Thoughts for the Day: Saturday 29 August 2020

 

The Kennedy Imprisonment

Garry Wills

Charismatic authority is constructive only when it builds order from chaos. When it tries to supersede continuing forms of authority, it destabilizes despite itself. The more insistent became Kennedy’s personal call to follow him, the less compelling was any order that did not issue directly from him. The nontransferability of such personal authority was evident in the refusal of many Kennedy followers to treat President Johnson as fully legitimate. Johnson’s authority came from procedures and legal precedent, not from the personal charisma of his predecessor.

World Order

Henry Kissinger

...on April 11, 1951, President Truman relieved MacArthur of his military command for making statements contradicting the administration’s policy. On substance, Truman stressed the containment concept: the major threat was the Soviet Union, whose strategic goal was the domination of Europe. Hence fighting the Korean War to a military conclusion, even more extending it into China, was, in the words of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Omar Bradley, a combat leader in the war against Germany, “the wrong war, at the wrong place, at the wrong time, and with the wrong enemy.”

Bonds That Make Us Free

C. Terry Warner

Though none of us is responsible for the misfortunes that befall us, we are, thankfully, responsible for how we use those misfortunes. We cannot alter past events, it’s true. Not having been responsible for them, we cannot take responsibility for them. But we are responsible for the effect they have upon us—for the meaning we assign to them and the way we remember them. And we can learn and grow from them.

A Few Lessons From Sherlock Holmes

Peter Bevelin

“It is of the first importance...not to allow your judgment to be biased by personal qualities...The emotional qualities are antagonistic to clear reasoning. I assure you that the most winning woman I ever knew was hanged for poisoning three little children for their insurance-money, and the most repellant man of my acquaintance is a philanthropist who has spent nearly a quarter of a million upon the London poor.” (Holmes; The Sign of the Four)

The Songlines

Bruce Chatwin

“If this were so; if the desert were 'home'; if our instincts were forged in the desert; to survive the rigours of the desert - then it is easier to understand why greener pastures pall on us; why possessions exhaust us, and why Pascal's imaginary man found his comfortable lodgings a prison.”

Thoughts of the Day: Friday 28 August 2020

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Forbidden Hypnotic Secrets! - Incredible Confessions of the Rogue Hypnotist!

The Rogue Hypnotist

If you have a seemingly unsolvable problem forget about it. If you wish, imagine you have a note with your problem written on it. Next imagine you put it in a bottle and throw it behind you 'into your subconscious.' Get on with your life and sooner or later the solution will present itself when you least expect. Relax. The subconscious/unconscious is fully capable of solving problems when you focus on something else. It doesn't need the help of the conscious mind which is far too limited for such a task.

“Never has our future been more unpredictable, never have we depended so much on political forces that cannot be trusted to follow the rules of common sense and self-interest—forces that look like sheer insanity.” Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
“The truth doesn’t change according to our ability to stomach it emotionally.” - Flannery O’Connor ​​

The Art of Travel

Alain De Botton

If it is true that love is the pursuit in another of qualities we lack in ourselves, then in our love of someone from another country, one ambition may be to weld ourselves more closely to values missing from our own culture.

Shar

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The Metaphysical Club

Louis Menand

The pragmatists wanted a social organism that permitted a greater (though by no means unrestricted) margin for difference, but not just for the sake of difference, and not even because they thought principles of love and fairness required it. They wanted to create more social room for error because they thought this would give good outcomes a better chance to emerge. They didn’t just want to keep the conversation going; they wanted to get to a better place.

Thoughts of the Day: Thursday 27 August 2020

 "A million years ago, during the George W. Bush administration, a White House official dismissively told journalist Ron Suskind that people like Suskind lived in “the reality-based community,” meaning that they believed solutions to the nation’s problems came from studying reality and finding answers. “That's not the way the world really works anymore,” the official told Suskind. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality…. We're history's actors...and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

--Heather Cox Richardson. (N.B. Not all thoughts offered here are those that I agree with but sometimes "bad thoughts" (like examples of hubris) can spur deeper and, one hopes, better thoughts. 

The Force of Character

James Hillman

In many indigenous societies, the deeper instructive and affective connections skip a generation. Since both grandparents and grandchildren are partly marginalized, the young fantast joins the old eccentric against a common opponent, the adult generation between them.

Speculum Mentis

R. G. Collingwood

All our historical sources are based in this way on testimony: all testimony tells us not what happened but what its author wanted us to believe, or wanted to believe himself. In this way the uncertainty of history is contrasted with the certainty of perception and memory. But neither the criticism nor the contrast is well founded.

"Under conditions of terror most people will comply but some people will not…" — Hannah Arendt

"Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it." ― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

Thoughts of the Day: Wednesday 26 August 2020

 “Never let yourself be persuaded that any one Great Man, any one leader, is necessary to the salvation of America. When America consists of one leader and 158 million followers, it will no longer be America.” 

--Dwight D. Eisenhower

The Brothers Karamazov

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Above all, don’t lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to such a pass that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.

Ultrasociety

Peter Turchin

In Secular Cycles (2009), the Russian historian Sergey Nefedov and I have examined in detail eight such waves of instability, brought on by the loss of cooperation: the civil wars of the late Roman Republic and the collapse of Roman Empire, the Hundred Years War and the War of the Roses in medieval England and France, the French War of Religion, the English Civil War, the Time of Troubles in Russia, and the Russian Revolution and Civil War that ended the Romanov dynasty. In each case, we found that unraveling cooperation was a lead indicator of social collapse.

