Deep Dive’s Porpoise
The aim of the Deep Dive series is to get thoughts moving on an unexpected, different-than-usual track. It’s aim is not-so-much to get-to-a-point, but more-so to provide philosophies to marinate on instead. To nod and-or disagree. To explore.
Question.
What is “education”?
Stories to help “mind-thing” dive-into “question-thing”:
Scripture and myth exalt the important life-force that is education: Leaving the garden. Being given the tool of fire. Knowing “good” and “evil.” The ability to think independently. A necessity for survival. A disobedience. Both a gift and something stolen. Something worth making sacrifices for.1
God’s Trade: Son for Tree.
In Christianity, God is all-knowing. God is powerful. He created heaven. He created earth. He created Hell.
John Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost, which narrates Lucifer, Adam, and Eve’s falls from grace, describes Hell as a “place Eternal Justice had prepared/ for those rebellious” (1. 70-71). This line acknowledges that God created Hell because he knew Lucifer was going to rebel against him. God had “prepared” accordingly. After his rebellion, Lucifer wanted to hurt God so he decided to go into the Garden of Eden and target Adam and Eve– this story is told in Genesis 3: Adam and Eve were tricked by Lucifer, existing as a serpent, to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which God had told them to avoid. After eating from the Tree, Adam and Eve saw the world through a knew lens. They were acting against God. Disobeying. They now knew of “good” and “evil.” They were know thinking freely. They saw they were naked. They were embarrassed. They were now educated.
Omniscient, God knew all this would happen. God knew the serpent would twist his flimsy warning and wield it against Adam and Eve. But God did nothing to better prevent Adam and Eve from eating from the Tree. God intended for Lucifer, Adam, and Eve to rebel. A divine plan of sinning-consuming-learning. God wanted Adam and Eve to lose purity. To mature. To no longer be ignorant of “good” and “evil.” To become educated.
The cost of this education: God had to damn Lucifer to Hell (a sacrifice of his best angel–his son– for Original Sin) and banish Adam and Eve from the paradise ofEden– from their blissful state of ignorance.
Prometheus’ Sacrifice: Liver for Fire.
The myth of Prometheus tells of a similar sacrifice made for mankind’s education.
Prometheus molded mankind out of clay. He gave them life but that alone was not enough to make them happy. They were cold and hungry. Suffering. Prometheus could not bare to watch it. Even though Zeus forbade it, Prometheus stole fire and gifted it to mankind to alleviate their suffering. Symbolically, this gift of fire equates to Prometheus bestowing enlightenment upon mankind.
This education came at a cost. Prometheus was punished for disobeying Zeus and enlightening mankind. He was chained to a rock and forced to endure a hawk eat his liver (leaving just enough so it could regrow afterwards). Every evening. For thirty thousand years.
Prometheus name means “forethought” in Greek. Meaning, Prometheus knew everything that would happen before it happened. Prometheus knew he would be punished for disobeying Zeus and enlightening mankind. But he still chose to do so. Prometheus willingly sacrificed his body and thirty-thousand years so mankind would not have to suffer ignorance. So mankind could become enlightened. Educated.
But what is this “thing” God and Prometheus sacrificed so much for?
What is “education”?
What I Think.
Education is what guides the formation of a person. It allows people to develop discretion– the ability to think independently. Independent-thinking is how one develops beliefs, decides who to be, and lives freely.
Succinctly, independent-thinking is the ability to analyze “good” and “evil” in a world where the concepts are alloyed metals– never in pure form. (Think of capitalism. Self-defense. Abortion. “Good” and “evil” are bonded.) This convoluted relationship makes “good” and “evil” definitions malleable. Flexible. Something that is sometimes “good” can other times be “evil.” (Plankton from Spongebob. Thomas Ripley. Shakespeare’s Richard III. Jo March. Greta Thunberg. Ruth Bader Ginsburg. All are ambitious, passionate, and decisive characters. These traits are sometimes “evil” and other times “good.”)
The coexistence and relativity of “good” v.s. “evil” is what makes discretion an invaluable tool. Without discretion, a person would have no way of knowing what is “good” and what is “evil.”
Knowing “evil” is the cost of education. It hurts to try to understand “evil” things. It zaps innocence to learn about murder and rape and war and politics. It may feel like Hell. Being kicked out of Eden. A punishment.
But knowing “evil” is necessary and a gift. Without an understanding of “evil” a person is weak. Ignorant in a garden. Cold and starving. Vulnerable to the manipulation of serpents who have ulterior motives. With knowledge of “evil,” one has a light by which to see “good.” To think-freely on matters where “good” and “evil” may be muddled. An ability to understand the depth-and-breadth-and-complexity of love-and-sacrifice-and-creativity.
Thus, I think an education is a means to protection and freedom. It comes at a cost of suffering the loss of ignorance… but it is worth the sacrifice.
But what do you think…
What is education to you? What is education to those around you?
Think about it. Ask others what they think too.
1This importance is also preserved in forms other than scripture or myth. Frederick Douglass’ Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave and Tara Westover’s Educated are two autobiographies depicting education as a transformative process that allows for opportunities in power and freedom.
Dive Deeper: Censorship
Censorship is a means of manipulation. Of making people weak through depriving access to information. It is well depicted and examined in the following:
Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and George Orwell’s 1984
Fictional examinations of censorship’s freedom-leeching and repressive nature.
Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis
An autobiography detailing how the fundamentalist regime censored education during the Iranian Revolution as a means of indoctrination.
John Milton’s Areopagitica
A speech admonishing “censoring to protect” as misconstrued and dangerous to the development of deciphering “good” from “evil.”
Censorship can be observed in American public schools today:
Politically-fueled protests are motivating the censorship of literature and depriving kids of access to information.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/23/books/book-ban-2022.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/12/books/book-bans-libraries.html
Citations
Milton, John.Paradise Lost .[New York, J. W.Lovell company, 1884] Pdf.
eat my words. 
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