What Every ASU Student Needs to Know

A Socratic Dialogue

It is not uncommon for a school, college, or even a university itself to have a book or theme that they want every student to know about. For example, one year, my college planned to have a freshman reading. I suggested Plato’s Apology. This would teach students the difference between knowing and only thinking you know. It would give them an example of someone willing to stand up by himself against his society when he thought they were wrong. And it would introduce them to important ideas like wisdom and the good. My college decided to go with “Fast Food Nation.”

This week, ASU announced it has a class that all ASU students must take. What could this class be? What important topic facing the human condition did ASU land on? Will it require all students to learn about wisdom? Perhaps goodness? Maybe about what is eternal and unchanging? It couldn’t be the fear of God, could it? No, they wouldn’t do that.

It is, drum roll, sustainability! That’s right. ASU wants every student to learn about sustainability so that they can contribute to meaningful change while they seek to innovate at the forefront of leadership. Does that sound like a word jumble of platitudes? Let’s find out by running it through a dialogue.

ASU: Every student must learn to be sustainable.

Socrates: To what end?

ASU: To preserve the future.

Socrates: But that still doesn’t tell us toward what end. To preserve the future for what purpose?

ASU: Future generations.

Socrates: To do what?

ASU: So they can also be sustainable.

Socrates: So, we learn sustainability to be sustainable in the future?

ASU: Yes. To guarantee a future for our species.

Socrates: We seem to have come back around in a circular argument. What will our species do beyond survival?

ASU: Be happy.

Socrates: Now we are getting somewhere. You only teach about sustainability in order for humans to be happy? How can humans achieve lasting happiness?

ASU: By doing what makes them happy.

Socrates: We are back to that circular reasoning again. Would you agree that there are things people think will make them happy but do not actually make them happy?

ASU: Yes, Socrates.

Socrates: Do you want your students to be actually happy or only mistaken about happiness?

ASU: Actually happy.

Socrates: And we agree that it is what is good that brings happiness and what is evil that brings destruction?

ASU: Yes, it is good to be sustainable.

Socrates: Remember, that’s your circular argument. Let’s stay focused on happiness. Do we agree that to be lastingly happy, you must possess what is good and avoid what is evil?

ASU: Yes, and sustainability is good.

Socrates: All you’ve shown is that sustainability makes it possible for a future person to either seek the good or not seek the good. Would you agree that we want to work in the present for a future where people know what is good?

ASU: Yes, and sustainability . . .

Socrates: Let’s not go back to your circle. Sustainability only provides us with physical life. We could be physically alive and not know the good. We could be physically alive and miserable, depressed, and meaningless. But you’ve agreed you don’t want that for your students. What are you doing to teach them about the good so that they can be lastingly happy?

ASU: We are teaching them to be sustainable so they can be on the cutting edge of innovation while they lead the way to advocacy for those who have no voice.

Socrates: Which is to say you aren’t teaching your students about the good. They leave your care no better off than when they started with respect to lasting happiness. Perhaps they are worse because they have lost this time of their lives and have not even been notified that they need to know the good. They are less wise than when they started. You stole their time.

ASU: We are #1 in innovation.