The Anatomy of Peace

The Arbinger Institute

So self-betrayal —this act of violating my own sensibilities toward another person—causes me to see that person or persons differently, and not only them but myself and the world also. When I ignore a sense to apologize to my son, for example, I might start telling myself that he’s really the one who needs to apologize, or that he’s a pain in the backside, or that if I apologize, he’ll just take it as license to do what he wants.

Collingwood's The Idea of History: A Reader's Guide by Peter Johnson

 

Collingwood in summary and in-depth

A preliminary observation: reading R.G. Collingwood is not a chore; in fact, it's a pleasure. Collingwood made a point of making his work accessible, and he succeeded. He addressed the issue of writing style in his Essay on Philosophical Method, where he argues that philosophy needn't--shouldn't--be difficult to read and fathom. Now, having read all of his major works at least once, I can attest to his writing acumen. But, make no mistake, what Collingwood writes requires close attention and a determined effort on the part of the reader to match Collingwood's mind. And he wrote a lot. The Oxford paperback copy of The Idea of History (rev. ed.) runs to 496 pages of text. In such a case, a guide can prove quite useful; someone who identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the book's arguments in a succinct and organized manner. Peter Johnson's Collingwood's The Idea of History: A Reader's Guide does just this, and by doing so, he provides an indispensable guide for anyone wanting a better grasp of Collingwood's thought about history as a discipline. 

Johnson's book only addresses Collingwood's The Idea of History and related texts in the revised edition of IH (OUP, 1993), not the entire body and development of Collingwood's thought. Johnson's text is relatively short at 196 pages, which includes a glossary of terms. Collingwood's terms, like "re-enactment," "encapsulation," and "inside/outside," for instance, are not terribly difficult to comprehend, but Collingwood deploys these terms in very specific ways, so the glossary proves useful. Indeed, the glossary defines its terms by quoting Collingwood directly. Johnson also provides a very detailed bibliography ("Reading Guide") of secondary works, both in general and relating to specific topics. This work was published in 2013, so the bibliography and reference to secondary works are reasonably up-to-date and quite thorough. 

The best aspect of this book, among its many merits, come from Johnson's splendid job of laying out Collingwood's main ideas with deftness and economy. He mixes quotes from Collingwood with his own concise summaries and comments about Collingwood's arguments. He also addresses criticisms of Collingwood's positions with the same sense of thoroughness and with an admirable degree of impartiality. Johnson (who's written an early book on Collingwood) is obviously an admirer, but he also sees the weaknesses or points of contention raised by other qualified readers. Collingwood, a careful and precise thinker, doesn't need a great deal of help in defense, although his inability to oversee the publication of IH (published posthumously) and his other ideas about history in the manner in which he planned, did leave some uncertainties and ambiguities about his positions, although the discovery and release of previously unpublished works, such as Collingwood's draft of The Principles of History (1999), have done much to alleviate this problem. 

The only slight criticism I have of Johnson's work is that he doesn't address Collingwood's use of res gestae, which I believe is necessary to fully understand--or at least not misunderstand--Collingwood's contention that "all history is the history of thought." It seems that some readers of Collingwood, including some otherwise perceptive and sympathetic, come to the conclusion that "all history is the history of thought" means that history is only a matter of intellectual history or the history of ideas. But this is not so, as Collingwood's use of res gestae demonstrates. Older lawyers (like me) will recognize the term res gestae is a part of the phrase the "res gestae exception to the rule against hearsay." The literal translation is "thing done." In short, Collingwood acknowledges that "things done" reflect the thought of the actor and therefore provide evidence of the actor's thought. "Thought" as Collingwood uses it in IH isn't limited to formal thinking, concepts, or such, but the everyday workings of the human mind as it attempts to solve problems and take action. Collingwood first references res gestae in IH here: 

What kind of things does history find out? I answer, res gestae: actions of human beings that have been done in the past. Although this answer raises all kinds of further questions many of which are controversial, still, however they may be answered, the answers do not discredit the proposition that history is the science of res gestae, the attempt to answer questions about human actions done in the past.

Collingwood, R. G.. The Idea of History. Albion Press. Kindle Edition. 

In short, res gestae are those thoughts that humans have turned into actions. Thus, the scope of human history as Collingwood defines it consists of those thoughts that have been turned into actions as established by evidence available in the present. The wishes, daydreams, private, unrecorded thoughts, sensations, perceptions, and emotions that leave no mark in the world (via some res gestae) are not a part of history as Collingwood defines it because these unrecorded or unacted upon thoughts leave no traces in the present, although such states of mind certainly existed in the past. Johnson spends some time addressing Collingwood's exclusion of emotions from history, as emotions serve as the fuel of human action. However, Collingwood is not quite as dogmatic and abrupt in his distinction between "thought" and "emotions" as he may seem in IH. In his Principles of Art Collingwood considers the emotions more thoroughly and with, I think, a greater appreciation of the sliding scale in the mind between emotion and thought that binds them together in some measure. 

