This writer was once a consultant for organizations struggling for direction relative to mission.  One afternoon I was the only male sitting with a group of much younger professional women after a fruitful afternoon of organizational work.  In the post work relaxed atmosphere one the women remarked she was a graduate of a well known liberal arts college where sadly she said it was a waste spending the years studying the thoughts of a lot of ‘very old dead white men’.  I checked myself to see if this old white man had just magically disappeared or simply dissolved into absence, but with the cheerful laughs around the table I realized I had earned some kind of demographic exemption which included not noticing. There was a generational, gender sourced anger in that small, bitter joke and one that western civilization has earned with interest accruing. 

It seems the sacred trust of every new generation is to break the spent patterns of the past generation. The young woman’s rage at the patterns of previous generations seemed natural and needed, but I had to differ with the target of her rage. How can any of us really break the deep patterns that no longer serve without knowing how those patterns are constructed. The disciplines of history and liberal arts teach us about patterns in our own times that serve or don’t serve. Subtract history and the liberal arts from our educations and we are doomed as cultures to running in ever tightening smaller circles of senseless violence. That I am sorry to say is the unrelenting meta-pattern of humanity. In response and guidance to this Project of The Good Decision my brilliant mentor pointed to such influences as phronesis, Chaucer, and Aristotle. From those references I am learning essential patterns that were pressing and relevant relevant in an age before Christianity and are still hounding us today. We live, unfortunately for us and our children, in an age where war has been declared by our current governance not only on history, but intelligence, ethics, virtue and character. Socrates did not drink poison because he was a spurned lover, or unhappy about life. He drank and was executed for questioning corrupted patterns and teaching youth to do the same.

Good is accepting with due humility that this country has an imperfect history composed of some very dark tones highlighted by brilliant aspirational values. We are working dark times right now but good is recognizing that to deny history is to deny America.  The young woman’s bitterness was not misplaced but simply misdirected. As a culture we have patterns to break and it is only in the study of history and the liberal arts that we can transform the dark patterns. By now, she is almost certainly a participant in her own imperfect history as was the old white man sitting invisibly across from her those years past.