Socrates Plato and Jackass?

Bloom breaks down his book into primary three sections the first being about his individual experience with students in his classes. Then he moves to american social commentary which he calls "Nihilism: American Style", and he then sums up with a large-scale evaluation of the universities as whole institutions. They all have great sub-chapters with headings like

~"The Nietzscheanization of the Left or Vice Versa"
~"Rousseau's Radicalization and the German University"
~"The Decomposition of the University"

I have only made it through about half-way of the first part mostly due to the material being incredibly dense. So here goes...

He begins by comparing the run of the mill European university attending student with his/her american counterpart. He felt though the European students came steeped in the classics (Plato, Socrates, Rousseau, Kant, etc) it was equally as abstract as the formalized Lord's Prayer that used to be recited mechanically in American schools. So in some ways American students were open to the Classics and felt there was something to learn from them up until the 60's. He felt when the Russians beat us into space amidst some other cultural pressures students began to be thrown into specialization-specific "disciplines" namely physics and mathematics. Necessity and ego prevailed and we were left with an intense spiritual vacuum devoid of any substantial moral component. He states that we were "capable of calculating but not of any passionate insight leaving the soul itself flaccid"

He then re-enters the euro-american comparison with a conversation about our lack of a collective "American" spirit any more. Still today wrapped up in the languages themselves of other countries are certain world-views or dispositions to worldviews. In France people are divided between Descartes-Psacal (reason and revelation) and you can get classified as one or the other if you visit there today. Similarly in Germany you have Goethe, Italy w/ Dante and Machiavelli. The only thing we had going for us, which speaks incredibly profoundly against those European thinkers, was a thourough understanding of the Scriptures and the Constitution in that order. Those were documents that interpreted Reality for us and the liveable Rights/Wrongs that they espoused. No one ever questioned whether freedom, equality, or justice were right or wrong they merely argued about their implications. However when the revisionst history and historicism began to re-write reality and debunk the Founding Fathers while throwing out anything sacred we have lost any sense of national/social consciousness we ever had. This is what seems to drive Bloom most crazy about the state of the students that come in as products of this brand of "absolute liberalism".

So he concludes:
"Thus openness has driven out the local deities, leaving only the speechless, meaningless country. There is no immediate, sensual experience of the nation's meaning or its project, which would provide the basis for adult reflection on regimes and statesmanship. Students now arrive at the university ignorant and cynical about our political hertiage, lacking the wherewithal to be either inspired by it or seriously critical of it"

When he deals with what i see to be even a grosser shortcoming (the loss of anything Sacred) he really hangs the blame on the family. The fundamental element of any democracy. Most of the How and Why questions in life were answered through individuals living lives grounded in the Scriptures. Something transcendental. There was no "abstract teaching" that was divorced from reality. Now however we teach "Ethics" for a grade in a university and the aim is to perform well in the classroom while not believing that there is any accountability in the real world for what you might potentially learn in the classroom outside of some loose scratch my back ill scratch yours. This is really a subtle insubstantial form of propaganda that somehow is now on the shoulders of schools and governments. He says families inability to translate any meaningful purpose to the next generation is one of the sharpest daggers currently in the American mind. Most of parents advice these days, save those amazing exceptions, can be summed up as "be happy"/"make money"/"be civil" which can be interpreted in any way you would like.

It seems to come back to the temptation birthed in the 60's to value the present, be snobbish about the past, have a blind acceptance in progress and teach our children to do likewise. It doesn't even have to correlate with Reality!!! We have zero appreciation for the books of ole that they might be able to teach us something important about how things really are. Check this..

"Instead of being overwhelmed by Cyrus, Theseus, Moses, Romulus (or the Transcendental personal Triune Creator God), they [students] unconciously act out the roles of the doctors, lawyers, businessmen, or TV personalities around them. One can only pity young people without admirations they can respect or avow, who are restrained from the enthusiasm for great virtue" (I added the bit about Triune Personal God bc i dont think Bloom goes far enough).

So ultimately we end up with what i watched last night : Jackass 2. We are entertained now in the present with no ability to critique the past. As Neil Postman states in his book "Americans are probably the best entertained and least informed people on the planet". I will leave you with a quote of Bloom's when talking about the Bible.

"I do not believe that my generation, my cousins who have been educated in the American Way, all of whom are M.d's or P.H.D's, have any comparable learning. When they talk about heaven and earth, the relations between men and women, parents and children, the human condition, I hear nothing but cliches, superficialities, the material of Satire...I mean rather that a life based on the Book is closer to the truth, that it provides the material for deeper research in and access to the real nature of things. Without the general revelations, epics and philosophies as part of our natural vision, there is nothing to see out there and eventually little left inside. "