Thouoghts: 13 Nov. 2021

 

Commanding Hope

Thomas Homer-Dixon

Simply stopping the slide— just keeping things from getting worse— isn’t enough. Reversing it means aggressively addressing our world’s agonizing social and economic injustices; and most importantly, it means rebuilding nature. We must commit to fixing the hideous environmental mess we’ve made— with all the science, technology, economic investment, and intellectual, artistic, and emotional creativity we can muster.

The Constitution of Knowledge

Jonathan Rauch

Those values and rules and institutions do for knowledge what the U.S. Constitution does for politics: they create a governing structure, forcing social contestation onto peaceful and productive pathways. And so I call them, collectively, the Constitution of Knowledge.

Fooled by Randomness

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Remember that nobody accepts randomness in his own success, only his failure.

The Inevitability of Tragedy

Barry Gewen

The internet has been excellent at telling us about the actual, not so much about the contingent, although policymakers necessarily operate in an arena of uncertainty and unpredictability.

Nixon Agonistes

Garry Wills

“Nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations [read, today: Russia?] and passionate attachments for others [read, perhaps: South Vietnam?] should be excluded.” Washington’s text argues that “the nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave.”

This was published in 1970, perhaps we'd substitute "China" for "Russia," and perhaps "Saudia Arabia."

The Way to Love

Anthony De Mello

This is what happened: First your society and your culture taught you to believe that you would not be happy  without certain persons and certain things. Just take a look around you: Everywhere people have actually built their lives on the unquestioned belief that  without certain things—money, power, success, approval, a good reputation, love, friendship, spirituality, God—they cannot be happy. What is your particular combination?

“Evolution doesn’t have a purpose in the human sense, as far as I know. But because we are human, we can give it a purpose. We are now in the position of being responsible for evolution, for life. It’s no longer just a mindless universe. I mean, it is just a mindless universe, which has generated through complexity a mind that now has to decide where we want to go. So, in that sense, now it has a purpose, it seems to me. It’s our purpose. And we have to decide what that purpose is.” —“Flow With Soul: An Interview with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi," What Is Enlightenment? Magazine, Issue 21, Spring/Summer 2002

Henry Adams & the Making of America by Garry Wills

 

Published in 2005; my second reading

It's my custom to pick a reading in American history to celebrate the Fourth of July each year. In browsing my bookshelf, which is amply stocked with Garry Wills, and my eye caught this title. I'd bought it and read it when it was published in 2005, so I thought I could dip into it to meet my quota of patriotic reading.

Wrong.

I can't "dip into" Garry Wills. There are few living authors of whom I've read--and re-read--so much. I was like a fish thinking I'd just take a nibble of that juicy worm and avoid the hook. No way with this expert angler of readers. And as I read and quickly realized that I wasn't going to read just a portion of this work, I also realized that I was really getting a twofer by doing so: extended quotes of Henry Adams along with a guided tour from Wills. Indeed, as Wills explains, the book serves as a mini-biography of Adams and a guided tour of Adams's great work, The History of the United States During the Administrations of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison (1801-1817), originally published in 1889 and1891 and consisting of nine volumes. Is this long venture worth it? Wills describes Adams's work here as ""the greatest prose masterpiece of non-fiction in America in the 19th century." And as to Wills, I'll venture the opinion that he's one of the outstanding prose stylists of the later 20th and early 21st century America, as well as serving as one of our most astute contemporary political observers and historians (among other achievements). This is a perfect match.

The first main contention Wills argues is that History is misread (if read at all) and overshadowed by Adam's The Education of Henry Adams (written in 1906 although not published until 1918). Wills describes The Education as a"world-weary and pessimistic view of the nation and its politics." But the History was written by Adams when he was in his forties and reveals "a man optimistic, progressive, and nationalistic, instead of one detached, arch, and pessimistic [compared to the author of The Education]. Even the prose begins to look different, more energetic, flexible, and engaged, less mannered and self-conscious." Wills also shatters the contention, surprisingly wide-spread, that Adams was out to defend the honor of his great-grandfather John Adams and grandfather John Quincy Adams. Not so. Adams wasn't keen on his grandfather or his New England heritage, nor was he sour about Jefferson. Finally, historians who know better often read only the opening, which consists of a social history of the United States in 1800. While some may praise this part of the work as a pioneering effort of social history, they ignore the remainder. But such a limited reading, as Wills describes it, consists of "the chrysalis without the butterfly, the windup without the pitch." With these three misconceptions dispatched, Wills then walks the reader through Adams's History and related works (biographies of Albert Gallatin, John Randolph, and an unpublished biography of Aaron Burr). 

