Parent: After talking it over, my wife and I have decided that Oliver would be happier going to a different school next year.
Gibbs: What’s your point?
Parent: What’s my—I don’t understand your question.
Gibbs: What’s the point in making Oliver happier?
Parent: Isn’t happiness the point of happiness?
Gibbs: Only if happiness is self-justifying, in which case anything that makes you happy is necessarily good.
Parent: Don’t you think it’s important for a teenager to be happy?
Modern Americans don’t read many books, let alone many good books, which means they don’t have much respect for the task of writing—the toil of writing, the laboriousness of it.
Reporter: What are your company’s core values?
CEO: Community. Community is very important.
Reporter: Any others?
CEO: Yes. Openness is a big one. So are transparency, diversity, mindfulness, leadership, hope, service, charity, responsibility, stewardship, trust, partnership, strength, power, bottom-up-fullness, flexibility—
Reporter: Bottom-up-fullness?
The inexperienced man defends his ideas for their purity and generosity; the experienced man does not feel much need to defend his ideas.
The inexperienced man prides himself on his ideas; the experienced man is happy he has not yet starved.
The inexperienced man knows how men ought to be; the experienced man knows how men are.
The inexperienced man trusts human beings; the experienced man trusts human nature.
Nature is known through experience; if a man rejects nature, he will always remain inexperienced.
Having given hundreds of writing assignments over the last decade, I can safely say the best student work comes in response to narrow, rigid essay prompts with extensive, nit-picky submission guidelines. The worst sort of student work comes in response to slatternly requests like, “Create a response to The Divine Comedy. It could be an essay, a short story, or an art project. A good response will be personal and involve somewhere between 4 and 8 hours of work.”
By my count, I published my 500th article for CiRCE last week and I thought it a fitting occasion to look back on what I have learned since beginning this column. As a longer reflection on the first five hundred articles, I will be giving a lecture entitled “Intellectual Honesty in an Age of Flattery” through my website GibbsClassical.com on January 21. The lecture will largely concern Nikolai Gogol’s “The Portrait” and what the story means for anyone involved in intellectual work, from painters and poets to teachers and critics.
Student: Can we talk about what happened in the capital yesterday?
Gibbs: No.
Student: Mr. Gibbs, these are historic times. I think we would all benefit from discussing what is happening to our country.
Gibbs: How would we all benefit from it?
Student: We could think through everything on a deeper level.
Gibbs: And what tools would we use to think through what is happening?
Student: Scripture, common sense, and the tools you’ve given us through our study of classic literature.
The beginning of the year is an appropriate time to mull over the state of things, like the state of your own soul, your finances, and your desires, but also the state of the enterprises and institutions to which you have committed your life. During the first week of January, what I really want is a bleak, soul-crushing news story that will help me leverage renewed fervor for my church, my family, my school, and my career.
This year, I torched my Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts. It was the best decision I have made in years—although you’ve probably already met a few other people who have quit social media and they have said the same thing.
Prior to the Enlightenment, there was no such thing as “society.” There may have been a society of butchers in New York or a society of Methodists in London, but a society was always a particular group of people who shared a common identity. A society was a knowable and definite body of people.
