"Advanced" Education

Karen will be gone for a bit here at the beginning of June. Karen is going to Lafayette, IA for a week of classes at Upper Iowa. The class was going to be Ethics but not enough people signed up so she is taking Critical Thinking. I told her if she comes home spewing all this crap about tolerance, personal relevance, truth is relative, humanism and post-modernist thinking that she will need to go through a few sessions of de-brainwashing before being allowed back in the house.

Lately I have run across too many people who adapt to this style of thinking in college and particularly advanced degrees. I’m beginning to think that advanced degrees are a recipe for disaster. Why do all the people I know who get them become all humanistic and self-centered? I’ve now seen three marriages ruined by this kind of thinking.”I’ve got my degree, so now it’s all about me!! See ya later honey!!" It just scares me how pervasive it is and it has been sad to see people I thought could not be "turned to the dark side" become self-centered humanistic fools.

Then there is the issue of the egos of those people who get advanced degrees. It becomes rare to find a humble Phd out there. There is a lot of self love and power trips going on. I remember once at a family gathering an article written by an ex relative who had obtained an advanced degree got passed around. She has a hearing disability and was working for a hard of hearing advocacy group at the time. The article was about the ”Elephant in the Room”. So many of my relatives were touched and drippy by this relative's drippy story about her struggle with her hearing loss always being the “elephant in the room”. I’m sorry but my wife and I just thought, “What are you talking about?? You weren’t an elephant in the room…the problem was you were a mesquito in the room.” I can’t remember the last time I remembered she was deaf. It was sad to think that she thought the problem was nobody wanted to talk about her deafness or acknowledge it because we were afraid, or it was taboo when really it was more about nobody realized she was deaf, didn't care, or just didn’t think it was any kind of big deal.

This humanist assumption that it would naturally be all about me so if people aren’t talking to me about it they must be avoiding the issue is a funny one. Of course that’s pretty depressing I suppose. Who wants to admit that the reason no one acknowledges their particular concerns is because they are simply ignorant of it, indifferent, or their concerns simply elicit no concern by others. It would make one feel small and unimportant. This is not cool for a humanist. I find this situation a lot with my daughter. She has some sort of self-centered melt-down and I find myself struggling to be empathetic because my reaction for the most part is, “I understand your upset however you’re being very self-absorbed so therefore it seems to be your own problem. I’m sure you’ll understand as I go in the other room and not care about this selfish episode.” You’d be surprised at how this is not helpful for her and does not score me Father of the Year awards. However it is a right of passage for most teens so it's nothing to get worked up about.

I guess this means that my hypothesis is that as those who get advanced degrees become more self-centered they become more like teenagers. Ahh the wisdom of this world….so much to take your focus off of Christ and put it on ourselves.