Early on Wills alerts the reader that because of Adams's ability as a stylist that he'd quote Adams at length and frequently. This allows the reader to appreciate the basis of Wills's assessment of Adams's skill as a stylist, and the reader also comes to appreciate Adams as a keen observer of politics (even remotely in time). Wills devotes as a chapter to each of the nine volumes of the History, thus providing a history lesson along with an assessment of what Adams accomplishes. But it is near the conclusion the book that Wills comes to reflect on the project as a whole the reader strikes the richest vein of observations and assessments. 

 As to the history itself, Wills agrees with Adams about the significance of the Jeffersonian reign (which includes Madison's two terms). He writes: 

ADAMS HAS TOLD a dramatic story in his nine volumes—how a nation stagnating at the end of Federalist rule shook itself awake and struck off boldly in new directions in the first sixteen years of the Jeffersonians' rule. In one way, this picture corresponds with accepted notions. Jefferson had, after all, promised a "second revolution." But his aim was initially a conservative one—to return to the original Revolution, which had been betrayed by the Federalists. He would draw back from the world, hobble federal power, let states and merchants conduct their own affairs. He promised to be even more wary of foreign entanglements than President Washington had been. He would recall embassies, put the navy to sleep, get rid of all taxes but customs duties, and give himself little to do. Adams agrees that there was, indeed, a second revolution—just not the one Jefferson thought he would be conducting. Yet he gives Jefferson the credit for aspiring to a new revolution, whatever its shape. Jefferson did not betray his principles in riding these new energies. It just proved impossible to return to the days of the first revolution, whether that was conceived in Federalist or Republican terms.

. . . . 

Politics had moved on. Old political alignments no longer applied when the New Englander John Quincy Adams was serving as secretary of state to the Virginia president James Monroe, and when a Connecticut Supreme Court justice like Joseph Story wrote opinions indistinguishable from those of the Virginia chief justice John Marshall.

Wills also describes the multiple feats of historical accomplishment and unique insights that Adams reveals in his work: 

What sets Adams's History apart, in its own time and in ours? There are a number of original features. It turns upside down the previous consensus on the period covered, so drastically that many have missed the point of the History entirely—which is not that Republicans became Federalists in office, but that they led a breakout from both ideologies. Adams brings to bear on his daring thesis many kinds of evidence, archival and cultural, that had not before been so deftly interwoven. The book also thinks internationally while telling a national tale. No other general account of the Jeffersonians' achievement tracks so carefully the international events that were affecting and being affected by what went on within the borders of the United States. Adams was bucking an American tendency of long standing—the sense that America's special destiny could be worked out without foreign aid or hindrance.

This last observation is expanded by Wills:

If one were to ask for the two leading figures in American history during the first sixteen years of the nineteenth century, the normal answer might be Jefferson and Madison. Adams, on the other hand, thinks they were Jefferson and Napoleon. Jefferson's actions were taken in the context of endless joustings with Bonaparte, or attempts to distance himself from him, or to escape the shadow of alleged collaboration with him. Even in electoral politics, he had always to cope with the charge of Francophile leanings toward Napoleon. The fate of Louisiana and the Floridas was dependent on Bonaparte. The War of 1812 was in large part prompted by his maneuverings to pit the Anglophone nations against each other. His power was continually felt or feared or flattered by the Jeffersonians. He, more than anyone or anything, forced Jefferson out of his original plan of disengagement from the world.

. . . .

To emphasize from the outset the importance of Napoleon to the Jeffersonian administrations, Adams introduces him in the History's first volume with a Miltonic flourish: "Most picturesque of all figures in modern history, Napoleon Bonaparte, like Milton's Satan on his throne of state, although surrounded by a group of figures little less striking than himself, sat unapproachable on his bad eminence; or, when he moved, the dusky air felt an unusual weight"  

Wills pivots from the importance of Napoleon to the American story to a comparison of Adams with his contemporary Leo Tolstoy, who also contends with Napoleon in his monumental War and Peace (although Wills notes, there is no evidence that Adams had read War and Peace). Wills writes:  

