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Creation as Secondary to Judgment

Creation as Secondary to Judgment

Last updated on: October 19, 2026 at 3:31 pm by John Mark N. Reynolds

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Creation as Secondary to Judgment 2026-10-19T15:31:51-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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Creating is a most human act.

A good canonical (classical) education will teach a student to create. Yet discerning what to create in any given generation requires balancing primary and secondary benefits. Some creations are good for us, but not useful to anyone else. Other creations are meant to be shared and to benefit us beyond the mere act of making. We should all learn to make music for the good of our souls, but few of us should force the rest of us to listen, and fewer still will make a living making music.

That’s fine, though; for me at least, discerning worthwhile music is as important as making music. Most music will come to me from other people using instruments other than my own. Gaining good judgment will matter to me.

The same is true of what used to be practical crafting skills.

My Dad was the last Reynolds to know how to make a nail. We still have the tools, but the era of generations of Reynolds subsidizing their income with some simple blacksmith work has ended. We do not make sinkers for fishing lines, bolts, or horseshoes. The last thing we made with metal came into being fifty years ago. It was cool to watch Papaw make a nail, yet the final product was more expensive, less usable, and less efficient with our work time.

It would be fine if one of my adult children picked up the hobby of metalwork, but there is no necessity for it. In contrast, Hope has taught all four “kids” to cook, and they are good at it. Ian makes great soup, for example. Few things Hope bakes can be replaced at Costco. The baked goods do not smell or taste as good as what comes out of her oven. When we are in a rush, we buy cookies, but at the cost of taste, which is, when you think about it, a big deal in cookie consumption. Angel food cake is a rare exception, hard to make, and generally indiscernible from mass-produced stuff.

We are teaching the grandchildren how to cook. A homemade quilt is not an efficient use of time, perhaps, and is not better at the task of being a blanket than one at Walmart. We can go on Etsy and get one more beautiful than any we are likely to make, yet there is joy in quilting. The quilt my wife made has sentiment for us that no purchased item could share. From needles to power tools, Hope has learned many skills. Choosing which artisanal endeavor to pursue is a matter of choice for her.

A school might pick some of these skills to teach the community, but the choice is relatively random. A mistake is looking to the past and forgetting that educators taught needlework partly for the beauty of creation and partly because it was a practical, necessary skill. There is no need to darn socks anymore. Technology has made much of what we had to do a choice.

Schools should recognize this.

Eidos:

This is the eleventh in a series on classical education. To read part one, click here.

What Should All of Us Try Creating?

There are some “makings” that are good for us, even though, throughout human history, most of us who learned the skill made no practical use of it.

There was never a moment when harder mathematics classes were going to be “useful” to me. I was the sort that technology immediately made my few mathematical skills obsolete. I should use a calculator for my own financial safety! Still, learning mathematics gave me a sense of the nature of reality: when someone makes a math claim, I have a sense of what is plausible. We should still teach mathematics even if AI makes a certain kind of mathematical discovery impossible for humans unaided by AI. After all, almost none of us were ever going to make those discoveries in any case!

Any craft that makes something useful and beautiful can be taught, though perhaps no particular craft needs to be taught. If a school has access to quilters and quilting materials, it might teach that lovely discipline, but not every school needs to do so! Robotics has slowly made most “making” tasks unnecessary, but working with our hands is good for us. We place value on the piece through our labor, distinct from the mere utility of the piece. The quilt we have made is no warmer, but it is more valuable.

Other skills have ceased to be necessary or at least much less needed, but are still good for our souls. Playing the piano used to be essential if you wanted to have music in your home. Phonographs and radio ended this necessity. We need fewer piano players now than in the past. Yet making music is so essential to the human soul (harmony needed!), and the piano keyboard is so widespread and flexible an instrument that perhaps we should keep encouraging lessons. After all, as Watson noted to Sherlock Holmes, a violin badly played is unbearable. Any of us can hit a note on a piano that sounds like a “C.”

Why is it good for us if impractical? Making music brings together our rational, emotional, passionate, and physical characteristics in a single act. There are few other activities so widely accessible to most people. You need only have a body to make some kind of music (singing, clapping). The harmony produced is real. It is not that a musician cannot be wicked, but that a musician will gain a certain safeguard against false or ugly assumptions about human nature.

Writing and public communication should be required to basic levels, even if most “practical” writing ends up being automated. I do not care, nor should I, if a human writes my loan documents. I care a great deal about Hope writing the love letter she sends me. We should teach writing up to the point where a “voice” is gained that friends and family can recognize. This gift may cease to be monetizable, but it is necessary to our humanity.

A curriculum should teach us to create, though the more things will cease to be creations of necessity. Some friends in robotics and AI suggest humans will need to make nothing. This is good news! We will get to make anything we feel called to make. I do not have four-year-old Whim-Wham’s drawings on my desk because they are the best artistic or biological renderings of a tree. I have them there because she made them, and I love her and her drawings. The great art we are all unlikely to make has value; any rendering not made by a human is merely useful.

Every man should be educated to be a good critic.

The very wealthy or powerful have always been able to choose their labor. They could dabble and afford the joys of the dilettante. Many societies have become wealthy enough to give many of us time for hobbies. I have relatives who paint amazing Warhammer figurines. Others form amateur theatrical groups, write plays, and perform them. God bless the amateur athlete who plays only for the love of the game! We must begin educating all Americans on how to use their leisure time well.

We can waste time or use it to grow and create beauty. No machine can find or report the truth. We should not leave judgment to our devices. This means we will all need to develop a sense of what is plausible in the physical and metaphysical world. Bluntly, we will need to develop good taste. Music, art, and literary appreciation will need standards to avoid the false, the wicked, and the ugly. Naturally, this must be done with care to avoid reactionary impulses. The goal is not to be trapped by the high styles of the past, but to develop the discernment to recognize when a new form of jazz is interesting rather than just schlock.

In this sense, everyone will be freed if we plan correctly to gain the education of a lady or a gentleman, cultivating a sound mind and body with virtuous character. We need only educate to humane ends.

We all must become critics. Part of humane education is being human! We can teach a preference for human things when the creation’s object is value or beauty. Tasks that are “under the hood” may cease to be crafted by people, but that should free us to make more, not less. The staff by my desk is made of holly by a skilled woodworker, not because I could not have gotten something cheaper, but because it is valuable to me. On the other hand, when Dad was very sick, we were thankful for inexpensive, practical tools that surely were made by machines. His walker was practical and necessary to help his failing body. Unlike the walking stick, it had no sentimental value, and we gave it away when he no longer needed such help.

Dad is, after all, now in a place where the great Creator allows him to sing, feast, and create without any burden of necessity ever again. The Creator could make anything, but allows us to make some things! Of His own bounty, we give to Him.

Of all forms of education, a canonical or classical education is best suited to the future. It can never be eliminated because we will always be human. I do not need to know ancient Greek the way I once did, but the feel of the Republic’s ending, to me, having spent decades thinking about that text, is different from any translation. There is no perfect translation, and so no machine will ever make one. The educated critic will always need to stand in judgment. Is Odysseus tricky? Is he “many-wayed?” What is he? The text is there; a machine might give me options, but Homer was a human, and so as a human, I stand with him over the text.

The future will make critics of us all. We will come to judgment on the works of our tools used by other men. They will serve us when we wish and as we wish.

*I am not defending the practices that have created some of our tools. No robber baron of any period will get a defense from me.

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