©
Charles D. Hayes
The 2016 presidential election made it
clear that America is suffering an egregious vacuum of goodwill. Too many of
our citizens are ill-equipped to cope with life in the twenty-first century.
Simply put, they lack the knowledge to deal with the angst that comes with
being mortal.
For decades, I have been trying to articulate
the benefits of a liberal education. I have fully experienced the rewards
myself, having gone from growing up as a hard-right conservative to becoming politically
liberal. Years of study helped unravel my animosity toward progressive points
of view. For me, the learning I experienced dispelled the angst that used to
fester in my mind toward people I considered “others.” Lately the angst has
resurfaced as a growing intolerance for intolerance.
So, like a moth to a flame, I’m drawn to
read every book and essay I can find about meaningful education because, even
though I understand the profound value of broad, liberal learning, I have
difficulty explaining how others might relieve themselves of the contempt that
comes with a narrow worldview. Nor can I name what the tipping point might be
to bring it about.
Although being open to experience is a hallmark of liberalism, it’s not yet
known for sure how much our political disposition is genetically predisposed
and how much it is because of learning. We do know, however, that even some who
hold rigid views can be persuaded to change their minds if presented with a
better argument.
One of the hardest things to do is to try
to recall what it is like not to know something once you have learned it. It’s
almost impossible. But having been raised without the benefit of a liberal
education, I still have some sense of the void and smoldering anxiety that such
an upbringing provides. Today, much as I want to share the benefits of an
existential education, I’m confounded by the amount of social resistance to
something that’s so life-changing and so beneficial to society at large. Even
so, I do understand the animosity. Anti-intellectualism runs deep.
There are lots of good books on the value
of a liberal education, but most come up short because they miss an adequate
description of its most important advantage. Finally, after many years of pondering,
I think I’m close to identifying what’s so often been left out. A big part of
the answer is so glaringly obvious that we don’t see it.
When it works as it should, a liberal
education becomes an existential education. By this I mean an education of
enough quality and depth to enable one
to release some of the anxiety that comes part and parcel with the human
condition—that of being mortal. Mortality is a condition from which there is no
escape. Willful illusion is one’s only protection, but it cannot last. Smoldering
anxiety festers when other people recognize this and no longer share the cultural
illusions one has adopted for escape. Contempt follows because the very
existence of nonbelievers poses a deep existential threat.
In essence, an existential education makes
it possible to find one’s own meaning in life without the need to find fault
with others. It provides one enough
confidence to be worry free and unconcerned when the views of others conflict
with one’s own. An existential education enables us to forgive others for their
otherness, most notably because it reminds us that we are soon to be food for
worms.
To learn about many diverse subjects in
the humanities is like creating a mental mansion with lavish rooms, each with
enough accumulated substance that any new additions are subject to wonder by their
contrast. So, instead of being allowed to inspire fear and contempt from a lack
of understanding, new information is subject to relative reflection and often
creates new corridors between rooms.
When a person embraces a multitude of
ideas about the world, narrow viewpoints begin to appear immature. More ideas
lead to more possibilities, and more options occur to consider, all of which
assist in quelling anxiety before it congeals into despair, scorn, and
derision. Thus, an existential education is liberating in its capacity to help
dissipate social angst. The effect is the same as taking the lid off a pot of
water about to boil, allowing steam to escape instead of blowing the lid
off.
John Adams was right when he said,
“Education makes a greater difference between man and man than nature has made
between man and brute.” In my view, an
existential education can effectively still the brute in man.
My Books and Essays on Amazon
New Fiction: A Mile North of Good and Evil
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