site banner
naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   4098 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for October 9, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

7
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

I found it! It's from Roger Scruton:

Moreover, the pursuit of irrelevant knowledge is, for that very reason, a mental discipline that can be adapted to the new and the unforeseeable. It is precisely the irrelevance of everything they knew that enabled a band of a thousand British civil servants, versed in Latin, Greek, and Ancient History, to govern the entire Indian sub-continent—not perfectly, but in many ways better than it had been governed in recent memory. It is the discipline of attending in depth to matters that were of no immediate use to them that made it possible for these civil servants to address situations that they had never imagined before they encountered them—strange languages, alphabets, religions, customs, and laws. It is no accident that it was a classical scholar—the judge Sir William Jones, founder of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1788—who did the most to rescue Sanskrit literature from oblivion, who introduced the world, the Indian world included, to the Vedas, and who launched his contemporaries on the search for the principles and repertoire of classical Indian music.

It is interesting Scruton calls the classics irrelevant information. I would call something like trivia and the accumulation of facts irrelevant, and I’d say the classics are filled with potentially relevant stories and solutions, and the learning of Ancient languages as taught created analytic and organized minds.

Our history today is largely filled with irrelevance, as there is no future applicability for knowing precise dates, names, and figures. The trivialization of learning is bad for brain snd soul and I think Jeopardy is the worst possible pastime. The Ancient histories contain inaccurate figures (60,000 perished… no, 100,000!), but the importance lies in the human stories and connections and the emphasis on faults and learning from human error. Great Man -styled history is nothing other than maximizing the utility of a history lesson for individual humans. Save the trivia for specialized excel workers, our leaders deserve Great Man theory!

In that article Scruton was arguing against an educational model focused on only teaching “relevant” things, as defined by the worldview of the teacher. So he was adopting their framework when saying that there is benefit to teach “irrelevant” things. I highly doubt he actually believes that those things are irrelevant in the broader sense.

It is interesting Scruton calls the classics irrelevant information. I would call something like trivia and the accumulation of facts irrelevant, and I’d say the classics are filled with potentially relevant stories and solutions, and the learning of Ancient languages as taught created analytic and organized minds.

Shamus Khan wrote a book - Privilege - exploring his education (both his own and the one he bestowed when he returned as a teacher) and he touches on the utility provided by such absurdly broad courses as "Western History"

His argument is that it's not so much teaching information as teaching ease: an ability to navigate a bunch of different cultural spheres and their products. Nobody ever really learns much about Western Civ in a high school class. But they learn how to navigate material and to not feel absolutely overwhelmed (or, less charitably: they learn how to bullshit according to the system's expectations)

We can apply the same logic to even more challenging endeavors like learning the classics or ancient Greek.

Of course, I think this misses a more obvious take: the "ease" being learned is about learning to fluently speak language of your fellow elites and civilization (hence the Iliad and not the Upanishads, which I don't doubt have meaningful human stories) but part of the book is about the changing character of the upper class so I guess it's not a bug.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats