Man and the multitude; Discussion of Long and Gustafson lectures, part two

Sense of longer hair there is colorful and the sex is my personal admiration for you the second the second creature to say that. But I think it's a lot of the larger you know I think it's relevant to the present discussion. I'm astonished by the substitution of sophisticated stereotypes. I don't understand what beards have to do with the issue one way or the other and you don't know how to live English ears. Well perhaps so. So I'm I'm a bot as I hear you paraphrase other people's questions and find it difficult to recognise the question in a paraphrase. I ask this question with some trepidation I'll ask it anyway. Your protest against protests. Was was beautiful. And your I mean protest Paris and your protest against the academic establishment in last night's lecture was even eloquent. But it remained a change in the in the realm of pure protest.

Now. Granting for the moment. That you had unfair restrictions on your time of attack but I suffer under every Sunday. If you have another 30 minutes. What would you say specifically about the way the university should be expected to pull the educational given twenty two meetings with students in this campus and every important warble about how to organize a joint and try to make it hard to bring about what I nor about Illinois politics and some of the people might have. That's where I expected something to move in this kind of the business. But last night she talked about not much academic enterprise. I said good I tried to say of education in the academic establishment of the university and got my notes here.

Who did essentially say to produce adults. I think it is a major job to try to move the kids on to a position of sustained Marlen intellectual growth where they're on their own. I mean we are in a sense a colonial power trying to develop self-government now economies are not as it is or how do you think the university a lot of the things I do is abolish these roaming dormitories and get the kids managing their own private lives. I mean this is a totality. Is that it comes from an ecclesiastical Muggeridge which is one of the awful things about our academic tradition is it comes from the top and we had a bunch of monks and people out there watching because they might sin and because of the religion. Deal with the total man in the eye of God in the eye of the priest or the padre is on you all the time and therefore you have no private life. One of the major problems is to teach people how to manage their private lives and there is not a listless way of doing it you have to turn people loose now in any OP why they kicked them

out for what they call. An internship program outside an industry it's lies or they haven't run their own apartments and manage their own lives without making a stink about it this is a very major part of going to be an adult. And that we could get rid of these babysitting employers that we call our universities in their present state while we might have educational operations that was serious. That's what you said last night and he's very nice. It's a very great idea isn't it you know has been tossing around like crazy banquet in the out years you know. He should get into a private private situation where you don't have to worry about dorm rules having education what might the song but this is you you fall into the same trap that students do when they get into discussion I've been in so many of these google groups have a get together sometimes. I think you know how are we going to get kids out of the dorm into daylight. Well this is the problem we run into. It's it did me just actually

horrified at the practicalities of this thing but the fact is look at those dormitories. Fantastic opportunity to just move anybody who has ever been complex or you cannot bring Chicago down your back. You've got to work within the structure checking out if you thing is what you're saying is just where everybody goes and I think everything should be changed to make wild statements but the point is what do you do with what you have what you want is big you have a nice day God is in my house so I mean I make for less some understanding of this problem one of them went to Berkeley and you know they could live on their own there because being close to San Francisco there are a lot of opportunities not happens that there are a lot of gel collegiate kids who want to live the dormitories. I discovered this at Brandeis and I get to pick the brats at the campus but they wouldn't feel it was for real unless they're on a campus. You know you got a number on the night ready for another way of dealing with it. My son is very good center of Europe. Nobody knows what that doing so is no problem. So he has no love no papers no local legislature is not a big problem. We

could develop a lot of ways of dealing with this problem if we seriously want the idea that we want kids to grow up instead of buying a local parenthesis Simon from parents. I don't own. The size more you want a ring. And this is more like I want more gold. Why you're against me. I'm going to be going. Oh it's a very serious question you see the very problem is that our educational system is part of the stratification system. We Chinese Mandarin society which is our They make it but what kind of degree you get where you get it. And

if you want to talk about that you're really talking about you know the very serious job of reforming American society because the whole educational structure was designed to play Plato's game of the casting department deciding who are the men of gold or the minute bass in the Mina So it's very interesting to see how the selection process operates and who gets selected for the disguise and who gets selected to make it. But you know unlike some of my younger colleagues I don't really believe we can start from scratch your life to say that slate clean. I think we have to work with the framework of institutions we have we have to avoid. Getting completely caught up in them that I do not see how you can change things to the ideal except by working within the realm of the actual and the possible. I regard this is an important ethical criterion for evaluation that you do face up to feasibility on the other hand you can always use feasibility as a weasely way of buying the status quo you always have to be

