Why Are We So Foolish?

Increasingly our society is foolish.  We are foolish with our votes, our time, and our money.  Schools, governments, and media outlets that are supposed to be bastions of wisdom and rationality are ripe with foolishness.  Why?

An answer in cultural terms comes from the book, Between War and Peace by Victor Davis Hanson (I’m becoming quite a fan) in an essay titled, “Postmodern Palestine: The New Amorality in the Middle East”.  Hanson writes:

I do not think there is some grand postmodern scheme afloat to undermine the legacy of empiricism, history and logic.  Rather, the spread of such amorality is simply a result of our own sloth and timidity—and perhaps ultimately the dangerous dividend of an increasingly affluent and cynical society.  Teachers, professors, and reporters embrace such dubious notions because they bring either rewards or at least the satisfaction of being liked and in the majority. (p.26)

Hanson offered an example earlier in the essay which describes the epitome of so-called ‘Canadian values’:

[W]e live in a society in which playground fights in our schools are now often adjudicated by concepts such as “zero tolerance” and “equal culpability”.  Rather than exercising moral judgment–and investing time and energy in such investigation–our school principals simply expel any student caught fighting, as if the bully and his victimn occupy the same moral ground. (p.25)

Let us hope that leaders in Alberta and the rest of Canada can ‘exercise moral judgment’ rather than resorting to the laziness of convenient postmodern platitudes.

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Published:
March 2, 2006 / 3:46 pm
Category:
Western Civilization, alberta, canadiana
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