To say that Jefferson and Napoleon are the contending giants in Adams's History is not, oddly enough, to say that he is writing "great man" history. These two are like Napoleon and his Russian rival, General Kutuzov, in War and Peace, men doing they knew not what, borne along by their people, by their foes, by accident or by concatenating factors seen and unseen—so that they accomplish very often the exact opposite of what they intended. Napoleon abets or baffles Jefferson into policies that succeed despite Jefferson's will. But Napoleon, too, is baffled over and over while he acts with an illusion of control—in Egypt, in Saint Domingue, in Spain, in Russia, at the English Channel. Adams and Tolstoy—contemporaries who were writing about the same Napoleonic years—are the supreme ironists of their subject.

 While working on the History in 1883, Adams reflected on how his leading figures were being led:  

"In regard to them I am incessantly forced to devise excuses and apologies or to admit that no excuse will avail. I am at times almost sorry that I ever undertook to write their history, for they appear like mere grasshoppers, kicking and gesticulating in the middle of the Mississippi River. There is no possibility of reconciling their theories with their acts, or their extraordinary foreign policy with dignity ... My own conclusion is that history is simply social development along the lines of weakest resistance, and that in most cases the line of weakest resistance is found as unconsciously by society as by water. "

As Wills notes, there is an irony here with both Adams and Tolstoy, both focus on a "great man" (Napoleon) but seems him only a conduit. Wills elucidates: 

Why, with this view of things, do Adams and Tolstoy dwell on their respective leading figures? Tolstoy answers that some men are better fitted to be the instruments of "the unseen hand" of history. They are used because they are usable. Napoleon was a force field in which all the hopes and angers and fears of the French Revolution, and resistance to it, and its aftermath, played themselves out. Men followed or resisted him because the same electrical currents were running through them, not because he was giving them the energies they lent him. In the same way, Adams's Jefferson is the only vehicle for a national vision of any sort in America. He offered "the line of least resistance" to forces breaking out of the old ideologies, out of the material constraints and mental blinders of the past.

And while both Adams and Tolstoy see providence in events, each has his own source: Tolstoy in the traditional providence of God's will and Jefferson in the "the people" and "the future." Thus the Jefferson of the revolutionary era could change course so drastically as Jefferson the president. This comparison of Adams and Tolstoy and their respective accounts lead Wills to his own insightful observations about the course of events: 

But whatever one thinks of Adams's own views, anyone can learn from the construction of the History how to study the interplay of the many factors—national and international interests, personal and impersonal influences, planned and unplanned events—that go into a period of great social change. Why and how did the Jeffersonians make a nation? Because they had to. They could not make or maintain a government fitted to their time without doing so. Their own acts and those prompting or responding to their acts insensibly but irresistibly bore them along. That is why Adams is right to see continuity between the Jefferson and the Madison administrations, all of it the work of the Jeffersonians. Party-making (with patronage, the Twelfth Amendment, the war on the judiciary), war-making (with Tripoli or with England), the supplanting of state militias with a standing professional army, territorial expansion achieved or attempted (in Louisiana, Florida, or Canada), a vigorous campaign of internal improvements, a central financial system, intellectual and technological innovations, a religious tolerance across regional boundaries—all these worked together in nation-making.  

But literally uncountable agencies were also necessary to the unforeseen result. To identify many of these factors is not to know them all or have one binding explanation for the outcome. Tolstoy's novel moves on many levels, with a highly personal story to tell, but it reminds us that much will never be told because much will never be known:  

"The more deeply we search out the causes [of a war], the more of them we discover; and every cause, and even a whole class of causes taken separately, strikes us as being equally true in itself, and equally deceptive through its insignificance in comparison with the immensity of the result, and its inability to produce (without all the other causes that concurred with it) the effect that followed.8 This is the irony of history as Adams traces it. It tells us how the Jeffersonians wrought better than they knew while they thought they were doing something else. In the end, they made a nation." [War and Peace, 688.]  

This is the irony of history as Adams traces it. It tells us how the Jeffersonians wrought better than they knew while they thought they were doing something else. In the end, they made a nation.

