We’ll talk about anything except the meaning of life

Joe Humphreys' opinion piece in The Irish Times is a most interesting read.

Here it is.

We ask a lot from our teachers and educators. Every time an issue of public concern arises, the catch-cry is “x should be taught in schools” – where x is everything from digital literacy to driving skills, computer coding to empathy. The voice of Catholic Church in Irish education has added a further item to the list: purpose.

In a submission to the Government’s Convention on Education, which is due to hold its first meeting later this month, the CatholicEducation Partnership (CEP) quotes Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky when he wrote “the mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for”.

“Education worthy of the name should help students to discover that purpose, to form conscience, and to learn the disciplines of friendship, study and service,” says the partnership, which was set up by Ireland’s Catholic bishops to represent the church’s interests across primary, post-primary, third-level and further education.

The church’s concern over a “loss of meaning” is shared by many in Ireland and internationally. The worry is not just that we have lost the ability to distinguish between right and wrong but that this moral vacuum is leaving us in a state of hopelessness and despair.

Friedrich Nietzche predicted this drift towards nihilism in a post-Christian world. With the demise of a shared belief in God, we toggle between different sources of moral authority, chiefly: (a) populism (whatever the majority says); (b) capitalism (whatever the market says); and, increasingly, (c) dataism (whatever the algorism says).

This “loss of a shared moral order” was the theme of David Brooks’s final column for The New York Times in January.

The “small-c” conservative commentator signed off his 22 years with the paper lamenting a “shredding of values” that began long before Donald Trump came to power in the United States.

One source of regret for Brooks is the way education has become just another arm of the economy.

“Multiple generations of students and their parents fled from the humanities and the liberal arts, driven by the belief that the prime purpose of education is to learn how to make money.” He cited recent Harvard research showing 58 per cent of college students say they experienced no sense of “purpose or meaning” in their life in the month before being polled.

“Loss of faith produces a belief in nothing,” Brooks wrote. “I’m haunted by an observation that Albert Camus made about his Continent 75 years ago: The men of Europe ‘no longer believe in the things that exist in the world and in living man; the secret of Europe is that it no longer loves life’.” But diagnosing a problem is easier than treating it. Just how do we go about teaching people to have “purpose”? Is it even possible?

Socrates

In Plato’s dialogues, Socrates argues that virtue cannot be taught; it is instead a gift from the gods. He suggests that, for all the fine words of priests and philosophers, no one can be reasoned into living a good life; spiritual or religious conversion is a mystery. Centuries of Christian indoctrination provides evidence for this. Ireland was once overwhelmingly Catholic but was it ever particularly Christian? Preaching seems to be a poor method of moving the soul.

So what can schools do? They can model purpose in action. They can uphold and defend values in their community. None of this will guarantee a sense of meaning is passed on to children but setting an example is important.

It has been inspiring, for example, to see school communities showing solidarity with students facing deportation during the current shift in asylum policy. A hard-nosed, rational approach states that “rules are rules”. But the rational answer isn’t always the right one. Brooks signed off his The New York Times career with a quote from theologian Reinhold Niebuhr. It contains the line: “Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.”

Schools fighting to stop pupils being taken away on deportation flights are demonstrating a kind of faith – a faith in justice as kindness. Whether or not you think such campaigns are naive, they force us to confront our own moral principles.

But let’s not think schools alone have responsibility in this area. The CEP should be commended for putting “purpose” on the agenda of the Government’s National Conversation on Education. However, wider society needs to step up. And for that, we need a national conversation on values, or better still a national conversation on the meaning of life. Why are we here? Is there a purpose to our lives? In Ireland we’ll talk about anything except the most fundamental question of existence.

For all the faults of the Catholic Church, it at least attempts to provide an answer. Much of Irish society is too incurious, or too prejudiced against religion, to even enter the discussion.

My own submission is that we’re here to be human – and that means erring on the side of humanity. On hard cases, I humbly suggest we should lean into kindness. Call it an article of faith. But, as Niebuhr suggests, without some sort of faith we’re damned.