Everybody knows the war is over / Everybody knows the good guys lost / Everybody knows the fight was fixed / The poor stay poor, the rich get rich / Everybody knows the boat is leaking / Everybody knows the captain lied / Everybody’s got this broken feeling / Like their father or their dog just died … / And everybody knows the Plague is coming / Everybody knows it’s moving fast … / That’s how it goes / Everybody knows. (Leonard Cohen, “Everybody Knows”)
Back in 2000, history professor Morris Berman published a book titled, The Twilight of American Culture, which turned out to be dead on. It starts with a couple of pointed quotes:
“No people can be both ignorant and free.” (Thomas Jefferson)
“When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.” (Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death)
America has entered the Dark Age that Berman predicted. We hoped 2016 was an aberration. Surely we learned our lesson. We did not — 2024 was confirmation.
“As the 21st century dawns,” Berman wrote [a quarter-century ago], “American culture is, quite simply, in a mess. … Every civilization has its twilight period, said Spengler, during which it hardens into a classical phase, preserving the form of its central Idea [in this case democracy, everyone created equal], but losing the content, the essential spirit. … This crisis is the logical culmination of a certain historical process that began in Europe at the end of the Middle Ages, expanded during the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, and finally climaxed in our own time.”
Unlike Leonard Cohen’s much darker song, Berman’s book finds hope in the monastic model of the Middle Ages: small enclaves of light surviving in a sea of darkness, wherein monks copied the great works of Greco-Roman culture, which eventually fueled a new dawn for Western Civilization. The monks (yes, literally) saved civilization.
For our Dark Age, Berman looks to a secular version of this: enclaves that preserve our ideals against the encroaching darkness. He quotes English novelist E.M. Forster, who, in the deepening gloom before WWII, wrote, “I believe in aristocracy. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos.”
In his “monastic option,” Berman includes groups, small institutions, and communities, whose contributions are invaluable, even when their idealism seems quixotic. And to those who would brand the new monasticism “elitist,” Berman answers that there are two kinds — elitism for the few and elitism for all. His definition of democracy is “elitism for everybody,” alluding to the University of Chicago’s Robert Maynard Hutchins, founder of the Great Books program, who said, “The best education for the best is the best education for all.”
Oak Park and River Forest should be one of those enclaves of light. Yet many here are frustrated and confused about what to do. We feel helpless watching from afar as elitist oligarchs run amuck (or amusk), dismantling the government, not because the government doesn’t work, but precisely because government does work, and it does not advantage “elitism for the few.” Truly democratic government aims to achieve “elitism for all,” and the Musks and Trumps of the world cannot abide that.
At this point, there is not much we can do on the national level to counter their cruelty and chaos (though boycotting Tesla and Amazon is a nice start). Things can, however, be enacted on the local level.
In fact, we’re already doing something important. It’s called “the freshman curriculum” at OPRF High School, an idealistic yet pragmatic attempt to take a positive step toward educational excellence — for all, not just the few. It is an effort to level the playing field while keeping academic standards high, a creative experiment to get more students of color involved in honors and AP level classes as they move forward through high school.
But if you’ve been reading the Viewpoints section lately, you know there is a vocal movement trying to discredit this program. These critics proclaimed it a “failure” right out of the gate (exposing their questionable motives). They have no interest in improving this experiment. They want to trash it and return to the former white-dominant “elitism for the few.”
If you’re looking for a way to be a light in the current darkness, supporting the freshman curriculum is an excellent place to start.
OPRF’s motto is the Greek “Ta Garista,” which translates as “The best.” It should be translated, “All that is best for all.” Do your best by all the rest. Shouldn’t that be our motto too?
Don’t just be a member of the audience. Be the light. Step up. At the very least, vote.