Western Mythology, Part One: Education as Salvation

"The Greek Myth:": From the time of Plato, or one of his poorer students, we have the idea that there is a kind of "education" which draws out the good in us, making all our intentions pure and all our decisions wise. It would seem that Hugh Hefner used that one to put pornography into mainstream society, by loading Playboy with articles written on a post-graduate level, and the "What sort of man reads /Playboy?/" internal advertising. (One might ask, after all, weren't there all kinds of nude representations in the ancient Greek sculptures? Well, actually, there were, and theywere generally set up along the roads leading to the temples where the prostitutes plied their trade. The noble Greeks had "solved" their problem of sexual misbehavior by having their religion endorse it! No, if this were the case, then we would surely see real virtue today, in a society which can boast of the highest education levels in history; but in fact the difference is only that the higher-educated, like the Greeks, are more skilled at weaving stories around their misdeeds, and using their networks of highly-placed old classmates and Greek society chums to make it all better. Example: If somebody steals a wallet on the street, there's an unblinking system of justice to make sure there's a prison cell waiting. If a judge or a lawyer perverts justice, costing someone far more than that wallet would have yielded, how often does that make the daily paper, or reach the courts to be made right? Education doesn't improve a person, but it does provide new skills and methods.

Is education a bad thing? Not necessarily, but can we really believe that stuffing the head can cure the heart?