The Greater Good--unpublished from ages ago

Somehow I located this post from ages ago in my "drafts" folder. If I did post a version of it, I don't recall. One can tell it's ancient, as I was teaching 101 when I wrote it. Kind of interesting to revisit that time.... What follows is what I wrote back then.

I'm reading free-writes that the students did last week, leading into our in-class discussion. I didn't really talk about that in previous posts, and I should. Especially in a comp class, in which most of my time is spent trying to get the students to have a basic understanding of what they read and then to be able to say something productive about it, we don't often get to just talk about ideas in general. And I think that's one of the most important things that can happen in college. This is why, in my lit classes, I don't mind if the conversation strays pretty far away from the topic at hand, as long as we're discussing real ideas. But I wanted to take that moment in the 101 classes as well, to let them think about ideas and kick them around a bit.

The conversation came out of a reading in which the author talks about his response to otters and beavers in a zoo--how he didn't want to understand them scientifically, he just wanted to experience them--and then his discussion morphs into a riff about altruism, especially altruism extending beyond the human family to other living beings. In response to that, I gave the students a free-write quotation by Norm Henderson: "The true meaning of life is to plant a tree under whose shade you do not expect to sit." Of course I had to translate that a bit: the sentence structure is sophisticated enough that I knew some of them would get lost. And the idea is expressed metaphorically, which I assumed they also would find difficult (I was right). But after they did their writing, we started talking about the common good, and specifically about whether one would be willing to experience discomfort or do something difficult for the benefit of an unknown person and without expecting anything in return. The general consensus: no. They'd at least want to know that what they did was appreciated, but many of them said that the point of life is to make yourself happy, not to worry about anyone else and certainly not to do anything for a random stranger, who might not deserve your largess.

Of course, quite apart from my concerns for their ability to read and write with more understanding and clarity, that attitude worries the hell out of me. I know it's epidemic in our society, and it is, in fact, one of the reasons I do the environmental theme in my 101s: it's a way to get them thinking about something other than merely the pursuit of their materialistic goals. In the course of our conversation I asked them to list five things that are extremely important in their lives right now. Of course 99% said family and friends (some broke that down so that the five "things" were individual people), but a fair number said that their car was very important, or "things," or money. I'm willing to grant that in our society, money is extremely important--to a point. But at what point does the pursuit of money stop being the need to ensure one's well-being and become instead a masturbatory, circular, purely pleasure-seeking endeavor? They'll pay lip-service to the idea that it is problematic for our society to be so materialistic, but when they're challenged--what possessions would you be willing to give up?--their attitude shifts. They want their toys, and they don't want to give any of them up, especially without some concrete, immediately visible, feel-good reason.

I hope I can show them the little online video "The Story of Stuff." I should have time in RB tomorrow, as only one group will be presenting, but I'm less sure about the other classes. The two groups that presented in MB today took the entire period, and yet each presentation was to be 14-16 minutes long: the rest of the time was taken up trying to get the technological elements to work (and one group never did get their video to play--though they had a good back-up plan and did very well). If that happens again on Wednesday, I won't be able to show the video--and I think it will be provocative. Especially if we have time to discuss it.

I've just posted the video to this blog so you can watch it: I think every human being living the Western lifestyle, especially every U.S.-American, should see it, along with the documentary The End of Suburbia (available through Netflix, if you do that). I used to show portions of The End of Suburbia in class: I didn't this semester but I think I'll go back to it next fall. Some students are bored by it, but it hits others squarely between the eyes--which is the point for the students (though this entire topic is a tangent here).

And of course I'm nattering about this because I need a brain break from the 101 revisions and left-over homework (the same piles I've been bitching about for weeks on end). But I want to get them done and out of my hair, so I need to jump back on that bus.