Marshall McLuhan on the Global Village

In the days before Twitter, email, Facebook, MySpace, texting, blogging, Google, the Internet... Marshall McLuhan describes the new world "created by instant electronic information"---a "global village".

"Today, the instantaneous world of electric information media involves all of us, all at once. Ours is a brand new world of all-at-onceness. Time, in a sense, has ceased and space has vanished. Like primitives, we now live in a global village of our own making, a simultaneous happening. The global village is not created by the motor car or even by the airplane. It is created by instant electronic information movement. The global village is at once as wide as the planet and as small as the little town where everybody is maliciously engaged in poking his nose into everybody else’s business. The global village is a world in which you don’t necessarily have harmony; you have extreme concern with every else’s business and much involvement in everybody else’s life. It’s a sort of Ann Landers column written larger. And it doesn’t necessarily mean harmony and peace and quiet, but it does mean huge involvement in everybody else’s affairs. And so, the global village is as big as a planet and as small as the village post office.

"We now share too much about each other to be strangers to each other. For example, in the age of the information explosion, all the walls go out between age-groups, between family groups, national groups, between economies. The walls all go out. People suddenly have to adjust themselves to this new proximity, this new interrelationship, and merely to tell them that this has happened isn’t very helpful. What they need to know is, if it is happening, what does it mean to me?"

“McLuhan on McLuhanism,” WNDT Educational Broadcasting Network, 1966

Why we educate...

"They [universities] are not intended to teach the knowledge required to fit men for some special mode of gaining a livelihood. Their object is not to make skilful lawyers or physicians, but capable and cultivated human beings… Education makes a man a more intelligent shoemaker, but not by teaching him how to make shoes."

– John Stuart Mills discussing the purpose of universities when becoming the rector of St. Andrews University in 1867

(Quote liftted from New Saint Andrews College)

English expands to a million words today

George Parkin Grant on Education: Teaching "purpose", teaching "wisdom"

This evening, I briefly paused from grading examination papers, and I picked up a book I recently borrowed from the library. It is a collection of philosophical essays by George Parkin Grant. Here is an excerpt that struck me.

Reason is at first only present in us potentially and not actually. It needs to be developed, and developed by education. Education is seen as the process by which a person comes to think clearly about the proper purposes of human life. (How different this is from our modern technical education which is simply concerned with teaching people how to get on, never teaching them where they are getting to.) In the old theory of education, when a man began to see what was the ultimate purpose of human life, he was said to be wise---to have the virtue of wisdom. Wisdom was then the purpose of education. It was the condition which men reached through reason, as they came to know what were the purposes in human life truly worthy of a rational soul.

George Parkin Grant “Natural Law” Philosophy in the Mass Age, 1959

It was, like, an awesome speech, actually

This morning on CBC Radio 2, I heard about the commencement address given by Pulitzer Prize winning author David McCullough to graduates at Boston College. He said, “Please, please do what you can to cure the verbal virus that seems increasingly rampant among your generation.” He cited the “relentless, wearisome use of words,” such as “like,” “awesome” and “actually.”

As an example, McCullough said, “Just imagine if in his inaugural address John F. Kennedy had said, ‘Ask not what your country can, you know, do for you, but what you can, like, do for your country actually.’”

Tolkien galumphs through the tulgey wood of Beowulf criticism

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s essay on Beowulf (cited in a previous post), he lists dozens of far-reaching, varied and contradicting opinions on the Old English poem. In the midst of this forest of opinions, Tolkien writes that “a view, a decision, a conviction are imperatively needed.” Tolkien then alludes to Lewis Carroll’s nonsense poem in his effort to sort out the “nonsense” (but not necessarily bad) opinions on Beowulf:

“For it is of their nature that the jabberwocks of historical and antiquarian research burble in the tulgey wood of conjecture, flitting from one tum-tum tree to another. Noble animals, whose burbling is on occasion good to hear; but though their eyes of flame may sometimes prove searchlights, their range is short.”

I am just glad I am not the only one who borrows freely from the tulgey wood of nonsense poetry. For the original poem “Jabberwocky” by Lewis Carroll, see the sidebar link “Why a blog called galumphing?”

At the Kilns: Learning from C.S. Lewis (I)

As I mentioned earlier this week, I am investing time to learn from the teaching of C.S. Lewis for the course of this year. Over the next few months, I hope to post what I am gleaning from this intellectual and spiritual giant.

At the Kilns: Learning from C.S. Lewis

I recently read “Learning in War-Time” which was a message C.S. Lewis preached at Oxford on October 22 1939. He had been asked to speak on the question whether students should continue with their studies while Great Britain was engaged in an all-encompassing war. He argues, simply, "yes." In the process of his argument on that subject, he makes a comparison to Christians studying, or doing anything, during the ongoing spiritual war.

