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.