The need for common referents

Warning: Critical thinking and grit required

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What’s below:

1. The need for common referents, and the critical thinking (and grit) needed to push back against fads

2. John Stuart Mill’s equation for happiness

3. Are you overwhelmed by the chaos of the times? A prompt for how to come back to ground.

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When I was in college, I sang with the Duke University Chorale and Chamber Choirs. In many ways it was the highlight of my musical experiences, as twice a week rehearsals allowed for a special musical intensity at that point in my life. I remember toward the end of one rehearsal just before the Easter (spring) break, our accompanist, David, I think his name was, who was also the organist at the Duke Chapel, played a little farewell music taken from something he was playing at the Duke Chapel, no doubt, but he seamlessly and without breaking tempo mixed in a couple of bars of “Here comes Peter Cottontail” to the great delight of all of us in the midst of putting away our music.

His humorous farewell music required two things: utter and complete mastery of his craft, and a common referent.

Today’s environment seems intent on doing away with these common referents in the name of progress. Critical thinking is needed to combat this ridiculous proposition, and propose instead the merits of a curriculum blended with both classical and more modern sources. In a deeply polarized society, using bad on social and cultural fads requires not only critical thinking— it requires grit.

What happens without our common history our common stories, our classic texts?

Imagine this: a friend talking endlessly about the object of his romantic affection. You can imagine, can’t you? Another friend saying: “OK, Romeo, let’s move on.”

We are made a community in large part by our stories, but our stories precede our experiences and our lives sometimes by millennia. Consider Margaret Atwood’s poem, Siren Song, a commentary on relationships between men and women.

the song that forces men

to leap overboard in squadrons

even though they see the beached skulls

To understand the power of this poem, and even the title, you must at least know about, and ideally have read, The Odyssey.

Consider the megahit Hallelujah, by Leonard Cohen. He gives away the source of potential allusion in the first stanza

Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord

The second stanza goes even further:

She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Leonard Cohen

The first stanza refers to the Psalmist, King David; the second to Sampson and the way in which Delilah rendered him powerless. The lyrics: “you saw her bathing on the roof/ her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you,” is of course a reference to King David and Bathsheba. Both references are to misuses of power in relationship, to the extreme. Without understanding the stories woven into the lyrics, a listener can never truly understand the work itself. (Musically, the writing in 12-8 time recalls Gospel music, adding another layer of meaning to its complexity).

John Stuart Mill’s equation for happiness (from Arthur Brooks’ article in The Atlantic)

1. Desire to be happy.
To want to be happier is an entirely legitimate, natural, healthy, and worthwhile goal. Don’t feel guilty or selfish for seeking higher life satisfaction and greater well-being.

2. Bring happiness to others.
You are not an island, as the English poet John Donne observed, and working for your own happiness should be part of a bigger project to build a better world. That means thinking about the well-being of others. So you should engage in acts of charity and kindness, and fight the zero-sum mentality that regards someone else’s happiness as being at the expense of your own. Especially in these times, you should resist the corrosive schadenfreude of taking pleasure in the misery of others.

3. Elevate your pleasures.
Choose enjoyment over base pleasures by uplifting your interests and improving your character. One way to do this is by identifying how you tend to fritter away time on mind-numbing trivialities and thinking about how this behavior makes you feel about yourself. Before sitting down for an hour of scrolling through social media, consider the feeling of emptiness this will most likely evoke. Keep around the house a stack of books that you want to dip into instead. And in accordance with rule No. 2, don’t push trivialities on others.

4. Do the work.
Remember that happiness is an active pursuit, not a passive one. Don’t wait around for circumstances to change for your well-being. And don’t make yourself dependent on others to pursue a higher pleasure. Make a plan to improve your life—and get started.

Allusions in literature add potency, depth, and texture, the kind that resonates deeply and profoundly as it touches the core of our existences. As references to other stories, allusions create layers within stories, create new pathways of meaning, sometimes discreet, sometimes overt, and form our cultural narratives and understanding. They allow us to more deeply understand and engage with a work on both conscious and subconscious levels. In both examples above, the texts (The Odyssey, the Bible) are foundational to the Western world (and, in fact, the non-western world, as both are Eastern texts).

The use of allusions to our common stories in any kind of writing, creative or non-fiction, those we have held in common for millennia, is not just intellectual play; they ground us. In the example of our choir accompanist, they may amuse and delight. In Atwood’s and Cohen’s works, the allusions drive us deeply into a challenge, more deeply than we might otherwise venture. Whether leading us to smiles or tears, they provide the kind of instantaneous understanding of friends or lovers, a kind of insider’s knowledge available to anyone willing to participate. A particular kind of relationship of shared experience which connects us, even when we may have little else in common.

We are in grave danger of losing these common stories.