After this mediation on history, Wills concludes with some pertinent observations on American politics. First, he describes the lingering desire to divide Americans into "Jeffersonians" and "Hamiltonians," although the History establishes that "the Jeffersonian era" described in the History effectively erased such this distinction.  Wills effectively mocks his contemporaries who still attempt to deploy this simple binary today. Second, and of special note, we have our infatuation with the Founders:

The Founders have the air of demigods. Such piety has, of course, prompted revisionist attempts to bring the idols back down to our level, but they float magically back up again. . . . [The approval of the Founders] is the seal of approval endlessly sought. We feel that we not only honor but need the Founding Fathers. Without them we become illegitimate children.

We are always seeking their approval (as if they could grant it from the grave). Thus we are fed ideas of "original meaning," "strict construction," and other such nostrums of contemporary conservatives. Wills uses no less a personage than James Madison--the single most important figure in the drafting of the Constitution and one of the authors of The Federalist--to take down this nonsense:

Madison, who drew up the rough draft of the document [the Constitution] but disagreed with key portions of its final promulgation, said that it was a first effort that should be "liquidated" (clarified) in practice. It was like a blueprint that should be a guide but not a prison to contractors working from it. In Federalist No. 37, he criticizes what we know as "fundamentalist" readings of the Bible to attack fundamentalist readings of the Constitution:    

"All new laws, though penned with the greatest technical skill, and passed on the fullest and most mature deliberation, are considered as more or less obscure and equivocal, until their meaning be liquidated and ascertained by a series of particular discussions and adjudications. Besides, the obscurity arising from the complexity of objects, and the imperfection of the human faculties, the medium through which the conceptions of men are conveyed to each other, adds a fresh embarrassment [obstacle]. The use of words is to express ideas. Perspecuity therefore requires not only that the ideas should be distinctly formed, but that they should be expressed by words distinctly and exclusively appropriated to them. But no language is so copious as to supply words and phrases for every complex idea, or so correct as not to include many equivocally denoting different ideas. Hence it must happen that, however accurately objects may be discriminated in themselves, and however accurately the discrimination may be considered, the definition of them may be rendered inaccurate by the inaccuracy of the terms in which it is delivered. And its unavoidable inaccuracy must be greater or less, according to the complexity and novelty of the objects defined. When the Almighty himself condescends to address mankind in their own language, his meaning, luminous as it must be, is rendered dim and doubtful, by the cloudy medium through which it is communicated. Here then are three causes of vague and incorrect definitions: indistinctness of the object, imperfection of the organ of conception, inadequateness of the vehicle of ideas. Any one of these must produce a certain degree of obscurity. The convention, in delineating the boundary between the Federal and State jurisdictions, must have experienced the full effect of them all."

Thus, as Wills argues, what constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment" in 1790 (for instance) must be given a newer (and better) reading based on contemporary standards (and yes, our idea of what constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment" for crimes is better than theirs). That we can (and must) "misread" the Constitution was given its greatest model by Lincoln's "misreading" of the Declaration's statement that "all men are created equal." Jefferson never meant to include slaves or women by his statement, but the progress of the republic--a moral progress--demanded this "misreading." Wills concludes this portion of his argument:

This or that. Either-or. Adams says both-neither. History is far more complex than the interplay of two (or many) ideologies. Chance, mistakes, opportunism, progress, reassessments, forgetfulness—all of them and more concatenate something less neat than anyone envisaged.

. . . .

There was no going back to Jefferson's or Hamilton's "original intent." Jefferson's "agrarian virtue" was inextricably entangled in slavery. Hamilton's commercial elitism was at odds with the populist direction of the country. Some analogues or extensions of what they said can be found—just as broadening of constitutional meanings can—but constantly trying to revalidate what was time-bound as if it were eternal leads to quibbling and waste of intellectual energy. It diverts attention from what is really happening in the world. It constantly cycles back to childish illusions. Does this mean that the past has nothing to say to us? Certainly not. Lincoln learned from the Declaration without being slavish toward it. The founding achievement is rich with lessons, of problems overcome, of ways to address obstacles, or brave first attempts at what was insoluble in the Founders' time but not necessarily in ours.

Wills and Adams do agree that one Founder provides the soundest foundation for emulation--the founder who was the least intellectual: George Washington. Wills quotes historian Joseph Ellis about Washington's place: 

Whatever minor missteps he made along the way, his judgment on all the major political and military questions invariably proved prescient, as if he had known where history was headed; or, perhaps, as if the future had felt compelled to align itself with his choices. He was the rarest of men, a supremely realistic visionary, a prudent prophet. [Joseph Ellis, His Excellency: George Washington (Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), pp. 202–3.]*

Wills concludes with this thought: 

There is much to be learned from the past—but it is better learned from the pragmatists than from the ideologues. Washington would have been the least surprised or disoriented to see what the nation looked like after the Jeffersonians had made it. 

 Thus ends my nibble at the worm. But I'm delighted that I swallowed it (again) hook, line, and sinker. Two for the price of one--a real bargain for a gem. 

*I recently was at an art museum in San Francisco that included a portrait of Washington. The caption indicated that Washington was adulated as a Founding Father, but then it cautioned that he owned slaves for many years. True, and not inconsequential, but small, and insulting to me that I didn't know this already and the implication that I needed this moral correction. We don't honor those before us for their perfection--none have it--but for the worthy accomplishments. Heaven save us from small-minded, moralistic historians and pedants! Thus my enthusiasm for the likes of Adams (to his detriment, he essentially ignored slavery) and Wills. 

 

Politics and the Occult: The Left, the Right, and the Radically Unseen by Gary Lachman

History, but not "just" history

Before I get to this book, please indulge me while I engage in a couple of brief tangents that I will tie into the book review in due course. First, I hear people say something to the effect that “people shouldn’t bring religion into politics,” or “in America, our Constitution says we should keep religion and politics separate.” I find these statements well-intentioned and understandable, but nevertheless absurd. Religion and politics have been conjoined since humans conceived of each, and they have been intimate since the dawn of civilization (agriculture and cities). One can argue that as a part of the modern project these concerns should be separated, and in some measure, they address different domains. But they are overlapping Venn diagrams, each claiming a common territory. Religion, broadly conceived, is the stuff of ultimate concerns: how we relate to those powers greater than us (e.g., God, gods, Nature, the Dharma, the Tao, etc.) and how we relate to each other (morality broadly conceived). Politics often addresses the mundane: “Where should we put this road?” and “How much should we levy for taxes this year?” (I was a city attorney for three decades.) In short, the “who gets what, when, and how” of Harold Laswell. But politics also addresses fundamental issues of life and death, such as definitions and punishments for murder, the legality of abortion, declarations of war—the big issues. In short, politics entails both the sacred and the profane; it involves the ethical and the practical. Thus, I can’t imagine keeping religion and politics separate. It’s impossible. On the other hand, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . ..”  In other words, what it requires is the separation of church and state, the respective institutions of religion and politics. The First Amendment prohibits the state from interfering in religious belief and practice, regardless of whether conducted within an institutional framework (church, synagogue, mosque, temple, etc.) or arising from the beliefs and practices of any one person. This constitutionally mandated separation of government from religion provides an essential safeguard for the individual, and it protects both religious institutions and government.  Entanglements of church and state create problems for churches and states. 

My next digression involves some post-election communications about Trump and Clinton. In short, one person with whom I had some contact argued that Trump deserved to win over Clinton because Clinton was in cahoots (my term, not his) with “the Illuminati,” such as George Soros. What? I, in my Enlightenment bubble, thought that such nonsense was something that I’d encounter only among the truly wigged-out. Not so. There isn’t a bubble out there; there are more bubbles than we can begin to count. I prefer mine (and I hope that it doesn’t create too distorting a lens), but we need to pop some of these others.

Having allowed myself these two digressions, let me turn to this book and explain why I found my digressions fitting in the circumstances. Gary Lachman’s Politics and the Occult: The Left, the Right, and the Radically Unseen (2008) is about the intersection of religion (or spirituality, if you prefer a wider net) and politics. However,  instead of the usual roster of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, he’s writing about those who inhabit the fringes of those religions and some who draw upon entirely different creeds. If Lachman had shared any jokes in this book, they wouldn’t have set up with a “priest, a minister, and a rabbi walk into a bar,” but “a magician, an adept, and a charlatan walk into a bar.” But unlike the mainstream set-up, where perhaps a Roman collar and a yarmulke would help us distinguish who is who among the mainstream three, among the three occult figures, you couldn’t know who is who from any first glimpse. (N.B. Don’t take this analogy too far; we can’t necessarily tell who is a charlatan in the occult group and only by process of elimination can we identify the minister in the first. Protestants can be so nondescript in public.) The occult has its roots in many of the mainstream traditions, Christian, Jewish, and Islamic, in addition to other traditions (Gnosticism, Hermeticism, etc.), but by definition, the occult remains out of sight and the esoteric reserved for the few. Lachman argues that the occult traditions became more secretive with the advent of the modern world when science and materialism (Newton’s interests notwithstanding) became the dominant ideology. With this tidal shift in culture, concerns about the soul, mind, and consciousness became suspect and began to migrate underground. Thus, the shadow side of religion becomes, even more, a matter of fear and fascination.

The list of occult groups identified and discussed by Lachman is impressive. From early modern times, we get the Rosicrucians, the Freemasons, and the Illuminati. All of these groups clothed themselves in secrecy, which, in addition to practical concerns about repression by ruling authorities, makes each organization more attractive to members (exclusiveness) and more fascinating to outsiders. Also, one can’t help but note that these groups seem to be populated by the elite, not simply (or even primarily) the aristocracy, but the educated elite as well. For instance, both Descartes and Leibniz are associated with the Rosicrucians. (An aside: isn’t Leibniz one of the most brilliant minds of all time?) The elite membership in these organizations certainly enhanced both their prestige and popular resentment of against them.

But how influential—or even powerful—were these early modern occult groups? In the end, the pyramid with the eye on the dollar bill and George Washington’s well-known Freemasonry membership notwithstanding, these groups were not that influential. If you want to gauge the thoughts and beliefs that guided the American Revolution and Founding, you’d do better to study Locke, the Scottish Enlightenment, Montesquieu, the Atlantic Republican tradition, and the English Whig tradition than  Freemasonry. Add the political economy of slavery (as sadly one must), and you have a strong sense of the thinking behind America’s political origins.  Occult organizations also had their fingerprints on the French Revolution, on both the Right and the Left (the time in which these terms emerged), but no group (occult or not) was in control completely or for long until Napolean put an end to the chaos. The ideas behind sea-change of the French Revolution have more to do with Voltaire and the philosophes and their arch-critic Rousseau than any occult dogma or action.

The intersection of the occult and the political continued into the 19^th century. At the level of individuals and events, adherents to occult organizations and beliefs have a role, but in the more encompassing mix of culture and political beliefs, their effect is hard to discern. The ideas of Marx and Mill and mainstream religions and philosophies are the most influential. Of course, many small sectarian groups, both political and occult (and sometimes overlapping) populate history since the French Revolution. Zionists and anti-Semitic schemers, utopian socialists and free-love advocates, syndicalists and social welfare groups—experimenters (good and ill) of all types abound as society goes through continued upheavals. As Lachman notes, inquiries into the spiritual, the non-material, and consciousness preceded modernity (and are as old as human culture), but in times of great change and turbulence, these concerns become acuter and more widespread. And beginning in the late 18^th century, the turmoil of politics, the wildfires of revolution, the conflagration of wars, imperialism and colonialism, along with changes in technology and culture, vastly increased the total wealth of Western nations and altered the composition of society while dramatically changing the culture. This level of change was—is—unprecedented in human history. But in contrast to the headlong changes in our lived environment, changes in shared consciousness, particularly at the deeper individual levels, seems to move at a much slower pace, taking the course of epochs, not months and years. Thus, to any extent that the occult or esoteric beliefs and practices might have had an effect would, by definition, be limited to an elite and could only disburse slowly through society. By contrast, changes in some religious practices can spread like wildfire through society, for instance, the changes of the Protestant Reformation and the Great Awakening, to provide just two examples. Thus, whatever legitimate hopes initiates might hold in times of great change, the odds are against any significant influence—not to mention control—over events. Thus, for all of the aspiration, the influence of the occult and esoteric remains limited.

But despite the limited influence, the role of occult and esoteric thinkers remains intriguing. Within periods that I’m acquainted with, the footprints bear following. Madame Blavatsky and the Theosophists were proponents of Indian independence at the beginning in the late 19^th century. In Romania, the great scholar of religion, Mircea Eliade, had sympathies with Romanian fascist and nationalist groups through the Second World War. Finally, at present, the president’s aide Stephen Bannon cites Julius Evola (along with Lenin) as an intellectual mentor. Evola was an Italian esoteric thinker and critic of modernity who promoted Italian fascism. Thus, while esoteric and occult thinkers certainly have not guided events nor have they been at the forefront of the intellectual currents shaping modern life, neither have their beliefs and personages been negligible. And contemplate this: you may conclude that Stephen Bannon is not the president and that his beliefs, no matter how seemingly fringe or outrageous, are of little consequence. But understand that the man he serves is marked by an extreme intellectual vacuity, and the contents of the House of Horrors that fill Bannon’s mind will undoubtedly—have undoubtedly—streamed in to fill that vacuum.