In sum, Peter Johnson has written his own "indispensable" guide to Collingwood's The Idea of History, one of the seminal works--perhaps the seminal work--about history written in the twentieth century. To return to the beginning, there's no compelling reason not to read Collingwood's book, but then to experience it again with the aid of an accomplished and informed guide is a genuine boon. I appreciate Collingwood's masterpiece even more after having considered it again with Johnson's guidance. 

sng

12 August 2020

The Human Condition by Hannah Arendt

Published in 1958

The flyleaf in my copy of this book records that I bought this book on 12 October 1974 for the cover price of $3.75. I was taking off a year from college before the start of my senior year in 1975.  I don't recall if I read it before I returned to school the next fall, but I do know that I read Arendt, either this The Human Condition or her Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought (or perhaps both). I'd taken a couple of courses in political thought and hadn't done all that well, but the topic drew me in and has never left me. The Human Condition was assigned for a contemporary political thought class that I took the following fall, and then I sat-in on an entire class about Arendt in the fall of 1978 while I was in law school. So, I estimate that I'd read the book at least twice before--and last about 42 years ago. 

But while I don't believe that I've read The Human Condition completely since 1978, Arendt's work and thought stayed with me, fermenting as I've considered it and as I've continued to refine my political thinking. 

With the election of a right-wing authoritarian as president 2016, my mind turned once again to Arendt and to her thought. And with the great pandemic of 2020, I joined the Virtual Reading Group" at the Hannah Arendt Center at Bard College (remote, of course). I'm now back again exploring works of Arendt that I'd not read before, such as Men in Dark Times and Essays in Understanding: 1930-1964. But Arendt provides more than emergency reading--the value of her insights transcend the "times of troubles" from which so much of it arose. 

When I first read Arendt, I recall the sensation of reading by lightning flashes. So many of her insights remained hidden or obscure to me, but these obstacles were interspaced with flashes of insight that prompted me to press on. Now, after four more decades of reading and learning, I can read her works with a greater appreciation and at least a pretense of comprehension. The Human Condition is a brilliant book. Brilliant not simply in the sense of sharp or engaging, but in the sense that it sheds an intense, revealing light upon politics, labor, work, and the Modern Age. By engaging with this book, one cannot but help but coming to a deeper understanding and engagement with the world. Despite having been written in 1958 (a very different time!), it helps us comprehend our current situation by grounding her analysis within the framework of the human condition (a term she unpacks in the book).

In this book, Arendt lays out some of her most important and enduring ideas. These include three attributes of "the human condition:" natality, mortality, and plurality (which entails a type of equality). In brief, natality refers to the fact that each human person is born into the world. As Arendt notes, this fact gives rise to newness, the initiation of something (someone) unique and therefore underlies the basis of freedom. On the other end of each human life is mortality, that each person will die. We enter and exit. So what do we leave behind? Plurality reflects that we each are born into a human community, of which we are but one among many. Plurality gives rise to political and social life. 

The main emphasis of the book is upon what Arendt labels the vita activa, the Latin phrase that we can understand as the active life. This form of life, with its three components, contrasts with the vita contempletiva, the life of contemplation that developed in late antiquity with Stoicism and Epicureanism and that was adopted Christianity and became the ideal way of life in the world of  Medieval Christianity. But with the rise of the Modern Age, the vita activa took the preferred role, but with an inversion of the classical hierarchy of action, work, and labor. The three modes of life within the vita activa include action, work, and labor, which Arendt identified as going back to ancient Greece and that survived well into the Roman period. For the Greeks of the city-state during the flowering of democracy, action was the most highly valued way of life. Action consists of speech and deeds done in public among one's peers; to wit. politics. Work consists of the making of items that were durable and not for consumption; tools and tables and works of art, for instance. Arendt argues that these items provide a continuing presence to human life that no individual life or consumable good could provide. I venture that these items produced by work are the cultural artifacts of archeologists, the pottery shards and bits of papyrus that allow us to see the physical world of ages past. The third activity in the vita activa is labor. In the ancient Greek world, this was the lowest form of life, mostly addressed by slaves. It represents the necessity of certainty activities and functions that allow the continuation of a human life. However, with the advent of the Modern Age, with the coming of more advanced technologies and new forms of life and production, labor gained a new level of importance. Economic and socio-political thinking came to place the greatest values on consumption and the processes of life and therefore labor became more highly valued. This trend was especially important in the work of Karl Marx (whom Arendt addresses at length in this book and whose importance she recognizes without adopting Marxism). 

The description above is a brief summary of the guiding concepts upon which the remainder of the book rests. What Arendt does with these concepts is quite amazing. For with these fundamental insights, she comes to grips with ideas and events that have created our world. In addition to Marx, Arendt draws deeply upon the classical world and modern thought, often citing Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, Adam Smith, in addition to the likes of Kant, Hegel (not much), Nietzsche, Bergson, and Whitehead. (Of note here is the fact that Arendt cites her teacher Heiddegar not at all in this book (perhaps for obvious reasons) and her other teacher--and friend--Karl Jaspers only in two footnotes, both related to Descartes.) To be clear, despite her firm grounding in the Western philosophical tradition, her thought is unique and original in a stunning way. Also, I should note, her mastery of issues outside of philosophy, such as economics and economic history and political and social history are astonishing. But be forewarned: reading her work is often not easy. To fully grasp everything that she wrote in this book, one would need to prove the master of five languages: English, German, French, ancient Greek, and Latin. (Happily, the body of the text is in English with Greek and Latin occasionally interspersed, while the French and German are mostly restricted to footnotes!)

