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A letter to my son about masculinity

Dear Theodore,

As you grow older, I know you won’t have a father who is a paragon of traditional masculinity. I’m frail, prone to injuries, unable to lift much weight due to various back and shoulder problems that I let linger too long without addressing them. My back is a bit bowed. The hair on top of my head is thin. You may look elsewhere for your definition of what it means to be a man, and I’ll understand. But…

I hope that you’ll know that physical strength must be matched by internal strength. You need strength of heart, will, and mind. If you develop that strength, you’ll find that strong women won’t scare you. Your mother is so strong. While pregnant, she’s held a full time job as a teacher, while going to graduate school and being part of a leadership development program. She’s a special woman. And her strength is beautiful. There’s nothing about her being my equal that I find intimidating. It’s why I was attracted to her in the first place. She’s beautiful outwardly and inwardly. Remember that. As you age, you’re being raised by a strong woman. Partner with strong women. Support strong women. Women aren’t our property. They’re not our servants. They fellow humans who are participating the same project of trying to build a better world for us all.

When you’re born, there will be voices who have been calling for women to be submissive, objects of sex. People who commit sexual violence against women are being celebrated as protectors of women. But this shows that something is weak and broken inside of them. It’s not a good weakness. It’s not a humility. It’s the type of weakness that when they’re alone at night with their thoughts they must battle because they know it indicates that something has failed in their hearts. People who act that way outwardly, no matter what sense of superiority and strength they give off, are not doing well inside. I guarantee it. Be the type of man who can lie your head down at night knowing you’re seeking the good in life and good for the world which means promoting the common good.

I have more to say but I must start my commute to work soon, so just a couple more things. Stand with the LGBTQIA+ community (as they’re known in 2024). I don’t know. You may be part of this community some day but if you’re not, there’s no strength is suppressing difference. There’s strength in standing for the oppressed, the bullied. No, not standing for…standing with them. Lock arms with them. Be that face of assurance. That’s strength.

And if you seek money, fame, or power, please don’t do it for its own sake. Philosophers for centuries have explained how it corrupts. And it begins inside. You’ll feel something dying inside first. The world may not see it but you’ll know it. If you seek money, fame, and power, please do so for the good of all. Our lives on earth are short. No matter how many toys and titles we collect, we’ll all be dust. All you have are a series of moments with others. Live those moments in shared joy and shared struggle. I know your dad (at least as I’m writing this) may not be seen as a “success” in the eyes of many—I’m “just a high school teacher”—but my internal life is vibrant and energetic; my life of the mind is fulfilling; I’m happy even when I’m angry and raging as I’m doing this week. And that’s not always been the case. I know the difference. As you develop what it means to be a man, just know that going to bed with a good conscience is a huge contributor to the good life, more than money, fame, or power can ever be.

I love you! I’ll see you for the first time in a few days.

Love,
Your Dad

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Hannah Arendt’s “two faculties” and “two…different mental activities”

A week ago, I wrote about Svend Brinkmann’s distinction between the “problem-solving” and the “meaning generation” forms of thinking (“Two forms of thinking: problem-solving and meaning generating”). In Hannah Arendt‘s Life of the Mind, she presents a similar framing of “two…different mental activities” (p. 14). Prompted by Immanuel Kant’s “scandal of reason” “that is, the fact that our mind is not capable of certain and verifiable knowledge regarding matters and questions that it nevertheless can’t help thinking about”, i.e. “‘ultimate questions’ of God, freedom, and immortality”, Arendt argues that we have “the distinguishing of two faculties”. She calls them “reason and intellect” that she says “coincides with…thinking and knowing” which she frames as “mental activities”. These “mental activities” align with “two altogether different concerns, meaning…and cognition” (p. 14).

Kant’s “scandal of reason” can be addressed when we recognize the differences between:

  1. Our “faculty” of “reason”, that is experienced through the “mental activity” of “thinking” which aligns with the “concern” of “meaning”.
  2. Our “faculty” of “intellect”, that is experienced through the “mental activity” of “knowing” which aligns with the “concern” of “cognition”.

These two framings align with Brinkmann’s (1) “meaning generating” and (2) “problem-solving”. If we combine Brinkmann’s categories with Arendt’s, here’s what we get. Arendt uses the word “reason” to refer to the type of thinking (“mental activity” which she calls “thinking”) that is concerned with “meaning” or Brinkmann’s “meaning generating”. I might use my faculty of “reason” to “think” about the “meaning” of a concept like “God” or “freedom”. In response to Kant, yes, our mind is unable to ultimately arrive at sure “knowledge” of whether there’s a God, or what it means for us to be free, or if we’re immortal in some sense, but that doesn’t prevent us from pondering these questions seriously. Brinkmann’s “meaning generation” can be “instrumental” but more often than not, it’s “intrinsic”. We want meaning because meaning gives us the basis for living as humans rather than as robots. But as humans, we don’t exist only to “solve” problems. As humans, we benefit from reflecting on what we think “love” is or should look like (for example), even if there’s never an objective answer to be found to our questions.

Arendt uses the word “intellect” to refer to the type of thinking (“mental activity”) which she calls “knowing” that is concerned with “cognition” or Brinkmann’s “problem-solving”. I might use my faculty of “intellect” to “know” through “cognition” the answer to a mathematical question, or a question of logic, or through the empiricism of science. Brinkmann’s “problem-solving” can be “intrinsic” but more often than not, it’s “instrumental”. We want to solve problems because they help us live better in our world. As humans, if we focused on meaning alone, we’d starve to death. We’d live far less enjoyable lives with less time for leisurely thinking and other activities. As humans, we benefit from creating new technologies, trying to cure cancer, etc.

As I said in the aforementioned previous post, I don’t see these two approaches to thinking as opposites. But our society has begun to create an imbalance. We value intellect/knowing/cognition, or “problem-solving” but we’ve begun to devalue reason/thinking/meaning. In the United States, we’ve been playing with the health of our democracy. I know that education alone won’t save us. In fact, I don’t think “meaning generation” alone will save us. But I don’t think democracies can survive without “meaning generation”.

