O
Oberon
Guest
I won't bother to contest the point. It's completely true that I don't much care for classic literature of any sort - never have - I'd much rather read something lighter, or non-fiction.
That's fine. All I'm doing is pointing out that, in acting on such preferences, you are deliberately choosing cultural illiteracy... in other words, ignorance.
Frankly, for me, reading the Bible just isn't worth it (I've tried - briefly, maybe twice - and I'll admit my nonreligious leanings are strong enough to have that aspect of it alone be a major turnoff). Even if a large percentage of classical Western literature assumes a knowledge of it - most of that's stuff that I don't enjoy anyway, and even if I can read something and say "well, this is very well written - but *yawn*" (my usual response to "classic" literature), it's not something that really makes me want to spend time on it - there are other things I'd enjoy more. Most (if not all) "new" stories are old stories in new wrappers - and have been even before and including the Bible - things that appealed to people thousands of years ago still appeal now - when presented in a context that you can appreciate. For me, the Bible isn't that context, and I've never felt much connection to "culture" anyway.
What it's really about is an ongoing conversation being passed down through generations. People in the past have had wise and perceptive things to say about things that will one day be important to you. In passing up a primary cultural reference, you are turning a deaf ear to them.
Which is fine, if that's what you want to do. It's your choice, your call.
"Educated" is a pretty meaningless generic term nowadays, I think.
You hold this view because post-moderns have lost the concept of "liberal education," in which the values of a culture are taught. You may not see the meaning of the term "educated," but it by no means follows that the term is meaningless.
There's SO much out there to know that none of us can really handle any reasonably large chunk of it. We can be educated in a topic, or even a lot of topics - but why should I choose to be educated in the Bible, for instance, instead of nuclear physics, or genetics, or geography, or geology, or economics?
Again this is an effect of the post-modern worldview, in which bodies of information are fragmented and pigeonholed, not bearing any relationship to one another, or relative value.
I'll put it as succinctly as I can, assuming you're still reading and haven't quit in disgust: Education is the process by which you learn how to decide what's important.
Please note that I didn't say that education is how you learn what's important. It's not a matter of what to think, but how to think... how to weigh relative merit of competing ideas, how to go about setting priorities in your life, how to make informed choices about what you believe about all the big philosophical questions.
At the root of it, you may discover a reason to live. (I know... to a post-modern, that very statement is absurd... it's like whistling about architecture... but still, there it is.) If that isn't important to you, well, I can't really help you.