I would like to teach a Freshman college course. I would name it, \u201cEssential Tools,\u201d and it would center around three texts:<\/p>\n
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, <\/i>by Jared Diamond.<\/p>\n
Thinking, Fast and Slow, <\/i>by Daniel Kahneman.<\/p>\n
G\u00f6del, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, <\/i>by Douglas Hofstadter.<\/p>\n
Guns, Germs, and Steel<\/i> won a Pulitzer Prize in 1997, <\/i>G\u00f6del, Escher, Bach <\/i>in 1980. Kahneman won a Nobel Prize and\u00a0Thinking, Fast and Slow <\/i>summarizes much of his earlier work.<\/p>\n
The course \u201cconcept\u201d would be \u201cWho are we, and how did we get this way?\u201d It\u2019s not political, and would puncture much of what pretends to be political discussion. It\u2019s not religious, and would be rejected by fundamentalists of any religion. And it\u2019s not Philosophy, because it talks about things we understand.<\/p>\n
There are other great books out there, of course. I won\u2019t name any other favorites because every time I bring this idea up in conversation, other people immediately provide their own list. There are obviously too many \u201cessential texts\u201d for any of them to be essential. This is mine.<\/p>\n
I lament that I seem to be as old as I am, that I feel as if humility has been replaced by entitlement, that thoughtful discussion seems quaint, that ideas that take more than 140 characters to \u201carticulate\u201d are boring, that “reality TV” does not offend, that compromise is thought of as surrender, that \u201con-message\u201d is more important than governing, that “news” has been replaced by opinion in a media war of words where “truth” is collateral damage, that I am living in a declining culture that has given so much to the world.<\/p>\n
In teaching this course, I’d hope to give a sense that some of the ideas we hold most sacred are fictions that we have been told, and that we tell ourselves: useful, satisfying and false. I’d hope to call out those assumptions we regard as absolutes, and create a sense of wonder.<\/p>\n
I’d hope that one student, somewhere, would be able to make a difference, do what I\u2019ve never done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I would like to teach a Freshman college course. I would name it, \u201cEssential Tools,\u201d and it would center around three texts:<\/p>\n
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, <\/i>by Jared Diamond.<\/p>\n
Thinking, Fast and Slow, <\/i>by Daniel Kahneman.<\/p>\n
G\u00f6del, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid, <\/i>by Douglas Hofstadter.<\/p>\n
Guns, Germs, and Steel<\/i> won a Pulitzer Prize in 1997, <\/i>G\u00f6del, Escher, Bach <\/i>in 1980. Kahneman won a Nobel Prize and\u00a0Thinking, Fast and Slow <\/i>summarizes much of his earlier work.<\/p>\n
The course \u201cconcept\u201d would be \u201cWho are we, and how did we get this way?\u201d It\u2019s not political, and \u2026 Read more\u2026