ANGELO LYNN

In his column today, Middlebury College Professor Hector Vila writes a probing piece about how the humanities might be an antidote to the anxieties of today’s era; how love and the concern for each other might counter our society’s obsession with the ills that ail us.

He covers this as the closing discussion of a class taught this past semester, reflecting on the challenges facing Middlebury students. But it also gives a fascinating and thoughtful insight into the underlying roots of a fractured society that has proved unsettling for many of today’s younger generation and helps define that angst. A key quote in his column is this from Ernest Becker in “The Denial of Death.” Becker writes, “The great perplexity of our time, the churning of our age, is that the youth have sensed — for better or for worse — a great social-historical truth: that just as there are useless self-sacrifices in unjust wars, so too is there an ignoble heroics of whole societies.” Vila notes that students agreed with that assessment, and that they recognized the result — again, from Becker — a “hyperanxious animal who constantly invents reasons for anxiety even where there are none.”

Such “ignoble heroics of whole societies” is a phrase to ponder as it applies in our culture at large, but also in our local communities. For more context, please read Vila’s column.

Angelo Lynn