What, perhaps someone may say, is
it not preposterous for an educated man who is able to influence the young to
the study of philosophy to work the land and to do manual labor just like a
peasant?
Yes, that would be really too bad
if working the land prevented him from the pursuit of philosophy or from
helping others to its attainment.
But since that is not so, pupils
would seem to me rather benefited by not meeting with their teacher in the city
nor listening to his formal lectures and discussions, but by seeing him at work
in the fields, demonstrating by his own labor the lessons which philosophy
inculcates—that one should endure hardships, and suffer the pains of labor with
his own body, rather than depend upon another for sustenance.
Having grown up in a time when the most important
intellectuals were imbued with a Marxist spirit, there was always a sense of
solidarity for the working man hovering over most of everything.
Notice I say only a sense, however, because it
would have been entirely unfitting for most of my teachers to ever pick up a
wrench, or milk a cow, or plow a field. They felt certain that their jobs
required them to expound the theory of the dialectic, while the proletariat
could then follow their inspired instructions.
At my progressive high school, where no one ever
got sent to the headmaster’s office, I was once sent to the headmaster’s office
for talking back to a teacher who told me that I was too bourgeois in my
thinking. I suggested he try working on a Soviet collective farm to see what it
felt like to be a slave of the state. Needless to say, this did not go over too well.
I learned fairly quickly that acquiring an
education, at least one that mattered, did not require me to become an effete snob.
I could still love my fancy books, and I could still be excited about all the
profound learning, but I never needed to look down my nose at anyone.
As with most false dichotomies, why should I assume
that a commitment to theory excludes the exercise of practice? Quite the
contrary, is not the meaning of the former made real through an application to
the latter?
A good number of the people I went to school with had
never suffered any serious hardships in their entire lives, and yet they were always
the most vocal about condemning social injustice. This was possible for them
because they only thought about it and spoke about it in a classroom, and then
later took their abstract ideologies to their firms and corporations.
Shouting and waving my fist at a fashionable protest
is hardly the same as being evicted for not being able to pay my rent.
Don’t get me wrong, I do believe they sincerely meant
it, but I also believe they had no idea what struggling in life really entailed.
If you had spent just an hour sitting with them at a trendy café in Harvard
Square, you would know exactly what I mean.
Musonius offers a radical, but also quite sensible,
solution to this divide between our intellectual and moral lives: put your
money where your mouth is. Instead of discussing it, start doing it. Instead of
contemplating it, start living it. Instead of getting angry about it, perform
the actual work.
Just imagine if you could meet your teacher, not in
the classroom or his office during those very few formally appointed hours, but
by spending many days, weeks, and months with him clearing stumps or draining a
bog.
Just imagine if you could learn your lessons by helping
him plant a crop or build a barn.
Just imagine if you could experience the realities
of struggle, suffering, and friendship by working alongside him, and hearing what
he has to say at exactly the same time he shows you how to tie the best knots.
Not an artsy John Lennon sort of imagining, but an
earthy Wendell Berry sort of imagining.
Now that would
be learning, and that would
be a teacher.
If we did it in such a way, I assure you that we
would no longer bicker about whether this group or that ends up with this political
handout or that.
We might well learn that we are responsible for
ourselves, and that we are made to care for one another.
We might well learn that we are called to give, not
entitled to receive.
Written in 11/1999
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