Episode 12: Cultural Decay
For the Good of the Public | The Morning FivePlay episode
Show notes
Wear is the Love, Episode #12
This week, we’re back to chatting about some of our Top 5 articles, specifically George Packer’s piece in The Atlantic on the school culture wars and Vinson Cunningham’s interview of Dr. Cornel West in the New Yorker. We’re still praying for Ukraine and hope you’ll tune into episodes 10 and 11 if you’re interested.
Also, don’t miss Michael’s posts from this last week, including his thoughts on cooking with love on a tight schedule, and his essay on the appropriate use of political power.
Episode notes:
Our Shared Past in the Mediterranean Curriculum (the project Melissa worked on a few years ago)
The Top 5 articles for your week:
“The Grown Ups Are Losing It” (The Atlantic)
Because as we discuss on the podcast, George Packer asks “what is school for?” amidst the debates about what we’re teaching children in public schools.
“Cornel West Sees Spiritual Decay in the Culture” (New Yorker)
Because Dr. West is incisive here and throughout this great interview: “The secular has taken tremendous wounds and bruises in the last thirty years, because commodification is almost taking it over—and so, when you think of the secular, you don’t think right away of scientific authority, scientific breakthroughs. When you think of the secular these days, you think of careerism, opportunism, hedonism, egoism, individualism—and the ways in which science seems to be driven by corporate greed, seems to be moving toward the explosion of the planet or the collapse of the environment. So that the secular has a very different resonance now than it did in ’77. It’s almost as if everybody recognizes the spiritual decay and the moral decrepitude of the culture.”
“Awaiting a New Prophetic Dispensation” (Hedgehog Review)
Because “Perhaps we can tuck our disagreements about fundamental things away into our private lives, and let the public sphere be a place for adjudicating public things.”
“The man who paid for America’s fear” (San Francisco Chronicle)
Because in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, hundreds of Muslims were detained and jailed on charges of terrorism, and this essay shows the lingering impact that experience had on one such man.
“Here is How It Feels to Watch Russia Wage War in Ukraine” (NYT)
Because young people, i.e. those under 30 who know nothing but a democratic Ukraine, talked to the NYT about their experiences and attitudes towards the war.
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