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I took the feeling of knowing Alex was everywhere for granted, and he’d mellowed in my mind like an old dream, sometimes mellifluous, sometimes enigmatic, always present but warbled and fuzzy. But here, standing beneath the wide-columned berth, the air around me had the vague, sweet spice of mystery, of him. I inhaled slowly, purposely, deeply, the ache of needing him seeping like a dark frost through me. I’d forgotten the ache, so much like the wisps of a snuffed out flame, its invisible pungence hovering, reminding me that my blood was like ice though my fingers lost their sense of touch, reminding me of the trembling cold beneath my skin when I’d forgotten I had skin and I was too numb to realize I was shivering in the dark–a shapeless, frozen being. And all of a sudden it burst upon me, an open flame rendering my skin, my veins, its heat piercing my fingers and thighs. It was all I could manage to purpose myself to breathe, my fingers to feel, my skin to find its shape. The dark was gone. He was standing before me, his face cocked in a half-grin, his eyes crinkling in exhilaration. But I was trembling, resolved but cocooned in my sensibilities like a pillar of salt, speechless, unable to move. ↗
We are training not isolated men but a living group of men, - nay, a group within a group. And the final product of our training must be neither a psychologist nor a brickmason, but a man. And to make men, we must have ideals, broad, pure, and inspiring ends of living, - not sordid money-getting, not apples of gold. The worker must work for the lory of his handiwork, not simply for pay; the thinker must think for truth, not for fame. And all this is gained only by human strife and longing; by ceaseless training and education; by founding Right on righteousness and Truth on the unhampered search for Truth...and weaving thus a system, not a distortion, and bringing a birth, not an abortion. ↗
Like it or not, philosophy or intellectual activity in ancient China was distinguished from manual labor, and thus philosophical texts were not only political in nature (because they normally addressed the issue of good government and social order) but also “esoteric.” They were not meant to contribute to general education, but to be studied only by a small fraction of the population, i.e., by those who had access to learning and power. If we want to understand the Laozi historically, we have to accept this context and thus also the fact that, as a philosophical treatise, it did not attempt to be generally accessible. It was originally a text for the few—and it clearly shows. ↗
The most erroneous assumption is to the effect that the aim of public education is to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence, and so make them fit to discharge the duties of citizenship in an enlightened and independent manner. Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else. ↗
