Greetings Everyone,

Welcome to the blog I use to update parents on what we are studying in class. These posts are not meant to directly repeat everything we said in class. Rather, I hope these posts will give parents and students a good idea of the general themes we discussed during the week, and a means of continuing the conversation at home if you wish.

This year we focus on what happened to the western world between roughly 1500-1800 AD. At the start of this period, western civilization still operates on a pre-modern mindset, though definite cracks are present in the civilization that has lasted roughly since the time of Charlemagne. By the time we finish the year, everything looks much more familiar to us in terms of politics, a scientific worldview, and the role of the individual in society. Over the course of our year together, I will ask the students to begin to evaluate for themselves what they think of these changes.

How we study the past depends in part on how we approach the past. Some fall immediately into one of two camps.

• What is old is worse than what is new. For these people, change is a positive force in civilization.
• What is old is better than what is new. For these people, change almost always makes things worse.

Their exists a third option, however, which is the approach that I take, and that I want the students to adopt, which is,

• What is old is not necessarily better or worse than what is new. Change brings things that likely have aspects that make things better and worse simultaneously. So,
• When we say “pre-modern” we should not immediately think that is better or worse than something “modern.” We have to step back a bit and try to evaluate the changes we see with care.

Does this mean that everything is relative, that nothing can be called better or worse than anything else? I don’t believe this. But cultivating this approach does mean that we cannot make snap judgments about the past. Before choosing which path we think is better, we have to pause and try to understand each path first.

So, before embarking on our study of the modern world, which has its origins around the year 1500, we need to understand and review the world that it replaced, and that was our main task for the week.

We began by looking at a few key differences about the modern and pre-modern world, with one of them being what each civilization “receives” vs. what we create or choose on our own. What we receive is what we essentially take into our identity without a thought. For example, we receive a world in which the sky is blue. It’s not up for discussion, it “just is.” In contrast we believe that we can and should choose our political leadership every few years. Here are some things that medieval world believed one “received”

• Their faith–one grew up in the faith and one did not interact with other religious denominations or choices
• Your political leaders–the king was the oldest son of the last king. Certain families were dukes or lords, and their sons would inherit their position
• Your station in life . . . some were nobles, some merchants, some farmers, etc. and that’s the way it was.
• Your family crest, colors, and traditions

Many moderns would be very uncomfortable living this way. We believe that personal choice, and the freedom to choose one’s path, is a bedrock aspect of our humanity. It is hard to conceive of life lived in any other way. By contrast, medieval people would have thought that we elevate choice to the position of an idol. One can imagine them saying, “Look at what has happened to you now that everything is up for grabs. You believe you can change churches, your political leaders, and now, some people believe that receiving their biological sex is akin to tyranny? Addiction to choice has driven your society crazy.”

Some in the modern world would fire back that the lack of choice made medieval society stale. So many people may have been stuck in jobs or roles that they had no talent for. Expanding choice means expanding human development and improving society overall. More choice gives you societies with more prosperity, longer life spans, and greater human flourishing.

There are tradeoffs with both the expansion and restriction of choice. More opportunities create different ways to succeed, and different ways to fail. Next week I will ask the students to make a hypothetical choice.

• You will be guaranteed a basic middle class life. You have a steady job, two cars, and a family. But just like you cannot change out your family, you cannot change out your job. You will have to stay at the job for your whole career. You will be able to vacation once a year to a beach somewhere. You will live in the same place for the entirety of your life, but people will know you and you will have personal connections to those around you.

Or

• You have no guarantees about jobs, family, or where you live. You will have the freedom to do whatever you like, to take what job you like, and to live where you like. You can change these things as often as you like. You could become fabulously wealthy. But, you could also fail and become poor. Also, you might make friends, but you have no built in community to support you. You will have to find that on your own.

Which would you choose, and why? Hopefully you can see that neither option is necessarily right or wrong. Both have good and bad things about them. More fundamentally, both options have different ideas about how a life is best lived. The first option, representing the pre-modern world, emphasizes that knowing and nestling into’s one place is how we best live out our lives. The second option, representing the modern world, tells us to blaze a trail, make our mark, or create our path. Certainly most every movie made for children emphasizes this crucial theme of the modern world.

How the change from the pre-modern to the modern world will be the main focus of our year together.

Thanks so much, and have a great weekend,

Dave