#140 - Stephen Blackwood - The Man Who Built A University Because The West Forgot What Education Is For

Stephen Blackwood is President and Founder of Ralston College in Savannah, Georgia. The Chancellor is Dr Iain McGilchrist. He is on the advisory board for the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC). 

This episode is supported by Aquinas Tuition, which provides bespoke academic tutoring for children who deserve to be stretched, not managed.

In this conversation, we think out loud about:

— What Blackwood saw inside the Western university system at its highest level that made him believe the existing institutions could not be saved
— How Boethius took the seeds of civilisation and cast them into the future from a prison cell — and why that matters now more than ever
— Why "the mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be lit" and why Ralston brings students to Samos, Greece, to light them on fire
— The deathbed test: did I live as I should have lived? And why no culture that fails to help its people answer that question deserves to endure
— Why the universities are the most upstream influence over the degradation of Western culture
— The difference between legal protection of free speech and a culture of genuine truth-seeking
— What Tocqueville saw in America that Britain is losing, which is to say self-governance as the precondition for democracy
— Why Roger Scruton was right that a culture is just the things we have loved, and transmitting it is just teaching others to love them too
— What growing up as the eldest of ten on a Canadian farm taught Blackwood about human nature, duty, and what a human being at full gallop looks like

Find Stephen Blackwood and Ralston College:
- Website: ralston.ac
- Podcast: The Ralston College Podcast
- YouTube

Related episodes you might enjoy:
— Iain McGilchrist — There Is A Great Deal Of Ruin In The Western World And This Is Why
— Carl Trueman — The West Killed God. Then It Killed Man. Now Something Darker Is Coming
— Pierre d'Alancaisez — The Custodians Of Beauty Became Its Gravediggers

Watch The Call of England, a documentary series retracing a 1927 journey through England to discover what remains of the national inheritance:

• Watch Episode 1 here
• Watch Episode 2 here

Thinking Class is a long-form interview podcast on the cultural, historical and civilisational forces shaping England, Britain, the Anglosphere and the wider West. Hosted by John Gillam. 

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New episodes every Thursday at 3pm.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

The big picture is not up to us. It's only up to us to be faithful with the time we have. And Buetus had his own hopes and dreams for what would come out of his work, I have no doubt, just as we all do. And yet, what he concretely may have hoped was not to be. And yet, he played a role beyond what he could ever have imagined in the transmission of the ideals and truths that he so brilliantly perceived. I often put it to our students that it's being able to pass the deathbed test. The deathbed test is very simple. It's just there you are at the end of your life, and you know, you know you're dying, and uh you are asking yourself the question, did I live as I should have lived? But it really comes down to this beautiful phrase of Plutarch. Uh he says, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, you know, crammed full of things, but a fire to be lit. And we bring our students uh to Greece because it lights them on fire.

SPEAKER_02 1:08

My guest today has a remarkable biography. He grew up as the eldest of ten children on a family farm in Prince Edward Island in Canada before going on to studying classics at King's College in Halifax, Canada, and taking a PhD at Emory on Boethius, the Roman philosopher who wrote the most important book of the Middle Ages from a prison cell while waiting to be executed. And then he did something even more remarkable that few people have the courage to do, but he recognized what was necessary, and that was to build a new university. It's Ralston College in Savannah, Georgia, and he built it from nothing. And it exists because Stephen knew that the institutions that we have are no longer adequate to satiate the hunger of the young and that reform wasn't the answer. Stephen Blackwood, welcome to Thinking Class.

SPEAKER_01 1:55

It's a great uh pleasure and a privilege to be here, John. Thank you for those generous words. Two generous words.

SPEAKER_02 2:02

Not at all, not at all. Stephen, you built a university from scratch. Uh you've studied and taught as some of the most prestigious institutions, and you've seen the Western university system from the inside at its highest level, and your conclusion seemed to be that reform wasn't uh uh satisfactory, but it needed replacement. We needed new institutions. What did you see inside those institutions that made you believe the existing ones couldn't be saved?

SPEAKER_01 2:30

Well, I think there's a couple of different ways one can approach this uh question. Of course, there's lots written about the degradation or deterioration or forgetting of mission that it really appears to characterize most institutions of higher education, not all, but uh many, let's say, and certainly the flagship ones that have played such a storied role in the preservation of uh and the driving of culture. Um and uh, you know, I think that you can approach the this through a few different uh aspects. You can talk about uh uh loss of purpose above all. I think that's what it really boils down to. We can certainly talk about ideological capture, that's a significant um uh uh aspect. Um I think that uh that that but what it really what it really comes down to is they're they're they're they're asleep at the switch, they're not doing the work that they that they fundamentally need to do. I mean the universities they're it's not it's not rocket science. I mean, they need to play a role in the preservation of knowledge and in the discovery of new knowledge and in the the transmission of that. That preservation takes place through the transmission of giving it to the young. And when you have you know universities that uh uh don't don't believe in knowledge or don't believe in uh their historic uh mission, then uh uh you know that might seem like a small problem if uh if universities were a localized uh you know, little uh ice silo. People talk about the ivory tower sometimes. Uh and uh but that's just that's just manifestly not how it is. I mean, the universities are possibly the most uh influential, upstream uh influence over uh the rest of culture. Now, of course, you know, one can quibble and say, oh, well, is it the family or is it this? Of course, all of these, we're living in a any culture is a is a really in extraordinarily complex uh uh uh dynamic uh phenomenon. But uh but you know, in the last, let's say, century, um, you'd be hard-pressed, I think, if one of the key aspects uh of the degradation of our time is a kind of neo-Marxist, let's say, kind of nihilistic uh standpoint. Uh you'd be hard-pressed uh to find an institution more responsible for the perpetuation of that through every realm and domain of culture than the university has been. And the reason for that is, and not because the universities are actually in charge of all these other things, but because the people who go to them and the worldview that they that they take on ends up being uh uh the worldview out of which they operate. And so that has been true in architecture, it's been true in uh politics, it's been true in policy and family life, it's been true in media and the arts. Uh it actually, I think it this kind of, for what I'm using in shorthand, is a kind of nihilistic perspective, is uh actually becomes it corrodes everything it touches, even unto how we think about ourselves. It darkens the horizon such that even what we think we can become is the very possibility of conversation or knowledge or relationship or love or forgiveness. Those things are impossible from this standpoint. And so, though I, you know, I'm not a catastrophist, it's not as if I think that that you know there's nothing good. I mean, I there's not a single great university that doesn't have wonderful people teaching at it. And that needs to be said. You know, it would be an act of ingratitude or you know, reductive uh opposition to deny that. And yet it can also be true that our institutions are fundamentally failing, that they are sick, that they have forgotten what they are. And that was my experience. Uh, and I was very fortunate to have wonderful teachers. I'm enormously gratitude, grateful, sorry, to my own, to my own alma mater. Uh, but it's also the case that it is a place that is uh deeply uh uh dysfunctional and that has has has has has has could be a much, much greater and better version of itself. And so, yeah, that was the that was a that was effectively the the um the insight uh that led to us to the founding of Ralston College was was not only that institutions could be much better versions of themselves, um, but that our civilization fundamentally depends on the existence of a thriving culture of universities.