As I look back upon this work that has influenced me so much, I have to address the question of "why?" I came to college very interested in politics (declaring my major upon my first registration). Both of my parents were active in politics, especially my father, although he was not a politician. By the time I went to college, acting as my father's apprentice, I'd already been to two national political conventions, attended meetings with governors and senators, and sat through all manor and level of political meetings. I gained a sense of what ground-level politics consisted of in the United States. In college, my freshman year, I took a survey course on political thought: Plato, Machiavelli, Mill, Marx, and contemporary developments. It was perhaps in this class that I first heard of Arendt. In any event, as I related above, I eventually came to read her on my own before any class requirement. What I discovered was a sense of politics that conferred upon political activity (Arendt's "action") a sense of dignity that one wouldn't intuit from my earlier ground-level experience. Speech and action based on thought, deeds that were worthy of history. The creation of a polity in which one could express oneself and one's insights and have an opportunity to act in concert with others to create something that, while certainly ephemeral, could nevertheless prove worth remembering. For some, politics could prove a calling, a way to be in the world. I never "went into politics" (ran for public office), but I've remained outspoken about political issues, and I've actively supported candidates. And, for a career, I pursued the law, which is the use of speech to attempt to avoid and resolve conflicts and to refine the daily operations of politics have been resolved in some measure (but not completely) by the adoption of laws. Speech and that actions that arise from speech are certainly among the highest and most distinctive human traits, and no one has made this more clear to me than Hannah Arendt. No gift is more valuable to have received in this age of increasing authoritarianism and deception in the public realm than Arendt's guidance about the value of speech and action in the public realm. 

 

Of Utopia & Eutopia: The Difference That Makes All the Difference

R.G. Collingwood (1891-1943) 

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975)

Don't blame Collingwood or Arendt for the foibles of my thought. But they both inspire me.

During a discussion during the Hannah Arendt Center’s Virtual Reading Group, the discussion led to a comment that our current (“capitalist”) system must surrender its reliance on “domination. We must learn to live as a culture (i.e., economy, politics, society) that doesn’t rely upon domination as an aspect of economic, social, and political relationships. One response to this was to label this aspiration “utopian.” I want to unpack some thoughts based on this interchange. 

1. Utopia can mean “nowhere” (except in the imagination) or it can--with a slight variation in spelling--indicated a “good place,” a “eutopia.” 

2. I don’t want to denigrate the power and importance of imagination, but the effort to establish utopias has gone nowhere. Humans must imagine what an ideal human life would be like, but the gap between our imagination of such a place and our ability to realize as always eluded us. 

3. But our ability to imagine a eutopia, a better place, is crucial to our survival. Places and eras are not equal in the quality of life that they offer to us. Sometimes this may be the result of a natural disaster, but more often than not the quality of life is diminished by human decisions. 

4. We need to distinguish what is achievable from what is imaginable, and there’s no infallible test for this. I suspect that the only way that we can hope to achieve an acceptable level of discernment for any project for the improvement of the human lot is via serious thought, dialogue, and experiment (that will certainly entail failures). 

5. In thought, we can look at the parameters of human life that we know from history (as Collingwood describes it, for instance) and our understanding of the human condition, as for instance, Hannah Arendt defines it. One might add “human nature” to this list, but both Collingwood and Arendt eschew this term as too confining. (Certainly we humans are a part of nature and can be seen in some ways through the lens of science, but we are also apart from Nature and define ourselves through history, which, to follow Collingwood explicitly (and Arendt implicitly), is the realm of human thought and action. It is through thought and action (joined at the hip, as it were) by which we continually define the human. Our thoughts and actions take us in new, unforeseen (or even unforeseeable) directions. 

6. But still, we are haunted by what I label human fallibility. The main components of human fallibility are ignorance and fear. Ignorance comes from our inability to perfectly comprehend the natural world around us and our inability to know the future with any comforting certainty.  As to the future, I’m referring to the unpredictability of the outcome of human actions and choices, which are not only impossible to calculate (even if simple such as simple supply and demand curves) but the complexity of which is made all the more vexing by the strategic choices that humans make in competition with one another over scarce resources. Scarce resources run from food and minerals to political power to social prestige to the choice of mates. We try to out-game each other; we’re always gaming the system. 

7. Fear is the result of our ignorance and uncertainty. Fear is our early warning system that we too often try to use as a guidance system. When fear, rather than thought, guides human conduct, the outcomes are rarely good. (That fear provokes and motivates thought is the preferred course.) 

8. Because of scarcity and fear, humans engage in rivalry and mimetic desires (Rene Girard). Thus, long before capitalism (or any other socio-economic evil of choice), humans have exercised the libido dominandi (St. Augustine), and we can expect humans to continue to do so at least until all scarcities--material and relational-- are eliminated. And what about time, the ultimate scarcity? Only until, or more realistically, if, humans can eliminate mortality from the human condition will time scarcity no longer remain a subject of rivalry. 

9. So, for these reasons, I look askance at utopian visions, but I welcome eutopian visions. We can and must do better. I agree with those who see “existential” (survival) threats to the human species in climate change and environmental degradation, the potential for nuclear warfare, and the intentional manipulation of biological systems (whether developed for warfare or an experimental virus escaping a lab or Frankenstein’s monster escaping the lab and our control). 

