No Wonder?

When we were young, adults asked (irrelevant) questions like “What is your favorite color?” and “Who is your best friend?” and “Who is the nicest teacher?” By the time we can vote, we have already asked the same kind of (irrelevant, even stupid) questions of others and, sigh, contributed to the fact that there is often “no wonder.”

  1. No wonder that so many consider the act of choosing as a strictly personal or local matter. Pulitzer Prize winner, David Hackett Fischer, described in his book, Washington’s Crossing, how difficult but symptomatic of the fledgling nation it was to coordinate revolutionary soldiers who had, variously, the “collective consciousness of New England towns, and the liberty-as-hierarchy among the Fairfax ([VA] men, [and the] liberty for African Americans [and] the backsettlers [of PA who] spoke of liberty in the first person singular: ‘Don’t Tread on Me’.”

  2. No wonder that we can hardly conceive of actually balancing powers so there is no one best or most important party or parent or branch of government or movie or right, that the (religious, constitutional, corporate, educational) worlds we occupy don’t always have to be pyramidal with room for only one at the top. 

3. No wonder that it is so difficult to prioritize relatively rather than absolutely so that we all end up with recurring identity crises because we “have to” choose one primary justification (as opposed to mere rationalization) for how we can support policies that both limit and extend States Rights. E.g., Federal regulations like “Leave No Child Behind” ignore important differences yet allow Intelligent (and unintelligent) Creationism to be taught on a par with scientific evolution. I fear this will create a bifurcated “red v. blue” educational system that undermines Thomas Jefferson’s idea of a free public (secular) educational system.

   4. No wonder that we so often forget the distinction between “power” and “authority,” between “sympathy” and “compassion, between “knowledge” or information and “wisdom.” My adult son has the power to take me out with one blow but he gives me the authority to advise him because he sympathizes, i.e., shares certain views about compassion for fellow human beings with whom we totally disagree - like not wishing President Bush would be trampled by a herd of ANWR caribou despite having no faith that, notwithstanding his recent acknowledgment that global warming may exist, he has the will or wisdom to act constructively for the long-term environment.

 It is, however, wondrous that one person I know did indeed wonder about all the above and figured out how to balance activism with an active life and an active mind (echoing the subject of an earlier MVMY blog). Last September, Merrill Skaggs, the Baldwin Professor of Humanities at Drew University specializing in American Literature, decided to make as much of a political impact as she could despite her hectic schedule.

 Pondering what Mark Twain said, “Morals, religions, politics, get their following from surrounding influences and atmospheres, almost entirely; not from study, not from thinking....A man's self-approval, in the large concerns of life, has its source in theapproval of the people about him, and not in a searching personal examination of the matter.... broadly speaking, Self-approval is acquired mainly from the approval of other people. The result is Conformity.” 

After considering many factors – personal, pedagogical, political – Professor Skaggs contrived a game plan that was, not untypical of her style, playful, provocative and somewhat perilous. That is, she made it a course requirement that students not just read about American life but that they participate in it. That is, they must enter the voting booth. That is, voting itself was not required (much less voting for a particular candidate) but registering to vote was mandatory.

In other words,  the students regarded her as "a common cause," if not an outright enemy and rallied themselves out of apathy.

In her own words, Merrill explained, “My logic was that the community Drew students cared most about was made up of other Drew students. My job was to make them talk and argue about the election enough to create a climate of opinion I trusted my colleagues on the faculty and their own propensity for debate to help them create for themselves. I first asked the faculty to join me in requiring them to vote. The faculty desisted. But in the ensuing faculty email debate, the TIMES got wind, the TV NETWORKS followed the breeze, and the ensuing publicity kept the students comparing notes and arguing. The results were that 88% of the students voted. Their consensus at the end is indicated by the fact that 78% voted for Kerry in a Republican county, in a school with a Republican ex-governor for President.” 

Liberal colleagues decried her treatment of students’ “freedom” but delighted in the result. I can only cry, “Yippee!!” though, admittedly with far less enthusiasm had the result gone the other way.