SPEAKER_02 6:46

Ralston offers a masters of the arts and humanities, so presumably you have students who've studied elsewhere in those um uh more uh mainstream uh educational institutions. Do you ever get them remarking on the difference of their own feeling and experience in your institution and the others? And if so, what do they typically say is the difference?

SPEAKER_01 7:14

It's a great question. It's one that we we think about because we are uh we're not setting ourselves up in opposition to anywhere else. Uh we try to have a sense of gratitude but also realism about where we are as a culture. Uh but we know we do we do find it interesting the things that our students say I would say uh a handful of things. The first is um maybe the first and most important is uh we we are uncynical about what we are doing. We believe we are trying to discover truth and apprehend beauty and uh affirm the freedom of uh other people to do those things and to do that in a community that values friendship and freedom of thought. And we really that is really what we're trying to do. That is not those are not lines that we're trying to, you know, market ourselves with uh but don't believe. I mean, we are genuinely uh uh we are those are our our highest we try to find ourselves fundamentally around four uh realities truth without which no university can be worthy of the name, the pursuit of truth, the freedoms on which that pursuit depends, freedom of speech, freedom of inquiry, freedom of association, freedom of conscience, the apprehension of the beautiful, and finally the fellowship or friendship that enables us to pursue these things together. Those are the ways that we've defined ourselves, those are the the realities fundamentally that we have defined ourselves uh in relation to. And what I think our students discover here is that we believe those things. Uh and it is a so I think they're they're first uh struck by the uncynical character that we're actually doing the things that we say that we're doing, and that that for them is transformative because they've come from environments which you had to be careful about what you said, or you you had to kind of always be be be too clever for the the argument or the thing, never really believe anything, or what whether you where if you did it, you had to to play a certain lip service or subservience to a dominant uh ideological position of whatever flavor of the month that might have been. And um and it's a very, very sad state of affairs uh to that. You know, we've had uh we've had students from you know the Ivy League universities saying that there was there's a kind of a doom loop that they encounter where where where they're not saying what they think and they wish that they could, it was what they want to do, but but because there's an atmosphere of skepticism and cynicism, what's really tragic is that the the the average person, the majority of people in those rooms may also be like them. But because you get this kind of doom loop of atmosphere, no one does it. And so the first thing I think they find is that is that this isn't this is an uncynical place where they can actually ask the questions that matter to them with other people who want to do the same. And we're really doing that. And then and that's the second piece I've sort of just alluded to already is is is the community, is the sense in which you can you can trust that we are here to do that. Um uh there's no gotcha culture, there's no uh, you know, I gotta show myself that I'm smarter than you are. Uh, you know, there's a lot of talk in sort of small c conservative circles about freedom of speech and freedom of thought. Uh but you know, you've got to think really hard about these things because um, you know, you can have legal protections, and we do, uh certainly in the United States, have brilliant uh constitutionally protected status of freedom of speech through the First Amendment, of course. Uh, it's very unlikely that that could ever be overturned, uh, just constitutionally. Um, and yet what we see in the United States is that really strong legal protection, as though it may be an essential, necessary condition of a culture of freedom of inquiry, freedom of speech, is not a sufficient condition to produce a culture of people in which everyone says, Hey, do you think I might be wrong about something? Can you help me see that? Because I sure as hell would like to know if I'm wrong about it, that you can help me see a better and truer picture of this problem I'm facing or this, you know, this this uh the complexity of reality, or however you might want to put the thing that you don't understand. Um and so so if you're trying to create a community of genuine truth seeking, you have to think not just about, okay, what are the legal protections and the board and the articles of corporation of all those kinds of things. And you've got to but you've got to think about a culture. And that culture is one in which I've come to think it's not just you need to be able to say anything and a challenge, any orthodoxy or opinion. Um that, of course, is essential. But I've actually come to think there's something more important, and that is you have to have trust. Because you could have a dynamic in which anyone says, oh, you're you're that's you're full of you're you're full of whatever, you know? Anyone says, Oh, well, that you becomes an environment in which you're actually scared to say things because it's a gotcha environment. Um, it's actually one thing I've the way I like to put this, John, is that you know, if you have something you value, you will only give it to someone that you trust. Let's say it's your your grandmother's wedding ring and you're keeping it in the family, it's an heirloom, and you need to go away and you're going to entrust it to someone for safekeeping. Well, you're not going to do that with someone you don't actually trust. And and what's interesting about the seeking of truth, about things that matter to us, is that they matter to us. And, you know, let's say it's you're you know you're trying to figure out something in your in your personal life or or there's a big challenge. We're our souls, our ourselves are invested in these questions. And so you you need to be able to establish a community in which there's actually trust, in which people feel they can they can open up what matters to them to others. And so, you know, we follow the Chatham House rule uh where where you know you you you fundamentally, you know, I'm sure your listeners will know that simply means that you you you you don't uh you don't you don't break uh you don't don't acknowledge where where you know a thought has come from or that you don't say, well, such and such said to me, if you know yesterday, uh if if you think that that is something that should be kept private, you say, Oh, I had an interesting conversation recently with someone was making some interesting arguments or something. So the point of the matter is you have to set from the beginning, and we tell our students right up front that you know if if you know they're generally not um uh us you they're not the kind of young people who are constantly on their phones to begin with, uh uh to the contrary. Uh but but we do say just to establish the the the the rules of the game, that uh if you are going to post something online that not only you follow the Chatham House rule, but also that you never put anyone's photo online, um uh if they're kind of recognizable, um without their permission. And what that does, because we're living in a time, let's be honest, right, in which the technological uh circumstance of our lives are that anything that you do or say with a simple recording device that everyone has in their pocket can go worldwide the next day. And I don't think we've really uh faced as communities and as small communities how toxic that is to the actually the development of the of non-scalable human relationships, which is where the meaning actually is. The meaning is not in our Instagram or our X account or whatever. The meaning is, though not to trivialize the importance of sharing what we know or our thoughts, that these are important and significant platforms. But the actual meaning in our lives is going to come from a handful of people, or maybe a dozen or a few dozen people that we know over the course of our lives. And and certainly when you're building a community like we are attempting to do, you have to be able to set the terms that allows it's like you have the trellis for the vine to grow on. And and there are very clear clear, very simple. They're not it's not rocket science, but you have to be able to set up those. So I would say, first of all, I would say we have um the uh the the sincerity of asking real questions that matter with others who who do that. The the with others being a critical side of it, the fellowship or the terms of community. And then finally, uh I would say that we uh it is very, very difficult. We we we we take our students seriously. And what I mean by that is we give them the absolute hardest challenge we think they can they can handle. And by and large, they will say that this is the hardest thing they have ever done in their lives, and it's not even close. And uh, you know, we had a student came to us last year who looked at, you know, two dozen master's programs, and she chose ours, and she said, I chose Ralston because it was literally the only one of two dozen that that uh talked about how difficult the program would be. And no one else thought that could possibly be a selling point. And I wanted to really have a serious year and really learn something. We say we push our students, try to keep the dial up to 10 or 11 out of 12. Uh sorry, sorry, to 10 or 11 out of 10, uh, because um we we take them seriously. Why would why would we why would you learn this in a year if we could have pushed you harder and you learned that? And you you surmounted that much of the mountain rather than only here. And so um those are the those are the key that those are the key aspects. And that uncynicism, I would say, also extends to to our approach to to the books, to our approach to the tradition, to our approach to to places that we go, our approach to you know, basic uh traditions and patterns and uh gatherings and liturgies of a community. We have dinners together once a week, and it's a very spirited uh uh gathering. Uh so what I mean to say is, you know, the elements, not rocket science, you know, you look back, you know, well, what is defined the great college and universities at their best throughout all of history? And then you say, well, how could we do our best to enshrine those patterns, paradigms, possibilities, uh forms of um forms of behavior and gathering of people towards a shared purpose. Uh, and and and what's interesting is that if you take that, those basic elements of what defines a great university, uh, which are not any secrets, uh, you just you can you can just they're they're they're right there for anyone to do. Uh what is interesting is that that becomes very contradistinctive in our in our in our present environment, that these very simple elements that I've described to you, which you think, well, surely every university understands that. I mean, those have got to be the bedrock. And in fact, uh, and this is not to speak badly of any other place, what our students tell us is that it is very contradistinctive to the experience they've had elsewhere. And it's you can almost see their shoulders relax in the hours after they arrive, because they they see that they have they have finally found a place where they can undertake the things that mean most to them.