10.  To this end, I sometimes describe myself as a “revolutionary Burkean” and on other days a “Burkean revolutionary.” Either way, we have to rebuild our craft (culture, society, polity) while keeping ourselves afloat. We must pursue dramatic and unprecedented change without unleashing the Four Horsemen. We need to throw out “capitalism” and “socialism” as past their “sell by” date. Yet we can’t throw out what we’ve learned and gained about (for instance) markets, collective action problems, and the public good. 

11. Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. I contain multitudes (of ideas and influences). We’ll have to sort them out as we set sail for the future. Human actions have no guarantees for desired results. A good will doesn’t guarantee good results. But set sail we must. 

On Science (and Facemasks)

Out biking today, I noticed some people without facemasks (who were walking or mingling; unless in a crowded area or stopped for a prolonged period, I don't wear mine when biking in the open). In conversation about this topic, most seem to say that the deicision whether to wear a mask is "political." Similar things are said about vaccinations also. Are these issues political? I think not, at least in a direct sense. But these decisions are a matter of science. But not "science" as most people seem to use the term. This leads me to the following observations:

Science as a human creation and endeavor. No humans, no science. Of course, Nature, the universe, the material world--whatever term you prefer--exists independently of any human being. And events and processes occur whether humans identify them or not. Science is the human effort to understand the natural world by using empirical observation and (mostly) mathematical modeling. But whatever conclusions we reach are reached by we fallible humans. Based on this fundamental premise of human fallibility, all our knowledge of "science" is in some measure hypothetical, tentative. Some conclusions are now beyond serious dispute (e.g., the earth orbits the sun) but a great deal of what we call "science" is simply our best effort to arrive at what we should consider a tentative conclusion. And when we move away from relatively mechanical systems (e.g., the orbits of the solar system) into complex systems, such as those of biology, which are neither mechanical nor fixed (unchanging), we are in a much more difficult arena in which to navigate. Thus, when we speak of science, especially concerning the biology of viruses, human health, or vaccines (to provide only three topical examples), we don't have "Science" that provides us with infallible answers, but only fallible science as an ongoing endeavor to attempt to drive away falsehood while at the same time allowing us to act with some sense of rationality (matching our actions to intended ends). 

Thus, if I refer to "science" in support of everyone wearing a mask in public (as I do), I'm not appealing to an infallible writ from on high, but to the most persuasive conclusions based on the best evidence upon which we can base our actions. All that may change--and will undoubtedly change--as we learn more from gathering new facts and forming new models. Indeed, at the beginning of the pandemic, masks for Americans were discouraged, although the recommendations seem to have been based more upon problems of human behavior (hoarding, decreased risk aversion) rather than recommendations based realities of viral transmission. But in any event, "science" seems to have changed its mind, as well it should. This isn't a shortcoming of science, it's the essence of its strength and utility. 

So, based on the best available scientific knowledge and conclusion (tentative though they may be), WEAR THE DAMNED MASK! And when (assuming here) a vaccine arrives, make the best possible decision based upon the best available evidence. Understand that every human act entails an element of risk. Every action is an experiment of sorts and will entail unintended consequences. But this is a part of the human condition. Acknowledge our predicaments and dilemmas and act accordingly. 

We've Had 100 Years of Psychotherapy--And the World's Getting Worse by James Hillman & Michael Ventura

Published in 1992

I've been reading the works of James Hillman for over three decades now, and only upon reading this book have I come upon a satisfying way to describe the experience: the relation between Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote. Hillman is Road Runner, dashing about the landscape from valley floors to the high mesas without breaking a sweat and at breakneck speeds. I, of course, am Wile E. Coyote, chasing him around attempting to consume him, but always--always--failing. So why does Wile E. Coyote persist in his enterprise? It's obviously not for the calories he gains; he'd have starved long ago if he'd hoped to feed himself solely on Road Runner fare. Obviously, Wile E. has other sources of nutrition (he's slender but capable of mad dashes around Monument Valley). So I infer that Wile E. persists in his venture simply because he enjoys it (although, given his repeated failures, perhaps he could use a bit of psychotherapy). And I reach this conclusion with a sense of confidence because in this analogy, I'm Wile E. and I know that I "chase" Road Runner-Hillman for the sheer pleasure of it, to sight-see the landscape as he takes me up (but not too far up, into "the spirit") and down into "the vale of soul-making." Hillman is a 20th-21st-century shaman who can speak like a Greek philosopher, a Rennaisance magus, and a guy from Atlantic City, New Jersey, where he began his life. The speed at which Hillman can switch from the deep recesses of classical and Rennaisance culture to the contemporary American vernacular often proves mind-boggling (much like Road Runner's transitions). And sometimes, like Wile E., these transitions--about daimon, the "imaginal," the acorn--leave me hanging. Sometimes I'm following along and like Wile E. I pause, look down to check my bearings, and find there's no ground beneath me. And yet I persist. It's exhilarating. 

