of years before the modern social sciences would grow, despite the fact that Ibn Khaldun had laid the groundwork long before). As for Averroes, his books were banned, burned, or just simply ignored.

To conclude, if anyone is responsible for the downfall of philosophy in the Muslim world, it is not Al-Ghazali, but rather Avicenna and the other Neo-Platonists. They confused, muddled, and distorted philosophy with their irrational ideas to the point that they ultimately defamed the entire thing. They infected philosophy with a poison that spawned an all-encompassing backlash against all its branches, from metaphysics to mathematics to the natural sciences. Their ideas were not just pernicious to Islam, but pernicious to reality. They divorced the intellect from the body, the universal from the concrete, the concept from the subject, and finally philosophy from practicality.

But, since Avicenna’s ideas and Neo-Platonism were so wide spread, it begs the question as to whether this part of history can really be called a “Golden Age.” Wouldn’t the majority of thinkers have to be part of the problem? Around the time Al-Ghazali was writing, this very well may be true. Thus, we may have to reconsider what exactly is meant by this supposed “Golden Age.” Perhaps the gold ought to lose a bit of its luster. In any case, it is still hard to imagine how and why philosophy would go in this direction in the Muslim world, and why it would come to an end despite the Andalusian reaction and Al-Ghazali’s respect for science and logic. Why were people willing to simply study the refutation and not the exaltation of reason? Why did people begin to blindly follow the authority of certain scholars rather than analyze the spirit of their work or attempt to build upon it themselves? Why was Averroes largely ignored by Muslims until the modern era? These questions will be the subject of another section.

How Education Kills Freedom

The following is not a scholarly work, but more of a rant. This is not typically how I would like to use my blog, but I felt compelled to comment on what has been going on recently at my university, specifically the Arabic program, as it illustrates an important point about how contemporary education is killing freedom of thought.

I learned recently that the Arabic program at my university is one of maybe three universities still using the Elementary Modern Standard Arabic (EMSA) series of textbooks. Most universities, including my undergraduate university, prefer the Al-Kitaab fii Ta‘allum al-‘Arabiyya series. The former is grammar and syntax based with a little vocabulary, whereas the latter is fluency based with little grammar. In any case, the director of the Arabic program here is proud of his basis in grammar, as it is an older, more scholarly approach to the language. However, it leaves transfer students in a predicament when they move to another university that uses Al-Kitaab. Apparently, there was a recent incident relating to this problem, the details of which I do not know. Suffice to say, our program director is seriously considering adding Al-Kitaab to the classes. This short essay will describe why such a precedent frustrates me, and why it signifies to me the destruction of the mind in the classroom. I have divided it into two parts. The first will illuminate the differences between EMSA and Al-Kitaab, and why I believe EMSA is superior. The second part will explain how the issue is characteristic of what is going on in contemporary education in general, and why it is an affront to free thought.

Part 1: EMSA vs. Al-Kitaab

I used Al-Kitaab as an undergraduate, and I am currently using the EMSA books. Both are excellent texts, to be sure, but the preference for Al-Kitaab over EMSA means the preference for functionality over understanding, the mundane over the scholarly, immediate reward over long-term benefit, and the closing of the mind instead of its opening. The brilliance of the EMSA books is that they demystify the language with a clear and detailed explanation of its fundamentals: grammar and syntax. Although we often take this fact for granted, it is worth stating that a language is so much more than a bunch of vocabulary words. The rules of form and organization are what give those words meaning when placed together, which allows us to understand sentences, paragraphs, and entire books. If I were to write this clause as, “As write to clause this I were if,” you might recognize each word but have no understanding of the meaning I’m trying to convey. Arabic syntax and grammar, to a westerner, looks just as muddled and jumbled. But, with knowledge of the basic elements, a student of Arabic can understand the order and get at the meaning, as if solving a puzzle with a special key. This special key is what the EMSA books try to give to students: a means of decoding the complexities of formal Arabic.