SPEAKER_02 17:52

You touched on so many nerves for me there, as an Englishman here in Britain, when you spoke about the formative influence of higher education on the whole of society, because those people then go on to see the institutions that ultimately govern it, and how uh the modern university system has become awash with cynicism. Uh because uh this is something that I feel like I see within and at times me and my fellow Brits, but I don't think I've always seen it. So, for example, we I've have found ourselves go through this huge national break, I think, with with continuity, with a sense of who we are and what we're about. And I I will trace that line unashamedly back to Tony Blair's, at least in the speech, very, very um noble idea that it should be all about education, education, education. But then if you go and listen to Tony Blair and what he was about, it was about telling British people we should no longer see ourselves as citizens of Britain, but as global citizens. And I think it's true that if you speak to almost any liberal metropolitan who's been through the university system, whether they're from a provincial part of England or Britain or not, is you will find that they are absolutely in a certain mould. And that has been ceded out here into the world. I've been in the corporate world for a long time. And what's quite um it's grimly amusing, but you get these behavioural um scientists um come along and start talking about how uh institutional leaders should create psychological safety. People want to bring their whole selves to work and people should be able to have a speak-up culture. And the people governing these institutions have been through those kind of educational institutions we've talked about. And I can tell you, no one wants to speak up about anything. No one wants to speak up about the highly restrictive policies, the highly selective policies, because they know they're going to be hung for treason in some way. I know people who were sacked for criticizing BLM in the middle of the uh 2020 uh mania. And that was a huge corporate institution. And so that's a bit of a clunky segue, but I think it does speak well to then your own preoccupations within your academic career, Stephen. But Boethius, a great influence on you, and indeed on King Alfred the Great, he was condemned on what appeared to be fabricated charges of of treason. And um, from the cell, whilst he was awaiting his execution, he wrote a book that uh became perhaps the single most widely read book of philosophy in the Western world. Uh why do you think that book matters now? Does it matter now?

