Are our inner selves being destroyed?

In reading about time last week, I encountered the work of Alan Lightman, astrophysicist and author of EINSTEIN'S DREAMS, for whom time remains a mystery, even after he explored most concepts of time.    This was a refreshing view to encounter, but Lightman is well known for bridging the gap between the scientific world he inhabits and the world of the soul and imagination, which he explores in some of his books.

In a recent article, Lightman laments the loss of slowness and silence, of reflection and solitude in a culture that has suddenly become electronic and invasive. He compares the situation today, in which many young people prefer smart phones to actual conversations, to global warming as a dire predicament with no easy solution.

If we lose the ability to be alone with a book or in nature without external stimulation, we will lose our "ability to know who we are and what is important to us."  He is concerned about being "relentlessly driven by the speed, noise and artificial urgency of the wired world."

Lightman, who teaches both science and humanities at MIT, is one of those truly enlightened people who see the larger picture and are able to ask the major questions about the meaning of life.   This very ability is being challenged on college campuses, and has been,  as more and more faculty vote to downgrade the humanities in favor of the technoscientific fields.

A professor of medical ethics at my alma mater, St. Louis University, Dr. Jeffrey Bishop, writes to protest his university's decision to follow the path of Notre Dame and countless other leading schools in revising the core curriculum so that it allows students to avoid courses in literature, philosophy, and foreign language.  "Every university is being pushed in this direction," he writes, "because this is where the money is."

Noting that our university in St. Louis is a Jesuit school, Bishop says a Catholic university should be ideally poised to maintain and cultivate the humanities and take the lead in keeping a solid, balanced core curriculum. It is hard to imagine a graduate of a Jesuit college who has not studied history, literature, and philosophy, who has not been exposed to the perennial questions about enduring values and ideas.  Instead of thinking about great ideas and the mysteries of reality, as Lightman does, too many universities  pander to the trendy technoscientific curriculum that is turning out more specialized graduates who seem destined to fill their slot in the global machine that robs us of interiority.

I am grateful to Drs. Bishop and Lightman for combining a respect for the values of science with seeing the urgent need to explore the more mysterious realm of the inner life.

Michael Harrington's America

My high school in St. Louis had humble beginnings 200 years ago but has produced many remarkable graduates, other than myself!

The "St. Louis Academy for Young Gentlemen" was founded in 1818 and soon became St. Louis College, then in 1832, St. Louis University, the first university west of the Mississippi, with the first medical school and law school in the area.  I spent eight years at the university in various capacities as well as four years at the affiliated Jesuit preparatory school.  What I learned there has been the foundation of my personal and professional life.

I was reminded of the outstanding record of achievement at St. Louis U. High this week in a New Yorker article by David Remnick, "Left Wing of the Possible," a quote from Michael Harrington, class of '44.  Harrington, who became a leading socialist, author, professor and public intellectual, wrote "The Other America."  Remnick shows how this best-selling study of poverty in America caught the attention of President Kennedy in 1963 and led him to begin what would be completed by his successor: the war on poverty, including Medicare, Medicaid, and expanded social security benefits. As a result of this action by the Democratic leadership, poverty declined from 22% in 1959 to 11% in 1973.

Although Harrington, who moved on from St. Louis to the University of Chicago and the Yale Law School, drifted from his Catholic faith, he remained, like many others, a Catholic in spirit.  He was inspired by his Jesuit schooling to be concerned with the common good, with social justice--in marked contrast to the prevailing political climate of recent years, where even most liberal-moderates are indebted to corporations, big money, and self-interest.

Despite his radical allegiances, Harrington was valued by the Kennedys and deserves to be remembered for having had an impact on liberal public policy. I can easily imagine what he might say about today's polarized political arena, which marginalizes the poor and needy, ignores the common good,  and seems determined to undo all of the social progress made prior to January, 2017.

I am proud to be a graduate of the same distinguished school that produced Michael Harrington