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Welcome, all. Being involved
in education has given me the opportunity to listen to many people and
encounter their diverse and often intriguing perspectives on life and education.
I offer here my reactions and ideas as they have developed in the hopes
of generating dialogue. I hope to create in cyberspace something corresponding
to a Roundtable Group which myself and some former students developed over
the last 3 years during my tenure at the University of New Orleans.
The Highest Truth Cannot be Put into Words.
Therefore the greatest teacher has nothing to say.
He simply gives himself in service, and never worries.
from: Hua Hu Ching: Lao Tzu
One can plunge entirely into the activity of making money as an end in itself. One can become so absorbed in the rituals and complexities of business, so deeply involved in the activity of planning and making deals, that everything else loses its meaning. Home life takes second (or third) place, the family loses its significance, personal relationships become ambivalent and frustrating if they interfere with the main object of one's life, which is to make money . Life becomes artificial, tense, and false. The genuine human dimensions shrivel up. In order to keep up the pace and cope with the contradictions that one has built into his own existence, he may resort to alcohol or tranquilizers, or both. In such an atmosphere, true spirituality becomes an almost total impossibility. At best, religion remains a veneer, an outward form, or a vague, disquieting velleity: one of those things you will get around to "later."
Thomas Merton: Life and Holiness (112)
Our time, our skill, our energy are not simply commodities which we put on sale. If we assume that they are, then we will inevitably concentrate more on selling our talents than on using them in fruitful and satisfying manner. Our capacities and gifts will become subservient to our main purpose: "making money." But this is a perversion of the natural order, in which the productive use of human talents in good and fruitful work should normally be a deeply human and satisfying activity in itself, not only bringing in a just wage and contributing to the support of a family, but also fulfilling certain fundamental spiritual and psychological needs of the human person.
Merton: Life and Holiness (111)
Success means we go to sleep at night knowing that our talents and abilities were used in a way that served others. We're compensated by grateful looks in people's eyes, whatever material abundance supports us in performing joyfully and at high energy, and the magnificent feeling that we did our bit today to save the world.
Williamson: Return to Love (177)
Though we still pay lip service to
the old myth that what is good for the market is good for everybody, as
a matter of fact the development of new products and the marketing of commodities
has really little or nothing to do
with man's real good and his real
needs. The aim is not the good of man but higher profits. Instead of production
being for the sake of man, man exists for the sake of production. Thus
we live in a culture which, while proclaiming its humanism and pretending
indeed to glorify man as never before, is really a systematic and almost
cynical affront to man's humanity. Man is a consumer who exists in order
to keep business going by consuming its products whether he wants them
or not. but in order to fulfill his role he must come to believe in it.
Hence his role as consumer takes the place of his identity (if any). He
is then reduced to a state of permanent nonentity and tutelage in which
his more or less abstract presence in society is tolerated only if he confor
ms, remains a smoothly functioning automaton, an uncomplaining and anonymous
element in the great reality of the market.
Merton: Contemplation in a World of
Action (49)
The world is too much with us; late and soon
Getting and spending we lay waste our powers
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, A sordid boon!
The Sea that bares her bosom to the moon,
And are upgathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I'd rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn.
Wordsworth: "THE WORLD IS TOO
MUCH WITH US"
Hope you find this interesting. I also hope that you will respond to these ideas with your own thoughts. E-mail me so I can post your responses.
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If you have comments or suggestions, email me at figueroaf@mail.brcc.cc.la.us
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