SPEAKER_01 20:44

Well, that's a beautiful introduction to Boethius, John, and I would say this uh this great man and his uh that that book uh matter uh hugely for really two two reasons. And the first is the very fact of it. So this is this man who's a who's a uh uh uh rises to prominence, uh he's he's he's a Megisir of Iciorum, uh he's he's in a very, very prominent position. Uh he's got the best education known to man. He's in a he's an inventor, he's a he's a scholar, he's a translator, he's a musician, he's a mathematician, he's uh he's in a he's just an astound, both of his sons become consuls, so he's in a position of enormous uh, you might say, prestige, uh uh wealth, uh power, uh influence, uh, and uh and then it all falls apart. He's accused of treason, he's he's um uh put uh put in uh in prison. And uh and and you know, just to back up a little bit, you know, uh I think Boethius is is aware in his lifetime that things are falling apart. Uh he of course this is after he's born in four seventy um four seventy five, four seventy six, uh you know, after the fall of Rome, you know, the technical fall of Rome, you might say. So Though it's in many respects, things are going on as they they have for centuries. Uh there is uh, you know, there's now uh the the Ostrogothic King Theodoric is is over top of the whole sort of system. So there's under uh but you know, there's another sense in which you say, well, things are kind of you know continuing on as they have. Um but but I think what Buethius understood in his time uh is that the the very foundations of the empire, the very foundations of the whole project of Rome were crumbling. And um, and he understood, as really all of the great Romans did, that their intellectual superstructure had been inherited from the Greeks. Uh this is this is just a just a fact. Um but one thing that many people don't know is that is that for most of that Roman history, uh, that was maintained because the Romans were speaking Greek uh uh amongst themselves, uh and certainly the aristocracy, but not only, but not only they and so they had easy access to this to this treasures of in the inheritance on which you know so much of the the the whole superstructure of the Roman project was based. Uh but then Greek is becoming lost in Boethius' time. It's it's it's it's ebbed away. And I think Boethius understood that uh he had to recover uh those um those foundations, shore up those foundations. And uh he didn't uh take the view that uh I I gather that he could do it by teaching everyone Greek. Uh instead uh he uh undertook to translate a whole swath of major texts from Greek into Latin. And uh he actually succeeds at that, uh at least to a to a significant degree. Um but the point I'm making is that I think that Buitis thought that this this work that he was undertaking would play a role in shoring up the foundations of Rome for another, you know, who knows what he thought, another thousand years, or at least into an unknown future, that that this project could be saved. And this speaks to me very powerfully at this moment in Western civilization. Um uh that he he took this long view um about what his work might play a role in doing. Uh and yet it all falls apart. And there, for all of his hopes that he may have had, uh, for his own work and his own life, he's accused of treason, uh thrown in prison, and a year later he is um brutally, according to contemporary accounts, brutally tortured and executed. And that is the end of Boethius. Um except, of course, that is not the end of Boethius. Uh, but it's very moving uh to reflect on this because uh it it really was the end of Rome. I mean, Rome was what Rome was done, you know, within whatever, a hundred years. I mean, historians can tell us exactly uh, you know, Rome goes uh from you know being what a million or so, uh million plus inhabitants, this most unbelievably sophisticated civilization to effectively a backwater, a swamp with 30,000 people uh over you know over the come the the next centuries. And so uh what I think is so beautiful though about this is that you know all of Buithi's hopes, you might say, were dashed. You know, he himself is executed uh his life over, his work come to naught, Rome collapsed, and yet from that prison cell, he wrote this astounding little book, The Consolation of Philosophy. And we we we don't we don't know anything, so far as I know, about how it even made it out into the world. And I think it's about it's more than a hundred years. Um it's really a couple of hundred years until we start to get any significant references to this text. So think about this. For 200 years, even, nothing comes of it. And yet, and yet after that, uh this little book becomes one of the it's like he what Boethius had done with what his writing is he had taken the seeds of civilization and he'd cast them into the future so that in the right time and place they could germinate and ripen and grow. And that is exactly what happens. You mentioned Alfred, uh uh Alfred, uh the uh the great uh Saxon king uh does a translation of Buetus's consolation. Uh, in fact, I think it's the first known uh written use of the word freedom in the English language. I mean, just imagine that. Um, and and that that book, along with his other books, comes to play uh uh and not single-handedly. There, of course, the whole inheritance in some sense is uh that which is present is part of that recovery. But I think it is it is true to say that, and this is what I I want to say, uh that you know the big picture is not up to us. It's only up to us to be faithful with the time we have. And Buithos had his own hopes and dreams for what would come out of his work, I have no doubt, just as we all do. And yet what he concretely may have hoped was not to be, and yet he played a role beyond what he could ever have imagined in the transmission of the ideals and truths that he so brilliantly perceived. And so I think the first lesson from Boethius is that of actually deep cultural transmission against the odds, when it's all, when it all seems to be going down, and maybe that is not reason to give uh to despair, but rather to, you know, I I sometimes like the analogy of, you know, whether you're on the cricket or the football field or whatever, but you know, it's uh it's really an American because you go backwards in cricket and forward uh uh in uh football, uh in American football. Uh but the principle obtains, you know, you know, to throw a deep pass, you know, um, you know, a long ball into the future. Um so uh that's the first uh element of it. Uh that it's the big picture's not up to us, uh, but only what is up for us to do. And then the second, uh the second element is what is the book actually about? And it's the book, a man who's lost everything. And well, I should say his other books are quite dry and difficult and logic-chopping. If you pick up his De Musica, which is a translation from uh an ancient Greek uh figure, it's very, very difficult, though it plays an important role in the history of music education for uh you know 1,500 years. Uh it's these are very dry texts and not ones that anyone would just pick up and say, you know, wow, this is a a great book for me to understand my life, you know, a bit better, uh, uh, or or or to provide deep insight. Um, and yet the consolation of philosophy written for the prison cells of a totally different literary character. It's just has a searing human urgency and power, like right from the first word. It is just, it is just, you know, the man is just stripped down to nothing, asking the most fundamental questions that every human being asks. I mean, imagine he's lost his family, his power, his prestige, his, his place in the world, his uh everything that he has built, it is all stripped away from him. He is just alone in a prison cell. Uh, and in fact, as it turns out, awaiting execution. And well, what does he say in that book? And what he does is he grapples with the most fundamental human questions. Is there, is there, is there any way in which we can live a life of purpose that is ours, that cannot be taken away from us, you know, despite what fortune or or politics or world affairs or the things that don't depend on me, all of these things that can throw us around, you know, uh on this wheel of fortune, as he will say it. Uh, is there any way for all that that we don't control? Is there any way that we can live lives that are truly ours, that's the stable possession of that which we seek? Uh that's what that book is about. And I would put it to you that that book accomplishes that um that it takes the reader because he is, he is the subject. It takes the reader from that position of alienation in the midst of the storms of fortune and change and difficulty, you know, cancer diagnosis, uh, stock market fall, uh, war, you know, whatever the case may be, you know, relationship trauma, breakup, death. That's where it starts. And he takes you from there to the recovery of uh uh self-possession, um, to a stable grasp, to a to a recollection of yourself, to a stable grasp of uh of stable eternal reality here and now, known, known and possessed by you. So that's what the book is about. And I'd say, so on the one hand, you have cultural transmission. This is a really interesting case, Boethius himself, for what it means to keep the lights on, even when they're going out, to give others the possibility in the future of turning the lights back on. And on the other hand, what it means right here and now for us to turn the lights on in ourselves.

