One of the scariest things that the big institutions of society - Science, Religion, Politics, Academia - have done for centuries is what Joan Baez sharply criticizes in her song "Diamonds and Rust". 

(Here's the link.)

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MSwBM_CbyY

In that song, she is speaking about her relationship with Bob Dylan. It was one of the paradigmatic relationships of twentieth century culture. Baez of the pure and radiant voice, Dylan, the poet of the people. That was how we saw them. 

The relationship fell apart, Baez being left with a lot of hurt that came out in this song. 

But I am drawn to the song over and over again for a different reason. For me, this relationship, I have finally figured out, is closely analogous to my relationship with the knowledge, learning, or wisdom - choose whichever term you prefer - that is offered at the universities in most of the West.

Why would I say so? 

The lines in the song that trouble me most are the ones that say the following: 



Now you're telling me that you're not nostalgic,
Well, give me another word for it.
You were so good with words, 
And at keeping things vague. 

I could use some of that vagueness now, it all comes back too clearly, 
Yes, I loved you dearly, 
And if you're offering me diamonds and rust, 
I've already paid. 



The point for Baez was that she'd had it with the post-modernist talk that enabled Dylan over and over her to treat her as somehow second-class, as lesser in importance to his pursuit of an ever shifting definition of who he was and how his art was supposed to be evolving. She just needed to be loved, and when she felt that most acutely, mostly, he wasn't there. 

How does that scenario parallel my situation with the universities? 

I don't expect or need them to love me, but I despair over the way that the smartest of the smart, or at least, they're supposed to be, keep dodging the question of moral realism. They are masters of keeping things vague.  

In their academic castles, they are not able to give the masses of young people who march dutifully through their halls year after year, the thing they crave most deeply: an explanation of what right and wrong are, an answer to what the philosophers for thousands of years have been calling the question of this human experience, namely "What is a good life?" In fact, in every discipline, the doctoral candidates and their advisers insist that the question can't be answered. 

The natural scientists choose to ignore the question altogether, and if pressed to answer, will say that it is not a question that science can answer. Its terms are vague, not physically specifiable, and, thus, it is best ignored. There are more pressing questions that science can answer to be dealt with.  

The commerce graduates seek to take the best ideas of physical science and turn them into goods and services. After all, none of the rest of society's citizens could do any of what they do, if there were no wealth to pay for it. So? If one can create that wealth for the rest, then one deserves a healthy slice of it for oneself. 

The social scientists go a step further and insist that science won't ever answer that question. They say every society makes its own culture-answer to that question and every answer is true in its own context. In short, there are no universal moral truths, and there can never be any. 

The fine arts people seek only to pursue their individual ideas of art. The world can like it or not. The unwashed philistines in those other sectors of society are not worth worrying about. 

I sympathize with them all. I believe I understand them all. But my studies of history tell me with crystal clarity that we have to solve this puzzle, and answer this question. In the past, fragmentation of society has produced new sub-cultures and some become species with populations of their own and they drift into less and less understanding of each other and ...so war. Centuries of blood "watering our fields" as the French national anthem puts the matter. 

Yes, that was our answer for centuries. No, we can't keep using it. 

I reiterate: the question really is "Are we truly a rational species?" Can reason give us control over the processes of our own history? Can we stop the madness?

It seems very clear to me that reason must tackle the question of what right is or we're going to travel the same path again.  

In the shadow of the mushroom cloud, nevertheless, have a nice day.