Of late, I have been reading Nietzsche, who, except for perhaps one random mention, barely acknowledges anything American. My favorite of his philosophical determinations from Beyond Good and Evil: "The Herd." From which we may derive "the herd mentality."
Now try out this article from The Chronicle Review concerning the American institutionalizing of mediocrity--especially education.
Then I was sent this article from The Weekly Standard, a laugh-a-minute take on Facebook. Is everything in our life inherently interesting? Must we all be on display?
Both articles point to the mind-numbing truth of our contemporary existence. Is a blog going to help? A posting on my "wall"?
What would Nietzsche say?
1 comment:
Well, the U.S. could do better by other Western, First World standards I think, but compared to the Second World, we are quite far ahead. It's true that American schools are constrained in the teaching of critical thinking because they have to teach to bubble tests, but our end results are still people generally more capable of independent thought than those in the Second World. All I'm saying is that it could be worse, not that the U.S. doesn't have a problem. I am actually going to blog about this pretty soon but in a broader context.
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