Over the past year, I spoke with English teachers at several schools, asking them how they considered the balance of classics with what is considered representational literature. One of them assured me with apparent deep sincerity that they were adding in indigenous voices to be sure they were a part of the curriculum. The other laughed and said that well, he heard Shakespeare wasn’t really relevant anymore. These reactions are typical. In the name of representation, Shakespeare is no longer a given in high school reading lists (despite the fact that he was almost certainly gay or bisexual; it would seem he might meet some of the criteria of representational literature).

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The result of these diversification efforts is not to more deeply engage us or our children, but instead offer a scattershot syllabus of various cultures, as if simply to prove that other cultures exist. One might have better impact by going deep into one culture for the potential of actual understanding. Meanwhile, the idea that a teacher would pick one book to represent and entire culture (Vietnamese, indigenous, Black American or other) by itself is absurd and surely an affront to any of these cultures which boast the same complexity and diversity as does our Western heritage. Does that mean that we don’t include any literature from non-Western sources for our students? Of course not. What is important is to adopt a both and approach, counter to the cultural tendency to throw something out entirely and pretend what is flimsily rebuilt as adequate to the wisdom of centuries— resulting in a thin broth, indeed.

Perhaps we have to begin by answering the question: What is the purpose of education? In Ancient Greece, it was to make good citizens. The modern day NEA suggests the purpose is “to prepare every student to succeed in a diverse and interdependent world,” a statement that is ambiguous at best and blatantly irresponsible at worst. This statement and subsequent change in our educational systems and imperatives is a significant paring down of education from the 19th century, when education was meant to meet both the intellectual demands of students in addition to larger societal concerns.

If you’re worried about the chaos of the news cycle, wars, polarization and upcoming elections both in the US and abroad, it’s easy to lose focus and have a hard time focusing.

This simple practice will bring you back to ground.

In The Grit Factor, we discuss the importance of gratitude. It’s not simply being thankful; it’s part of the practice of reframing, the positive psychology technique proven over decades to change the way you look at the world. It’s a basic idea that is harder to put into practice, as it requires you to consciously work against your subconscious. It’s also completely doable.

Start by writing down three things for which you’re grateful every night. If you meditate or pray, add this awareness into your time. As you wake up, reflect on the previous night’s gratitudes before you move into your day.

Try it. You’ll bring the good of the world back into focus around you, and that makes any challenge more manageable.

The lack of understanding within our culture is evident in the widespread areas of focus of the splintering education system, and the myriad micro schools and alternative schooling which has sprung up in response to the crisis-level failure of the public education system. Some earnestly support doing at the expense of any classroom learning, some focus nearly entirely on STEM, some seem to focus on nothing but wandering in nature or pursuing art. These attempts to address a lack of focus in education are well meaning and perhaps even salutary, helping to develop a diversity of experience and opinion which might fuel innovation in thought for a rapidly changing future.

But back to the reading lists. Some of this work to diversify our children’s reading in the Western world is based on a true desire to expand our understanding for what is a more diverse global community. Both philosophical and sacred texts tell us to “first know thyself” (a reference to an inscription on the temple at the Oracle at Delphi, of course— an understanding that is part of our common referents with classical education). If it isn’t sacrilege at this point to quote Shakespeare, from Polonius’ admonitions to Laertes before he embarks on a journey, “This above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” But choosing to eschew the classics for “representational literature” at the expense of first knowing ourselves (recognizing that “ourselves” itself is diverse, and here referring to Western culture in which a diversity of cultures live and work) dismantles— or in the case of our children and the adults they become— impedes our understanding of ourselves, which then destroys our ability to understand or appreciate others.

“There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in.”
― Leonard Cohen, Selected Poems, 1956-1968

The devolution of our curricula in literature for our junior high and high school students is dangerous. Without adequate knowledge of themselves within the context in which they live, whatever the student’s background or identity, they are forced to navigate a world without guidance, direction or footing. They lose— or in fact, never learn— our culture’s common referents, and thus the potential for both deep understanding as well as the delight of discovery and recognition; but perhaps more gravely, this loss takes away the glue of our personal and communal relationships: our common stories— and the common stories of what is in modern times, for all of its many flaws, the most egalitarian and democratic society the world has ever seen.

Abetting the argument on diverse reading lists replacing classics (as opposed to augmenting them) are suggestions that school serve to prepare the student for the world in which they will live and work (see the statement by the NEA). This, too, is perilously misplaced. To suggest that a student doesn’t need Shakespeare, as an example, is making terribly limiting assumptions about the student’s future (which indicate more about the person making the assumption than the potential or even actual interests of the student.) This limitation has the dual effect of not equipping the student for knowledge and context of the world in which they will be living as human beings.

The humanities have always been about being human. They are not about being ready to take on a job coding or managing a non-profit or starting a business. The humanities— and schooling, well done— instead help us to be human in all of these endeavors, to develop empathy for others, to appreciate beauty, to learn from past mistakes. A sense of self in the context of our culture is the bare minimum necessary to impart to our students regardless of their chosen field of work or study.

