Mirror of Justice

Arthur Brooks is the President of the American Enterprise Institute and is the author of a new book called "The Conservative Heart:  How to Build a Fairer, Happier, and More Prosperous America."  (I've heard good things about the book, and am looking forward to listening to it.)  

Recently, I listened to the podcast of "Conversations" (with Bill Kristol) which featured Brooks, and I really enjoyed it.  One particular observation really jumped out at me (it's a long quote, but well worth reading) (emphasis mine):

. . . universities have a tendency to ask two wrong questions. The big – the first wrong question they tend to ask is, “What are you?” As if they impose this question on students. So students who are watching us today, particularly people who are getting ready to go to college, you’re going to get asked, “What are you?” And that is basically, “What are you? I’m a physicist, I’m an economist, I’m a business major.” And you know, that is an incredibly materialistic view of people that’s imposed from this intellectual force.

That’s hugely problematic because once you answer that question, once you define yourself in terms of that question, the world will follow with another a question, which is, “How much money?” And that’s a tyranny. That’s a manmade prison that people get in. Materialism notwithstanding, but we often hear from the conservative movement as if abundance were an end it itself, these things truly are a kind of human tyranny. They hold human welfare back. We need to rebel against it. We need to become detached from it. This is very important in every spiritual tradition but it’s just in a humanistic tradition – we all understand that to be true. So that’s the first wrong question that we tend to have.

The second is, and this is much newer and this is more troubling still. The question that students are asked is “Who are you?” And that’s what gets into the awful identify politics that dominate university campuses today. Where we go from everything to esoteric departments to identity all the way through to the climate of micro-aggression, so called micro-aggression. People who are watching us today who are at universities suffering through this weird culture. It’s because of that question, “Who are you?” You have to answer the question, “Who are you?” No you don’t! The world has a follow-up question to that too which is, “Who cares?” The world doesn’t care who you are. You shouldn’t care who you are.

KRISTOL: People in college really care who they are?

BROOKS: Because they’re being asked that. And indeed this is a period, from 18 to 22, where you’re trying to figure out your identity and when that’s dignified, when that’s put under the microscope, when you’re told that truly is an important question that can wreak your life. What are you and who are you are the wrong questions, the real question is – that we have to answer and this comes from the virtue of intellect and high education, the virtue of education per se of improving oneself of the purpose of – in my own personal view glorifying God and serving fellow man – is, “Why are you? Why are you who you are and what you are?”

The “why” question is the interrogative that’s meaningful in people’s lives. In higher ed, when you’re in this ecosystem of learning or supposed to be in an ecosystem of learning, you should be able to come to that question. Why am I on Earth? The happiest, the most fulfilled people who’ve done the most for humanity are the ones who have a very strong understanding of why they’re on the Earth. Why they’re alive. And by the way, many of them also have an understanding of why they will die. So soldiers who’ve confronted that have an understanding of what they’ve been willing to die for. Why would I die?

And, in a materialistic world we don’t have good questions for why am I alive and why should I not be alive? And those are the question that should come from an environment of learning and set us on a trajectory of learning about ourselves and learning about the world that’s neither identify politics nor materialism. The two tyrannies are what’s ruining higher ed and getting away from the fundamental question is probably the most troubling thing about universities today. . . .