Additionally, they provide students with a basic understanding of the formation of words. As a root language, almost every word in Arabic (except for borrowed terms) is based on a single root word. For instance, the word “Al-Kitaab” comes from the verb “kataba,” which means “he wrote.” Through fairly consistent modifications, one can derive different but related meanings. “Kaatib,” for instance, means a writer, or more literally “the one who writes,” because it is an active participle form. Similarly, the title of this blog uses an active participle, “Marid,” (pronounced “Maarid”), which derives from the word “marada,” or “he rebelled.” Thus, Al-Marid is the one who rebels (and is often applied to evil genies and giants because they rebel against God). There are other forms as well, such as the often-seen word “mamluk,” the name for the slave dynasty in late medieval Egypt. This is a passive participle form for “malaka,” which means “he ruled.” Thus, a mamluk is one who is ruled, or a slave (also, one should see that the active participle Maalik means, “one who rules,” or a king). Different derived verbs also exist with general semantic implications. For instance, the word “darasa” means “he studied.” The second type of this verb, which is signified by a doubling of the middle consonant, is “darrasa.” This word means: “he taught.” This is because type two verb forms often have the semantic implication of causation, thus “darrasa” is literally causing someone to study, i.e. teaching.

The list goes on and on of various derivations from words. The point is that a student can often figure out the general meaning of a new word if he knows the meaning of the root. But in order to do so, he must know how to recognize the root and understand the semantic implications of the form. For instance, a student of EMSA would be able to look at the word “Istaqbala,” having never seen it before, and recognize the root as “qabala.” And, knowing that “qabala” means “he received (s.o.),” i.e. someone came over and he received them, they would then think: “This is the type ten form of the verb, so it has a reflexive and causative implication, thus ‘istaqbala’ means causing one’s self to be received, or going out and meeting someone.” That is basically the correct meaning of the word, and a student of EMSA can recognize it and understand it without ever having seen it before. That is the importance of Arabic grammar, and one of the most wonderful things about the language.

On the other hand, Al-Kitaab throws a series of vocabulary words at the student, with little or no explanation of how or why they are connected. A student effectively has to memorize each word independently. Although some recognition is given to forms, explanation is not emphasized. Even worse, Al-Kitaab does almost nothing to explain syntax, leaving the student with little or no way of translating if he were to read literally. The details of this are too fine to go into here, but they can have a massive impact on translation. I will try to summarize with an example. Arabic is a gendered language, meaning it has feminine and masculine words, and all verbs, adjectives, pronouns, and so forth have to agree in gender. So, imagine if a student encounters a series of male and female pronouns later in a sentence. How is he supposed to sort out which pronoun refers to which earlier noun? What’s more is that a student is apt to make a gross error in this organization if he forgets (or doesn’t know) the rule of non-human plurals always taking feminine singular agreement. This is just one of many possible ways to misunderstand an Arabic sentence, many more of which are so subtle yet so critical there is no way I can go into them here without giving a lecture of grammar. In fact, it is because they are so subtle that they require special attention, since they are the easiest to miss. For the sake of brevity, it is enough if one can imagine the possible problems. Because everything in an Arabic sentence has to have proper agreement, one can imagine that a misunderstanding of the grammar could lead to confusing an object for a subject, which verb goes with which noun, and all of the other intricacies that go into complex sentences. It can even lead to misunderstanding which form of a verb is used (in Arabic texts with no vowels, “darasa” looks exactly the same as “darrasa,” and often only rules of grammar and syntax will indicate which word must be correct), and this can completely change the meaning of a sentence. A student who does not know grammar well, a student without that special key, is going to look at a complex sentence and be hopelessly confused, even if he knows the meaning of every single word independently. That is, assuming he can even correctly recognize the word at all!

This is the advantage of EMSA over Al-Kitaab. But if what I write is true, why would so many universities prefer Al-Kitaab? The reason is simple: it is the quickest and easiest path. Studying grammar can often seem abstract and unrelated early on in learning, and it is a difficult way of thinking (to which any teacher or student of language can attest). Almost immediately, a student of Al-Kitaab will be able to greet someone, ask them the time, discuss the weather, order food at a restaurant, and many other such things. But that’s all they’ll be able to do. According to the proponents of the book, all students really need to know about Arabic is small talk.