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Meaning, significance, purpose, and “sonder”

More than a decade ago, I admitted something out loud in a conversation that I knew to be true to how I felt but that I was embarrassed to articulate. I was in my early-30s and I was disillusioned with much of my life. Things weren’t going as I had imagined they’d go. And I said, “I thought I would live the type of life that someone would write a biography about.” As I said the words, I knew they sounded foolish. They sounded narcissistic. It’s likely that they were narcissistic and foolish. But these delusions of grandeur had come from a sincere place. While I can’t unpack all that went into this misguided vision, I can summarize things this way: I had embraced a bad theology that led me to think that if I dedicated my life to certain higher spiritual ideals (“seek first the kingdom of God”) and forsook debased, “worldly”, selfish pursuits (“and his righteousness”), I would be rewarded with a life that was full of significance and meaning (“and all of these things shall be added unto you”). When I say “significance and meaning” I mean divinely given significance and meaning (see the Gospel of Matthew 6:3). The kind of significance and meaning that you “know” comes “from above” because other people recognize it.

There’s a little prosperity Gospel in there. There’s a lot of problematic theology around “calling” as well. (In religious circles, this is sometimes referred to as “discernment” where other people who have been called “confirm” that you have been called as well.) But at the time, I couldn’t get my head around why I was just another face in the crowd. I thought I had made a covenant (as in Matthew 19:27: “Look, we have left everything and followed you.”). Why had I committed myself to the path that I was walking if it led me obscurity? But not just obscurity, since this wasn’t about fame. Purposelessness. Meaninglessness. I felt unneeded. I wasn’t contributing to anything. Why didn’t I focus on a career path that would’ve let me pursue my own “selfish” goals, like wealth?! The exchange (as I imagined it) was for a life that would make an impact on the world. I wasn’t making an impact.

Thankfully, I got therapy. My therapist suggested, gently, that there may be a lot of meaning and significance in the world but that it wasn’t to be “found” or (divinely) “gifted”. She had me read Viktor E. Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning. I remember coming away with a new sense that significance and meaning could be created. The universe wasn’t meaningless. It was full of meaning. But that meaning isn’t necessarily inherit or objective. You don’t have to go on a quest to find it. You don’t have to pray, fast, and wait for it to be announced to you by an angel from heaven. You have to create it.

This places a lot of responsibility on the individual. As John Paul Sarte said in “Existentialism Is a Humanism”: “…man is condemned to be free.” But theologies that tell you that there’s a (single) divine will for your life that you must find is a greater condemnation. You’re responsible but powerless. It’s almost like you have to get lucky. You have to follow the divine calling the “right way” without knowing what that way is! The existential thinking of Frankl and Sarte is freeing in that while you’re responsible, there’s no “wrong” life for you to create. The condemnation is that there are many possibilities. But I’ve come to embrace “possibilities” as superior to the idea of a single, divine plan for one’s life. (If this needs theological rescuing for some readers, then consider this: we may be “creators” with a small “c” created by our “Creator” with a big “C” for a purpose of co-creating. I don’t know if that’s good theology but if theology is needed, then it’s better theology than the alternative!)

In my formative years, I heard preachers talk about “the good, acceptable, and perfect will of God” (Romans 12:2, KJV). These were framed as “three types” of divine will. Your life would fulfill it’s purpose only if you happened to discover the “perfect will of God” which is superior to the “good…will of God” or the “acceptable…will of God”. In retrospect, I don’t know how this exegesis worked but it stuck in my brain, tormenting me for years, even when I was shown that this isn’t the meaning of the quoted passage from the Bible’s Epistle to the Romans.

Eventually, I got a job teaching high school. I found it meaningful. It took me a little while longer to come to terms with the reality that my life could have meaning, significance, and purpose without approval by institutions ecclesial or academic. (Honestly, I think I may be arriving at that realization in its fullness only this year.) It took time to accept that I might be “only a high school teacher” and not a scholar, or a frequently published author, or a “thought leader”, or whatever else the previous generations’ equivalent to an “influencer” is! It’s unlikely that I’ll make a great contribution to theology, philosophy, or history. Instead, I’ll do my best to contribute to the formation of young people, some who will bluntly tell you things like “your class doesn’t matter” or “no one takes this [subject] seriously”. You smile and remind yourself that you said a lot of mean things as a teenager too!

I think the fear of my 20s and most of my 30s was that I would live an insignificant life. In a vast universe, there seemed to be nothing more horrifying than being just another person, a statistic, a name that future generations would forget. To be forgotten seemed like a form of eternal damnation. In my religious circles, I was told that I needed to create a “legacy”. In broader American Evangelical circles, people speak of a “purpose-driven life”. It was preached that God put us on this earth “for a reason” and to “make a difference”. It was as if living a normal, peaceful life would be a disappointment to God. That terrified me.

In my mid-30s, as I was deconstructing and recovering from this theology, a colleague shared a concept created by the author of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. He called the concept “sonder”. Here’s his definition:

n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

This word captured my fear but simultaneously empowered me with a realization. Even the most well-known people in the world whose lives seem more significant than the rest of ours have moments when they are background characters to other people’s stories. They may be a wealthy CEO but merely an insignificant person in their own child’s life. They could be a powerful politician who eventually becomes a rambling, tired old face on television. The fact of the matter is that no matter how “objectively” “significant” you try to be, the most important person in everyone’s life is themselves. We’re the “main character” in our own minds and even wealthy and powerful people are merely background characters in the lives of others.