SPEAKER_02 31:23

You drew out there that recovery is not only to be spoken about with regards to let's come up with a recovery for Western civilization, but you touched on self-governance, and I think that's hugely important. And when I look around at the manifest number of or the manifold problems that are facing countries across the West, whether it's high national debts, whether it's increasing wastelines, whether it's rates of divorce, whether it's uh the the the list goes on really, or uh the the amount of um uh addiction, whether it's substance, whether it's technology, is it all seems to come down to a loss of the ability to self-govern. And if I think about Tuck V's democracy in America when he walked around saying, look how amazing this is, all these self-sustaining communities that are able to self-govern. And they're talking about the democracy being uh only possible through self-governing individuals. And I look around at democracy being such in such disarray in many ways, and not in the in the tropes that people throw around because people vote the wrong way. You know, it's a it it if if anyway, it's it's in disarray because we're losing the capacity to self-govern, and that civilizations come out of cultural practices and the interactions between individuals, it's not just some abstract ideal. And I love that that Alfred translated Boethius and the first time freedom appeared in the English language, which must have been such a huge thing because those who had seen the the origins of the English-speaking peoples in Germania, Tacitus, saw that the English-speaking peoples they didn't suffer tyrants and they they prized individualism. And I love that that that translation in King Alfred the Great ended up ceding not only a unified England in the end, but then thinking about all the things that the English-speaking peoples hold dear, so much so that you and the United States of America constitutionalized freedoms uh and put them into law, which by the way, I must say I felt. I was saying before we started recording, I felt I was there for two weeks, and there is something about the American people that has allowed them to rise above the cynicism. I'm not saying it doesn't exist. There has been a brainwashing in a similar way to the one I've already talked about, but I was speaking to the common person at every class of society, and there's this internal Zoe, a kind of internal life, uh the Greeks would call it, that I do think we have been losing here in Britain because we are finding ourselves repressed with regards to speech, with regards to the pursuit of truth, and we see that in our institutions, hence the Jason R. Day scandal and all the rest of it. Um, but I really did feel it, and that is that is precious, and to know that that ultimately goes all the way back to this chap in his prison cell in ancient Greece is remarkable. Um and and let let's talk about the recovery, because recovery obviously comes through people, as we just mentioned. You have been inspired by the hunger of the young. You said that's what drives you. Maybe you can tell us about what you mean by that and why it is that the hunger specifically drives you for me.