Hilman on the left; me on the right

In this work, Hillman engages in a dialogue with Los Angeles-based writer Michael Ventura, both in person and via letters. The dialogue is free-ranging and like most of Hillman's work, it ranges over a wide variety of ideas and images (and Hillman will note the etymological relation of the two terms). There is one over-arching theme to the conversations: the failure of much of psychotherapy to do much good in the world. Indeed, we could go so far as to say that both Hillman and Ventura suggest its not the individual who needs the couch so much as the world. To whatever extent that individuals are messed-up, the environment in which they live and work and love is even more messed-up. The personal isn't the political, but the political is personal. Taking action in the world is a part of the cure; one can't live in a despoiled environment (physical, cultural, political) and not suffer a despoiled psyche. Of course, nothing in Hillman's work is quite so simple and direct as I've just summarized it, but that's a part of the joy in reading this series of dialogues. Hillman constantly points, questions, prods, and ponders, which, I imagine, makes him a compelling therapist. On the other hand, if you're looking for answers, programs, or blueprints, forget it; he won't do it. And, again as I imagine a good therapist would do, he makes you, the reader-patient, do your own heavy lifting. 

To conclude this consideration of the book, and of Hillman, in particular, I offer the following quotations from the book. Hillman speaks best for himself. The following quotations are a few of those that happened to grab me, ideas and observations that engaged me. Enjoy and ponder. 

We've had 100 years of analysis, and people are getting more and more sensitive, and the world is getting worse and worse. Maybe it's time to look at that. We still locate the psyche inside the skin. You go inside to look at the psyche you examine your feelings and your dreams, they belong to you. Words interelations, inter-psyche, between your psyche and mine. That's been extended a bit into family systems and office groups – but the psyche, the soul, is still only within and between people. We're working on our relationships constantly and our feelings and reflections, but look what's left out of that. 

What's left out is the deteriorating world.

So why hasn't therapy noticed that? Because psychotherapy is only working on the "inside" soul. By removing the soul from the world and not recognizing that the soul is also in the world, psychotherapy can't do the job anymore. The buildings are sick. Institutions are set, the banking system is sick, the schools, the streets – the sickness is out there. (3-4)

N.B. Unless otherwise noted, all quotes are from James Hillman and not his conversation partner, Michael Ventura.  

Put this in italics so nobody can just pass it over: This is not to deny that you need to do need to go inside – but we have to see what we're doing when we do that. By going inside we are maintaining the Cartesian view that the world out there is dead matter and the world inside is living. (12)

 . . . . 

I won't except the simple opposites – either individual self in control or a totalitarian, mindless mob. This kind of fantasy keeps us afraid of community. It locks us up inside our separate selves all alone and longing for connection. In fact, the idea of surrendering to the fascist mob is the result of the separate self. It's the old Apollonian ego, aloof and clear, panicked by the Dionysian flow. (43)

 . . . . 

Kenosis [from the Greek for emptying out; used in Christian theology in reference to Jesus emptying out the divine within himself to become fully human] seems now the only political way to be – emptied out of certainty. Otherwise, you've become a fundamentalist united with an almighty ideology, protected from above by a cause. Therapy is just one more of the current ideologies keeping its believers from the panic of kenosis, the panic that comes with the higher structure of guarantees has collapsed. Therapy becomes a salvational ideology. 

But I want to stay with politics with this letter. I could compare kenosis with the emptiness in Buddhist thought and the Zen exercises of emptying and the Oriental aesthetics of pottery and painting. But I'd rather connect kenosis with Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Kenosis is a form of action--not mashochistic action, victimized, crucified, beaten with lathi stickes and billy clubs. Protest. (103)

. . . . 

Kenosis puts the emptiness in a new light. It values the emptiness. It says “empty protest“ is a via negativa, a non-positivist way of entering the political arena. You take your outrage seriously, but you don’t force yourself to have answers. Trust your nose. You know what stinks. Don’t try to replace the helpless frustration you feel, the powerless victimization, by working out a rational answer. The answers will come, if they come, when they come, to you, to others, but don’t fill in the emptiness of the protest with positive suggestions before their time. First, protest! I don’t know what should be done about most of the major political dilemmas, but my God Prince my soul, my heart, my skin, my eyes) stinks, But my gut (my soul, my heart, my skin, my eyes) sinks,  weeps, crunches, shakes. It’s wrong, simply wrong, what’s going on here. (104)

. . . . 

Yet, to the question “What would you have done with Sadam Hussein in August 1990, in October, in January and February, wiseguy?“ I am only my physical sense of something wrong. Only my empty protest. Therapy blocks this kind of protest.… It does not let these “negative“ emotions have their full say. And I value them, analyze them, but therapy insists that they have to lead us into deeper meaning rather than immediate action. Therapy says, Think before you act, feel before you emote, judge, interpret, imagine, reflect. Self-knowledge is the point of the emotions and the protest, not public awareness. Know thyself; know what you are doing before you know the issue, and know the meaning of an action before you act. Otherwise you’re projecting and acting out.

So, therapy would say, you can’t protest in this empty way because you haven’t made clear what the protest really wants and why and what for. It has to mean something.

An empty protest, however, hasn’t got a defined meaning. It doesn’t have an end goal – not even the end of blocking something it protests about. My protest about the Gulf War doesn’t clearly say, “Stop the war!“ Empty protest is protest for the sake of the emotions that fuel it and is rooted not in the conscious fulfillment of improvement, but in radical negativity. And theological language, empty protest as a ritual of negative theology. It’s what the Hindus call neti, neti, neti – not this, not this, not this. No utopia, no farther shore toward which we march, only the march, the shout, the placard, the negative vote, the refusal.