For a few years now, off and on, I’ve pondered this word “sonder” and what it represents. And I’ve thought about how meaningful it is that we get to be mere “extras” that create the elaborate tapestry of someone else’s life. Think of this. In our individual insignificance (“an extra sipping coffee in the background”) we contribute to the greater, collective significance of what it means to be alive and to share in this life in this world. Even as the person who does nothing but turn on our kitchen light creating texture for someone walking through the neighborhood, we add to the lives of others. We’re significant in our insignificance. I think the Buddhists would call this “interdependence”. “Sonder” has the potential to infuse our own lives with meaning, significance, and purpose but in a way that is counterintuitive. It is an antidote to narcissism. It can prevent us from obsessing over how much we do and accomplish. It allows us to live lives that we enjoy knowing that in some small sense, even if we’re not “great”, even if we don’t “change the world”, no one can remove us from being part of the world as long as we’re alive.

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Two forms of thinking: problem-solving and meaning generating

A couple of weeks ago, I finished Svend Brinkmann‘s brilliant little book, Think: In Defence of a Thoughtful Life. In the first chapter (“What do you think?”) he argues that there are two forms of thinking: (1) problem-solving and (2) meaning generating (p. 18). I found this helpful as someone who teaches religion and philosophy in a society that continues to devalue the humanities in favor of STEM. STEM focused on Brinkmann’s “problem-solving” form of thinking. He describes it as “instrumental and intrinsic thinking” that “can either be a tool in service to something else, or an end in itself with (intrinsic) value per se.” He gives examples of the “instrumental” and “intrinsic” form of “problem-solving” style thinking (p. 19). For “instrumental” he says, “For example, choosing the right recruit after a job interview”. For intrinsic, he says, “For example, doing a crossword”.

The “instrumental” approach to “problem-solving” thinking solves a problem in service to something else. This style of thinking is done in order to choose the right person for the job for the benefit of the company that’s doing the hiring. On the other hand, the “intrinsic” approach would include, as with the example, doing a crossword or another puzzle. I have a colleague who plays the New York Times’ game “Wordle” almost religiously. He is solving a problem for the pure enjoyment of solving the problem. There’s no other end.

My colleagues who teach math, science, and for the most part, Innovation and Design, are helping students learn to value instrumental thinking. This is a valuable skill. And it’s a skill our society values. But it’s not the only style of thinking nor is it the only style of thinking that’s valuable.

Brinkmann’s second style is “meaning generation”. He uses the example of when we “think back” on a situation that was formative in our lives in order to better understand it. This approach to thinking “is related to daydreaming and reverie” (p. 18). This means it can be “proactive” as much as “retroactive” thinking.

Brinkmann writes (p. 18):

“Thinking as meaning generation doesn’t need to be about our life, but can be about more general existential or cosmological questions: Is there a God? Is the universe infinite? Is there life after death? What would the ideal society look like? From where does the experience of beauty stem? Do we have a duty to forgive? What is love?”

When we think on these things, “the point is not to ‘solve the problem’ and move on, but to let our minds wander and mull them over.” The examples Brinkmann gives for “meaning generation” style thinking include “instrumental” and “intrinsic” examples as well (p. 19). For “instrumental” he says, “For example, writing an exam essay about your future”. For “intrinsic” he says, “For example, reflecting freely on the meaning of life”. We may write the essay in order to help us think clearly about what we want to do to shape the life we want to live. But we may reflect on the meaning of life for the sole purpose that we want to consider what all of this means. Meaning is inherently valuable just like the joy of solving problems can be.

Brinkmann argues that “children tend to learn—and master—problem-solving before meaning generation”. His claim is that meaning generation “requires maturity and depth beyond the reach of children” and that “Philosophical thoughtfulness calls for a more mature intellect” (p. 20). I want to say “yes” and “no” to this because I do think children can begin participating in meaning generation though I get what he’s saying.

While both styles are important, it makes me wonder: what does it say about our society that we’ve placed such heavy emphasis only on one style. The humanities are dying. Fewer college students are majoring in humanities related fields. I’m convinced that this is good for capitalism but detrimental to democracy. We need a society that can invent and make and fix. We need a society that can solve problems like climate change and cancer. But for our own mental health, collective well-being, and the common good, we need people to think about why we do what we do, why we want what we want, where we want to go and what we want to become. If a society can do things but they can’t explain why any of it is meaningful outside of capitalist terms such as wealth and employment, I fear we’re headed for ruin. I get it: before someone commits to student loans and majoring in a field of study for four to six years, they want to know that there will be a paycheck on the other side. This is practical and wise. But our lives can’t be just about our work. It can’t be just about our careers. Honestly, that benefits only those at the highest point of our economic class system. The rest of us better learn to ask what it is that gives meaning to our lives outside the 9-5.

I worry that there’s reason why cultural forces want us to participate in only one form of thinking as a society; why our government, universities, wealthy elite, and others tell us that we need to do something “practical” that’s a “real job” and my hunch is that they don’t want us to stop and ask ourselves “why” we are doing what we’re doing; why we’re pouring our energies into “problem-solving” while ignoring “meaning generation”. I think that if more of us stopped to participate in “meaning generation” it may lead us to reevaluate how we spend the several short decades of our life on this planet.

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Song of the Day

This week I was talking to one of our seniors who took my classes when she was either a freshman or a sophomore. She told me that those were difficult years for her but then she shared something that made my day. She told me that the days that she had my class she would brighten up a bit because she thought, “I wonder what song will be played in LePort’s class today?” She’s referring to a daily tradition of mine that I derived from my friend and mentor Ruben Dupertuis. I begin each class with a “Song of the Day” that is playing toward the end of the passing period between classes. As they enter my classroom, the song is connected in some way to that day’s lesson content. It could be the artist, song title, album cover/music video, or the excerpt from the lyrics that are on the screen.

I’ve turned “Song of the Day” into a daily extra credit (“Bonus Point”) opportunity where I allow up to five students to try to tell me what the connection is. It functions as a fun pregame show, if you will, for the lesson’s content. But it’s also a culture builder. It creates a warmth to the classroom as they enter. Or, at least that’s what I hope it creates! And I think for many it works to get them thinking about what we’re about to learn as they listen to their peers try to bridge the gap between the song and the title of the lesson written on a white board.

