On the Final
Sep 27, 2009 Faith and Works, Heart and spirit, Narcissus Rex
I first posted this two years ago. But it’s so good I’m posting it again (joke will become readily apparent).
I have been pondering this link from Instapundit for a couple of days now. It is about, in 
one sense, a cutesie trend on American campuses now called a “last lecture”:
Schools such as Stanford and the University of Alabama have mounted “Last Lecture Series,” in which top professors are asked to think deeply about what matters to them and to give hypothetical final talks. For the audience, the question to be mulled is this: What wisdom would we impart to the world if we knew it was our last chance?
Now the lecture in question in the article really was the last chance, for all practical purposes, for the professor involved, who is dying. I was, however, rather put off by this idea. The man was facing his end, I realized; how churlish could I be about such a topic?
On the eve of Yom Kippur, however — when among Jews the congregation as a whole admits to a state of sinfulness generically, but as individuals reserves the most intimate of confession for the private communication between Man and his Creator — I’ve had the chance to contemplate the matter some more. Regrettably for those among us who circulate heart-warming emails and who yet care about my opinion (uh, hi, Mom), I want to go with my initial instinct, at least as to the general trend; as to the case in the article, perhaps that requires more thought.
The “last lecture” trend is truly the emblem of ours, history’s most narcisstic era. It is true that in ancient times, the few close students of a great master would gather around his deathbed, seeking the last traces of wisdom and, perhaps, blessing. But I am not aware of an historic practice of such a “master” (a concept that is dubious enough in the context of the modern academy) assembling hundreds of his (paying) students for a public tribute to himself, his legacy and his supposed accumulation of wisdom at the end of his days.
These public “me-athons” are one thing, and are questionable enough as it is; but the idea of engaging in such self-indulgence when that end is, in fact nowhere near at all only brings to mind the interminable “retirement tours” of the never-say-never cash-driven performers of today, from Roger Clemons to Michael Jordan to the Who, who refuse to get off stage as long as the ka-ching of the cash register refuses to die. (Which it never does, for another symptom of the Me Generation is obsession with reliving its mythically perfect childhood, a phenomenon that goes beyond nostalgia to virtually infinite replication of Then.) How often does one get to make one of these “good bye” lectures? What if he changes his mind about the lessons of life? I’m reminded of Steve Martin, offering to leave his audience with the one great piece of wisdom he has learned in life, but not remembering whether it began with “always” or “never.”
And far be it from me to suggest that the popularity of these lectures has something to do with the fact that, like the famous television show, they are about nothing. By all indications even these ego-fests, which presume broad humane “wisdom” must emanate from a person by virtue of his expertise in bacteriology, French Medieval literature or basket-weaving, are not part of the curriculum. No, students, this will not “be on the final.”
But surely my withering gaze does not extend to the really dying professor, for whom Final has a very different meaning? Well, far be it from me, too, to deny a man whose mortality is facing him a small pleasure of the mind and a large one of the ego. It warmed his heart to feel loved by the students who came to hear him, and, like an episode of Oprah, the audience surely felt they had been part of creating a meaningfully transcendant emotional experience for a worthy person.
But still I believe the phenomenon would be unthinkable except in an age in which limits on self-revelation are gauche, private struggles are public fodder and — lacking spiritual guidance, and taught in these very academies that there are no absolute truths, and being essentially illiterate on the topics that matter most in men’s struggles for meaning in this world — even those engaged in the pursuit of supposedly higher education must take doses of Profundity from whatever fount it seems to spout. What dies here is, above all, dignity, and all the more so when imminent death is not an imagined intellectual game, but real.
So the Last Lecture will live on, whether or not the lecturers do. That is our fallen state.
I would think that people so obsessed with their own observations would be satisfied to just get a blog.
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