Populists don’t understand ethics

THE populist mental culture of today, which we can all recognise around us, represents a huge danger to civilisation, because populist thought is limited only to its own scope of understanding.

So this idea that the education of a nation should now be entrusted to a lot of wealthy celebrities who will control companies deciding what and how children will be taught, is the direct opposite to how education has been valued for thousands of years.

Education has to be a great deal more than repeating the ideas of the last generation, just to produce mental clones of the parents. But populists cannot see any fault in that, so that is their belief of what education should be, because they have never known there is another essential type of education, far beyond their own, of subjects like philosophy, ethics and metaphysics.

Civilisation needs a just and efficient economic system, if it can ever get one, but it stands in need more of elevated intellects.

Populist Brexiteers urging the rest of us to hope for unlikely trade deals, are incapable to perceive matters beyond that, such as ethical principles of international cooperation. To them, chained to their practical understanding of their “facts”, that is idealistic nonsense, so they dismiss it completely. Those who cannot comprehend ethical principles, cannot be expected to be guided by them.

Some part of this is due to Tory ideas that “vocational learning” from apprenticeships is every bit as valuable as a degree in philosophy. This never was true and cannot become true from silly repetition. Vocational training is very valuable for our country, but the progress of humankind depends on much higher levels of thought than that, and only a full education keeps it alive. Neville Westerman Brynna