Does Humanity Fit in a Business Equation?

The New York Times ran an article this week about how universities are out dated and should be run on a business model to make them more competitive and relevant to modern society. I initially had a lot to say about the merits of a liberal arts education, classics, learning for learning's sake and all that jazz. Earlier this week, however, I had to opportunity to listen to one of my favorite authors do a reading and Q and A while sitting out under the stars on a perfect spring evening. And I realized that the real problem with this article is that it fails to account for these intangibles. There is a desire and need people have for readings, poetry, conversation--things that cannot be quantified or put into a business model--things that help make us human. It is, among other things, this type of analysis and the desire to make things profitable and efficient that has all but eliminated troubadours, scops or any other type of professional story teller and the ability to make a living writing poetry of painting. So instead of refuting the article I am going to go home today, draw and take a walk and I would encourage you to do something creative today and take time to enjoy the scenery--something that defies a bussiness model.

Sit and Think

I sit beside the fire and think of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies in summers that have been;
Of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there were,
with morning mist and silver sun and wind upon my hair.

I sit beside the fire and think of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring that I shall never see.
For still there are so many things that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring there is a different green.

I sit beside the fire and think of people long ago,
and people who will see a world that I shall never know.
But all the while I sit and think of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet and voices at the door.

--J. R. R. Tolkien

Life less ordinary

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.--Seneca

He Wishes For The Cloths Of Heaven

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. -

-William Butler Yeats

Been Burned By This World's Cold

The world offers you comfort, but you were not made for comfort; you were made for greatness. -Pope Benedict XVI

Pursuit of Excellence

Every once and a while I will catch an episode of the Colbert Report. Leading up to last year's Oscars he obsessed, frequently, about the award--why he hadn't won, who was stealing the award from him, whom he could bribe to win. Since winning, he has not let the gag go; every once in a while he runs a segment called "Who's Not Honoring Me Now " where he lists all of the awards he has not won recently.

One of the reasons this is so funny is because of America's uneasy relationship with excellence. On the one hand we exalt winners, paying athletes obscene amounts of money and making the Superbowl the most watched thing on television. At the same time, however, we refuse to acknowledge how great an achievement what they are doing actually is by awarding people of all skill levels, giving a's for effort and trophies to every little league team.

Some people have lamented that this is corroding America's ingenuity and drive. Why work hard to get to the top when you can receive ribbons and accolades for merely showing up. And if you cannot even manage mediocrity, if you are so far below average, or cannot be bothered to even show up, you can blame it on society and maybe get a feel good segment on Oprah. The problem, however, is more than one of economics, it is concerns the human spirit.

The primary problem is, I believe, two-fold. First, if we teach children to be complacent with mediocrity and reward them just for trying, they will cease to push themselves. This is bad for society for the next Mozart, the next Picasso, Einstein, Frank Lloyd Wright, the next David Beckham might be out there, but if people are not challenged and continually encouraged to test their limits, they will not achieve their full potential. Secondly, failure is itself crucial for the human life. As imperfect creatures imperfection is part of everything we do. People learn from failure: they learn about themselves, they learn about their humanity, they learn that they cannot be self sufficient but must rely on others. So glossing over failure and elevating everyone, regardless of merit, to the same level deprives people of an important learning experience and part of being human. After all, to err is human.

The Windhover

I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird,—the achieve of; the mastery of the thing!

Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!

No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermillion.

--Gerard Manley Hopkins

The Donkey

When fishes flew and forests walked 
And figs grew upon thorn, 
Some moment when the moon was blood 
Then surely I was born; 

With monstrous head and sickening cry
And ears like errant wings,
The devil's walking parody
On all four-footed things.

The tattered outlaw of the earth,
Of ancient crooked will;
Starve, scourge, deride me: I am dumb,
I keep my secret still.

Fools! For I also had my hour;
One far fierce hour and sweet:
There was a shout about my ears,
And palms before my feet. 

--G. K. Chesterton

Seven Stanzas at Easter

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells’ dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that-pierced-died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping, transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mâché,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

-John Updike

Sonnet To Liberty

These are the letters which Endymion wrote
To one he loved in secret, and apart.
And now the brawlers of the auction mart
Bargain and bid for each poor blotted note,
Ay! for each separate pulse of passion quote
The merchant's price. I think they love not art
Who break the crystal of a poet's heart
That small and sickly eyes may glare and gloat.

Is it not said that many years ago,
In a far Eastern town, some soldiers ran
With torches through the midnight, and began
To wrangle for mean raiment, and to throw
Dice for the garments of a wretched man,
Not knowing the God's wonder, or His woe?

--Oscar Wilde

The Hungry Soul

"Our troubles are not economic or political, they are intellectual, moral, and spiritual. Our souls still crave the drama of what Tolstoy called "real life": immediately meaningful work, genuine love and intimacy, true ties to place and persons, kinship with nature, family, and community, dignity, understanding, and an openness to the divine. But real life has become nearly impossible as we have ceased to know and honor its forms. We are, of course, too sophisticated to allow ourselves to be self-deceived, to embrace any grand illusions. We would sooner quit the scene than live a noble lie, and so we continue (nervously) to applaud the intellectual demystifiers and debunkers of our traditions and mores. We fuss over our decadent art, our atonal music, and our haute cuisine. But when the lights grow dimmer and we look into the mirror, we do not like what we see: We look even to ourselves like hungry men who have been offered nothing but sawdust and tinsel." --Leon Kass, The Hungry Soul

Oh, the cleverness of me!

As he stood and waited by the blue gate,
He heard in the dark starless night a cry.

Alone he went forth to decide his fate,
Alone he went on, looking to the sky.
There he saw through the black and mist a light.
Where stars could not, it shown bright, bringing hope;

He felt strength and courage to face the fight.
With this newfound power he could now cope
with troubles which before had caused him strife.
He walked from the mist into the dawn.
Renewed was his passion renewed, his life.
He felt light; he felt new, despair had gone.

Inspired to conquer the world today,
The new dawn broke as Stalin walked away.

Life

Children, ye have not lived, to you it seems
Life is a lovely stalactite of dreams,
Or carnival of careless joys that leap
About your hearts like billows on the deep
In flames of amber and of amethyst.

Children, ye have not lived, ye but exist
Till some resistless hour shall rise and move
Your hearts to wake and hunger after love,
And thirst with passionate longing for the things
That burn your brows with blood-red sufferings.

Till ye have battled with great grief and fears,
And borne the conflict of dream-shattering years,
Wounded with fierce desire and worn with strife,
Children, ye have not lived: for this is life.

--Sarojini Naidu