Liberal Arts Yeah!
Letter to my son, Cedar, the freshman!
No denying that dropping you off at your university last week was a little rough on both of us. That said, our family has had the privilege of a college education for the past two-plus generations so it is par the course. But besides a trade or profession, what else is did we get? That's what I wanted to talk about. While the cost of college tends to compel us to ask what is the return on this investment, what can I earn when I get out, bear with me. I want you to suspend that thought for a few minutes.
You are entering a place that is to some extent cordoned off from the outside world and you will be surrounded by a few thousand other young people for a period of 4 years. It's the residential campus life that originated from a system not that different from the Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witchcraft. Your choice of Gonzaga U, follows the Jesuits' worldview. Their devotion to ‘service in the common good’ rings true to me but we are of a different persuasion and I wanted to clear my thoughts with you.
As Jews share a lot of the values embraced by all the Abrahamic religions. And as humanists and pluralists, we are open to all other beliefs on the condition that they do no evil. Still, so many questions require consideration by each one of us. Not the Jesuits, not your lecturers, not your peers nor your parents, can answer them for you. But for the next few years, in the porous cloister of your university, you have the privilege and duty to explore these beautiful questions. Questions like how to behave in your private sexual life, where the line between useful ambition and over-reaching greed is best drawn, what does a good life look like, what do you want for our planet and how can you dream that into being, what does equity look like in the world you are creating, what friendship looks like when you disagree, will you choose to believe in a higher power, and what could that mean?
Now I don't mean to ignore the reality of our consumer life or deny that you will have to support yourself with the skills you acquire in the coming years. And I assume you will narrow your study focus to master a niche where you produce more than you consume, but I hope you will explore some of those questions along the way. I hope you will attend lectures on the nature of love, justice, and happiness even if credit is not given. That you will argue the status quo of faith and democracy late into the night with your peers, that you will discover ways to relate to others that bring you into lasting, meaningful connection even within our compulsively transactional world.
I hope you will explore the ideas of the past that don't relate to anything useful at all. How have earlier iterations of you and I managed society, how did our civilizations flourish only to collapse, and rise again? What being handy meant as hunter/gatherers and how we may have out-maneuvered ourselves with technology.
While you sift through facts and ideas, you will begin to identify what you see as both ethical and important. And in my opinion that is the ultimate value of a liberal arts education. Why? Because our values determine where our energy flows. Take a look at the COVID crises we have now. It is an economic, health, justice, and values crisis. Individual liberties versus public safety, should there be a mask mandate, should everyone be obligated to get the vaccine for the greater good, what is the greater good, individual freedom or public safety? I don't have the answers for you. They are hard questions that you will be better able to answer for yourself as you debate our humanistic heritage. All the crises of our time, hunger, poverty, and especially climate can be tackled with technology. But it is our values that determine how we deploy that technology. The rigor and wisdom that your values rest upon will determine our future.
So my son, what do you want to do with this college experience? More to the point, what do you want to do with this experience of being alive? I can't wait to see.
Bon voyage.
