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Bruce Springsteen and Sen. Ben Sasse are probably as ideologically-opposite as you’ll find in the realm of rational human beings in 2019. But an op-ed by Sasse late last year and a bit on a new Springsteen album struck a common theme: How can we shape the legacy we leave our children?

“Springsteen on Broadway” was released on streaming media a couple of weeks ago, and in his introduction to the song “Long Time Comin’, ” Springsteen tells a story about his dad making amends with him, just before the Boss becomes a father himself.

In this soliloquy, Springsteen said that we get a choice in this life: We get to be the ghosts that haunt our children’s futures, or we get to be the ancestors, who help guide them on their path, turning us toward the right and good.

As a guy who recently lost his dad — and with a terminal illness that’ll someday take me from my kids — I felt like Bruce was talking right to me, and laying down a marker: Which is it gonna be, pal? Ghost? Or ancestor?

And that’s where Sasse provides a partial blueprint. Paraphrasing from his own book in a December op-ed in the New York Times, the Nebraska senator talked about how he and his wife have developed an evolving “family canon” of books. This shelf of maybe 60 books should represent the things you’d want your kids to know as they go out into the world.

A dear friend introduced me to the idea on a cold night over hot pizza in BG, and it’s consumed me ever since. Sasse starts with the idea that you establish a dozen categories of books, and then limit yourself to six in each category. The categories are negotiable, but critical.

What are the 12 categories of human thought you want your kids to take a deep dive?

I kind of settled on six from the start: Faith, understanding America, adventure, family, conflict and — at my friend’s suggestion — bad ideas.

In the weeks since, I have played with lists of books under each of these sublists. Is “The Scarlet Letter” as important as “Between the World And Me” to understanding American today? Do I leave “The American Way of War” in the conflict section, if it kicks out “The History of the Peloponnesian War?” If I’m allowed to keep every book of the Bible for faith … can I keep every book of the Harry Potter series for adventure?

The parlor game aspect of this has been a ton of fun, and I would really encourage anyone to do it, just to figure out which books are meaningful to you. But the exercise gets at something deeper, too.

We want to be Springsteen’s ancestors. We want to help guide our children through the wilds, and I think most of us want to do it by making them good thinkers, and passing on the values and knowledge we’ve found critical to getting through this life.

The categories and books we think are important represent the ideas we think are important — not the small-minded political ideas of the day, but ideas about family, honor, trust, courage, loyalty, commitment. Legacies of stuff can disappear, but a legacy of ideas?

It speaks to us. From our ancestors.

ttps://www.sent-trib.com/opinion/book-some-time-for-this-idea-from-bruce-and-ben/article_a20fdcec-1f16-11e9-b582-739a101f228d.html

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The SPL Rocks!

Prego che tu stia danzando con San Pietro alle porte perlacee del cielo





Pulled up to my house today
Came and took my little girl away!
Giants Stadium 8/28/03



Oats

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The idea sounds interesting and seems like it may be fun to try.

Do you think we could do this here at the SPL?

____________________________________

The SPL Rocks!

Prego che tu stia danzando con San Pietro alle porte perlacee del cielo





Pulled up to my house today
Came and took my little girl away!
Giants Stadium 8/28/03



Oats

Last edited by Oats

So... you don't believe we could have 'Faith' along with 'Science' or 'Critical Thought'?  Do you believe they are mutually exclusive of each other? 

____________________________________

The SPL Rocks!

Prego che tu stia danzando con San Pietro alle porte perlacee del cielo





Pulled up to my house today
Came and took my little girl away!
Giants Stadium 8/28/03



Oats

I guess it's how you define faith.  I define is loosely as believing something without any evidence to support your belief.  I like to think that I don't have faith in anything/don't believe in faith.  I don't have faith that my wife loves me, I believe it based on evidence (how she says hello to me when we see each other after work etc...).  I am an atheist, so that part is easy (don't believe there is an all knowing entity that cares what we think or do). 

I would rather that my children learn how the world came about how life evolved, and how amazing it is life on earth is here at all, let alone that each one of us was born and gets to live for whatever short period of time we have than worry about a book (or books) that men who didn't know where the sun went at night wrote.  There are still places that call themselves "Universities" that claim the earth is 6,000 years old and teach that as part of science class.

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To follow-up on your question Oats (ignoring my diatribe), one can certainly have both.  The Jesuits are a prefect example of people who believed in a specific religious text but did not let that religious text interfere with a greater curiosity of the world around them. 

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DenverBrian posted:

To follow-up on your question Oats (ignoring my diatribe), one can certainly have both.  The Jesuits are a prefect example of people who believed in a specific religious text but did not let that religious text interfere with a greater curiosity of the world around them. 

You took the words right out of my mouth. lol  They still have the Sciences taught and majored in at those same Jesuit Universities. 

____________________________________

The SPL Rocks!

Prego che tu stia danzando con San Pietro alle porte perlacee del cielo





Pulled up to my house today
Came and took my little girl away!
Giants Stadium 8/28/03



Oats

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