In Fantasyland today we encounter the counter-culture, hippie-dom, and the New Age whose mother church was Esalen Institute, "where miracles not only happen, but where they happen all the time." Don Draper was there, for a dose of Gestalt therapy and the deceptively-benign "I do my thing and you do your thing" prayer. The deception consists in concealing radical relativism behind a screen of tolerant-seeming pluralism that "helped accelerate the giant slalom toward a concoct-your-own-truth culture and society" that really didn't need the encouragement.
Nor did Jane Roberts, who made "Seth" (an "unseen entity") speak through her "channel" and say things like "you create your own reality"
Our culture's "sudden and enthusiastic embrace of psychotropics" helped make Seth seem a lot more plausible, for some, "fog(ging) up the boundaries betweeen reality and fantasy."
Kurt Andersen's mom was one of the inexplicably-countless potted devotees of The Secret Life of Plants. Reading generally makes people smarter, but dumb reading is another story.
In A&P today, Susan Jacoby's history of freethought in America echoes Kurt Andersen's observation that New England and the Deep South, before the 19th century, were reverse images of the societies they would become. "America's modern religion-based culture wars" invert the old order, when the north was actually less tolerant of dissent from religious orthodoxy than the south. Kinda hard to believe, until you remember those Salem witch trials.
But then came the war, and the south's "utilitarian justification for slavery"-this was not J.S. Mill's utilitarianism, nor his liberty.
Women's rights movements, to their honorable credit, have stood historically against such self-serving orthodoxy and servitude in all its forms, including that which descended from "Paul's dictum" of female subjugation. They've stood with the core values of Enlightenment.
"Truth is older than any parchment," said abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, whose heroes were "Paine, Voltaire, and the authority-challenging Jesus." They affirmed his conviction that we should read every text critically and in the full light of human experience and observation. The Grimke sisters of South Carolina spoke truth to every audience, including mixed audiences of men and women, blacks and whites. Shocking!
"Truth for authority, not authority for truth" - well said, Lucretia Mott.
Abe Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, in its earliest drafts, did not place this nation "under God." Whether he believed or not is uncertain, but his great legacy and importance is for "the ages" to which he belongs. What use have angels for martyrs to truth? Whatever he believed, he was a skeptic and doubter in the best sense. He was good, with or without god.
==
*Wonder what Epicureans and Stoics would say about last year's Oscar kerfuffle? The Epicureans would probably just say not to waste money on Hollywood, the Stoics that there's no point in grumbling about either Academy-Plato's or the motion picture industry's. Both would advise therapy for anyone who takes it all too seriously. "The key to wisdom is knowing what not to care about."
It's also another day for reports... Last semester we had a good one on Kurt Vonnegut's Man Without a Country, of particular interest to me as I prepare shortly to head to Vonnegut's Indianapolis for the American Philosophy conference.
“And on the subject of burning books: I want to congratulate librarians, not famous for their physical strength or their powerful political connections or their great wealth, who, all over this country, have staunchly resisted anti-democratic bullies who have tried to remove certain books from their shelves, and have refused to reveal to thought police the names of persons who have checked out those titles.
So the America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries.”
[This paragraph does not apply to us directly, today, but it might still be of future use...] Would a Stoic care about an exam (let alone a quiz)? We should, not too much OR too little-more than an "iota" but less than to lose any sleep over. James's advice on how to prepare for an exam is pretty sound, though of course it's predicated on the presumption that students have in fact been studying all along.
Epicurus was apparently the first to state the intractable problem of free will and determinism. If the random knocking-about of atoms gives rise to every event, where does that leave us? On the sidelines, observing but not directing our fate? "Here I stand, I can do no other"-? That won't do. Will it?
If you want really to do your best in an examination, fling away the book the day before, say to yourself, “I won’t waste another minute on this miserable thing, and I don’t care an iota whether I succeed or not.” Say this sincerely, and feel it; and go out and play, or go to bed and sleep, and I am sure the results next day will encourage you to use the method permanently. William James, “Gospel of Relaxation"Epicureanism was the ancestral precursor of utilitarianism and its "greatest happiness for the greatest number" approach to life. The big difference, though, is that you can't really maximize happiness in the style of Jeremy Bentham and J.S. Mill while also shunning "any direct involvement in public life." Can you?
Epicurus was apparently the first to state the intractable problem of free will and determinism. If the random knocking-about of atoms gives rise to every event, where does that leave us? On the sidelines, observing but not directing our fate? "Here I stand, I can do no other"-? That won't do. Will it?
A.J. Ayer said freedom's not worth much if it's decoupled from responsibility, and if there's no knowing what someone's ever going to do "we do not look upon him as a moral agent. We look upon him rather as a lunatic." That reminds me of an incident from my vault of undergrad memories, when one of my determined peers set out to demonstrate his and our freedom by doing something unpredictable with a beer mug. He really just demonstrated the truth of Ayer's observation.
I'm also reminded of the time Ayer faced off with the heavyweight champion of the world. Freedom and responsibility are nothing, if not a threat to one's bodily health.
The Stoics were (painted) porch philosophers, and in the co-opted person of Epictetus were more at ease with an unswerving determinism than I. "Wish for everything to happen as it does happen, and your life will be serene." Really? Is that a responsible form of serenity or resignation to slavish servitude?
The Stoics thought the Epicureans were wrong about plenty, but agreed with them that we live in a material world. Everything is physical, in its own way. Okay, but we're natural spirits in the material world. We're not just bouncing atoms, even if the occasional swerve leaves us guessing about the next configuration of people and things. Our breath is fiery and animated, and we have consequential choices and decisions to make.
But there's a yawning inconsistency at the heart of the Stoic worldview, Gottlieb says. "If they are right about Fate, then nothing at all is under our control." Not even our attitudes and inner reactions to external events. Back to the drawing board. Or back to the therapist's couch.*
Can philosophers can be good therapists, or as good (in their different way) as psychologists? Can Plato beat prozac? People like Lou Marinoff (the "Socratic shrink") say so. Others say: dream on.
*Or, back on your feet: you can resolve with young James that your first act of free will shall be to believe in and act upon a committed belief in free will. Stand! You're free, at least in your mind, if you want to be.
==
10.9.17. On this day in 1941 US President Franklin D. Roosevelt approves an atomic program - beginning of the Manhattan project... in 2006 North Korea allegedly tests its first nuclear device... John Lennon was born on this day in 1940. Imagine.
==
2.28.17. Happy birthday to Irish-American novelist and lifelong learner Colum McCann, who at age 21 biked 12,000 miles through 40 states on his Schwinn, "collecting stories all along the way... He said that it feels like going to college every time he writes a book: 'I take a brand-new three-year crash course in that which I want to know.' And, 'real bravery comes with those who... look at the world in all its grime and torment, and still find something of value, no matter how small.'"
5:25/6:20, 56/70, 5:39
No comments:
Post a Comment