Before I conclude my review, I need to admit something. I feel a bit guilty about reviewing this book. The guilt comes from the fact that while reading it—and other books and articles by Lachman—I find myself mumbling “hum-hum," making an electronic note of a “yes” to a passage, and generally finding that his comments—never intrusive and or heavy-handed—reflect many of my beliefs and conclusions. I enjoyed this book, like the others, because he channels and expresses so many of my thoughts and perceptions. It’s reassuring the find someone who shares many of your viewpoints, but it may take the edge off of my criticism. If so, so be it; you’re forewarned. 

To illustrate this point, let me quote from his conclusion, where, as in the Introduction, Lachman allows himself to comment more extensively. In the “Last Words” he writes:

Clearly, for anyone who thinks life should be about something more than reality TV, celebrity gossip, and having the “F” word misspelled on your clothes, the secular Western world leaves much to be desired. I include myself in this group. Like many people, I find much about the modern world unappealing. It's for this reason that I find critics of it like Julius Evola and René Guénon [both “Traditionalists”] and others of their sensibilities disturbing—not because of Evola's obvious fascist sympathies or Guénon's elitist ethos, but because many of their criticisms hit the mark. Unless a more moderate rethinking of modernity comes up with something soon, the more extreme alternatives offered by Guénon and others like him will seem attractive. Notwithstanding Evola's repellent racist views, it's not surprising that some of his readers appreciated his belief that the only thing left was to “blow up” everything. Thankfully, the majority take this as a metaphor, and I'd bet that many of us feel something similar at times, although, again thankfully, we have the presence of mind not to succumb to this “purifying” release. To want to knock everything down and start anew has been a part of the human psyche for ages, probably from the beginning. It's a form of metaphysical impatience, and most spiritual practices are aimed at learning how to curb it. But no society or nation can practice Zen or any other discipline; only people can. So it's up to us to refrain from indulging in the delightful and stimulating exercise of smashing everything up.

Lachman, Gary. Politics and the Occult: The Left, the Right, and the Radically Unseen (p. 232). Quest Books. Kindle Edition.

While I’m not well enough acquainted with either Evola or Guenon to endorse their critiques of modernity, I appreciate the sentiment. (See my review of William Ophuls’s book Requiem for Modern Politics and my review of Ian McGilchrist's The Master and His Emissary--also a Lachman favorite--for examples.) But as someone who’s trying to figure out how he can call himself a “Burkean revolutionary” (I’m still working out how I can transform this from a blatant oxymoron into a revealing paradox), I share Lachman’s appreciation of the critique and his desire not to destroy the world in order to perfect it. I didn’t think Donald Trump would be elected president because I didn’t believe enough American were willing to (even metaphorically) “blow up the system,” which Trump is attempting to do.

I also share Lachman’s conception of politics and political thinking:

Politics deals with the possible, not the ideal; it inhabits the messy world of becoming, not the stable world of being. Ideas from the world of being can inform the politics of becoming, but they cannot take its place, which means that as long as the world is the world, there will always be change. Attempts to force some ideal, whether it be right or left, into existence will fail, or success will come at such a cost that failure would have been preferable. While watching the collapse of his beloved Russia during the Bolshevik Revolution, P. D. Ouspensky had deep insight into what he called “the impossibility of violence,” “the uselessness of violent means to attain no matter what.” “I saw with undoubted clarity,” Ouspensky wrote, “that violent means and methods in anything whatever would unfailingly produce negative results, that is to say, results opposed to those aims for which they were applied.” This, Ouspensky said, wasn't an ethical insight but a practical one. Violence simply doesn't work. History, I think, bears Ouspensky out. If humankind and society are going to become “better,” it's not going to happen overnight. As the I Ching counsels, “Perseverance furthers.” And that, as I say, takes patience.

Lachman continues:

            Given that the political world isn't an ideal one, if I was asked which I preferred, the modern world—which allows for shopping malls, dumbed-down culture, and consumer consciousness—or a variant of the spiritual authoritarian theocracies encountered in this book, I'd have to come down on the side of modernity. With Leszek Kolakowski, I'm conservative because I believe that there is much to conserve and that the new is not always better than the old. But with Ernst Bloch I'm a radical, because I believe in the promise of the new, the potential for something that doesn't yet exist to arrive. The challenge, of course, is how to combine the two until we find the Goldilocks-like state of having things “just right.”

