So I have been reading (or hearing, to be precise) "The closing of the American mind" for some months. I hear it often when I am working out, so around 1 hr per day. The audiobook on audible is around 17 hours long, and given my attention span of a small bird, I don't really catch everything Alan Bloom says in the book.
With the impressive retention of 5%, I imagine something is better than nothing. So I hear along to the meta-philosophy cookbook, where bloom points out the origin of the western liberal thought. I haven't read a lot of philosophy, so I think it wasn't the most wise decision to read the book. Anyhow, as I need to complete my 50 books aim of the year, I don't really care.
This force feeding has actually worked out pretty well. Bloom points out the contradictory nature of the modern man, with ruthless economics on the mind, like a protestant, but also he understands the healing property of nature on man. This contradiction doesn't arise until you're a woodcutter. Otherwise, it keeps at bay.
We, in our mind, have great capacity to keep contradictory notions in our mind, without actually noticing them. We might need to force ourselves to be crystal clear on what we actually think.
Also Bloom brought out one more good point. In a democratic society each person is equal. So they don't have anyone above them to tell them what's right or wrong, and therefore they need to make a decision on what is to be done, and how is it to be done. This takes work. What food to eat? What stock to buy? What does the news actually mean? Whom to vote? All these questions, and we need to make choices for them. Not everyone can go and collect information, and think deeply and then make a rational choice. We just don't have enough time for that. Then what do we do in that case? Fallback to the next best choice. What are the others doing? What are the others saying about the current incidents? What are the sectors that will grow in the next 5 years? These decisions are deferred to whatever person we think is good enough to answer these. Unless, obviously, we get bitten back for some, and decide to research and then make an informed decision.
So the freedom of choice is not exercised, just because we don't have the time to understand what the right choice is for us.
This is intriguing.
There was some discussion in the book around science being the prominent source of truth, with are mixed with liberal thought in America, leads them to think that they're non-religious, and thus can go meta, and judge each religion. Each being inferior to the scientific truth obviously. Then (not really sure on this) Bloom points out that, that's what the other religions do. They don't accept other religions. They just tolerate them. So maybe what Americans do isn't meta religion, instead it's a religion in itself. I didn't totally get the point there, as my, again impressive, 5% retention didn't allow me to listen and understand much.
