The metaphor “the blind leading the blind” comes from ancient wisdom and is an apt metaphor for Western politics and higher education today. Not that there aren’t very smart and shrewd politicians or many new discoveries in the sciences. But, when it comes to knowledge of where we want to go and how to get there, our culture is full of statements and policies that reflect the ancient metaphor taught in the Bible, the Upanishads, and Roman Classics that complain of the blind leading the blind. Sextus Empiricus (160-210 a.d.) wrote in Outlines of Scepticism: “Nor does the non-expert teach the non-expert—any more than the blind can lead the blind.”
This saying is just one example of pertinent ancient wisdom discarded in the twentieth century by a rejection of conventional wisdom that followed the rise in faith in modern science and the nation state. This modern faith in science and the state became a basis for the rejection of religion as superstition and an opiate, and the idea that the principles informing the U.S. Constitution could be rejected on the basis that it was “the philosophy of dead white men,” and in this age of pluralism, everyone’s cultural views were as valid as everyone else’s. Continue reading →