We Wear The Mask

Yes, I know I stole the title from Paul Laurence Dunbar.

Last week, I  gave the briefest of brief introductions to six ancient Greek schools of philosophy and their answers to the question, "What is the Good Life?" 

In one of my classes, as we wrapped up discussion, one student boldly proclaimed:

"I don't think life has any purpose. It doesn't mean anything. Why are we looking at this question? In fact, even if there were some higher being who appeared and told me my life had a purpose, I wouldn't care. I don't want to know."

He wasn't being facetious. Quite the contrary, he's an avid student and earnest. I was taken aback. I've had students in the middle of an epistemological crisis before ("But how do we know anything at all, let alone our purpose!?"). I've had students argue that they alone can forge their purpose in life--that's a fairly popular view. But I've never had a student actively object to the very concept of life having meaning. 

I just finished reading his homework, in which he argues that humans are only an accumulated set of masks for different settings, a compilation of roles we play. In his view, underneath the masks lies only silence and a void. 

Never in my career have I felt so keenly that teaching matters as I have in the last two or three years. I don't think he's alone in seeing life this way, he's just considerably more articulate than many of his peers. I certainly don't begrudge him the freedom to think and believe as he chooses, but this seems a particularly bleak outlook and somehow representative of his TikTok generation. They work so hard to cultivate the right masks that they become the masks they wear.

How do we as educators reach beneath this surface to show how life and relation to other people can be so rich and full and even free of masks? I wonder whether many of my students have any experience of real intimacy with another human being, even in close friendship. Surely the Humanities are a gateway into considering meaningful living...?

Little does he know that I'm about to introduce him (and all the others!) to Viktor Frankl, Simone Weil, and Michel Foucault.  I've been gleefully planning my next lesson.