Maria Tatar, professor of Germanic Literature at Harvard, has studied the thread of fairy tales across both time and culture. In fascinating findings, she finds both similar themes and actual stories shared across cultures and centuries, even when there is no evidence to suggest the connection existed. Stories matter deeply to not only our human experience, but also to our being human, in ways we still don’t know.

Is it important to expand our understanding of our common story? Certainly. But expanding is different than replacing, especially when replacing means a removal of a heritage that has formed every literate person on the planet for millennia or centuries, depending on the source. If a student is compelled in college or in graduate school to go deep into a particular aspect of literature, Western, Eastern, or more specific to another identity, that is an appropriate place for even deeper exploration, but it must be built onto a firm foundation.

While an English major at Duke University in the 1990s, I could have studied with the then famous professor of literary deconstruction— Stanley Fish. Deconstruction was all the rage in literature then (as it seems to be today in history, despite its essential debunking in literary circles). It was a fad, but adherents supported it with near religious zeal, and the supposedly Marxist professors who taught it brought in decidedly non-Marxist six-figure incomes. I stayed away from those classes, because somehow I understood that my public school education had not adequately grounded me in the basics. I knew I needed more time with Shakespeare and Milton before ripping things apart and neutering their meanings. My thoughts around the ideas of deconstruction are clear; but even if we disagreed, one cannot adequately deconstruct what one does not first know. Rules are necessary before we learn to break them.

To suggest that we must choose between our classic and common literature and expanding that definition is, like so many other things in our culture today, a false binary. Appreciating diverse literature and all that it represents about other stories that are also a part of our culture is important as augmentation to what is foundational. The argument is only partial; we exist within the context of the Western world, and that understanding is formed by its stories and history (even when we find ways in which our approaches can be modified or altered). Appreciating other cultures is important and additive. Western culture cannot be understood through the exclusive lens of diverse stories. The answer must be that we include both.

On another level altogether, to remove literature which has endured for a reason— Shakespeare, who added 1700 words to the English language, as an example— we miss out on work which touches the soul as well as the mind. I’d challenge anyone to find a passage on mercy more beautiful that this, delivered by Portia— dressed as a man— in The Merchant of Venice:

The quality of mercy is not strained;
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him that takes…

If you don’t know of David Copperfield, you don’t know the inspiration and the texture behind the Pulitzer Prize winning Demon Copperhead. If you don’t know King Lear, you won’t understand the significance of Jane Smiley’s 1000 Acres. And most currently, without having read Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, you can’t properly appreciate James. There are myriad such examples. Will we deprive our children of not only this part of their story, but also of its beauty and import, in an often undirected flailing to add other stories? Or will we decide we can offer them both, and make a considered effort to ensure coherence?

Similarly, the idea that we must choose between educating a workforce and educating ourselves for civil society and humanity is another false binary. It is not possible to properly communicate and collaborate without common language, and deteriorating connections personally and communally will necessarily affect work environments. Students must be educated for civil society as well as ready to move into a chosen field of work. As with any complex consideration, the solution must lie somewhere between, holding the two in tension. In Greek mythology, Icarus was warned not only to not fly too high— but also not to fly too low. Oddly, the same people who argued against the “industrial education model” are now supporting ideas that continue to dehumanize and develop workers, as opposed to developing good people who will bring their good selves to go on to do good work.

A final argument, perhaps the most condescending of all to our students, is that this classic literature is elite. That we need to soften requirements and make literature “more accessible.” If there is anything more absurd than this, I don’t know it. William Kitteredge, the renowned writer of the West who grew up on dirt floors, honed his education on Shakespeare. Similarly, Betty Smith of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn notes that every night, her mother read to her from either Shakespeare or the Bible. To dismiss the capabilities of our students and to deny them the opportunities of this common language and understanding based on their economic status is the least equitable approach a school, a system or an individual educator can condone.

To fight the cultural tide is difficult; it requires clear thinking, grit and determination. It’s a battle worth fighting. And when schools will not make good decisions, parents will continue to have to find ways to offer this to their children in the midst of the exhaustion of work and the many other requirements of a family— or they will, as they have begun to do, opt children out of what is offered and find other alternatives.

We are creatures of story, and our self-concept and our personal relationships, as well as our communities and our country are woven together and strengthened by shared stories. Weaving new threads into the tapestry of story is an exciting opportunity, but to burn the tapestry altogether and attempt to start anew is both foolhardy and hubristic. And for those who have read the Greek myths, as all would have not so terribly long ago, hubris has eternal consequences.

If you’ve made it this far, well, congratulations :) What does this have to do with your work and life? I like to think it encourages critical thought, no matter what your area of business or study. Let me know your thoughts in the comments, or send me an email!

With all my best, and to your grit!

Shannon

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