SPEAKER_01 34:50

This comes down to the most fundamental of all questions, and that is um, you know, what are we here for? And how do we how do we to put it simply, how do we as human beings, we as individuals, live the one life that we have that only we can live, the only one we've got in a way that we ourselves think is meaningful. And you can put it this way, you can say, well, human human beings have evolved as self-conscious creatures. Let's take the evolutionary argument. What does that mean? That means that uh the fact that we think about ourselves and that we think about whether our lives are valuable and whether we're doing what we should, and that we're, you know, whether, whether, you know all of those kinds of questions. That that is a feature, not a bug, of human existence, right? There's there is no there is no so you might say that it that any culture that fails to uh enable human beings to to live lives that they themselves consider worth living has failed, you might say, even for the most basic standpoint of human evolution. Um and and so the question is, well, how do we do that? How do we how do we uh live how do we have the w what are the conditions for let's call it the realization of human potential? You know, I often put it to our students that it's uh it's it's about the being able to pass the deathbed test. And the deathbed test is very simple. It's just you there you are at the end of your life, and you know, you know you're dying, and uh you are asking yourself the question, did I live as I should have lived? I don't know that there's any question to any human being that that is more important than that. And so and yet here we are living in the in the midst of a meaning crisis. So what I'm suggesting, John, is that at a at a pretty sort of fundamental level, it's not clear that our society, our civilization, our culture, is doing a good job at enabling people to do that thing which they actually think is the most important thing in their entire lives. And so then the question is, well, what are the what are the what are the the conditions, uh the ingredients, the terms of human flourishing, of of of the realization of human potential across a broad range, uh the the the infinitely you might say broad range of human beings and in their particularity. And um, that's the task of a civilization. Any civilization that is to to endure has to know what are the basic conditions, so that's freedom of speech and um the you know the the various political cultural aspects that uh of our societies that make them places that we can thrive. There is actually no important question than that. And um to connect that to the hunger of the young, I would simply say that you know the the the young people who come to us you know they're not interested in the culture wars, they're not interested in in these kind of legacy positions that we all know are already bankrupt. They are they're interested in living the one l life that they have to live in a way that that is worth it their living it, is worthy of their living it. And uh they're not interested in the culture wars, but they are interested in culture itself. They're interested in building. Uh they they know that what we've inherited at the moment, that the terms of life around us are unsatisfying, whether it's material, cultural, technological, religious, familial, whatever. They're well aware that this that the current state of things is in many respects has failed, uh, failed by the very terms that most that human beings use to analyze it. Am I happy? Is my life meaningful? I mean, I really mean the most basic bedrock of uh of analysis, of human analysis. And so my contention is that you can only turn the lights back on culturally, just being the big picture like Boethius in that sense, through the individual. And so if you want to recover the terms of a flourishing civilization, you can only do that by recovering that in and through the individual. And so we have focused ourselves very clearly on uh uh designing an education that we we hope and seem so far to actually uh do uh that we hope will uh unlock uh kind of deep self-understanding uh in uh in our students of who and what they are, of their place in the world in time and history, uh to give them the tools to navigate the the world ahead of them such that they can have they can, you know, you can put it different ways. You could say they can have the high-ceiling impact that they're that only their the potential and the realization of which will enable. Um you can put it very simply, and that is simply to say uh so that they can live lives of deep purpose, meaning dignity, freedom. And that I think is what they are hungry for. Indeed, I would say it is what we are all hungry for.

SPEAKER_02 40:16

Well, for those watching, it wouldn't have escaped their notice that your backdrop is looking decidedly sunnier than what they're used to. You you're sitting in Samos, uh a Greek islands, olive trees in the background. And before we start the recording, you're telling me that this is part of the curriculum at Ralston. You you you ask everyone to make their own way to that particular part of the world, and you're going to situate them in a place where an incredibly historical um uh series of events took place. You got the the fall, the fall of civilization and it the flame of it being kept alive and Greek monasteries close by, and ultimately that was the thing that formed the seed for the rest of us, referring to Western civilization. And there's there's something about what you're doing at Ralston where you're not just trying to transmit abstract knowledge in the written word, you're getting people to feel it. And I I I want to move over to an appointment you made as Chancellor, Ian McGilchrist. He's famous for his work on the divided brain, effectively saying Western civilization has been catastrophically dominated by the left hemisphere's impulse to control, to categorize, to reduce everything, everything's about abstraction, it's representation. And he did an opening address to your uh graduating class where he spoke about transcendent ideals, the courage to achieve one's potential. Thinking about you and Samos situating people in time and place and getting them to receive the inheritance in a real place rather than just a book. Is all of that of a piece with what you're trying to achieve? Does that tell us why you appointed someone like Ian McGilchrist as the Chancellor? What does it what does it actually signal about what you believe education is for and what we're losing in the Western mind?

