Getting a little philosophical

Last week I found myself in a far-ranging, fascinating, and provocative discussion with a few friends. The conversation, allegedly, was about the social contract and it's well-being after a couple hundred years of democracy, but we talked about much, much more than that.

One of the themes that we kept returning to, in part because none of us could find a way to respond to it, was, "what is an ideal society?" And one of my friends made the bold assertion that life would have been better as a peasant in 12th century France than as a 21st century urban American, because, although life would be shorter and harsher, one had a clearer sense of one's role in the community, stronger ties to that community, a sustained relationship with one's family, and possibly even more leisure time.

Agree or disagree, that's a real argument, and there are plenty of counterarguments to be made; I know because I immediately began thinking about what we are trying to do through Cornerstone Friends. While southern Sudan isn't quite feudal Europe, a lot of our programs address conditions that are at least similar in appearance - take for instance the general lack of education available to the typical Sudanese child and the staggering rate of illiteracy among the adult population; it's not dissimilar to the lack of education among most of European society prior to the Enlightenment (if not later). We are trying to improve both the quality and the amount of education that Sudanese children receive in Sudanese schools, and we are trying to reach as many of those children as possible.

But what end does education serve?

As my friend pointed out, education brings with it the burden of self-awareness and an often unsatisfying struggle to understand one's role in the world and maintain one's connection with others. While education liberates a person to think and make choices rather than be constrained by the limits of tradition, tradition is not automatically a negative (nor, for that matter, is choice automatically a positive).

We will be working in a society that is overtly traditional. Is it our role to educate people to defy tradition or to better understand it?

Yes.

We want to improve education because we believe that it is both a joy and a burden, and that as people bear that burden education produces discourse. Discourse, however, is not the end; it is the means to the end of constructing a society.

I'm not sure there is a single ideal society, but I do believe there are principles that guide its construction, and one of those principles is that it should arise from the values of those it governs. How to do that is a question of even greater complexity, and it's the kind of question that can only be answered by people who have the skills and abilities to look at a problem from every imaginable perspective and identify the various strengths and weaknesses of each.

Those skills are not innate, they are learned, and someone always learns them, but for a society in transition (such as southern Sudan) a crucial question is whether those skills are in the hands of few or many. I personally believe that for all the shortcomings of tyranny of the majority, it is preferable to absolute authority, because it encourages people to live not only for themselves but for their society as a whole and to be active within that society. People who see problems can acquire the skills, through education, to address those problems. People who see injustice, cruelty, and oppression can oppose it and propose a different way. People can live for more than just survival, can be part of something larger than a family, can imagine and hope and dream.

And that's the kind of society I want to live in.