I'm trying gently to encourage us all to post earlier in the week, so we'll have ample time and opportunity to reflect in advance on one another's questions and reflections. But I dashed off a few last-minute thoughts late in the afternoon yesterday that strike me as, well, good enough. Better than nothing, which is what I often had to settle for offering our Democracy class when I was teaching all day before we began at 6. (Had to squeeze in an hour at the Boulevard with Younger Daughter in her final semester, after all.)
What I've noticed is that Garrison Keillor was right (did he write this somewhere, or just say it?), when he said of his habit of writing Lake Wobegon scripts but then going on stage sans notes and winging it, that if you've written down what you intend to say then it'll be in your head, more or less. You'll say something that sounds fresh and spontaneous, because the specific formulation you end up uttering will not be read but roughly recollected.
So, sans questions and context, here's some of what I wrote shortly before class. I'll bet, if I checked the recording, I'd see that I said something like this in class. Or at least something more thoughtful than it would have been, had I written nothing at all.
On the religious spectrum I'm definitely in the non-theist camp. I believe there probably are no gods, at least not of the omnipotent/omniscient/omni-benevolent variety. I also believe in what they used to call the religion of humanity. So I guess that makes me some variety of humanist and naturalist. But I'm also a defender of William James's approach to "the varieties of religious experience," meaning that I--like he--support the right of individuals to decide for themselves what they believe. I simply urge them to be sure that their beliefs accord with their own experience, and that they not interfere with others' equal right to (dis)believe. Like James, I believe in believing -- but not in coercing others to share any particular belief or dogma.
"Adopt but qualify" is my approach to pretty much everything. I've very bad at responding to questionnaires, I always want to interpret the questions and qualify my replies.
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That's great: [Enlightenment is a never-ending process, ideally. And it's never too late or too early to begin. Ideally, I think, it begins in childhood under the nurturing care of loving parents who give their children quality time and attention, read to them a lot, encourage their questions, respond honestly to them, etc. Parents who shrug off the Big Questions of childhood, or who insist on instilling very particular beliefs and attitudes in their progeny from the earliest years, are in my opinion doing a tremendous disservice to their kids and to society at large. Emerson said to such parents "you're trying to create another you. One is enough!"
Of course many kids, through no fault of their own, are denied quality nurture. For them, we as a society need to step up and support their education from pre-K forward. I've always loved what John Dewey said: "What the best and wisest parents want for their children, that must society want for all children."
I also think we need to encourage philosophical curiosity from the earliest ages. Philosophy with children is a growing movement, and it's a great idea. I believe we'd do a better job of creating a society of adults if we began by philosophizing with kids. (That's what Rousseau thought too, it's what his book "Emile" was about.)
And that prompted me to share Christopher Phillips's crusade to get everyone, and especially everyone of tender years, to reflect and converse philosophically. I remain convinced that we'd be better and better off (a phrase of John Lachs's) if more of us had been encouraged in childhood to embrace our curiosity and share it.
Writing does trigger shareable associations. I wrote: One reason Deism was so popular during the Enlightenment was that it pre-dated Darwin. Many 18th century Deists (Voltaire for instance) might have considered natural selection a sufficient explanation of life's processes (if not yet of its ultimate origins) to let go of God. Personally, though, I'm fine with the Deist assertion of divine indifference to our fate. Whether you're a Deist or a Darwinian agnostic or an atheist, you believe we have to paddle our own canoes and not count on divine intervention to save us from our own foibles.
And "let go" reminded me of Julia Sweeney. I think a class called Enlightenment Now needs to hear her story, but I'm not sure I'd have remembered to say so if I hadn't written those other things first. So the moral is: write on.
And listen to Jane Kenyon. “Be a good steward of your gifts. Protect your time. Feed your inner life. Avoid too much noise. Read good books, have good sentences in your ears. Be by yourself as often as you can. Walk. Take the phone off the hook. Work regular hours.”
And as Emerson is said to have said,
“Finish every day and be done with it. You have done what you could; some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; you shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”
And
“Live in the sunshine, swim in the sea, drink the wild air.” Because, as he definitely did say, "it is a luxury to draw the breath of life."
And keep a journal.
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