SPEAKER_01 42:24

Such a good a good question. Um well uh I love this phrase uh of Plutarch. Um I'll say, you know, why do we bring people to Greece? You know, well of course they can learn faster and immersed in the language. Uh uh there's all kinds of things I could say about that. Um but it really comes down to this beautiful phrase of Plutarch. Uh he says the mind is not a vessel to be filled, you know, crammed full of things, but a fire to be lit. And we bring our students uh to Greece uh because it lights them on fire. Um they swim in the sea of Homer, they dance at Greek wine festivals, they go to the cave of Pythagoras and the cave of St. John, and they come back just absolutely burning so bright. Uh and you know, I think you know, small sea conservatives have to ask themselves the question. I mean, I mean, it's sort of like the internet meme. You had one job and you failed. I mean, all you had to do was to give this burning torch to the next generation and have them burn it and let them burn and pass it to the next generation. That's all you had to do. It's very simple, it seems simple. It turns out it's not so simple. And, you know, you can talk about uh, you know, taxes and you can talk about policies and you can talk about all these things, and they all matter. But at the end of the day, uh uh a culture, a civilization, is fundamentally constituted in the act of giving it to others. Roger Scruton, the late uh great British philosopher, Sir Roger, used to say that a culture is just the things we have. Loved. And transmitting a culture is just teaching others to love them too. And so you can make enormous investments and big bets and all kinds of places. But if you're not doing that one thing, if you're not, you know, showing young people, hey, here's where the good stuff is. Hey, here's here are the tools that you'll need to live the life that you want to live. Here's how you do it. Here's if you're not doing that, it comes to an end. If the mama bears don't teach the baby bears how to hunt, there's no more baby bears. It's very, very simple. And that's where we are. In fact, in in a in uh uh the the word tradition, which has a bad rep now today because people regard it as some kind of ossified, coercive, either, you know, you're kind of forced to participate or something. That's just complete nonsense. The word tradition comes from the Latin trado-tratera, which just means literally means just to hand on. It's like a baton or a flame. You're just giving it to the next person. And so tradition actually uh uh is is not a uh uh uh uh uh an inert or rigid thing. It's an inherently dynamic and creative phenomenon. I mean, how do you pass this thing to the next? And so we bring our students here because uh we want to light them on fire with uh uh an understanding and love for the uh the tools and the treasures that can enable them and others to live lives of purpose and dignity. And uh and that and that is indeed what happens in Greece, by by by bringing them into a community, by immersing them in the language, and by taking them to the places in which these things because it's not simply that that Greece is a place of the origin of things, you know, pet fully, all of the categories of knowledge. We do know this even in the the words we use today biology, physics, chemistry, architecture, uh uh uh poetry, philosophy, these are Greek words. And so it's not just that these are the origin of these in these founding insights uh to how we think about and understand the world, uh, uh, ultimately, human dignity and freedom, these things are at least related and originate in a profound sense. But it's it's also that that that Greek, in a way, is the is the, as what my one of my colleagues says, the Greek is the matrix of humanistic inquiry. You can see that in the words as it goes through the the Latin and Christian West all the way up into the present. And so um we bring them here because it gives the the students the this we bring them to Greece because it is the way they come to encounter the inheritance that is theirs. And you know, we're living in a time of of alienation and forgetting and and you know, both alienation from the past and alienation from each other, right? I mean, skepticism, cynicism, uh, you know, living online and not having real human communities and all these things that people have, you know, deaths of despair, all those, all these things that that that are people have so brilliantly uh uh diagnosed. And the question is how do you reconnect? How do you recon how do you reconnect? How do you how do you build back your relationship to the to to how do you there's a beautiful image here in Samos where uh there was a uh a town without a water source and they dug a tunnel uh through a kilometer and just over half a mile of rock in order to connect with that water source. And the question is, how do we do that today? How do we reconnect ourselves to the to the eternal springs that will sustain human uh agency, meaning, productivity, uh love, virtue, et cetera? And so uh the the point is that it you know, I often say to people, well, how much would it be worth to you if you could really kindle in a single person, in an undying way, uh a love for that inheritance? And you've got to think very practically, and I think in that sense, uh one of the key civilizational, let's say, misallocations of capital, you know, business people like to think they've got all this wisdom and often they do, about how to run things and how to well, I just want to say at the level of our human civilization, we have fantastically misallocated our capital. I mean, to the point that the thing is going bankrupt, because we've we've failed, we've failed to inspire in the young the very things that will enable them to carry it on, and the very things they need to live the lives that only they can live. And so all that is to say that what we have what we have attempted to do is to design Rolston College as a tectonic intervention at the heart of civilizational renewal. And of course, that brings me to speak about this great man that we are honored to have as our chancellor, Dr. Ian McGilchrist. Um, and as you've said, you know, Ian has uh uh uh become known above all for his brilliant diagnosis of the way in which we have come to be captured by the left hemisphere and its grasping, its instrumentalization, uh, and subordinated a view of the whole uh to that sort of grasping instrumentality. As important as that grasping is, that instrumentality, it needs to find itself, be situated within a higher, uh prior, greater uh grasp of uh of the whole. And and and so you know, Dr. McGilchrist and I spent a good bit of time talking about these things, and he's he is he is well by many accounts, he may be the most significant, most important living uh living intellectual. In any event, uh uh what I want to say about um uh we are of course if Dr. McGilchrist is in that sense a uh uh a symbol of the very work of education. That is to say, that that moving from your immediacy, think about the odyssey of what has what is the story or journey that Odysseus has to go on, go go under. It it that that immediacy of your of your sort of self-will to gr grasp and see yourself within uh within a tradition, within a place, within a time in relation to others. And I would say that there is a deep sense in which what we our program is aimed to do is to bring about that shift in the individual. And it's it's not only in what you learn, but in your receptivity, your sense of gratitude towards a wider uh whole which you are a part.

SPEAKER_02 50:23

Lots of threads to pick on there, but I won't know in that we're we're up against time. But a penultimate question before I ask you the question of all of my guests uh is there's a thread coming through your work, your mission, your motivation, your raison d'être, so to speak. And that seems to be one of duty and care. And as we've mentioned, you grew up as one of ten, the eldest of the ten children on a farm. And you also ran an inner city youth mentoring program in Canada before you entered academia, which is amazing. So you're not a product of the establishment, uh, but you you seem to have been driven by formation. Is it is this is this what growing up on a farm with nine siblings, the eldest of uh you think that's that's part of it? You you have this natural tendency to want to nurture and duty, and and what did it teach you about human nature, duty, and what what the the responsibilities of the elders in society are?

SPEAKER_01 51:29

Well, I was so fortunate to have the uh the upbringing that I I I did, you know, I was born in the wild west of Canada. My parents made a big move uh to the this this rural, small place, uh beautiful, was so formative for me. We live grew up in sort of a family, sort of kind of a hobby farm, but we had you know, we had a milk cow I grew up with and and uh uh you know other animals and and huge gardens and so on. And and uh you know, it's as you mentioned, I've got my my nine um uh beloved younger siblings, uh seven brothers and two sisters, and uh all of this was very formative for me. Um of course it's you know being an eldest sibling gives you some maybe uh natural uh uh position of of of of of being uh uh being a leader or a helper. Uh um I think above all what my upbringing uh gave me. I was blessed with wonderful parents and and they gave us a love of music and that we lived in a beautiful place uh uh outdoors. Uh so we all of nature was open to us in a sense that we just we just could just walk outdoors and be in a in a in a beautiful and simple place uh through the seasons. Um uh they they introduced us to the to gave us a deep sense of of the truths of the Christian religion that was very important, a sense that we were made for a purpose and could be in direct relationship to the infinite. I mean, that's what prayer is, um, but also the responsibilities of that and the ways in which um we are we are living in relation to others. And I think that is the big thing that my upbringing gave me is uh the privilege of being the eldest sibling of these nine, you know, infinitely complex and beautiful creatures uh were my brothers and sisters. And that uh I think gave me a sense of both the the complexity, the substantiality, and the beauty of the human being. And uh, you know, um that that does relate to education because, you know, uh what we're saying about the realization of human potential, uh, you know, it's it's not it's it's not inevitable, right? I mean, I think of the example of you know seeds or acorns or whatever, that you know, most of them never never become anything at all. They just they just they just they'll get back ass by the wayside, eaten by squirrels, whatever. And so, you know, what does it mean for human potential to be realized? And uh there's lots of ways to approach that through various institutions and family and so on. But when it comes to um when it comes to education, even when it comes to parenting, um, you know, it's not inevitable. You don't just, you know, put your send your children out into the uh out into the woods as as as ch as as infants and hope they come back as Winston Churchill, you know, 20 years later. Um, you know, they need cultivation and care and direction. But you also don't, you know, it's not fitting, it's not befitting a free people, a free person to simply tell them and force them into what they become. That that is a that is to betray the very agency that you are looking to awaken. And so the question is, how what is that middle way between providing a context that allows the plant to grow, providing a context in which a free, deeply developed subjectivity, an individual, you know, can can come to realize their high potential. And I'd like to give uh some just the example of, you know, you know, we know what it looks like to see a mighty oak tree, an acorn turned into an oak. We know what it looks like to see a great, you know, a bird in full flight, soaring flight. We know what it looks like to see a horse at full gallop. Well, what does a human being in full flight look like? At full gallop look like. And I think that really is the question that that is the whole question of pedagogy, of education, uh, but it's a whole question of culture. And I would say that my upbringing uh gave me some beautiful insight, let's say. My upbringing gave me a sense of the the great beauty and complexity of and substantiality of of the human being and of how a human being can move with the right kind of context and mentoring and and education uh to realize the kind of precious and infinite and delicate and fragile potential that only they can realize.

