VOLUME VI, CHAPTER 2
A New Order for Culture
The fire is out. Now we build.
The last chapter pulled you out of the flames and got you back on your feet. This chapter puts something into your hands. It is about the thing that quietly decides what kind of world the next generation grows up into. Most people call it education. Underneath, it is something older and plainer than that.
Culture is what gets handed down. It is a real person, one with something good in them, passing what they have lived and what they have gathered into the person coming up behind them, one generation soaking into the next. And this, of all things, is the one job a machine cannot take, because a machine has never lived a life, and it has no body to stand in front of a child and be seen.
Raising a person stands on two legs. The first is character, and it is the only medicine there is for the sickness running through this whole world, the sickness of people tormenting people. The second is science, which gives character a clear pair of eyes, so that what gets handed down is true and not blind. And the place where all of this happens, the school, has a first job that almost no one will say out loud. To hold people safely. To raise them into people of character. And then, from among them, to find the ones who can truly be trusted to get things done.
Get those two legs standing, and even the touchiest thing in the world, the one that has set off wars for thousands of years, religion, can be settled with a single light move.
That is this chapter. Here is the order we walk it in.
Contents of This Chapter
One. If You Can Read This Page, You Are One of the People Who Should Be Running Education
Two. Your Position Is One AI Cannot Take
Three. Culture Is What Gets Handed Down, and That Is as It Should Be
Four. The Root of Torment, and Benevolence, Righteousness, Good Faith, and Filial Love
Five. Integrity and Courage, and Tormenting No One
Six. The School Is a Prison: Hold People Safely, Then Find the Ones Who Can Get Things Done
Seven. The Root Sickness: The People Who Designed the System Mistook Its First Job
Eight. The Yardstick of the Standardized Test: It Helps the Rich and Hurts the Poor
Nine. Stage, Radio, and Television: If It Is Fake, Say So Plainly
Ten. Standing Firm, Keeping AI Out of the Door Where People Are Raised, and Why That Is How You Save AI
Eleven. Culture Must Not Be Handed Down Blindly: The Other Leg of Raising People Is Science
Twelve. One Move for Religion, and Holding a License, Renewing the Card
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.