Ch 4 ABSOLUTE ABSOLUTION - The Forgiveness of Original Sin By Ministers of Government Schooling by John Taylor Gatto

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So nobody had to wander aimlessly in the Christian world, what constituted a meaningful life was clearly spelled out. Self-knowledge, duty, responsibility, preparation for death - all these were up to you; no teacher or guru could do the work for you. People being people, however, each of the themes had inherent in it its own heresy, some way to beat the game.

For instance, developing your rational mind suggested ways to cut through God's secrets, the secrets of Nature, and avoid the penalties of Evil. The great deep magical tradition of pagan Europe from which the scientific tradition was born - that attitude that you can get something for nothing by cleverness - peeks forth tantalizingly from the "Wisdom of Solomon" in the Apocrypha:

 

He it was who gave me true understanding of things as they are: a knowledge of the structure of the world and the operation of the elements; the beginning and end or epochs and their middle course; the alternating solstices and changing seasons, the cycles of the years and the constellations; the nature of living creatures and behavior or wild beasts; the violent force of winds and human thought; the varieties of plants and the virtues of roots. I learned it all, hidden or manifest.

Wisdom of Solomon 15-21.....

Apocrypha (Revised English Bible).....

 

By understanding Nature you might devise machines to extract her bounty without Labor, and by understanding human nature and power you might turn human beings into slave-machines to do your own labor for you.

By understanding the ways of other, more physical cultures, you might learn to surrender to the temptations of sensual indulgence and escape unscathed, drink every cup to the dregs, exploit every sexual opportunity, exhaust every urge to violence and license - and still find spiritual justifications for your conduct through the doctrine of the "justified sinner", just as the Ranter sect did. Or you might devise a multi-tiered morality as the Egyptians had, where the highest ranks in secret could indulge themselves while preaching abstinence to the masses. Sort of like smoking dope but claiming if you were caught that you didn't inhale.

And you could even cheat Death for a while, as John D. Rockefeller spent so much effort and money trying to do. Consider that a significant portion of the entire modern scientific establishment is bent to the task of postponing the inevitable - and removing its inevitability. Indeed, of each of the other three competitive curriculums that grew up with Christianity in the West (see earlier) only the scientific curriculum is in violent conflict with each base of Christian curriculum. The two cannot live together as equals; unless Christianity dominates, it will die in the presence of Science.

Now all this might be only a matter of dusty academic interest except for the uncomfortable truth that these pillars of meaning hold up the house of the Western world. To the extent that school violates one or another, our purpose in living is jeopardized.

Without taking any sides on the moral question which is right or wrong, and focusing entirely on the psychological question whether a sane and stable life can come from the religion or science, we need to take a closer look at the destination the competing God of science is indicating when it contradicts the Christian curriculum.

Of necessity I have to oversimplify here in order to get a handle on very s1ippery concepts at all. Hopefully each reader will realize I make no promise of the whole truth in what follows, only a start along a promising trail hitherto obscured in underbrush.

Here is the net result of my own reflection, set down starkly. The scientific curriculum has as its poles:

 

1. You can't know too much, There is no good or evil. Knowledge can give you the same magical power that God has. Did He destroy Sodom and Gomorrah with fire? Then we can turn the night sky over the Sinai to flame as well with our war machinery. We are God.

 

2. Work is a curse to be avoided. Do as little as you can get away with. Quality is subjective, it is more important that the customer (teacher) be pleased than that quality be achieved. The package is more important than the product, the sales pitch more important than either. Only stupid people work; machines and slaves are there for those who understand.

 

3. Good feeling is what life is all about; there is nothing besides our sense data. Take as much as you can of it, as often as you can. Check out everything; leave no stone unturned in your search for sensual pleasure. There is no good or bad but thinking makes it so. Grab for gusto, you only go around once.

 

4. Death and sickness is the ultimate evil. Use as much magic, pills, potions, lotions, surgery, aerobics, etc. as you can to stave off death. Young is the name of the game when it's all said and done, power its only substitute. Take vitamins, 1isten to doctors, think about your health, issue a blank check to the magical industry dedicated to erasing this scourge of God from human affairs.

 

None of these prescriptions: knowledge, the easy life, fun, fame, accumulations; can provide much meaning to existence; each is a very limited benefit and more easily attained than we acknowledge. Serious literature, from Marcus Aurelius' Meditations to Fellini's Dolce Vita, is virtually a unanimous pronouncement that the material game isn't worth the candle; fairy tales from King Midas across the whole corpus of Grimm and Anderson delve frequently into what is really important and what isn't. And yet this trivia is the curriculum of modern schooling. Somewhere it was decided to absolve the young of Original Sin, this would be the absolute absolution: freed from its penalties, a new scientific utopia might eventually result after a different set of operating principles was inscribed on the blank tablets of childish minds. It seemed impossible that this effort, surreptitiously made on the part of Unitarians, Quakers, Anglicans, Positivists, and others, and defiantly attempted on the part of Utopian socialists, progressives, and members of the many odd little sects (and some not so little) which flourished in the 19th century, could not improve on Christian superstition. Well, that's hubris for you.