Meanwhile, a stripped-down federal government provides free virtual-reality consoles, opioids, and pornography to all citizens excluded from the new labor market. Within the walled cities of the super-rich, crime is virtually nonexistent and the opportunities for self-actualization are limitless. Wealth generation rests in the hands of an elite cadre of knowledge workers, educated at top schools and trained from birth to join the managerial caste. Advances in big data and automation have radically reconfigured the national economy. This assumption not only anchors political discourse on both sides of the aisle, but increasingly underpins our educational system: one goes to college to get a job, after all.Ĭonsider the following thought experiment: The year is 2068. They wanted to discuss realities and values extending beyond money or material equality.Ĭountless modern institutions tacitly assume that man is ultimately reducible to homo economicus : at bottom, everyone is a value-maximizing, rational actor oriented toward their own material well-being. It is profoundly disturbing that Ivy League-educated students-provided with nearly limitless opportunities-could go through years of higher education without being asked to discuss the “big questions.” And yet despite that pedagogical failure, and despite their overwhelming material and social privilege, my classmates still felt a profound craving for meaning beyond meritocracy. That, to me, is both striking and deeply unsettling. Almost to a person, they agreed that the course provided a uniquely valuable opportunity to discuss their deepest commitments about God, creation, and human life more intriguingly, many said that it was the first and only time they’d felt comfortable doing so in an academic setting. There’s a great deal I could say about this course, but one thing in particular stands out in hindsight: the way my classmates responded to its content.
In my final semester of law school, I had the opportunity to take a unique interdisciplinary class-“Law, Environment, and Religion: A Communion of Subjects”-taught through the law, forestry, and divinity schools.
0 kommentar(er)
