The Closing of the American Mind

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1. piuantiderpNov 2023
   Then definitely don't miss its forefather. Writing with such insight

   The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom

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2. blueridgeAug 2023
   If anyone hasn't read The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom, I'd highly recommend it. There are a few thoughtful chapters on relationships, love, marriage, sex, etc. that are worth reading.
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3. blueridgeJun 2023
   Two responses:

   First, this piece makes me think of The Closing of the American Mind, by Allan Bloom. Highly recommended, it's more relevant than ever.

   Second, I am reminded of these passages from Justin E.H. Smith:

   > Yet the new social mores are not going to last forever either, and sooner or later the young people who memory-holed so many of the things I once thought would last forever are going to have to begin again the work of mining the past for tried-and-true moral sensibilities with the suppleness and vigor to help them navigate through this objectively problematic world, and to thrive. We might be depressed, but we are not without purpose: our purpose is preservation. The bubble of “false representation” is going to burst sooner or later, and when it does the value of our investment in old-style commodities will become clear again.

   And:

   > I have become convinced that the best way to respond to the threats posed by new technologies to the conventions of literacy that we continue to strive to maintain is to return to the practices of knowledge transmission that preceded literacy altogether and that characterized oral cultures: namely, education should involve the rote internalization of texts. Make kids memorize epic poetry, or the Bible, or King Lear, or the Upanishads, through recitation, adding a few lines each day over the course of several years. They do not even need to see the texts in written form, but only to hear them and speak them. Eventually one might make them compose epic poetry in their heads, too, like Solzhenitsyn biding his time in the Gulag by reverting to oral literature when his writing implements had been taken away, adding a few lines each day, accreting a world inside of himself.

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4. recursivedoubtsJul 2020
   I think you misunderstand me: I very much am in favor of the humanities as a part of a liberal education, I just wouldn't expect a university humanities department to teach me (or my children) much about them. There are exceptions, of course, but we are speaking internet here.

   For a general overview of the situation, Allan Blooms "The Closing of The American Mind" covers it far better than I (or almost anyone else) could.

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5. codegrapplerFeb 2019
   Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom (https://www.amazon.com/Closing-American-Mind-Education-Impov...) was a book I had to read multiple times. It gave me a new understanding of how deep culture and environment really do influence your opinions of the world. I spend a lot more time reflecting on my own opinions about the world and I'm much more mindful of the opinions I declare publicly because of this book.
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6. notthegovFeb 2016
   The general idea is that since humans are self-conscious and born with innate natural rights, that these are the rights that can never be taken away unless proven guilty of a crime in a court of law (ideally if there's an actual victim but this could be argued against).

   There are some 18th century philosophers who talked about two types of rights but I can't remember the analogy.

   But essentially, you were born with human freedom, even your ancestors and all of our ancestors in Africa. And these are the rights that existed prior to civilization, government, the Bill of Rights, the UN and the EU.

   This is why some say they come from God, to distinguish them from the government. But you might as well say they came from the Higgs Boson because Jefferson et al were Deists.

   The reason this is important is because why would you want to diminish your own personal sovereignty knowing what we all know about human nature and power?

   This is why the Bill of Rights says Congress shall make no law restricting Freedom of Speech. It does not grant or create a right or privilege. It acknowledges it.

   The organic law (Dec. of Indepedence) declares this in the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Deny this to an Enlightenment-thinker, and prepare for silent revolution.

   We should resist the utopian temptation to accept the falsehood that rights are privileges. In the 20th century in the United States, wealthy idealists who often doubled as Marxists created the American Historical Association (historians.org), and promoted the idea that the centralization of power was always a good thing, i.e. collectivism. And to do that, they taught that truth was relative and that natural rights and classical liberalism was irrelevant in the face of supranational political utopias.

   This is covered in Professor Allen Bloom's book, "The Closing of the American Mind."

   We are all from Africa and we all have natural rights. So since the US was the first nation to acknowledge this, and since the EU does not acknowledge natural rights and in fact is a bureaucratic nightmare, then it is fair to suggest that we all are in fact "African Americans", free and individually powerful since our ancestors lived in Ethiopia and Somalia.

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