Rational possibilities

LISTEN. The Independence Holiday was simple and right, in my household. Just quality time together appreciating what's good about our lives in this land of possibility, acknowledging what's bad and what must be made better. Nourishing food and nurturing conversation, no rah-rah nationalistic bombast. Like John Fogerty I and mine were not born to wave the flag. It ain't us.

But we  do still salute this country's unfulfilled creed of freedom and justice for all. Baseball, hot dogs, & apple pie too. (The cliche came alive for me, on my bikride yesterday morning, when I happened upon a parade of my neighbors on bikes and in strollers over by the Richland branch library.) And we salute our independence from conformist bluster. 

To all those gifts we quietly re-pledged our allegiance. When the temperature rose to oppressive levels we hit the multiplex to see Baz Luhrmann's take on Elvis. Glad we didn't let the New Yorker review deter us, it's an all-American story of rags to riches to heartbreak to legend. The boy from Tupelo and Memphis flew, before he crashed at just 42 in '77. But in the process, in many positive ways, he made things better. Thank you, thank you very much. I think I have to go to Graceland now. Gotta find that old Paul Simon disc.

So now summer school begins, with my MALA course Rationality (sequel to last summer's Enlightenment, prequel to next spring's Experience). 

We only have a few weeks, really just time to dive in to Steven Pinker's book and BBC podcast. But I want to begin by setting up a contrast between Pinker's emphasis on the rules of rational thinking and William James's in "The Sentiment of Rationality" on feeling. We need to honor both, in order to begin realizing our potential for lives at least intermittently salved by "ease, peace, rest"--James's subjective "marks" of rationality.

And why, ultimately, should we want to be rational? Because the unrealized possibilities we treasure, like those Fourth of July ideals, and a mutual commitment to sustainable non-violent peace, depend on it. Reading this morning an interview with the public radio star Krista Tippett, she says of her new project that it will attempt to ameliorate some of the irrational "disarray, damage, and pain" of our country and world in this time by "stitching together relationships and quiet conversations at a very human, granular level. We’re going to work on quiet conversations that will not be publicized." 

That sounds like a good description of what we might possibly accomplish, on a much smaller scale, in our course. It's possible. There's a chance. And as James said, nothing is more characteristic of human nature than its willingness to take a chance on possibility. Seems rational to me.