“The dialectic axis of criticism, then, has as one pole the
total acceptance of the data of literature, and as the other the total
acceptance of the potential values of those data. This is the real level of
culture and of liberal education, the
fertilizing of life by learning, in which the systematic progress of
scholarship flows into a systematic progress of taste and understanding.”
“…the fertilizing of life by learning” strikes me as the
most powerful metaphor for the value of learning I have ever read or heard. What
is the process of fertilization? The feeding of the soil and the killing of
weeds.
The soil is our minds, minds that without education are the conglomeration
of and attempt to understand random life experiences. I will concede that some
people have more varied experiences and some people put more effort into
understanding their experiences, both of which leads to often useful “folk
wisdom,” but on the part of the intellectually lazy leads to prejudice and
inflexibility.
And education is not always beneficial, I know. Prejudiced
teachers pass on their limitations. Bigotry is the virus of the intellectual
eco-system. But a good faith intellectual effort to understand the world must
involve more than just one’s own experiences, because those are always very
limited and random, while reading can exponentially expand one’s horizons.
And if we attempt this good faith effort, the process of
learning enhances one’s life. I, for one, do appreciate paintings better after
my brother explained how to look at the light. I do enjoy books and movies more
after I gain an understanding of them. I am more patient with my students and
friends after reading about the psychology of family dynamics and how they
influence all of us. I am more humble intellectually thanks to Kant and more
ambitious in my art thanks to Nietzsche, Cao Xueqin, and now perhaps David
Mitchell.
Sitting here by the lake, I sometimes wonder if my conscious
mind is like those waves and my subconscious is like the lake proper. The waves
are what I’m paying attention right now, who I’m talking to, what I’m reading,
what I’m watching…but as I absorb it into my mind, it sinks back into my
subconscious to play with until it comes out, or not, in future conservations,
essays, or fiction. Learning feeds my life.
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