When thinking about the secular and sacred aspects of life, Christians always end up wrestling with the question C.S. Lewis poses: “How can you be so frivolous and selfish as to think about anything but the salvation of human souls?” There are Christians who ask this question of themselves and others. I wrestle with this question sometimes when I invest energy and time into teaching students about the writings of Shakespeare rather than the writings of the Apostle Paul. It is a worthy question to consider, given the fact that everything this side of glory will pass away. However, this sort of question, adds Lewis, “implies that our life can, and ought, to become exclusively and explicitly religious.” In one sense, our lives do become transformed and all-consumed by Christ. But Lewis distinguishes an exclusive divide between sacred and secular. He writes, “Before I became a Christian I do not think I fully realised hat one’s life, after conversion, would inevitably consist in doing most of the same things one had been doing before, one hopes, in a new spirit, but still the same things.” The reality, Lewis points out, is that we spend most of our time doing the mundane, secular things in life. The solution to this question, then, that Lewis presents is this: “Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Co 10:31) Lewis goes on to say, “All our merely natural activities will be accepted, if they are offered to God, even the humblest, and all of them, even the noblest, will be sinful if they are not.” This truth can be an encouragement or a sobering rebuke.

Below are some particularly meritous excerpts from the same sermon:

We must do what we were created to do

“The work of Beethoven and the work of a charwoman become spiritual on precisely the same condition, that of being offered to God, of being done humbly ‘as the Lord.’ This does not, of course, mean that it is a mere toss-up whether he should sweep rooms or compose symphonies. A mole must dig to the glory of God and a cock must crow.”

Why we need educated Christians
“A cultural life will exist outside the Church whether it exists inside or not. To be ignorant and simple now---not to be able to meet the enemies on their own ground---would be to throw down our weapons, and to betray our uneducated brethren who have, under God, no defence but us against the intellectual attacks of the heathen.”

“Good philosophy must exist, if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.”

Study history
“Most of all, perhaps, we need an intimate knowledge of the past. Not that the past has anything magical about it, but we cannot study the future, and yet need something to set against the present, to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods and that much which seems certain to the uneducated is merely temporary fashion.”

“A man who has lived in many places is not likely to be deceived by the local errors of his native village; the scholar has lived in many times, and is therefore in some degree immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pouts from the press and the microphone of his own age.”

The quotes from C.S. Lewis are taken from “Learning in War-Time” in The Weight of Glory, edited by Walter Hooper (HarperCollins, 2001)

On writing poetry...

“It’s silly to suggest the writing of poetry as something ethereal, a sort of soul-crashing emotional experience that wrings you. I have no fancy ideas about poetry. It doesn’t come to you on the wings of a dove. It’s something you work hard at.”

---Louise Bogan

In the last post on What is Poetry?, I included Burton Raffel's definition for poetry as a "disciplined, compact verbal utterance, in some more or less musical mode, dealing with aspects of internal or external reality in some meaningful way." I think modern readers and writers of poetry have a hard time with the word "disciplined." Horace, the great Roman poet, writes, "Not gods, nor men, nor even booksellers have put up with poets being second-rate." Excellence doesn't simply occur; it is achieved. A poet must account for every jot and tittle in his poem. In poetry, there is no room for excess and overindulgence. Being concise takes discipline and hard work.

Historical Ignorance

"History will be kind to me for I intend to write it." Winston Churchill

That may be true, but what if no one studies history...? Or worse, what if no one believes in history at all? I recently came across this article below (refered on Dr. Haykin's blog). Apparently one in four Britons do not believe Winston Churchill ever existed! Here is the article published on FOXNews.

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One in four Britons don't believe wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill existed, according to a recent survey. Churchill is compared to Florence Nightingale and Sir Walter Raleigh, seen by many survey respondents as a mythical person, the London Daily Mail reported Monday. The survey, conducted with 3,000 respondents to test their general knowledge, reported other historical figures such as Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, Cleopatra and the Duke of Wellington were made up for books and films, the Mail reported. The survey, by UKTV Gold, also found that Sherlock Holmes was a real person. Young Britons under 20 lack a basic historical education according to the survey results, historian Correlli Barnett told the Daily Mail. "This suggests a complete lack of common sense and respect for our greatest heroes of the past," Barnett said.

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This survey adds irony to Churchill's famous double imperative, "Study history! Study history!"

On Ritual and Ceremony

On the academic calendar, we draw closer to the formal and ritualistic "modi operandi" of graduation ceremonies and academic convocations. I recently came across this excerpt from C.S. Lewis's Preface to Paradise Lost, which seems to me to shed some light on the attitude of many students and faculty alike regarding the "pomp and circumstance" of ceremony and rituals.

"Above all, you must be rid of the hideous idea, fruit of a widespread inferiority complex, that pomp, on the proper occasions, has any connection with vanity or self-conceit... The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for every one else the proper pleasure of ritual."