For the aforementioned student, it was just the idea of a class beginning with music that brighten her day. I don’t think my pedagogical goals were being accomplished because of all that she was experiencing but as I’ve learned over the past eight years as a high school teacher, your main priority is helping young people become adults. What you teach does matter. I don’t want to downplay that at all. The subject-matter matters! But your goal in high school is different than being a college professor who is teaching to students who happen to be majoring in your field of expertise. Most of your students won’t go on to become the same type of professional that you are. (So far, only one of the several hundred students that I’ve taught has gone on to seminary. Two others minored in religious studies and another minored in philosophy. I could be wrong but I think that’s the extent of the students who have gone on to focus on the type of content that I teach once they graduated.) They will become contributors to our society which I hope will remain a functioning democracy. Sometimes the best you can do is help them continue forward through their rough patches. That may mean that your classroom feels like a place where they can be happy during unhappy days.

But there’s a pedagogical method to the madness as well. Music helps our brain make connections and memories. I’ve had students walk past my classroom and tell me, “I remember that song and we talked about…”! They don’t remember all the details but they have some retention. I was never one to memorize Bible passages, or lines from plays, etc., but what I do remember all the way from childhood was information that was connected to music (for example, I can tell you the “fruits of the spirit” because I was taught it to music as a kid).

On a final note, I don’t think teachers need to start each class with music but I do wonder how much music could improve a class. I imagine teaching modern American history and dropping certain songs into different lessons that were important at the time. My guess is that this would enliven any class but also tie the content to music which should help students remember what was taught a little better!

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Father and Son

November 19th, 2024, is the due date for my son’s birth. If he takes his time, that’s a little over five weeks from now. In reality, he could arrive at any time. We have our hospital bags ready to go. We have our house (mostly) prepared for him. A few weeks ago, when I was asked how I was feeling, my response was something like “Let’s get to it already!” I’m excited to meet him outside of the womb. But yesterday it hit me that within the next month, this could be happening, really happening, for real. Admittedly, I felt a little bit of fear and anxiety. I can talk about becoming a father. I can read about it. I can think on it. There’s nothing that will prepare me for what I’m about to experience though. I’ve never done this. I’m about to do this.

My son doing his best impression of Rodin’s “The Thinker”

I’m not the one with the toughest task. That’s my wife. She’ll birth him. So, I must keep calm. I need to mask that fear and anxiety a little bit so that it doesn’t spread unnecessarily. I need to be encouraging and positive. But my heart does beat a little faster when I think about what’s about to happen. I do feel the nerves.

I imagine that these emotions are like what someone must feel when they’re going to play in the Super Bowl. First, you’re thrilled about what’s going to happen. But then nearly two weeks pass, and a few days before the “Big Game” you want to fast forward to the day. Then kickoff nears and you realize this is where the rubber meets the road. It’s about to start. You better be ready. It’s time. That’s where I’ve been. When I found out that I was going to be a father, I was a little scared but even more excited than I expected to be. I’ve gone through the different emotions. Now it’s time. I better be ready.

I’ve tried to be as thoughtful as possible in preparation. My mini library of parenting books is growing fast. I take parenting seriously. It seems that many Millennial dads do. Our generation spends three times as much time with our kids as dads did in 1965, per Pew Research. There can be a danger in this though. Our generation of parents may be overthinking it. We may be avoiding self-care, personal time, and time with friends that replenishes us which isn’t good for our kids in the long run. In August, the U.S. Surgeon General issued a warning that parent stress levels have reached crisis levels. Now there’s a raging debate over whether the “intensive parenting” approach of our generation is good or bad for us; good or bad for kids. (An episode of The New York Times’ podcast, “The Daily”, covered this topic just this week: “The Parents Aren’t All Right”.) This is a reminder that one generation’s corrective can become a pendulum swing that goes too far. Maybe there’s comfort in this though. There may not be any real “getting it right”.

And yet I want to get it right. I’m particularly nervous about raising a son. Not so much the paying the bills or helping him with school work side of things. I’m confident there. It has to do with what it means to raise a son, specifically. I imagined that I could’ve been a natural “girl dad”. I expected that we’d have a daughter. Now, as soon as I found out it was a boy, my brain shifted and I became excited to become a “boy dad”. But I was always more fearful of raising a son. What does it mean to raise a boy in 2024? I hear constantly about the “crisis in masculinity”. It unnerves me. I don’t want to project my values on my son to the point that it stifles him in his uniqueness. But I’m aware that “toxic masculinity” is real. I don’t want to raise a jerk. I don’t want my son to be cruel or unkind. That being said, I’m aware that many males have a particular psychology that needs to wrestle, and punch, and climb things and fall off of things. I was that boy once. I’m calmer now. Actually, I’m pretty passive. You won’t see me in a fist fight. For goodness sake, I’m a vegetarian because animal cruelty bothers me so much (along with other philosophical reasons that have to do with animal sentience and the relationship between morality and suffering…but that’s not my focus here).

On the spectrum of masculinity (if such a thing exists), I imagine I’m somewhere near the middle. For example, I like football but I dislike MMA and boxing. I guess I like highly contained, strategic violence, especially now that the NFL is trying to make helmet technology that prevents brain injuries? But I hate violence beyond that. I find MMA grotesque and I can’t watch boxers beat in each other’s faces. On the other hand, there are many stereotypically “feminine” things that I don’t enjoy and that I don’t feel that I need to enjoy in order to prove that I’m not “one of those kinds of men”. I guess my point is that I don’t value strict, black-and-white gender roles but I know that kids look to their culture for ways to shape their identity. If all I can offer my son is some milquetoast shrug when he seeks guidance for what it means to be a boy or a man, then I leave him vulnerable to the predatory “Manosphere” and MLM-style ideologies such as “Broicism”:

On the other hand, my son could identify with a completely different side of the gender spectrum. I live in Texas where homophobia and transphobia are commonly on shameless display in political ads. Will it look like that in fourteen to eighteen years if my child’s identity doesn’t fall in line with their strict binary? I hope not but I need to be aware that it could. And I need to be prepared for what it might mean to raise my child in our world as it is.