afraid of this that this is where you're going to end up. So I don't know that there's as much difference between these two ends of the table as it seems to be I'm just not as skilled at that. I've been around longer. Yes. I think it's a no answer in terms of the statement that we ought to throw a lot of people out of education because a lot of mediocre education is going on because a mass education is mediocre education doesn't mean we oughtn't to have masses of people educated ones. And I think this raises some serious problems about change and I think it's really ridiculous to have all these people going to college. It's terribly sad that we have a lot of people in high school who aren't going to college or being defined as bombs by the system defining themselves as systems and having a lot of by the system having a lot of trouble. And I think there are a lot of people are just runs through this kind of sausage machine in order to become high grade cliques in a society that really does need I'm. Resigned to this business of having a little fun. I had have a daughter who

is an institution where there are no students. And she's been living in a dormitory where this is so and she has just moved out of the Dharma crane. Because she cannot get any studying. The fact is that the student committee which is supposed to enforce these rules and the rules are. Very nominal they don't even prevent people from singing playing the photograph all night making love all night at the top of their lungs or whatever it is they write so you can't sleep. These are the students who run this have got the guts to enforce the rules because they pick the line of strapping on somebodies toes telling him what to do. There's something to be said for having some authority figure at least for some room. Oh yes. Up here we have again availed ourselves in finding some way or a better alarm I think Gustavus and

I compare first factors I think it is that what they were saying last night they so far has run parallel and haven't gotten going and I think there's a way they're the way to have a. Discussion here it's going to be very important. Oh I don't think you are concerned about our university for example as you know comes to white vs.. Long thing is important to come to a realization of that is how things are right because that's maturity. What this business of living is all about. Up as along everybody clearly like you think. Is Ali important aspects of this are what president has been doing with some of the more basic presupposition which with which he would come to the problem. We haven't heard

much from us along with he thinks that the presupposition that Mr. Guterres and break the problem are relevant are what you are very very very much from Gaza is the one I was problem that is rather than go with peace is going to last. Half hour went by and what a university going down to is kind of on its purpose. Yet I know he has a very good opinion about it and he's going to be a very big area of commonality here and we don't know why I don't get more but I don't know who I mean that I responded very favorably to a number of things Professor Long said last night. Let me try to state them in maybe a generalized form that he was indicating the recognition that that action has to have a

purpose. I think he was indicating a recognition that the purpose of action is related to the intellectual life and isn't simply the kind of gut response and this real response to what is going on. It seems to me he raised the challenge as to whether the structure of the university was such that it was. Trained people to come to majority as purposive participants and actors in the society. Now one of the areas of university like that it seems to me we have not talked about here is what can be done with reference to curriculum and with reference to teaching procedures the ways in which we teach that can help bring us to this kind of majority we've been more concerned than they with living conditions and so forth and I don't want to suggest that they are unimportant. But if you have even a small group of people in the university can agree that what we're trying to develop is in some sense responsible persons mature persons then it seems to me a certain kind of

intellectual discourse has to go on in the life of the university and a sense most of the actual problems that students confront cannot be neatly compartmentalized into the departments that deal with these problems in the university. I'm quite willing to say that what I said at some level or another in various levels would be profoundly need interdisciplinary discourse going on in the university. There are many people who well it's very clear that Professor lawn is primarily a political scientist is concerned about political policy and to be concerned about political policies to be concerned about certain kinds of moral values as they become involved in political policy give shape to exams and give some kind of control over the means exercised to achieve these ends. Now do the universities provide for the students that kind of form in which students can begin to see as they begin to internalize

ways of thinking ways of appropriating masses of material perspectives on material did the universities provide the kind of form in which students can begin to recognize to see to see it work out just how the same moral values of one sort or another are involved in various levels of the formation of political process. I think it varies. Places in the universe in various levels not only political process but what are we going to do with all this new technology that is burgeoning out of our science and engineering skills. What kinds of of values are to be kept in view in terms of the usage of knowledge of genetics of biochemistry of the brain and all sorts of these questions. I think students have the right to be in on these kinds of discussions and they're terribly important that they be on these kinds of discussions because these are the sort of concrete way in which questions of morality are going to confront them in the future. I would say one of things we

