Just Curious

Every exchange is helpful

Sometimes I really want to throw food at those who disagree with me. Sometimes I really do.

But being a quick-tempered young man in his maturing process, I gradually come to realize that regardless of how wrong you think they are, exchange with people who disagree with you are almost invariably fruitful in one way or another.

Two days ago I ran into a bitter argument with a Bushite (my term for Bush-supporter; it's a term of endearment, I guess) who thought that the War in Iraq was both morally and legally justified. Neither of us gained anything from the debate itself. Nevertheless, after we had changed our topic, he mentioned to me a classicist named Mortimer Adler (from Chicago) whom I have heard of before but am not familiar with.

It turns out that this certain Dr. Adler is a very interesting person. Being a big advocate of keeping Western Civilization in our college curricula, he's also an ardent socialist who looked down upon the so-called New Left (i.e. the soft-bellied self-proclaimed liberals we have today who are more offended by terms like "Englishman" than the sight of starving children in Ethiopia.)

Adler in fact made a very good point during his tenure as editor in chief of the Great Book in Western Thought series. When asked, in 1990 (when he was eighty six), why he included no work by women or minority in his collection of great books, he replied, "Whereas it was indeed a human tragedy that women and minority has been so oppressed in the past that they were denied even the chance to express their thoughts effectively, it was also true that for this reason (i.e. sexist and racist) all the great books produced in the past were written by white men."

What he really was saying is, as progressives, our job is to ensure that women and minorities could contribute more in future, nevertheless, in the meantime, we cannot deny the fact that great books in the past were works by dead white men even when the cause for this pattern is utterly unsettling and repugnant to the progressive mind.

posted by James Chang @ 2:31 PM