You may “hear” in my voice the desire to protect my child from this world. You’re hearing me correctly. I’m a Millennial after all. But I know that I can’t protect him from everything. In fact, if I’m going to do this parenting thing the right way, the healthy way, he’ll need to be able to become independent, self-aware, and self-determining (in whatever sense that’s possible) in order for him to become an adult. How is it that I’m worrying about things that are decades down the road already? I don’t know but I am. I guess I presume that there’s some teleology to parenting; some goal. If you don’t know what the goal is, then it would seem that raising a kid toward nothingness is a recipe for disaster. Equally, being a helicopter parent who scripts my child’s life from birth to college and/or career is absurd and based more in hubris than reality.

I won’t have this figured out when my son arrives. I know that. Or when he’s 2, or 5, or 14, or 18, or 21. But I do hope that my son knows that this father wants to do his best. I’m trying to be intentional and thoughtful. I want to model that for him. If I can model being caring, being intentional, and being thoughtful, then I’m going to do ok. I think.

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Anthropomorphic speech about “God”, animals, and inanimate objects

I don’t know much about “God”. In fact, it would be better if I wrote “God” as God using the tradition of sous rature, or “under erasure”, developed by Martin Heidegger and Jacques Derrida, where the strikethrough functions to retain a “necessary” word while acknowledging that it doesn’t represent the traditional metaphysics often associated with the word. I’m a theist, maybe more in the Spinozist sense than would make most of my coreligionist comfortable but not so much that I claim to have any lasting insights into what it is that the word God references. Christianity has made room for apophatic theology from the beginning, so it’s to the negative that I appeal if pressed to explain my own theology. Whatever ideas are floating in my head today may not be the same ones tomorrow, so you won’t find me being all that dogmatic in my “God-talk”. There is “God-talk” with which I’m increasingly uncomfortable though. More often than not, it’s anthropomorphic in nature.

Anthropomorphic speech about God
I was raised around Pentecostalism. Pentecostals find the divine presence everywhere and everywhere active, not in the aforementioned Spinozist sense that the divine animates everything, or according to some is one with everything (a type of monism, if you will). Pentecostals retain a stark natural/supernatural divide that fits within the very Enlightenment modes of thought that they reject. For Pentecostals, the supernatural breaks through the restraints of the natural. It does this frequently. You should expect it. But it’s still supernatural.

I was raised, in part, to expect to see divine activity in the world. I won’t say whether I have or not. I will say that I haven’t seen anything that I would say is clearly divine in distinction from nature—nothing clearly supernatural. I’ve had this or that pointed out to me. I may be unable to see it due to skepticism but I would presume that if it were evidently supernatural, my skepticism wouldn’t matter. If God were to part the Red Sea in front of me, I should be able to recognize this as something clearly unnatural.

My discomfort has to do primarily with what it means to claim that we’ve seen something supernatural happen and that we know it was so. For example, if I say that God gave me a job, this implies that God prevented someone else from getting it. We’re seeing terrible hurricanes hitting Florida this fall. If I claim that God spared one home from destruction, then this implies that God chose not to do the same for all the other homes. When we deconstruct language about an interventionist deity, it leaves us with something more troubling than encouraging.

One might reply that “God’s ways are mysterious!” This may be true. I don’t know. I do know that if we are going use this type of agnostic language about the people God doesn’t heal, or protect, or rescue, or feed, or house, or bless, etc., then we should retain the same agnosticism about whether God is actively healing, protecting, rescuing, feeding, housing, blessing, etc.

I think that some fear that such agnosticism will leave us with a lack of gratitude. Maybe. On the other hand, as I’ve discussed, in Plato’s Republic, Socrates says  (Lee’s translation, p. 71), “…while god must be held to be the sole cause of good, we must look for some factors other than god as a cause of evil.” Similarly, in the Epistle of James in the Christian New Testament, we read the claim, “Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change” Both “Socrates” and “James” claim that goodness is from a divine source. This leaves us silent on the source of badness. We can affirm this if we want without saying that God actively gave me a parking spot near the front of the store while ignoring people starving due to a famine somewhere else in the world. In this sense, God is like the sun that shines down on us without intention or aim. It’s just the nature of the sun to do this. There are things that block the sun’s rays from us but this isn’t the sun judging us or withholding light from us. It’s just the nature of our reality.

In this vein, Jesus himself said (Matthew 5:44-46), “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven, for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same?” I’m not saying that Jesus would agree with my God-talk, per se. I’m saying that when Jesus encouraged his followers to do good and show love to even those who do not love them, his example was the generousness of the Father which is available to the just and the unjust alike.

This is where things get tricky for me. I see what Jesus was doing when he called God “Father”. While the anthropomorphic language can lead to all sorts of theological absurdities—e.g. if God exists, “he’s” “male” or he’s a “father” in the same sense of whatever that words means in your culture—we risk an opposite danger when our God-talk begins to sound like we’re talking about the Force in Star Wars or even the Tao of Chinese philosophy like Taoism. There’s part of me that’s more comfortable with these impersonal presentations of ultimate reality. I don’t mind speaking of the “Universe” but the minute I say the “Universe” did this or that, I’ve personified it and I’ve drifted into anthropomorphic language. This is a flaw but maybe a necessary one because I think we humans know our world only through what it means to be human. Therefore, as non-human as God would be, if there are aspects of the divine nature that are anything like our own (e.g. God is/has “mind”), we risk misunderstanding God further by choosing to speak of God as “Force” or something completely impersonal.

For this reason, as uncomfortable as I may be with anthropomorphic God-talk, I don’t know if there’s a better solution. Do we speak of God as a mathematical formula? It seems like this would make God irrelevant to most of us. Anthropomorphic ways of thinking have their strengths and weaknesses, no matter the context, including God-talk.