could talk about is is curriculum revision we can talk about the way in which particular courses are taught. We have to start with the beginning of the of the moral philosophy in its historical way. And as an historical sequence or can we begin with the actual moral questions and then help students to see how moral philosophers of the past as well as the present have had something to say about these. Fortunately I think moral philosophy and ethics are taught this way in many places. But there again this is relatively meaningless to many students unless they can see it in conjunction with what they're learning in politics or economics or other times the kinds of courses. And we don't provide it seems to me most universities the form for this kind of intellectual and moral discourse. Yes Augustus's last night I believe you said that morality can be crippling or channeling of the life of the human spirit. Now in the light of the fact that I believe you also distinguished at least implicitly between mores and morality as for example you talked about middle

class more and did not as I recall talk about middle class morality. I was wondering how morality. As distinct from war. Can be crippling or killing life or making a distinction that I didn't have but me I think we can use the term mores as a description of how people actually behave in common they aspects of their life. What I meant to say in terms of this distinction that Maurice can be crippling. I was using the terms without distinguishing them at that particular point. No one can describe certain kinds of moral codes moral behavior that are crippling. If you want to equate those moral codes and moral behavior with mores It's one thing or if the use of the word morality already indicates that there's a normative judgment of something being

good and therefore not simply being crippling then then there's another matter to be talked about. I think then you are thinking of more a pre-established order as distinct from morality which should be an order that arises out of mutual interaction. Fair enough. Now it's somewhere along the line that I thought at least one connection that being man bustle round a dress and the sickest of sins one of the questions I had in mind asked. That's a lot of early was. What I raised a question about affective political action. Or what. Should be regarded as justifying political action as from political action which is simply a fact of the pragmatic but I've you know really were raised to wonder how you define a fact because it is a fact it doesn't affect what you want it isn't the fact. So if you do things that have side effects which you had intended. More

important than the way you make it your goal you may have lost everything that you stand for and this is a cause and problems and is concerned with what is possible in all the months students compromise is a dirty word but uncompromising is a pigheaded hung up between us. I think it she was saying it's just a matter of political action. The good must be effective and sensibly the cheating got one really I don't know any other justification and that means that in the end it will accomplish the end. But the real problem is the hierarchy and then the relationship of means and ends of the means do indeed accomplish your rounds and accomplish your wins in terms of your sense of one of the most important ends that you have in mind with our ends are always overlapping. Ya'll are ripe. I can't really can see that any situation you know I mean sort of like this in that you

can put your launch and say it's a means will get you your immoral salvation and it doesn't matter what the means is it will do this is the name of the game. May I suggest the following as a starter and then I see the very first Irish at me have years ago they didn't let him and he that he survives distance in. The passage just as a start. Was to Gusterson talked about morality as consisting of rules or or and or oil arising out of a mutual interaction. In the relationship. That the Rose Garden. Justifiable political activity. Quite separate from affecting us from paying the state. Sure and I'll sure suggesting something to think about should be a vote

that arise out of what must be yesterday namely those that arise out of mutual interaction that all of the people could be brought to agree upon. Provided. That they were in a position where they could best Fash the consequences of Apollonius they were not acting under restraint and this very well story idea saying and so on. Would you agree that they're stopping. I think one of the questions addressed without hormones and. I think the only point I would like to ask seriously in terms of this interaction to what extent. Are the. Sort of is the direction in which the interaction is big now. Something which is brought to bear upon it by the kinds of moral convictions of the individuals who are interacting holding the hand that is to say it doesn't simply arise out of an interactive process as if that interactive process was some kind of

status in and of itself. But that part of the interactive process is the into position or the imposition into the interactive process of events and purposes which which individuals have come to convictions upon as being. Being balanced morally valid justified when the two things involve this it seems to me the first ethical question have the ordinary situation. Is there a rule you know is there a rule when I break it but the next ethical question is do you like the consequences of the rule so that there's a problem of first saying it you know it is Bridget. As somebody cheated as he violated the rule. But then you might very well want to raise the question do we like the consequences of this particular room where I was changing them in football in sports and other kinds of thing on the basis of presumably that we think some of the consequences are bad now if you say the people of Alabama have interacted and decided that they want certain rules with respect to Negro You may choose not to be bound by this and think this is a bad rule.