EMSA, on the other hand, is the long and hard road, but it leads to understanding all kinds of literature, from poetry to philosophy. A student of Al-Kitaab will struggle just reading a newspaper. Al-Kitaab is not only simple, it is simplistic. And if there is any doubt left about the superiority of EMSA, allow me to illustrate from my own personally experience. I took two semesters and two summer courses with Al-Kitaab at the University of Minnesota. I left each class feeling befuddled, and after all my work, I was barely able to read children’s books written in Arabic. In three quarters using EMSA at my new university, I left each class feeling as if the language had just become simpler and more understandable. And, I was able to translate passages from the prominent medieval philosopher Ibn Rushd. I went from struggling with children’s books to reading philosophical treatises. I think the results speak for themselves.

Part 2: The Destruction of the Mind

“The fundamentals” is a term that has garnered an increasingly negative connotation in modern education. It is connected with ideas of “old,” “out-dated,” and above all “restrictive,” even authoritarian. Some would argue that students should not be forced into accepted a bunch of rules handed down to them, but should have the opportunity to express themselves and their own ideas. In order to accomplish this, several new theories like whole math and whole word reading have begun to take root in our schools. The idea is that by teaching these methods, students will have an easier and faster route to expressing themselves and their creativity. Somehow, they will unlock a student’s free thought and potential. This is false.

Take for instance the game of Scrabble. In this game, there are tiles representing one of each of the 26 letters in the English language (plus a few blank tiles which can be any of those letters). With these 26 possibilities, players form different words to score points. As anyone who has ever played Scrabble knows, this allows for many different possibilities. Players can be very creative in what words they form and how many points they score. Using only 26 different letters, Scrabble opens up thousands of possibilities. Moreover, it is fun!

The fun of Scrabble derives from the creativity of the players in how they play, and this creativity derives from their basic knowledge of 26 simple letters. If Scrabble used entire words, already set, the game would require thousands of tiles just to match the same number of possibilities, and a player would be able to do fewer creative things with those tiles. In short, it would be much less fun. To me, EMSA represents the fundamentals which do not restrict creativity, but allow it through an understand of a smaller set of rules. Al-Kitaab, on the other hand, represents the new school, the whole language, and the direction of contemporary education. Instead of a game with a few tiles and several possibilities, it makes Arabic a game of thousands of random tiles with few possibilities. It kills the fun of life, because it kills the potential for creative and novel expression.

Human beings are born with a rational mind. However, this mind is a tabula rasa, a blank slate with no inherent ideas. Reason cannot spontaneously produce knowledge. It can only combine existing knowledge in new and thoughtful ways. It is from reason that derives our creative potential, our ability to imagine and predict, and to adapt to the world around us. But, it cannot function without a sound foundation of ideas to work from. This foundation is “the fundamentals.” With knowledge of 26 letters, English speakers can create any word. With knowledge of 12 tones, a musician can make any melody. With knowledge of how to shoot, dribble, and pass, an athlete can play basketball. That is how reason works. It does not work the other way around. Someone who has memorized a thousand complete songs will not be able to write his own, for he only knows what other people have written. A basketball player who only scrimmages and never develops his fundamentals will miss his shots, bobble the ball, and send errant passes. In any case, these people, whenever they encounter a novel situation, will not be able to adapt since they only have the knowledge they’ve learned in a specific context. In order to truly develop one’s reasoning mind and creative thought, a person must have a set of general rules to work from. These general rules act like a special key with which one can decode the complexities of any situation. And, one can imagine new situations and act accordingly. A musician improvising a song is quite astonishing, but it is not so bewildering when one realizes he is basing all of his improvisation on a basic knowledge of key signatures and chord progressions. Truly, it is this basic knowledge which allows his imagination to take flight, like a plane from a runway.

But this is not contemporary education. Instead, the answer is the quick fix, at the expense of the effort and time it takes to develop the basics. The fundamentals do not have such an immediate reward or applicability because they are so basic, so fundamental. One will only realize their full potential with time and work. Also, for the time being they are fairly strict and unresponsive to the interpretations of students. Students are not allowed to question: that a sentence must have a subject and a verb, that there is only one way to play the key of E minor, or that shooting a basketball requires a special form and is not just throwing the ball at the hoop. That does seem rather restrictive at first. But, a person who understands subjects, verbs, and how to construct sentences will be able to construct any sentence in order to express any idea he wishes. A person who understands the key of E minor will be able to play any melody in that key, or even write his own. And, a person who has mastered the form of shooting a basketball will be able to shoot from any angle under a myriad of situations, whether he is making a stationary jump shot in the post while being guarded or driving full-tilt to the rim for a wide open lay-up. Once again, the full creativity of a person will not be realized until he has laid the proper groundwork.

