Text-2-text connections! And a chart.

          So I'm ready to get back to Paradise Lost.

          Okay, I've been trying to figure out a way to bring Brave New World into this blog post because I feel like it's saying something similar. Yes, it's a dystopian novel like many others that include the idea of an all-powerful government, but there was something else there that I knew I could mention. Then I read this:

"Henceforth let no man care to learn or care to be more than worldly wise, for certainly in higher matters to be ignorant and slothful, to be a common, steadfast dunce, will be the only pleasant life, and only in request."

         Humans in Brave New World are manufactured to develop different amounts of intelligence. Alphas are the smartest, Betas are next, and so on until you reach Gammas. It looks like Gammas lead a pretty rough and/or dull life--some of their jobs include simply standing by an elevator to watch people walk in--but they are happy with their lot because they are created to think that this is as much as life can offer them. They aren't jealous of the Alphas or Betas and they're technically happy. But that is sad to me. :(

          Is there much more to talk about in reference to Areopagitica? Maybe not. But... there you go!

A Paradise Lost by One

One of the things that has struck me most as I've been reading the first couple of books in Milton's Paradise Lost is the parallel of Satan's and Christ's relationship to their followers. You could say that I've thought a lot about salvation and damnation and what each means and how each is ensured, either by deference to virtue (Christ) or to sin (Satan), but a couple of pretty simple lines have had me thinking about how one figure (Christ or Satan) can figure into the fates of millions of individuals.

In the second book of Paradise Lost, Satan announces that he will "Through all the coasts of dark destruction seek / Deliverance for us all: . . . (2:464-465). The parallel to Christ's salvation here is, I think, more than apparent. Just as Christ is the author and finisher of our salvation--of our ascent back from a fallen condition--so also does Satan become the savior figure for those devils cast out of Heaven. But what really got to me was some lines that I came across among my annotations as I was reviewing the first book:

Millions of spirits for his [Satan's] fault amerced
Of Heav’n, and from eternal splendors flung
For his revolt . . . (1:609-611).

I had never really thought about this before, but just as man is saved by one supernal, vicarious act, so were those among that third part cast out for one singular act of selfishness. Each individual is, of course, responsible for his/her own actions and decisions, but would those "morning stars" and "sons of God" (Job 38:7) have relinquished their glory had not Lucifer stepped forward in defiance? After all, the Bible states that "all the sons of God shouted for joy" when the foundations of the earth were laid. Why then did they follow Lucifer, the light bringer that would cast them into darkness? What is the power of one to save or to damn?

On the Danger of Idiots and the Necessity of Dumb Oxen

Having read somewhat on the subject of homeschooling, including what has been called "The Thomas Jefferson Education" as popularized by the same folks who established the nearly disintegrated "George Wythe University", Milton's claim (as I understand it) that studying the literature of past sages offers the ideal gateway to all other skills virtues is a familiar concept. Praxis, at least as it pertains to non-mathematical studies, is left to develop as a natural outgrowth of sound moral study. I agree with Milton, at least insofar as his examples of those engaged in law or illustrates. In contrast to those who are

...allured to the trade of law, grounding their purposes not on the prudent and heavenly contemplation of justice and equity, which was never taught them, but on the promising and pleasing thoughts of litigious terms, fat contention, and flowing fees...

or to state affairs by the love of flattery,exchanging wisdom and virtue for the currency of well-worn aphorism and favors. And I agree with Milton that it would be better that such empty souls spend their lives in self-interested frivolity than that they thrust the burden of their ignorance on the rest of us by so-called civil service. An idiot in the legislature is worth two in the tavern, I suppose; the former knowing only enough to be profoundly dangerous.

But this approach seems to neglect the real public need for trade-centered education in elevating those who were not blessed, as Milton, with ample leisure in the library. Some folks are required to pull as an ox before conversing in the cart. Learning the mechanical arts of butchery, carpentry, or plumbing may deserve, in some cases, a higher priority than the language arts. In our time, these trades may be the means by which a student is able to put himself through school and begin to elevate his station. In this way, practical learning - coupled with the essential grammar of basic morality and frugality - tills the soil wherein lofty humanism can grow.