But if you have accepted a certain process of rulemaking you may still say I have to follow this rule because I thought certain other kinds of procedural things and this is get the gentlemens process argument. But I say again you would have brought the process because you think on balance it's consequences that with your Reza goldfields I mean you wouldn't buy the prizes if you didn't think it had all the Torah and the kind of ethical consequences you believe and you want to change the process if you didn't think it actually did produce these consequences. Packing up my phone. Last night he said. The problem of underachievers and in our society especially in the university. I'm sure that where our are aware of this and everyone and it's really clever and Cheever. But you suggested the system for the university letting students on their own. To me it seems the system would

further underachievement. Professor brand I guess cited example of his daughter who was left on her own a first here. And I would assume that the results were drastic and I got academia then I would ask the system how you justify this system. And how it went. From make students achieve their potential especially when a student has come down to university and broken the bonds of. Our love they must talk that knowing you know actually what I was talking about was the the extension of the doctrine of the underachieving eclectic middle management because what is really the cream of the Jazz is the corporations who are running around like crazy because of middle management underachieving because they're afraid they might have a heart attack. And they're copping out a Sistine grand a year to enjoy the Vatican put on the

theory that they might run in the rat race and they won't anyhow on the basis to sticks and die than in the car in the other. Jack I'm not going to the last of it. Yes I actually think the whole problem is ready to use as a cheat and I don't regard the rat race is a cheat and I have a great deal of sympathy for students who are smart enough to get off it. As a matter of fact when I went to school people used to take a lot of courses in fact I was an economics major Instead it was right. I was advised by the people because I didn't have to worry about whether I get it. I could take courses in a wide variety of fields like to try out the facets of my possible instead of standing in a rat race that begins an elementary school run like that they can sell it because this is the only way you'll get somewhere and then you get real problems when people begin asking philosophical

questions of Ryan my running or my running to win isn't worth it to from the point of view of the society and especially if you take a capitalistic Calvinistic society believes in postponing the roads until after Yaz is run like the dickens accumulate a fortune the brass ring is relieved to some extent a more sensible society when people begin to ask themselves you know what purpose does it make sense. There are other things in running a material than gadgets at high prices or even live in Bromley hall thinking a great thing. When you know people begin to question these things you know really what might happen if philosophy got loose in the universities in Assam sicking question just you know one of the ends of life and not just the library with the books and then also you know be also as Colossus was a you know you can learn from something other than books you can win in the agora and they might say that one of the most

important lessons for a daughter to learn is what happens when you have a bunch of brats who take on the responsibility of running a dormitory and then conked out on. I happen to think is is building a politics that's a terribly important lesson that one of the reasons our societies are lousy is exactly because the adults caught out on running the dormitory and accepting their responsibility they don't because they don't stagger early if they're going to finish strong washing especially that of you who wondered. What would happen here that people are living well with their own inherent apathy. He can from accomplishing all the goriest and you might hope for highly motivated people trapped in a repressive system. I suspect that you will. People in the great mass of people with our. Flow with the current weather the current was permissive or respected. And he said well the lessons that you find that. People can't manage their.

Own business very well and the lesson itself is enough of an educational process well I think that's a good bet. I suspect that. University really ought to do more than just sit back and let you experiment. You don't want to let you do that. That perhaps there ought to be some. Way short of our actual gangs to improve the educational experience. But more than freedom would you do. Think this freedom you know isn't this something in the absence of rules that I don't feel or I think does a sense conceal for that. I think you have to accept that. I think the point was very well made. By my colleague from Wisconsin. People need to have some sense of self and some sense of patters and take it this is what Aristotle that when he talks about the difference between tyranny and constitutional Gladwin saloon are willing savages and they're willing to

have some rational appreciation of the lives that gladdens one has a sense of. What is rationally defensible and the sensible in terms of serving one's own interest of one's own interests in a broadly conceived fashion seems to me that this is as I see it the very definition of situational and one that is for the common good. That is all willing subjection hopefully the willing subjects that Inform 7 so that in some sense you can have an allegiance to it that is voluntary in some sense and even where you don't accept that you have in a rational way of conducting some kind of dialogue in his life and actions in your criticisms. This is an adaptation change. Fine but these personal morals without institutionalizing them and in turn after a while imposing.

Institutions always vested in I was the five the five my theological college was already in the scary and sad the scary thing. Killed by the latter. He's a made up of Pharisees and rebels have a cause we have to make the problem says White. Plus it's a great tradition. You've been listening to a discussion of lectures given by James Gustavsson professor of Christian ethics again at university and Norton long professor of politics Brandeis University. These lectures and discussion were a part of the University of Illinois Centennial symposium sponsored by the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. On our next program. Daniel Boorstin professor of American history at the University of Chicago will speak on the culture of communication. This. Man and the multitude is a feature presentation of the University of Illinois a

radio service. This program was distributed by a national educational radio. This is the national educational radio network.