What then shall we choose?

I had an enlightening experience with Allan Bloom and his book "The Closing of the American Mind" in the coffee shop this morning. Read this and try not to cringe in the face of truth:

Natural science asserts that it is metaphysically neutral, and hence has no need for philosophy, and that imagination is not a faculty that in any way intuits the real - hence art has nothing to do with truth. The kinds of questions children ask: Is there a God? Is there freedom? Is there punishment for evil deeds? Is there certain knowledge? What is a good society? were once also the questions addressed by science and philosophy. But now the grownups are too busy at work, and the children are left in a day-care center called the humanities, in which the discussions have no echo in the adult world. Moreover, students whose nature draws them to such questions and to the books that appear to investigate them are very quickly rebuffed by the fact that their humanities teachers do not want or are unable to use the books to respond to their needs.

The enlightenment springs from my newly found intelligible support for my elderly intuitional desire to leave the Academy. I will soon patch it altogether in some literary composition.

For now, I will pose this question. The question ranks among the most important I've ever struggled answering. If the moral fabric of this nation is in mature degradation due to, in large part, the collapsing function and execution of higher education and classical liberal studies in today's universities, what then shall I choose? Hope and encouragement, I've recently found, comes from Bloom's genius matter-of-fact:

After a reading of the Symposium a serious student came with deep malancholy and said it was impossible to imagine that magic Athenian atmosphere reproduced, in which friendly men, educated, lively, on a footing of equality, civilized but natural, came together and told wonderful stories about the meaning of their longing. But such experiences are always accessible. Actually, this playful discussion took place in the midst of a terrible war that Athens was destined to lose, and Aristophanes and Socrates at least could foresee that this meant the decline of Greek civilization. But they were not given to culture despair, and in these terrible political circumstances, their abandon to the joy of nature proved the viability of what is best in man, independent of accidents, of circumstance.

Thank you, Mr. Bloom.

A Life of no Sound

A life of no sound sounds appealing to me.
Empty words cease screaming,
annoying drips cease dripping,
and it stops the buzzing of the bee.

The Great Silence comes all at once...
She and he will question me,
I'll don a look and offer glee
And they'll think me crazier than I was

Their caged minds I will unlock.
Peace I'll give to ignorance
and War I'll give to compliments
and pray they'll learn the better of them both.