SPEAKER_02 56:00

Well, your students should be very grateful for that upbringing and what it inspired in you because what you're doing in Ralston is very special. It is, as in your own words, it's lighting people up, and I know they're being lit up by the tradition, but ultimately this is your vision, and uh this is uh particular to you, and you're having a huge uh impact and influence uh on those people's lives. But I suppose for those of us who know of Ralston, what it's trying to achieve, uh uh it's very inspiring, and we know you put a lot of work into it. 12 years is not a small amount of time to build something up. So um very glad you're inspired by such an upbringing, and uh people are lucky to have you, Stephen. Um, but my last question to you before I let you go is the question I ask all of my guests, which is what have you changed your mind on during the course of your life? Perhaps it's something big, perhaps it's something small, and what was it that made you think differently?

SPEAKER_01 56:59

Well, thinking with those kind words only say that I uh like all of us, I only have the things I have myself been given. And so um let me strike that note of gratitude in response. Uh it's all we ever have in that sense. Um I you told me you're gonna ask this question, and I was trying to think I was trying to give a trying to come up with a good answer to it. Um there's all sorts of things that I've I've you know, my my thinking has has developed on. I mean, you're not thinking if you're if you're not developing your views or deepening them, often maybe changing them profoundly. Um I think the big thing that has shifted, because you asked in particular, you know, is there something that you once thought was absolute that you know I think is um and I think the thing about the discovery of uh let's say uh when you learn to think deeply, um what you know, what it means to think deeply is to say, well, if this is true, well then what does it mean that it must be true for that to be true and for that to be true? And to you get down to bedrock to what's really most uh most fundamental and real. And so I think in my youth I thought that there were um I don't know, certain moral codes, for example, that were were sort of absolute. Uh and though I I I I still in in all kinds of ways hold to those and and consider them extremely valuable. What a deep education gives you as you move towards the fundamental is it actually relativizes everything else. Uh and that's what real thinking does. It doesn't mean you're in a in a in a world of ultimate relativism, but it means that you've actually been able to connect subordinate goods to to primary, more fundamental ones. And you know, the the the gift and challenge and opportunity of a free life is being able to do that. It's being able to say, well, how do I spend my time? How do I how do I locate this thing that matters to me relative to the thing that I think is most true? How do I know what is the thing that's superordinate towards which I'm I'm I'm moving? But how do I stack rank? How do I, my, my priorities, my life, my my time, my relation, my my how do I live in a way in relation in this in this fleeting time that I have every day in relation to what is highest and best? And that is a that's it, that's a that's a challenge for the for the for the wisest person out there, because that if that were easy, we wouldn't have the whole history of literature that would and philosophy helping us to learn to do precisely that. And so I think that the thing that I have changed on is I would have been more reflexive as a younger man, as a teenager about the the absolute the absoluteness of certain moral things. And though I will still hold to, you know, broadly speaking, those things as true, I would I would locate them within uh a hierarchy of goods and in a in a dynamic system uh in relation to uh to what to what is highest, what is good itself. And and and that that um that's a that's a significant perennial and a perennial lesson uh that um I have, let's say, been learning and am learning.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:21

Stephen, thank you for your full, beautifully articulate uh personal responses. Uh they uh have given me certainly a lot to meditate on. I'm sure lots of other people watching and listening. Um we know you are the president of Ralston College. Uh where can people find you in the dark corners of the internet? And is uh anything that we can expect from you or the college in the coming months and years?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:48

Well, it's uh uh certainly you can if you can find Ralston easily, R-A-L-S-T-O-N, Ralston College. Uh we're online. Uh we have uh the various channels, uh including a podcast that I'd I'd encourage people to to check out where, for example, our wonderful chancellor has has uh given us some some beautiful lectures, uh shared out uh out with the world. Uh I I would say uh pay attention to the things that we're I would say uh that all of your listeners would be heartily welcomed into our fellowship. We like to say that Ralston, in a biggest sense, is simply a community of all those who seek truth with courage. And so we are doing our best to share these treasures of humanistic of the tre with that share the treasures of the tradition, uh, not only with our students, uh, but in the ways that we can with anyone anywhere. And so join us online. Uh come visit us in Savannah, and we'll be very, very glad to have you with us.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:47

Stephen, it's been a deep pleasure. Keep fighting the good fight, and I hope to speak again.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:54

Thank you, and you.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:56

All the best, you know, you're gonna be able to do it.