Posted on Jun 15th, 2012 in
Academy,
Politics,
West |
0 comments
At the beginning of his epic poem, “The Ballad of the White Horse,” one of the two greatest Christian apologists of the previous century speculatively proclaimed:
For the end of the world was long ago
And all we dwell today
As children of some second birth
Like a strange people left on earth
After a Judgement Day.
Gilbert Keith Chesterton understood much about creation and its eventual demise, even before the outbreak of the war to end all wars in 1914.
Without getting into any theology (I really don’t know what my pre- or post-millennial views are, as I don’t quite understand the distinctions, even though countless students have kindly tried to explain the various views on these things to me), I think it’s worth considering where we’re at in history: in a stagnate period, a period of ascension, or a period of decline. Or, perhaps, a semblance of all three things might be happening, depending on what area of society we’re analyzing.
A few weeks ago, I offered
here the possibility that we might be somewhere at the beginning of a massive decline.
In terms of education, I don’t really think there’s much of a debate. Whether society embraces the liberal arts or not has been a standard way of identifying whether we’re in ascension or decline in the western tradition. When society embraces the liberal arts, we tend to be in a rise, or, at the very least, we’re taught to tolerate stagnation with stoic resignation; when society rejects the seven liberal arts, we tend to fall into darkness.