C.S. Lewis, Preface to Paradise Lost

Flannery on English Education

I continue to dabble in the writings of Flannery O'Connor this summer, and last night during my son's soccer game (he wasn't on the field at the time) I read a fabulous essay on a subject near and dear to my heart. Here is a gem of a quote from Flannery O'Connor:

"Ours is the first age in history which has asked the child what he would tolerate learning, but that is a part of the problem I am not equipped to deal. The devil of Educationism that possesses us is the kind that can be cast out only by prayer and fasting. No one has yet come along strong enough to do it. In other ages the attention of children was held by Homer and Virgil, among others, but by the reverse evolutionary process, that is no longer possible; our children are too stupid now to enter the past imaginatively. No one asks the student if algebra pleases him or if he finds it satisfactory that some French verbs are irregular, but if he prefers Hersey to Hawthorne, his taste must prevail.

I would like to put forward a proposition, repugnant to most English teachers, that fiction, if it is going to be taught in the high schools, should be taught as a subject and as a subject with a history. The total effect of a novel depends not only on its innate impact, but upon the experience, literary and otherwise, with which it is approached. No child needs to be assigned Hersey or Steinbeck until he is familiar with a certain amount of the best work of Cooper, Hawthorne, Melville, the early James and Crane, and he does not need to be assigned these until he has been introduced to some of the better English novelists of the 18th and 19th centuries.

The fact that these works do not present him with the realities of his own time is all to the good. He is surrounded by the realities of his own time and he has no perspective whatever to view them..."

O'Connor, Flannery. Flannery O'Connor: Collected Works. "Fiction is a Subject with a History" Library of America: NY, 1988.

Christians and their Imagination

“Fairy Tales are more than true; not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten.”
G.K. Chesterton

Every year I make a list a books that I feel I ought to read. I sort my annual reading list into categories. Some of my headings include such books as Theology, Pastoral or Homiletic, Church History, Christian Biography, a Journal or Collection of Letters. Added to the list of clearly “spiritual” headings are such books that fall under the categories of poetry, novel, mystery/fantasy novel. I believe that fiction has as much importance in my spiritual growth as does my yearly “theology” book.

Christians need to nurture their imagination. It takes a mind that is able to “imagine” in order to savour the beauty and to understand the depth of the work of Jesus on the cross. It takes an imagination to empathise with and love your neighbour. Nowhere in scripture are we commanded to read fiction; however, Jesus not only taught using “story,” he also lived the greatest story ever told. As Douglas Wilson writes, “The story of the gospel is a glorious story.” The gospel is a story, a true story. A story that regenerate and Spirit-filled men and women understand, a story that regenerate and Spirit-filled imaginations love. Christian imagination can be fostered by reading fiction. Over the next month or so, I plan to make a case for Christians reading fiction.

On the subject of poetry and Christianity, Christian poet, George Herbert, writes in his definitive work, The Temple,

Harken unto a Verser, who may chance
Ryme thee to good, and make a bait of pleasure.
A verse may finde him, who a sermon flies,
And turn delight into a sacrifice.

Poetry in the Pulpit

This morning Pastor Kirk Wellum, the pastor of my church (Pilgrim Baptist Fellowship), drew our attention to the lyrics of one of the Church’s most beautiful hymns, “The Love of God” by Frederick M. Lehman. He recited the third stanza to us during his sermon:




Could we with ink the ocean fill, And were the skies of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill, And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above Would drain the ocean dry;
Nor could the scroll contain the whole, Tho stretched from sky to sky.

I have sung this hymn many times and I have heard many ministers recite these lines, but it never ceases to move my soul. How powerful these words are, not simply because of poetic potency, but because they words are immensely true. “O love of God how rich and pure! How measureless and strong! It shall forever more endure. The saint's and angels song!”

For the complete lyrics, music and background info, click here.

Terence, Socrates and Herbert On Opinions

Quot homines tot sententiae
Terence, Roman comic dramatist (185 BC - 159 BC)

This Latin phrase idiomatically translates as, “There are as many men as there are opinions.”

So much of modern education is encouraging our students to have “opinions” instead of well-informed positions. It takes time and effort to develop an argument defending a position. For an opinion, on the contrary, it only takes a heart-beat and the ability to form words. Socrates states, “Wind puffs up empty bladders; opinions, fools.”

I am reading English poet George Herberts’s (1593-1633) classic work, The Temple. I recently came across this little poem, which seemed to me to be very timely:

In conversation boldnesse now bears sway.
But know, that nothing can so foolish be,
As empty boldnesse: therefore first assay
To stuffe thy minde with solid braverie;
Then march on gallant: get substantiall worth.
Boldnesse guilds finely, and will set it forth.