What I’m suggesting here can’t even become a new motive conscientious objection because the C.O. must back up his position with a set of positive ideals (not taking life, all war is evil, peace, human community). It’s not even anarchism, for an anarchist has a positive goal of the literal ending of our governmental forms. It is not libertarianism, which again has a positive set of beliefs that can be put in the programs of deregulating and dismantling.

What could be more unpopular than empty protest? Not only will you be seen as stupid because empty, but you will also be alone in right field and ninth in the batting order. I find it very hard to play the political game without falling into the usual American popularity contest, the public opinion poll. How does one enter the public fray and at the same time be unpopular? By this I mean I don’t even have the honor of standing for the oppositional unpopular position like a Mencken, Chomsky, Jerry Brown, Ventura. You, Michael [Ventura] can be counted on to define an unpopular position but never truly an empty one. Your protests have beef. We read you to hear the “wrong“ thing, whereas I want is to be applauded! Yet I am often roundly cursed (when understood) or, worse, approvingly smelted into someone else’s arguments (because misunderstood). (104; 105-106.)

. . . . .

Puritanism is no joke. It is the structural fiber of America; it’s in our writing, our wiring, or anatomy. And, if Freud is right that anatomy is destiny, then we all dissent from the Mayflower. Then there’s no hope for an aesthetic awakening. I can’t overcome Lifton’s “psyching numbing“ because it’s ground is puritanism. We are supposed to be sensually numb. That is the fundamental nature of puritan goodness. We are numb because we are anaesthetized, without aesthetics, aesthetically unconscious, beauty repressed. Just look at our land--this continent’s astonishing beauty--and then look at what we immigrants, Bibles in hand, priests and preachers in tow, have done to it. Not despoiling, not exploitation, not he profit motive; no, as a people we are void of beauty and devoted to ugliness.

Yes we each know that nothing so moves the soul as an aesthetic leap of the heart at the sight of a fox in the forest, of a lovely open face, the sound of a little melody. Sense, imagination, pleasure, beauty are what the soul longs for, knowing innately that these would be its secure.

Instead our motto is “just say no.“ And we pass laws to make everything “clean“ and “safe“-- childproof, tamperproof, fallproof, bugproof. Start each meal with a preop prep--iced and chlorinated water to numb the tongue, lips, and palate. Laws to protect children in a moving vehicle so they can be kept alive to be ignored, scolded, and homeless. Laws for order, once the inherent cosmos (the Greek word for aesthetic order) of the world is no longer sensed. This is the promised land, and the laws are still coming down from the hill. Prohibition is the ultimate law of the land. Watch school kids of eleven and twelve debate on TV whether or not to turn in a friend of his parents for smoking on the sly, because smoking is bad for the friend's health. Is this friendship or is this espionage for the sake of the law? (130-131)

. . . . 

Critics of the American style of mind from de Tocqueville in the early nineteenth century on down have said this is not a land of ideas. We are superb at implementing, and making useful (practical?) Inventions, but we are not philosophers. Europeans think and American apply. The major psychological ideas with which we practice come from Europe. . . . (One of my own great difficulties is due to the many years I spent in Switzerland, so that I never quite made a comfortable connection with the American way of psychology.) I have never offered a testable hypothesis, applied for research grant, produced a program, found a gadget or a procedure that could be named after me, invented a “practical" test, elaborated an experimental model, or examined a particular population. I work mainly in a chair thinking, on my feet talking, in the library reading; it all goes on in my head while my body lives life. In this way, my work can be accused of being a head trip and not practical, because we believe, in America, that the head's activities--this head so full of blood and flushed with excitement of spirit—is not practical. But it’s not the mind that’s impractical or heady; it’s the burned out, ashen, conceptual language of academia and television that we have all been taught is the correct expression of thinking. It’s this neutral, flatline language that is heady, not the impassioned head, popping ideas like grasshoppers. (141)

. . . . 

One thing is sure: ideas don’t belong to academics. You don’t have to have academic knowledge to have ideas. Knowledge might help work with an idea, enrich it, discriminate it more finely, or recognize its history – that it’s not the first time that idea ever moved through someone’s mind. So knowledge may save you the embarrassment of inflation and help you pick up some skills about polishing ideas. But knowledge is not necessary. You can distinguish things you have learned from ideas you have. Keeping these distinct – knowledge and ideas – ought to help you feel that you can ideate without an academic degree. When an idea comes to mind, it asks first of all to be listened to and that you attempt to understand it. If knowledge helps do this, then fine. But first entertain your visitor. (144)

N.B. Compare what Hillman says above with Hannah Arendt's distinction between knowledge and thinking (and implicitly "ideas") that she considered very thoroughly in her work The Life of the Mind: Thinking (1977). I find their respective ideas track closely.

. . . .

How [can] we evaluate an idea? Is the idea fertile, fecund? Does it make you think? Is it surprising, shocking? Does it stop you up from habits and bring a spark of reflection? Is it delightful to think about it? Does it seem deep? Important? Needing to be told? Does it wear out quickly? Especially: what does the idea itself want from you, why in the world did you decide to light in your mind? (145)

....

[M]y approach is, the world is getting worse and that’s correlated with therapy's concerns, and if we were less concerned with ourselves and paid more attention to the world, the world wouldn’t be getting worse. So, in your view, I’m still doing the therapy.