However, the creative potential of the fundamentals are long term, and their short term perception is authoritarian. Our education system has become woefully short-sighted. Instead, they want what appears immediately to be creative or expressive at the expense of truly free thinking later on in life. Only the immediate reward is what matters, and the long term damage it can do to the mind is ignored. This is why the fundamentals are disappearing, and this is why Al-Kitaab has overtaken EMSA by a vast margin. And, this is the reason for my frustration at the very thought that the director of the Arabic program here is seriously considering the book. To me, it represents the death of the mind, the death of creativity for the sake of quick rewards. To me, it means a generation of Arabic students graduating and getting jobs in the CIA or State Department as translators when they can’t even read children’s stories. It means a generation of students of language who can’t even write a semi-coherent essay. It means a generation of students who become artists only capable of copying other artists and never able to create something original and profound. That is the direction I see the education in the United States going, and that my Arabic program might be going in such a direction is sickening. It is indicative of this poisonous, short-sighted mentality that, if unchecked, will produce a society of “free” thinkers that have no idea how to think for themselves.

How to Protect the Mind

As a cadence to my rant, I’d like to give two short messages, one to students and one to teachers, about how to protect their own minds and others'.

Students: Don’t let school get in the way of your education. Don’t just scrape by with what is required in class, but seek out knowledge on your own. Go above and beyond the class material and seek out the fundamentals. If you are an Arabic student using Al-Kitaab, study your vocabulary. But, give extra attention to the few passages on grammar it contains, and supplement your knowledge by reading EMSA or some other grammar books. And, keep in mind that you’re just planting a seed. The fruits of your labor may be far off, but they will be the sweetest and best harvest.

Teachers: Don’t let others dictate your class. Most teachers, I believe, know that the fundamentals are the key to creative thought, not its antithesis. So, don’t be pressured into changing your curriculum because of what others are doing. Don’t let short-sighted administrators force you to sacrifice your convictions. And above all, don’t let lazy students keep you from doing what you know is right. They may hate you now, but one day the will thank you for it.

The Meaning of Life

Let's get things rolling by answering the easiest question of all: What is the meaning of life? Okay, it's not easy at all. But, modern societies with their openness and freedom have presented us a wealth of possible answers to chose from. It seems everyone is selling some quick and easy answer to the meaning of life. Demagogues of all kinds exhort us to follow their God, that He has a greater purpose in mind for us, that there is a plan for our world, and that upon completing this plan, we will be rewarded with eternal bliss, everlasting peace, oneness with the universe, or some kind of spiritual creaminess. In any case, most seem to agree that there IS a purpose to life, and moreover a reward, that one day we will reach that pinacle and find "true" happiness here or in the hereafter. This certainly is a nice sounding answer, one that is obviously very appealing to our desires. However, it's an evasion of the issue. The answer to the mysteries of life, if there is an answer, should not be so nice, not so quick, and ultimately not so easy. It should be HARD. I mean not only be hard to aquire, but hard to accept the answer once we come upon it. Is there no one out there with courage to admit that the truth can be terrifying?

The following is a wonderful example of what I'm talking about, a passage selected from that old story of Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu. To preface, Enkidu is on his deathbed and has had a terrible dream of the afterlife. He then relates his dream to his friend Gilgamesh. It is a poignant passage, and I urge the reader to examine it with care.

(Enkidu speaking) "'There is the house whose people sit in darkness; dust is their food and clay their meat. They are clothed like birds with wings for covering, they see no light, they sit in darkness. I entered the house of dust and I saw the kings of the earth, their crowns put away forever; rulers and princes, all those who once wore kingly crowns and ruled the world in the days of old. They who had stood in the place of the gods like Anu and Enlil, stood now like servants to fetch baked meats in the house of dust, to carry cooked meat and cold water from the water-skin. In the house of dust which I entered were high priests and acolytes, priests of the incantation and the ecstasy; there were servants of the temple, and there was Etana, that king of Kish whom the eagle carried to heaven in the days of old. I saw also Samuqan, god of cattle, and there was Ereshkigal the Queen of the Underworld; and Belit-Sheri squatted in front of her, she who is recorder of the gods and keeps the book of death. She held a tablet from which she read. She raised her head, she saw me and spoke: "Who has brought this one here?" Then I awoke like a man drained of blood who wanders alone in a waste of rushes; like one whom the baliff has seized and his heart pounds with terror.'
Gilgamesh had peeled off his clothes, he listend to his words and wept quick tears, Gilgamesh listened and his tears flowed. He opened his mouth and spoke to Enkidu: 'Who is there in strong-walled Uruk who has wisdom like this? Strange things have been spoken, why does your heart speak so strangely? The dream was marvelous but the terror was great; we must treasure the dream whatever the terror; for the dream has shown that misery comes at last to the healthy man, the end of life is sorrow.'"

