| L | E | S | S | O | N | 46 |
The Closing of the
AMERICAN MIND
| S | CRIPTURE |
“It has given me great joy to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as the Father commanded us. And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another. And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love.”
~ 2 John 1:1–6
Prayer Points
| R | EVERENTIAL FEAR OF GOD |
“The Lord listened and heard. A scroll of remembrance was written in his presence concerning those who feared the Lord and honored his name.”
~ Malachi 3:16
Yale professor Allan Bloom, in The Closing of the American Mind,1 argues that as it now stands, post-moderns (an expression describing the generation that emerged after 1990 that rejected modernist faith in science and embraced a form of subjectivity) have a powerful image of what a perfect body is and pursue it incessantly. But deprived of guidance, they no longer have any image of a perfect soul and hence do not long to have gain that vision before chaos ensues. The eternal conflict between good and evil has been replaced with “I’m okay, you’re okay.” Men and women once paid for difficult choices with their reputations, their sanity, and even their lives. But no more. Post-modern America has no-fault automobile accidents, no-fault insurance, no-consequence choices. The Church has struggled in this era.
O father, father
Gone from us, lost to us,
The church lies bereft,
Alone,
Desecrated, desolated.
And the heathen shall build
On the ruins
Their world without God.
I see it.
I see it.2
Our society purports to build their world without God. But the dance is almost over. Before long, post-modern man will lose his bearings. Post-modern sensibility does not lament the loss of narrative coherence any more than the loss of being. But the loss will be acutely felt when the post-modern faces crises, say, death. This crisis is one that drove many old, earlier, romantics back to the faith, too. The romanticism of Ralph Waldo Emerson is fine and good on a warm, spring day. But is a paltry offering to a crying, dying soul.
A sidebar is the computer. This has hastened the stampede to post-modernism. The computer has transformed knowledge into information, that is, coded messages within a system of transmission and communication. Analysis of this knowledge calls for a pragmatic approach to communication insofar as the phrasing of messages, their transmission and reception, must follow rules in order to be accepted by those who judge them. Reality, then, originates and ends in the recipient of the IM or e-mail.
From T.S. Eliot in “The Rock”:
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?3
Thus, the individual, and by implications, society, compartmentalizes knowledge. The compartmentalization of knowledge and the dissolution of epistemic coherence is a concern for Christians. If knowledge is subjective then truth will be the next victim. If post-moderns don’t believe a tree is a tree, then what will they do with faith? There will no longer be a redemptive narrative for millions of post-modern Americans whose subjectivity has stampeded any semblance of metaphysical objectivity from the barn.
Furthermore, the loss of a continuous, historically true, biblical narrative in American society was/is disastrous. Post-modernism breaks the subject into heterogeneous moments of subjectivity that do not cohere into an identity. Quite literally separating the parts into parts means that there is no whole.
What does this mean? It means that millions of Americans will not know who they are. Really. Their subjective interpretations of who they think they are — roughly based on perceived needs and desires — will not suffice to create a coherent whole. Like Oedipus in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, Americans will rail against the fates while standing squarely in the path of inevitable destruction — and not knowing what is happening.
What’s done was well done. Thou canst never shake
My firm belief. A truce to argument.
For, had I sight, I know not with what eyes
I could have met my father in the shades,
Or my poor mother, since against the twain
I sinned, a sin no gallows could atone.
Aye, but, ye say, the sight of children joys
A parent’s eyes. What, born as mine were born?
Dark, dark! The horror of darkness, like a shroud,
Wraps me and bears me on through mist and cloud.
Ah me, ah me! What spasms athwart me shoot,
What pangs of agonizing memory?4
“Only the fool, fixed in his folly, may think he can turn the wheel on which he turns,” T.S. Eliot writes.5 Post-modern Americans, sooner or later, will fall and not know what knocked them down.
I ask that we love one another. And this is love: that we walk in obedience to His commands. As you have heard from the beginning, His command is that you walk in love.
“A book is the only place in which you can examine a fragile thought without breaking it, or explore an explosive idea without fear it will go off in your face. It is one of the few havens remaining where a man’s mind can get both provocation and privacy.”6
| R | EADING |
Interpretation
“Slumber and waking” are examples of what type of metaphors?
The following are metaphors for “love” in the poem “Love.”
| W | RITING |
Writing Style
Which part of the sentence below is wrong?