 

 

 

 

The Golden Day: A Study in American Literature & Culture by Lewis Mumford

Originally published in 1926 with a new forward by the author in 1957

For the Fourth of July each year I select a work in American history or culture to mark the occasion. This year in a bit of serendipity, I spied this work as I unpacked a box of books that I'd hastily assembled as a part of our move out West. When I pulled this book our of the box on about July 3, I knew that I had my reading for this year.

The Golden Day: A Study in American Literature and Culture was originally published in 1926 by a young Lewis Mumford. Many today won't recognize his name, but from the 1920s to the 1980s, he was one of America's leading public intellectuals. (He died at age 94 in 1990.) In fact, to describe Mumford is to encounter a quandary. How exactly to describe him? In The Golden Day, he's a literary critic and historian of American literature, but these fields are only two of the many fields that he wrote about. Wikipedia describes Mumford as "an American historian, sociologist, philosopher of technology, and literary critic. Particularly noted for his study of cities and urban architecture, he had a broad career as a writer. Mumford made signal contributions to social philosophy, American literary and cultural history and the history of technology."  This comes closer, but the breadth of Mumford's interests and knowledge is truly astonishing. And, I should note, he published all of his many books without having finished his college degree! (His education was interrupted by illness and then service in World War I.) 

In The Golden Day, Mumford focuses on American literature and philosophical thought as a way of apprehending the American experiment. Mumford's contemporary and compatriot, Van Wyck Brooks, was working much the same project at the time, as well.) In fact, as a part of his project, Mumford played a major role in delivering Herman Melville's literary works--such as Moby Dick--from the obscurity into which these works had fallen. Melville and his pre-Civil War contemporaries provide the foundation of this work. But while Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman, Melville, and Hawthorne provide the foundation of the work--the Golden Day--this isn't where Mumford begins his assessment of American culture. Mumford begins his examination with the advent of modernity, which coincided with the European discovery and colonization of the Americas. Protestantism (especially the Puritan variety at the beginning and evangelical Christianity later), capitalism, and later industrialism, along with the existence of the frontier until late into the 19th-century,  all shape American culture. But until the Golden Day, the literature of a nascent nation was not especially noteworthy (with some exceptions, such as the last great Puritan divine, Jonathan Edwards). But starting with James Fenimore Cooper's work exploring the early (eastern) frontier and its challenges and conflicts his works explored, we begin to see American literature form into more familiar themes. This momentum gains a full head of steam with Emerson, whom Mumford holds in the highest regard. Indeed, although I don't believe that he stated it specifically, I contend that Mumford considers Emerson the foundation stone of American literature and high culture. 

Of course, in the pre-Civil War era, Emerson was not alone. His younger contemporary and friend  Henry David Thoreau was an active and outspoken voice, as was the great bard of democracy and America, Walt Whitman. Rounding out this core is Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne, who's most famous for The Scarlett Letter.  (As I noted earlier, Melville's work had fallen into obscurity by Mumford's time, and Melville had never gained the esteem and notoriety of his great contemporaries described here.) Mumford carefully considers each writer's contributions and perspectives. And I should hasten to add that in addition to cataloging and noting the contribution of each of these figures, Mumford also provides insightful criticism. He not only provides a tour of the wine cellar and catalogues the various vintages, but he beautifully describes and critiques them as well.

The Civil War provides the key turning point in the life of the nation. The vanquishing of the slave-holding South and the triumph of the North with its industrialism, along with the settlement of the Mountain West, turn America in a different direction. Mumford perhaps under-appreciates or under-emphasizes the economics of both the plantation system of the South and its effects on the American scene even after the defeat of the Confederacy. But he does turn a keen eye on the post-war North and its cultural heritage. Here, at the center, is Mark Twain. But other figures, less recognized today, such as William Dean Howells, were also at work, and Emerson, Whitman, and Melville, all remained active for a time after the War. After Twain, the next great figure Mumford explores in some depth isn't a novelist or a poet, but the philosopher-psychologist William James. (Mumford give short shrift to William's famous novelist brother, Henry James.) William James, while not a poet, is nevertheless a gifted essayist and one of the fathers the uniquely American philosophy of pragmatism (along with the brilliant but eccentric Charles Saunders Pierce and the more prosaic John Dewey). Moving forward to the time of his writing, Mumford notes the importance (and limitations) of John Dewey, who was growing in stature and would attain an especially high status in the era between the wars as a public intellectual. (Mumford wryly notes that Dewey's prose is like taking the subway: it gets you where you need to go, but the trip isn't very scenic.) 

One should be sure to read the new Introduction to the work that Mumford wrote in 1957,  Mumford not only critiques the work of others, but he's also instructive in critiquing himself. For instance, he rues having mostly (or completely?) ignored Emily Dickinson, and he says he'd treat Melville and William James differently. And, perhaps most noteworthy, he would have treated Henry Adams differently. By 1957, Mumford appreciates Adams as the prophet of the disintegration of Western Civilization as well as prophet of the machine age (something that Mumford undertook as well). 

As a way to celebrate our nation in this fraught time, this book was a perfect fit. Mumford doesn't hide warts and deformities, but he nevertheless appreciates the American experience with a depth of perception that few can match. As we who live in a new Gilded Age and in an era of disintegration, the experiences and models of the past take on a new importance, and Lewis Mumford provides us with excellent guidance as we seek to mine the past to gain our bearings and help us set our course.