[Source: The Epic of Gilgamesh. Translated by N. K. Sanders. London: Penguin Books, 1972. p. 92-3]

There is powerful profundity, and an equal amount of uncertainty, expressed in these words. To think that all our efforts in life are a waste, that we all wind up in the same place and equally miserable for eternity, is a frightening thing. There is a great amount of anxiety here. But, why would Gilgamesh also call it "marvelous" and say it should be treasured? This same description which moved him to tears (and if you know the story, later took him on a long and fruitless journey in search of immortality), was also great wisdom to him. It seems like a strange, fatalistic view of life and offensive to our modern senses, but is it possible that it can also be marvelous?

The Epic of Gilgamesh is not the only place we find this kind of sentiment. Take, for instance, the following passages from Omar Khayyam:

"The worldy hope men set their hearts upon
Turns ashes - or it prospers; and anon,
Like snow upon the desert's dusty face
Lighting a little hour or two - is gone."

"Why, all the saints and sages who discuss'd
Of the two worlds so learnedly, are thrust
Like foolish prophets forth; their words to scorn
Are scatter'd, and their mouths are stopt with dust."

"Oh, come with old Khayyam, and leave the wise
To talk; one thing is certain, that life flies;
One thing is certain, and the rest is lies;
The flower that once has blown forever dies."

[Source: Khayyam, Omar. The Rubaiyat. Translated by Edward FitzGerald. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1983. poems 14, 25, 26]

Khayyam certainly doesn't pull any punches when it comes to his discussion of death. Everyone, from those who set their sights on earthly delight to those who seek higher wisdom and spirituality, will inevitably die, and all their words and pursuits, all their efforts, are impotent. So, basically, whoever you are and whatever you do, ultimately your efforts are meaningless. Lovely thought, no?

And of course, there are the more recent examples. This is a selected passage from the lyrics to the song How Far to Asgard, from the album of the same name, by the heavy metal band Tyr:

"Where we end is not our decision
And though hidden, fate is fixed with no evasion
All men should try to live each
Day for the evening, each week for the end
Each summer for the winter, each life for death."

Live life for death? Are they serious? Yes. In pondering the meaning of life, it is perhaps better to rephrase the question: What is the meaning of death? Perhaps life has no meaning other than what the reality of death - true death, no blissful afterlife - can give it.

In summary, getting back to the original question: I truly have no idea what the meaning of life is, or even if there is a meaning at all. But, it seems to me, death has a powerful meaning, that our own extinction is the basic truth we have to work with. Thus, it is worth pondering the wisdom of Enkidu's dream, Khayyam's "one thing is certain, and the rest is lies," and Tyr's "life for death." Life may not need a meaning if we can come to grips with this awful, sublime reality of death. It seems to carry enough meaning and weight on its own, so long as we can face it openly without the comfort of hopeful illusions. And in the end, this need not result in a fatalistic or depressing view of life. Instead, it may inspire us, teach us, entertain us, and in its own way actually be something we come to treasure.

Welcome to the House of Giants

I would like to introduce you to my blog. This is a place for me to post my ideas, philosophy, intellectual work, and anything of a high-minded nature. Additionally, it is a place for others to discover intellectual topics relating to history, philosophy, and art. Be forewarned that the subject material is not for those who want quick gratification or entertainment. Rather, it is a place for free and original thought to shine. In keeping with my philosophy, this blog will be a House of Giants, a home for those who champion the rebel thinker, the free thinker, the creator, the genius, the Human. Ahlan wa-sahlan, welcome to this house.