Two and a half centuries after Dr. Johnson s celebrated bon mot concerning the abuse of patriotism, family values are indeed the last refuge of a scoundrel. When educational institutions create an academic culture that values property rights over human rights, and shamelessly markets learning as a means of accumulating wealth, it is time for those who care about the future of humanity to give serious thought to how genuine education may be preserved and renewed. We must first observe that although the many starve for want of the resources so mindlessly squandered by their betters, the favored few are really not that much better off either. Having grown up in the Third World, I have never found anything romantic about poverty, being all too aware of the spiritually corrosive effects of powerlessness and hunger. It thus becomes necessary to draw a crucial distinction between pleasure and happiness.
Pleasure is a way of using the body to evade the obligations that go with having a soul.
By contrast, happiness consists in knowing and liking oneself. It should be clear to any observer of popular culture that neither material accumulation nor sensual indulgence can generate genuine happiness. Unlike the pleasure seeker, who ceaselessly seeks to devise new and increasingly perverse ways of escaping himself, the virtuous person can look at his soul and know that he is at peace with himself. While incarnate happiness often presupposes a certain amount of material property, an educated person s wealth is measured by moderation rather than by excess. Accordingly, we must look towards a situation where material sufficiency and the humanistic values of trust and community are not mutually exclusive commodities.