Anthropomorphic speech about animals
For example, I’m the type of person who doesn’t even speak of myself as a dog “owner”. Yes, I’m one of those who says that I’m “my dog’s human”. There’s a strength to this. When I anthropomorphize my dog, I see her as a being with emotions/feelings, motivations, and wants. Whether or not we can say she has a “will” or “thoughts” may depend on how we’re using those words. But when I think of her this way, it’s unlikely that I’ll mistreat her. In fact, she’s quite spoiled. My wife and I love her as a member of the family.

But this can be dangerous. If I interpret behaviors that I dislike as being done with “intention” like a human might do, then I’ll be holding her to a standard that’s unfair to her as a dog. As a dog, I need to value her “dogness”. This may mean seeing her dogness through an anthropomorphic lens at times. But she’s not like me in the same way other humans are. As Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote in Philosophy of Psychology, 327 (or Philosophical Investigations II, 190), “If a lion could talk, we wouldn’t be able to understand it.” Lions live in a different embodiment than we humans. They see the world differently. If we could find a way to “translate” lion “speech” into human language, we may be lost still and unable to understand them. At least, Wittgenstein thought this was so. (Also, we could reference Thomas Nagel’s “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”)

Anthropomorphic speech about inanimate objects
A similar pro-/con- scenario can be applied even to inanimate objects. We’re a wasteful bunch, we humans. We throw away so many things. We create trash. Now, I’m not saying we should be unsanitary or hoard purposelessly. But maybe we can learn from say Japanese culture with the art of kintsugi. There are inanimate objects that we anthropomorphize which infuses those things with added value. We may think of stuffed animals or robots. Admittedly, it’s easier to do this when the inanimate object has been given humanish characteristics by its creator. But we do this with far from human things too. How many people name their cars?

On the flip side, if you treat your car better than your spouse or children, then you may have taken things a bit too far. Materialism (in the economic sense of the word) can lead us to dehumanize humans in favor of attributing excessive value to objects. With each category—God, animals, and objects—anthropomorphic thoughts can be positive or negative. They can lead us to undervalue or overvalue the reality about which we speak. This can lead to good theology (God loves me and God cares about me personally) and bad theology (“I’m favored by God which is why ‘he’ gave me this big house and nice car”). It can lead us to the better treatment of animals or it could drive us to expect things from them that are unfair. It can lead us to value objects, to be thrifty and grateful, and it can lead us to hoard.

We can’t escape anthropomorphic language, usually. We don’t have to. But we should be reflective when using it. We should have a mental asterisks next to each thought that attributes human characteristics to non-human realities. I try to do this with my dog but also with God. Whenever I hear a passage from the Bible read that makes God sound like a giant human, I try to abstract it. When I show gratitude toward God, it may be quite similar to how I’m grateful to the sun for its light. Yes, this may lead me to miss this or that divine reality, if God exists, but I’d rather miss in the negative than miss in the positive of wrongly attributing intention to God where such attribution would have to bring to question the goodness/justness of God.

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“I, too, seek an unreadable book”

The philosopher Robert Nozick begins his book Philosophical Explanations with this wonderful line (p. 1): “I, too, seek an unreadable book: urgent thoughts to grapple with in agitation and excitement, revelations to be transformed by or to transform, a book incapable of being read straight through, a book, even, to bring reading to a stop.” There’s something about this statement that resonates with me as I think on the books that I’ve read. Now, if I happen to finish a book by reading it straight through for a day, or a few days, or a week, while this is rare, I don’t think it says anything negative about the book. In fact, often I would consider this to be a sign that it was a good book. If I begin a book and it finds its way to my bookshelf, it would seem to follow that it was a bad book. But is this the case? Are good books easy to finish and bad ones difficult?

I don’t know why I’ve never thought about this before but when I stop and reflect, I think some of the best books I’ve read are those that I had to stop, though not permanently. I had to stop for a time. On my shelves sit books like John Rawls A Theory of Justice or Benedict Spinoza’s Ethics. These books are partially read but I stopped with the intent of reengaging later. Why? Because I had to stop. I had to reflect. I had to read other authors on similar topics to help me move forward. I needed to consult the history of some idea or the history of some debate in order to have a great context for what I was reading. I was forced into a hermeneutical spiral of sorts.

I learned from Mortimer J. Adler’s How to Read a Book that it’s my responsibility to find out whether a book is worth my time and attention. Not all books need to be finished. I think this is why I sometimes look at unfinished books in a negative light. But the “unreadable” book that makes you stop, walk away, and think, may be more valuable in the long haul than the book through which you can breeze quickly! This reframes many of the books on my shelves that are waiting for the day that I reunite with them. They’re good books; they’re just not books for which I was ready when we first met.

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Does Gen Z have pre-Internet nostalgia?

I was listening to the recent episode of the Ezra Klein Show when something Klein’s guest Emily Jashinsky said caused me to pause and google. Jashinsky claims about Gen Z’ers who are tired of social media and smart phones, who may want to give them up (starting at about 15:34):

“Do you know what Gen Z is binging hours of on YouTube? Its camcorder videos from the 1980s and 1990s of high schoolers. It’s the most boring camcorder videos on your old Sony that you could possibly imagine of people just at their lockers. No phones, just living in the moment and Gen Z is binging these hard, and it goes beyond just the curiosity of these historical artifacts. I think actually, if you asked a 22-year old that question and its through the lens of what your every day life would look like, and not just explicitly economic, I actually think a lot of them would take the deal. Not all of them, but the level of exhaustion with smartphones and social media…”

As she continues, she makes the case that younger conservatives, with whom she identifies, have a problem with modernity and that they would like to be free of some of its constraints, especially the dominance of technology and social media. I recommend listening to the episode yourself (embedded below) to hear her argument in its entirety, and I appreciate Klein, himself a progressive, hosting a conversation about the internal diversity of America’s conservative movement. I’m learning a lot as I listen but that’s not what I want to address. I want to address this claim about Gen Z’s nostalgia.

