Expectations, High And Low
“There is a complexity to human affairs before which science and analysis simply stands mute.”
So says David Brooks, aiming another low blow below the belt of reason. Brooks seems to be on some kind of one man mission against sensible, rational thought. Brooks is referring to the Grant Study as captured in an essay called “What Makes Us Happy?” by Joshua Wolf Shenk in The Atlantic. (Available online today.) What a way for Brooks to set expectations about what science and analysis may yet achieve.
This from a letter to the editor in today’s Times:
“While I applaud David Brooks for drawing attention to an effective inner-city school, I disagree with his assessment of why such schools are so effective.
“The success of schools like the Harlem Children’s Zone’s Promise Academy is not because of the inculcation of “middle-class values” (when do middle-class kids ever learn to look at the person who is talking?). It is because of the teachers’ and principal’s high expectations of the students.”
[Emphasis mine.]
Ah, David, what would you say about Michael Phelps’ pot-smoking? A story of high expectations and middle-class debauchery.
I read the piece about Michael Phelps today with a new and acute sense of the incredible dedication and sacrifice that his swimming achievements required. Such incredible results took very high expectations that recognized no existing limits.
If we look at human achievement from a philosophical perspective we find that it is marked by a willingness to go beyond existing limits, to defy limits perhaps. Philosophers have been defying reality to prove itself worthy of belief for thousands of years. In turn this reflects a common human characteristic to allow ourselves to set expectations that defy existing norms.
Surely no amount of human complexity will keep science and analysis mute for long…