Huh? That doesn’t make any sense to me. Do you mean that they shouldn’t be teaching principles in school? Or do you mean that they shouldn’t be teaching specifically the principle of detachment? Or do you mean principles, of any sort, delivered in any fashion, are fucking up the kids?
I guess it depends what they mean by detachment, but it seems to me that detachment from, say, one’s feelings, could at times be valuable. The emergency room doctor who witnesses two hundred deaths a year, and has to bear the bad news to the next of kin, cannot possibly persist in his job if his heart is always raw and exposed-likewise the beat cop on the downtown eastside, or the social worker in a street shelter. On a more personal level, detachment from one’s moment-to-moment desires is also important in the pursuit of some larger objective: saving money for a car or a house, rather than spending on all sorts of minor, ephemeral luxuries; or doing one’s homework even when would rather be doing anything-but. Admittedly, detachment taken to an extreme might mean mindless conformity, or apology for the status quo, but I don’t think it’s a synonym for it, and it’s certainly questionable whether detachment must cause apathy. Am I missing something here?
Comments 3
Reply
Reply
Reply
Leave a comment