Unfortunately, I can’t find any information about Gen Z binging camcorder videos. I’m not doubting the claim, per se, just saying I can’t link to any study or news article on the topic. If someone out there finds something, feel free to share in the comments and I’ll update this post! I want to know if this is true because it would be eye opening, for one, but also affirming of the pedagogy I’ve implemented in my classroom.

What do I mean by this? Well, I share some of the concerns Jashinsky expressed about the Internet and social media. Obviously. In the past several weeks, I’ve written about how much better things seem at the school where I work since we’ve banned smartphones and smartwatches during school hours (see “Anecdotal evidence about phones in the classroom”). I’m skeptical of Artificial Intelligence’s ability to contribute to my students’ education (see “AI in the/my classroom”). Instead, I encourage my students to handwrite almost everything at this stage (see “Handwriting is good for the brain”). I have zero interest in engaging with trendy social media platforms like Snapchat and TikTok, as evidenced by the fact that I’m blogging like it’s 2010 (see “Why do I blog?”). This means that almost no one hears my views on topics like this one, and I’m fine with that! It’s freeing to do this sort of thing mostly for myself, to process my own thoughts in writing, to help me become clearer about my reasoning. I mean, I confess: I despise what algorithms are doing to us and I’m happy to pretend like the Internet is something else; something freer than what it’s become:

But most importantly: is Jashinsky’s claim true that many Gen Z’ers wish they could have the lives we had in the 80s and 90s? Would they trade social media and smart phones for camcorders, landline phones, and getting your sports scores either on cable TV or through tomorrow’s newspaper?

I don’t think I’d make a 1-for-1 trade but I do think there’s a lot about present modernity that we need to rethink, especially with regard to smartphone use, the Internet, and social media…especially for young, developing minds. To clarify, I was raised (partially) in fringe religious circles. The Internet provided me with information but also dialogue partners that made it impossible that I would continue in that religious movement once I became an adult. I imagine that pre-Internet, when your community was mostly people you know only in “real” life, I may have been more prone to settle for the sense of belonging that extreme religious groups can provide. But like the man being led out of Plato’s cave, the Internet gave me a map to freedom.

That being said, the Internet has also provided many people with a map into the cave. The conspiratorial thinking of QAnon is an Internet reality. Heaven’s Gate is famous for its use of the Internet to gain adherents and notoriety at the very beginning of the Internet Era. So the Internet has been used for variegated purposes since the beginning. It’s neither good nor bad in itself, nor are smart phones or social media.

But if Gen Z does have pre-Internet nostalgia, then we should pay attention to what it is that they wish they had from the eras of our childhoods. (I’m an older Millennial, or a “Xennial” as we who were born in the early 1980s are called, so by “our” I mean the childhoods of the 80s and 90s.) It may tell us what our young people need, including Gen Alpha who arrives in my classroom soon.

A final side note: I don’t remember being nostalgic for my parent’s youth. I had my own ups and downs as a kid and adolescent but I enjoyed my era. I liked some of the music from my parents era but I didn’t want to trade places. If even a sizable percentage of Gen Z does want to trade places with Millennials, or at least wishes that they had some of what made our childhoods unique, then this seems to be telling us a lot about what’s gone wrong over the past two decades. It may give our collective culture a guide for how to course correct. We should pay attention.

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AI in the/my classroom

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the classroom is something that all faculties, from elementary to graduate school, need to address. Last week our upper school faculty broke into groups to do just this. It seemed fruitful but nowhere near final. I’ll admit that I’m something of an AI-skeptic. I won’t pretend that I understand how it all works but I do try to read articles and listen to podcast episodes where experts address the rapid changes that we’re seeing. To the best of my ability, I’ve formulated an opinion not so much on whether AI should be used in the classroom but whether it should be used in my classroom. I want to put those thoughts down somewhere, so here we go.

What do we mean by “AI”?
One problem with this discussion is that everything seems to be “AI” now. As one podcast I was listening to pointed out: AI has become a marketing label. It’s useful for gaining venture capital. It’s helpful for selling your product. AI means so many different things (does Word use AI? Grammarly? ChatGPT? and are these products all doing the same thing?) that a broad acceptance or denouncement is impossible. (I’m sure it’s linked below but I can’t remember which one of the podcasts this point is from!) Personally, I’m most concerned with “Large Language Models” or “LLMs”.

Is AI’s relevance the same for all subjects?
One thing I noticed during our faculty discussion is that my colleagues who teach in our “English” or “Social and Religious Studies” departments emphasized the dangers of AI while my colleagues who teach STEM topics emphasized the benefits. The educational goals of the humanities stand in tension with many of the educational goals of STEM. I’ve noticed that many STEM teachers are prone to celebrate what humans can do with new scientific discoveries and technological advances whereas many humanities teachers tend to sound the alarm with regard to what these discoveries and advances might do to our humanity. (On this note, I highly recommend Scott Stephens and Shannon Valor’s discussion: “What is AI doing to our humanity?”) This isn’t always the case. Some people involved in the humanities are convinced that the humanities need to embrace things like AI (e.g. “AI, reading, and the humanities”). They may be correct though as I’ll discuss below, I think the answer to the question of “Is AI good for us?” depends on the context in which it’s being asked.

Again, I return to my favorite “Jurassic Park” meme to explain how humanities teachers often feel about what’s happening in the world of STEM:

In a recent interview with Sean Illing (see “Yuval Norah Harari in the eclipsing of human intelligence”), Yuval Noah Harari talked about his new book Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI. He frames history around information networks. Harari isn’t an alarmist but he’s concerned about the impact of AI (one information network) on democracy (another information network). This goes beyond Russian spam bots on X/Twitter and other social media. If someone like Harari is sounding the alarm, we should listen. The more we teach our students to outsource their own thinking to AI systems, or even Google search results, the less we should be surprised when we’re surrounded by people who are easily manipulated by technology for the simple reason that it’s technology!