The rest of the generals were willing to surrender unconditionally, (A) depressed by this unforeseen calamity; (B) only the young colonel, who retained his presence of mind, represented to them that they were increasing the difficulties of a position in itself very difficult (C) by their conduct.
| V | OCABULARY |
1914 and Other Poems7
Never has a war so devastated a generation as World War I cruelly injured England. Author Tim Cross compiled an anthology entitled The Lost Voices of World War I: An International Anthology of Writers, Poets and Playwrights, with works by more than 50 authors who died in the four years of fighting in World War I. To read the works of these authors is unsettling, because the reader is constantly aware of how much talent was lost when these men died so young. The appendix to Cross’s anthology is even more tragic in its implications, for it is a necrology (i.e., death list) of creative people who were killed from 1914 to 1918. As Cross says, “A complete list of all poets, playwrights, writers, artists, architects, and composers who died as a result of the First World War is an impossible task,” but even so, he has compiled a list of about 750 names.
Cross’s list includes only people who had already accomplished something of note in their fields. We are left to ponder how many of the nine million young men lost in the war might have gone on to do great things in the arts, sciences, medicine, and politics. Given the official number of military personnel killed between the years 1914 and 1918 — over one million dead soldiers from the British Empire and the United States alone — a handful of artists might seem insignificant. A few survived — J.R.R. Tolkien, for instance.8
Rupert Brooke(1887–1915) was a good student and athlete, and — in part because of his strikingly handsome looks — a popular young man who eventually numbered among his friends E.M. Forster and Virginia Woolf. Brooke actually saw little combat during the war; he contracted blood poisoning from a small neglected wound and died in April 1915.9
The Dead
These hearts were woven of human joys and cares,
Washed marvellously with sorrow, swift to mirth.
The years had given them kindness. Dawn was theirs,
And sunset, and the colours of the earth.
These had seen movement, and heard music; known
Slumber and waking; loved; gone proudly friended;
Felt the quick stir of wonder; sat alone;
Touched flowers and furs and cheeks. All this is ended.
There are waters blown by changing winds to laughter
And lit by the rich skies, all day. And after,
Frost, with a gesture, stays the waves that dance
And wandering loveliness. He leaves a white
Unbroken glory, a gathered radiance,
A width, a shining peace, under the night.
— Rupert Brooke
Love
Love is a breach in the walls, a broken gate,
Where that comes in that shall not go again;
Love sells the proud heart’s citadel to Fate.
They have known shame, who love unloved. Even then,
When two mouths, thirsty each for each, find slaking,
And agony’s forgot, and hushed the crying
Of credulous hearts, in heaven — such are but taking
Their own poor dreams within their arms, and lying
Each in his lonely night, each with a ghost.
Some share that night. But they know, love grows colder,
Grows false and dull, that was sweet lies at most.
Astonishment is no more in hand or shoulder,
But darkens, and dies out from kiss to kiss.
All this is love; and all love is but this.
— Rupert Brooke
Define the suggested vocabulary words underlined in the above passage.
The Soldier
If I should die, think only this of me:
That there’s some corner of a foreign field
That is for ever England. There shall be
In that rich earth a richer dust concealed;
A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,
Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam,
A body of England’s, breathing English air,
Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home.
And think, this heart, all evil shed away,
A pulse in the eternal mind, no less
Gives somewhere back the thoughts by England given;
Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day;
And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness,
In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
— Rupert Brooke
“Isn’t it odd how much fatter a book gets when you’ve read it several times?” Mo had said . . . “As if something were left between the pages every time you read it. Feelings, thoughts, sounds, smells . . . and then, when you look at the book again many years later, you find yourself there, too, a slightly younger self, slightly different, as if the book had preserved you like a pressed flower . . . both strange and familiar.”11
| M | ATH |
Fractions
1. Divide x+ 3x– 2x – 5 by x – 2
2. Divide 2x5 – x 3 + 2x – 1 by x + 2
3. Divide x3 + 6x2 + 10x – 1 by x – 0.09
Percentages
1. A merchant mixes a pounds of tea worth x cents a pound with b pounds worth y cents a pound. How much is the mixture worth per pound?
2. If a man bought a horse for x dollars and sold him so as to gain 5%, what will represent the number of dollars he gained?
3. The difference between two numbers is 6, and if 4 be added to the greater, the result will be three times the smaller. What are the numbers? Of how many terms does the expression x3 – 4x2y + y3 consist? How many factors has each of the terms? What is the value of a number, one of whose factors is zero?
“Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour, and caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping.”10
| E | NGLISH |
Grammar
Which parts of the sentences below are wrong?
(A) I met the students from (B) Pittsburgh, PA, Columbus, OH, and Kansas City, MO.
(A) I am not sure what to do,(B) however, I think I will go anyway.
(A) My three loves are: (B) reading, writing, and arithmetic.
