Nathaniel

Shockey

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April 15, 2009

Wealth and Education . . . and Good and Evil

In November 2007, columnist Dennis Prager replied to Sen. Chris Dodd’s assertion that “education is the answer to every problem we confront as a people,” by pointing out that it was the intellectuals who supported mass murderers such as Mao, Lenin, Stalin and Hitler.

In fact, three of the four commanders who led the Nazi mobile killing units called the “einsatzgruppen,” held PhDs, while the fourth held a double PhD. Quite often, it is from the most educated people that comes support for Communism and Fascism, which happen to be the most prolific enablers of slaughtering millions in history.

Just yesterday, my North Star Writers Group colleague Jamie Weinstein factually demonstrated that poverty probably does not breed terrorism. Contrarily, terrorists tend to be wealthier than their more peaceful neighbors. Evidently, similar to the relationship between education and evil dictators, the relationship between poverty and terrorism is more often the opposite of the commonly held belief.

And of course, statistics illustrate that there is a direct relationship between education and income, which links the aforementioned relationships. So what do we do with this?

If you or your children went to college, assuming you aren’t a Nazi or a jihadist, you ought to feel quite pleased with yourselves for contributing to the more peaceful side of this issue. I know I do. And like most people, I prefer savings to debt, which, like most, was the main reason I went to college.

But still, one might be mildly uncomfortable with the idea that education and financial prosperity are not necessarily the keys to peace and happiness. It could breed the question: What the hell kind of education are we getting? If Chris Dodd was wrong, and education happens not to be the answer to life’s problems, we might ask the question: Why not?

People often rest in the faith that, given all the information, people will make the right decision. At the root of this is the belief that people are inherently good. Often, looking back on bad decisions we made, we assure ourselves or are assured by our therapists that we made the best decision we could with the information we had at the time.

This idea temporarily assuages our shame or guilt, both of which are terrible burdens and, I might add, incredibly ill-advised. But the problem with the belief that people are inherently good is that it ignores our inherent desire to have things that our neighbors don’t, whether it’s Play-Doh or a boat. It ignores the fact that people hate admitting that they were wrong, whether it’s about cheating on a spelling test or accepting a promotion that cuts into family time. It ignores things like pride, selfishness and jealousy. The problem with the belief that education is the difference between a bad decision and a good decision is that it causes us to ignore good and evil, or at least to believe the bridge between the two is another degree.

It is logical for a person to resist the idea that he is born with great evil in his heart. In fact, I’d consider it logical for this person to resist this idea so forcefully that he would go to great lengths of “reason” and “philosophy” to replace the extremes of good and evil with the categories “informed decisions” and “uninformed decisions.”

It is no secret that academia is a hotbed of secularism. Having received a degree in English Literature, which is easily transformed from a degree in good writing into a degree in good philosophy, I experienced the struggle to blur the lines between good and evil firsthand (at a Christian university, no less). All this leads me to the conclusion that it is commonplace for many universities to major in one particular topic and to minor in the faith that the difference between right and wrong is more information. It sure beats guilt.

If there were a shred of truth to my belief that most people vigorously fight the ideas that good and evil not only exist, but we are all born with a healthier dose of the latter, it would sure help to explain the seemingly odd relationships between education, wealth and mass murder.

And if I might draw a useful conclusion from all this, it is that we would be better off spending time learning trades and crafts than explaining away our past and present mistakes.

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