For reasons like this, I won’t speak to what my colleagues in mathematics or the sciences are doing. I will say that those of us who teach students to read, write, philosophize, theologize, engage in politics, compile history, create art, etc., should be very concerned about what AI could do to our student’s brains.

Is AI’s dominance inevitable?
Another argument I heard for using AI in the classroom goes something like this: the dominance of AI is inevitable, it’s the future, so we better spend time teaching students how to use it. I’m not so sure that I’m convinced that this is true. One book that I want to read soon is AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference. One of the authors, Prof. Arvind Narayanan of Princeton University, was interviewed by Anthony Funnell (see “AI snake oil—its limits, risks, and its thirst for resources”), and I came away from listening to that interview wondering if many of us are buying into the marketing campaigns of the Elon Musks and Sam Altmans of the world who hope to continue make profit off of convincing us that they can see the future. Musk has been promising self-driving Teslas for a while now and we know that hasn’t been going well but if Musk, or Altman, tell investors and consumers that they don’t know if and when the technology will mature, they’ll lose investors and consumers. It’s important for them to convince us that we’re missing the train to the future and that they’re driving it!

Does AI need to be paired with maturity?
Let’s concede that AI’s dominance is inevitable, for the sake of argument. This doesn’t automatically answer whether or not students should use these tools in our classrooms. There are many things that may be inevitable for our students when they’re older. I would be shocked to see a third grade teacher putting a kid behind the wheel of a car because driving is inevitable! Similarly, if students haven’t learned how to read, write, analyze, etc., yet, it’s educational malpractice to emphasize tools for which they’re not ready!

There are stages of our development when handwriting is really good for students (see “Handwriting is good for the brain”). There are stages of development when less is more with regard to technology use and accessibility (see “Anecdotal evidence about phones in the classroom”). And I think there are stages in our development when once we’ve learned the basic skills that the humanities teach us, we may be ready for using AI. Personally, I’m happy for my students to wait until college and I’m satisfied with punting to the colleges and universities that have way more resources for dealing with student use of AI. When kids go to college, they have to make all sorts of decisions about how they spend their time, who they spend it with, etc., that we don’t ask them to make in high school.

I’ve heard some compare hesitancy to embrace AI with hesitancy to embrace the Internet in the 1990s. I don’t think this is the same thing but I do think that such a claim makes an unintentional observation. All of us wish we would’ve known how the Internet would be weaponized for things like misinformation, bullying, algorithms that feed on anger, etc. If we could go back and prepare ourselves for the ugly side of Internet use, we would. This is my warning! We know that LLMs bullshit (see “ChatGPT is Bullshit” by Michael Townsend, et al., and “Are LLMs Natural Born Bullshitters” by Anand Jayprakash Vaidya). They don’t know any better. If we don’t try to help our students develop skeptical thinking skills (see below), we’re feeding them to AI systems that have no way of caring whether or not what is being said is true or false. As J. Aaron Simmons has written about bullshitters (see “I’d Rather Be a Liar”):

“In contrast to the liar, the bullshitter doesn’t even care about truth at all. They are not intending to deceive their audience, but rather the bullshitter attempts to motivate behavior in their audience that supports their own self-interest.”

Systems like ChatGPT have one “goal”: engagement. They’re not concerned with truth, as Vaidya wrote in the article linked above:

“Research suggests that LLMs, left to their own devices, are natural-born bullshitters. The tendency for LLMs to hallucinate has only been reduced through reinforcement learning from human feedback. Without human intervention, they appear to lack the ability to control or reduce their hallucinations through training unaided by humans. Even if their hallucination rate is low, it might be that they have a fundamental disposition to bullshit as a result of the fact that they think* as opposed to think as well as care* as opposed to care for the truth.”

In other words, whatever seems “human” about LLMs is because we humans remain involved. One analogy Vaidya gives is helpful. He writes, “Just as we can say a car ‘runs’, when it is clear to everyone that the underlying mechanics of a functioning car and a running animal are fundamentally different, we can also apply words like ‘think’, ‘assert’, ‘understand’, and ‘know’ to LLMs without losing sight of the underlying mechanical and structural differences. Mental life need not be human mental life to be mental life.” Hence, the asterisks next to “think” and “care” in the above quote. LLMs “think” and “care” like us like cars “run” like us.

Creating Skeptical Thinkers/Avoiding AI’s “Mirror”
Personally, I don’t think many adolescents are ready to discern what bullshitters like ChatGPT are feeding them. This means that those of us who are fighting for the future of the humanities need to be very intentional in teaching our students to be skeptical thinkers. What do I mean by this? Well, I mean something like what Prof. Jamil Saki of Stanford University calls “hopeful skepticism” which he contrasts with cynicism:

“…hopeful skepticism is about applying a scientific mindset. Like a scientist, hopeful skeptics seek out facts and evidence instead of relying on feelings and fears. And rather than being fatalistic, they are critical and curious instead.”

We need to teach students to have a skeptical mindset that doesn’t just accept things at face value but, again, seeks “out facts and evidence” and is “critical and curious”. I can use ChatGPT this way. I can use Google search results this way. But my students could become easily susceptible to just embracing whatever ChatGPT or Google feeds them. If we don’t prepare them for this (which may mean walking them through the use of LLMs in our classes but doesn’t necessitate making that jump), we’ll be in trouble as a society. We’ll face a future were LLMs, like dogs returning to their vomit, consume AI generated information so that the cycle of information is AI feeding AI feeding AI. As Shannon Vallor argues in (another book I need to read) The AI Mirror, “today’s powerful AI technologies reproduce the past”. They reflect past, cumulative human knowledge (see the already linked above interview: “What is AI doing to our humanity?”). Whether they can create new knowledge is to be determined but we shouldn’t outsource the creativity of the human brain to AI anymore than we should start talking to someone’s reflection in a mirror while ignoring the person/people being reflected. When it comes to thinking, we’re still superior.