Denotation means “literal meaning.” Connotation means “contextual meaning.” You will need to discern both on the ACT English exam.
| S | CIENCE |
Analysis
Race or breed was a moment ago described as a factor in human nature. But to break up human nature into factors is something that we can do, or try to do, in thought only. In practice we can never succeed in doing anything of the kind. A machine such as a watch we can take to bits and then put together again. Even a chemical compound such as water we can resolve into oxygen and hydrogen and then reproduce out of its elements. But to dissect a living thing is to kill it once and for all. Life, as was said in the first chapter, is something unique, with the unique property of being able to evolve. As life evolves, that is to say changes, by being handed on from certain forms to certain other forms, a partial rigidity marks the process together with a partial plasticity. There is a stiffening, so to speak, that keeps the life-force up to a point true to its old direction; though, short of that limit, it is free to take a new line of its own. Race, then, stands for the stiffening in the evolutionary process. Just up to what point it goes in any given case we probably can never quite tell. Yet, if we could think our way anywhere near to that point in regard to man, I doubt not that we should eventually succeed in forging a fresh instrument for controlling the destinies of our species, an instrument perhaps more powerful than education itself — I mean, eugenics, the art of improving the human breed.
To see what race means when considered apart, let us first of all take your individual self, and ask how you would proceed to separate your inherited nature from the nature which you have acquired in the course of living your life. It is not easy. Suppose, however, that you had a twin brother born, if indeed that were possible, as like you as one pea is like another. An accident in childhood, however, has caused him to lose a leg. So he becomes a clerk, living a sedentary life in an office. You, on the other hand, with your two lusty legs to help you, become a postman, always on the run. Well, the two of you are now very different men in looks and habits. He is pale and you are brown. You play football and he sits at home reading. Nevertheless, any friend who knows you both intimately will discover fifty little things that bespeak in you the same underlying nature and bent. You are both, for instance, slightly colour-blind, and both inclined to fly into violent passions on occasion. That is your common inheritance peeping out — if, at least, your friend has really managed to make allowance for your common bringing-up, which might mainly account for the passionateness, though hardly for the colour-blindness.
But now comes the great difficulty. Let us further suppose that you two twins marry wives who are also twins born as like as two peas; and each pair of you has a family. Which of the two batches of children will tend on the whole to have the stronger legs? Your legs are strong by use; your brother’s are weak by disuse. But do use and disuse make any difference to the race? That is the theoretical question which, above all others, complicates and hampers our present-day attempts to understand heredity.
In technical language, this is the problem of use-inheritance, otherwise known as the inheritance of acquired characters. It is apt to seem obvious to the plain man that the effects of use and disuse are transmitted to offspring. So, too, thought Lamarck, who half a century before Darwin propounded a theory of the origin of species that was equally evolutionary in its way. Why does the giraffe have so long a neck? Lamarck thought it was because the giraffe had acquired a habit of stretching his neck out. Every time there was a bad season, the giraffes must all stretch up as high as ever they could towards the leafy tops of the trees; and the one that stretched up farthest survived, and handed on the capacity for a like feat to his fortunate descendants. Now Darwin himself was ready to allow that use and disuse might have some influence on the offspring’s inheritance; but he thought that this influence was small as compared with the influence of what, for want of a better term, he called spontaneous variation. Certain of his followers, however, who call themselves Neo-Darwinians, are ready to go one better. Led by the German biologist, Weismann, they would thrust the Lamarckians, with their hypothesis of use-inheritance, clean out of the field. Spontaneous variation, they assert, is all that is needed to prepare the way for the selection of the tall giraffe. It happened to be born that way. In other words, its parents had it in them to breed it so. This is not a theory that tells one anything positive. It is merely a caution to look away from use and disuse to another explanation of variation that is not yet forthcoming.12 (Robert Marett, Anthropology)
What is the problem with the use-inheritance theory?
Test-Taking Insight
Reading Test: Scaffolding
Again, the key to a high score on all parts of the ACT is determined by your ability to read well. Reading effectiveness is enhanced by something called “scaffolding.” Scaffolding is an artificial structure created to repair or build another structure. It is not permanent and will be taken down when the structure is built.
“A set of training wheels on a bicycle is a classic example of scaffolding. It is adjustable and temporary, providing the young rider with the support he or she needs while learning to ride a two-wheeler. Without an aid of this sort, the complex tasks of learning to pedal, balance, and steer all at one time would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, for many youngsters. This scaffold—training wheels—allows the learners to accomplish a goal, riding a bicycle successfully, and then to happily pedal his or her way into the wider world.”13
The most important part of scaffolding is marking up the text.
Circle the thesis statement.
Check and box the topic sentences of each paragraph.
Star the conclusions.
Circle individual words or facts that catch your eye.
You should predict what conclusion the author will offer. Engage the text. Make it part of you. Try what is called KWL.
All these activities relating to scaffolding — marking up the text, predicting, and KWL — will greatly enhance your reading comprehension and therefore your ACT score.
|
K |
W |
L |
|
What I KNOW |
What I WANT to know |
What I LEARNED |