day no. 16,895: Descartes before the whores

"But, is not mental culture per se elevating? It is hard for us to give up this flattery, because hitherto education has been more or less Christian. The minister has been the American schoolmaster. But are not the educated the more elevated? Yes. For the reason just given, and for another; not that their mental culture made them seek higher morals, but their (and their parents) higher morals made them seek mental culture! We are prone to put the cart before the horse." — R.L. Dabley, On Secular Education

High mental culture does not lead to high moral culture. In fact, the inverse is often true. The more a culture clamors after the academic, the more it abandons moral absolutes. As accreditation displaces honor, conceit corrupts courage.

"The Age of Affluence silences the voice of duty. The object of the young and the ambitious is no longer fame, honour or service, but cash. Education undergoes the same gradual transformation. No longer do schools aim at producing brave patriots ready to serve their country. Parents and students alike seek the educational qualifications which will command the highest salaries." — Sir John Glubb, The Fates of Empires

If a society devolves into imagining it is its own standard of success (i.e. Cartesian conceit), instead of whatever it ought to be according to the standard of God's revealed Word, it has put Descartes before the whores. Morality cannot survive that kind of vacuum. Good taste gets sucked up by the force of the void. If you presume upon your existence, you pave the way for the presence of promiscuity. The course that follows Descartes is lined with whoredom. When we try to parody the I AM that I AM by insisting that, "We are who we are," we carry our coins in a bag full of holes.

All that to say, morals must suspend from something, or more to the point Someone, else. They cannot be hung from an imaginary sky hook. They will fall down and descend to the lowest common denominator like everything else. Bad company corrupts good morals as the Good Book warns (1 Cor 15:33) and academic conceit is as bad of a business as can be conceived.