“One whose falsehoods no longer deceive,” says Ambrose Bierce, “has forfeited the right to speak truth.” What might he mean? Perhaps that the one who is not competent enough to deceive is unlikely to be competent enough to discover truth.
The Western Intellectual Tradition is my God. An atheism that denies reverence even to this God would be just an excuse to avoid studying.
When I hear leftists lamenting the authority of the Dead White Males, or the authority of science, my first suspicion is that they were looking for a convenient excuse to bring their studies to a conclusion, and their professors obliged them by providing one.
“Wisdom is before him that hath understanding,” says Solomon, “but the eyes of a fool are in the ends of the earth.” Delivering the morning newspaper, turning all eyes to the ends of the earth at the start of every day, is the way our society cultivates foolishness.
When I was younger and looking in every direction for approval, chasing money seemed extremely logical. What is money, after all, but the approval of others in its most tangible and quantifiable form?
Education is always described as a “program”—“master’s program,”—“PhD program.” The objective of every such program is to prepare a man or woman for his or her role in the division of labor. The script of the student’s life, at least in outline, is written beforehand. If we were foolish enough to cultivate genius instead of harnessing it, education would proceed not according to a “program,” but according to the needs of genius, which only genius itself can determine.
Perhaps the worst thing about the “program” is that is has an endpoint. This instills in vulnerable students the pernicious idea that study is a preparation for something else rather than an end in itself.
The professor’s job calls for him to devote his attention to the Western Intellectual Tradition. It also calls for him to devote his attention to students whose aim in life is a comfortable salary. Even if, in theory, his dedication to the Western Intellectual Tradition is sincere, in practice he serves Mammon once removed.
Ye cannot both serve The Western Intellectual and perform a role in the division of labor. It is not accidental that Nietzsche, Kierkegaard and Schopenhauer retreated from the world to write.
If you are quite certain that your genius will never produce anything profound, go right ahead and dedicate it to reputation and money. No matter how hard I try, I can’t imagine how anyone could be certain of this.
More often than not, reverence for our elders and reverence for truth ally themselves on one side, with reverence for money and reputation on the other. But those of our elders whose lives have been wholly dedicated to money and reputation, and who seek to justify their choices by foisting them upon the next generation—they do not deserve our reverence.
Commerce is no more than a highly developed and refined excuse to avoid studying. Admittedly it also provides food and shelter, but these do not begin to compensate for the attention it takes away.
There is one sort of piety which helps us cultivate reverence for what is high and contempt for what is low. There is another sort of piety which helps us cultivate reverence for ourselves and contempt for those who are different. The second sort is what gives piety its bad reputation.
“There is nothing either good or bad,” says Hamlet, “But thinking makes it so.” Concentrate, therefore, on the thinking and not on the things.
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