Id.

To all of the above, I say “Amen.” Lachman is not only a knowledgeable guide in the field of the occult, the esoteric, and of consciousness studies, but he also proves himself a responsible thinker in the quotidian world of politics. To borrow from the candidates, “I approve this message.”  

One final point. In a year-end blog post, in addition to announcing a new book scheduled for publication this spring about the imagination (including more on Owen Barfield), Lachman announced the receipt of a new commission. He reports:

I’ve also just received a commission from my US publisher, Tarcher Penguin, now Tarcher Perigee, for Dark Star Rising: Magick and Power in the Age of Trump. The book will look at the influence ‘mental science’ and ‘positive thinking’ has had on Trump’s rise to power, and will explore the links between the new ‘alt.right’ movement within the political far right and the political philosophy of the Italian esotericist Julius Evola. I will also look at the influence Alexandr Dugin, a radical political theorist influenced by Evola, ‘chaos magick’ and Martin Heidegger, has on the Russian President Vladimir Putin. In different ways both Trump and Putin seek to destabilize the west and reshape the political and economic map of Europe. With this in mind I will look at the possible connection – if any – between the European Union and a strange political philosophy that began in the late nineteenth century and according to some reports had a hidden but effective influence on European politics. This is what is known as Synarchy, the complete opposite of anarchy. Anarchy means no government; Synarchy means total government. I write about Synarchy in Politics and the Occult  and Dark Star Rising will pick up my account of the occult influence on modern politics from where I left it in 2008.

To borrow a term that I picked up from Lachman, I’m “chuffed” at this prospect. (I hope I’ve used that correctly.) I also hope that by the time of publication that it’s not as topical as it is at the moment, but I’m not banking on that. And even if we are so lucky, we’re going to be trying to discern what happened for some time, and Lachman is sure to provide fascinating insights into our unsettling course of events.

Happy Anniversary, America

Today we mark the 240^th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. We’ll enjoy picnics and parades, burgers and dogs, and cap the day by watching towering fireworks displays. All well and good. But it should also serve—as no other national holiday does—as a time to take stock and reflect on our nation.

I say “anniversary” rather than “birthday” because while our nation can be said to have been conceived—or perhaps given birth—in 1776, it didn’t achieve nationhood until the adoption of the Constitution and the inauguration of George Washington, the convening of the First Congress, and the seating of the Supreme Court. These institutions of government, which formed the character of our nation as a polity, created these United States of America. (We would the become The United States of America until we passed through the crucible of the Civil War).  Now is a crucial time to reflect on the status of this project.

Today we have a carbuncle on the surface of our body politic. Large, red, and ugly, we hope that it may go away with limited treatment and minimal interference to our politics and life as usual. But this is a Pollyannaish view because the carbuncle—or perhaps “bubo” is a better metaphor—represents an underlying systemic infection that threatens the whole of the body politic. Continued vigilance and treatment are imperative.

But this is a holiday, and my personal habit is to reflect on some work of American history or political thought. To this end, I’ll continue my way through The Federalist, the collective effort of Madison, Hamilton, and Jay.

Some see this document as a mere antiquary of 18^th-century political thought, but it remains a vital and penetrating work of political thought and government design. The insights and warnings found in The Federalist remain pertinent today. I’ll leave with one small thought from Federalist No. 1:

[A] dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.

(Hamilton)

Spend a little time this holiday pondering these words. 

Brooks on Repubicans

Brooks writes interestingly on the rather pathetic (my term, not his) Republican race, how even brighter Republicans, like Lugar & Hatch (well, maybe) are adhering to tribal loyalty. In fact, as Brooks notes, adherence to the crazy of the day seems to trump anything, thus the parade of lame potential nominees, all, as Brooks notes, unelectable. And how about Romney! Wow, I thought Richard Nixon was awkward in public, but Mitt seems to take it to a whole new level. Nixon was plagued by demons of inadequacy and inferiority leading to a degree of paranoia (and thus Watergate). Romney has to try to hide that he's not a normal guy. Did Washington have this problem? No! Washington cultivated his alooffness. Different times, for sure.