Freedom

Every July 4 I take a free moment to think determinedly about self-reliance.

Best book ever on the general theme of independence: Richard Ford's Independence Day. (Ford himself prefers Emerson's Self-reliance for "its implicit goal of leaving us as it found us: free.")

It's a great road book, too. The action centers on Cooperstown and the baseball hall of fame. It reflects wisely on just how much, and how little, any of us can help anyone else (our own kids included) be free.

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion;…The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self Reliance,"
Essays, First Series, 1841.

DS 7.4.09

Walking with ghosts in the U.K.

Philosophy Walks has taken a small but significant step toward its natural denoument, some actual walks in one of reflective walking's most hospitable places: the U.K.

I've informed my school's office of Study Abroad of my intent to develop, with a colleague, a peripatetic summer course to be based at Oxford but exported by rail to multiple British venues associated with the English roots of American philosophy. First and foremost among the latter: Darwin's Down House, in Kent. We'll tread the Sand Walk where he formulated the best idea anybody ever had, talk about how that idea inspired and informed the ideas of the likes of William James and John Dewey, and then go in search of other walkable sites where American roots lie buried in English soil.

Or Scottish: Hume's (& Gifford's) Edinburgh. Might even hop the channel or at least dream of it, at this early planning stage when practicality and financial constraint are still on the back benches. My colleague reminds me that "Hume built the Treatise in Anjou; and Locke did his best work in Holland ... very walkable places, I do believe ..."

And then, summer after next: The French Roots of American Philosophy. Pascal, Montaigne, Bergson, Proust...

What's summer for, if not for just this kind of revery?

But it makes all kinds of practical sense, I will propose to my academic committee overlords, to go looking for the ghosts that inspired pragmatism at Oxford. Locke was there, at Christ Church. His lecture's still there. If we time it right we'll see Martha Nussbaum, I think.

F.H. Bradley, one of James's favorite metaphysical betes-noire, was at University and Merton Colleges.

And another ghost, lesser known, haunts Corpus Christi: F.C.S. Schiller, a neglected Oxonian humanist who, despite his relative youth, had a great impact on William James at the dawn of pragmatism.

Schiller's butt-end-foremost statement of the humanist position has exposed him to severe attack. I mean to defend the humanist position.

In fact, James passed the pragmatic baton to Schiller just weeks before his death in 1910. Schiller dropped it, in due course, and picked up an anti-humanist obsession with eugenics before his own departure in 1937. But James's near-parting words continue to inspire:

I leave the 'Cause' in your hands... Good bye + God bless you! Keep your health, your Splendid health! It's better than all the 'truths' under the firmament.

And that's the truth I walk for. Works for me.

Cicero

Cicero, my favorite semi-Stoic, on Socrates:

"Socrates would walk hard till evening and when he was asked why he did so, replied that by walking he was getting hunger as a relish to make a better dinner."

 On happiness and self-reliance:

"Most happy is he who is entirely self-reliant, and who centers all his requirements in himself alone."

"I do not perceive why he who is happy requires to be happier. 

On our perennial fallibility:

“Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century:

• Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others;
• Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected;
• Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it;
• Refusing to set aside trivial preferences;
• Neglecting development and refinement of the mind;
• Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.” 

On historical ignorance:

“To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?”  

His silver tongue got him in trouble to the end, but Robert Harris has brought him back to life. Another good walking companion.

Stop and think like a Stoic

"Did you mean stick walkers?"

-No, Google, nor did I mean silly walkers or nonsense on stilts of any sort. Looks like you'll be no help on this one.

So what do I mean, stoic walkers? I mean Epictetus, Seneca, Cicero, Zeno, Aurelius et al, and I mean all walkers whose nurtured optimism is balanced by a daily meditation on the reality of our situation on earth. We can each only do what we can do, individually, but we can always still move, think, and feel within a range whose extent is measured a footfall at a time. That's the stoic presumption of bounded freedom.

"Every day, we have a choice to either reinforce a habit, or challenge it," knew the ancient Greek and Roman philosophers of stoicism. And every day we have an opportunity to survey the field of possible action and decide what's worth challenging, and what we must accept and live with.

The Cynics were the self-styled dog philosophers, for their indifference to convention and public propriety. But Stoics invite another canine metaphor, reported by Alain de Botton:

The Stoics had another image with which to evoke our condition as creatures at times able to effect change yet always subject to external necessities. We are like dogs who have been tied to an unpredictable cart. Our leash is long enough to give us a degree of leeway, but not long enough to allow us to wander wherever we please. 

Not the most flattering image, but my dogs have learned to be stoical in this way most of the time, squirrel sitings excepted. I, however, and probably most of us, still strain against the leash more often than necessary. A little more circumspection and a little less strain is one of the happy by-products of my daily rounds.

And, as our national patriotic holiday descends, does walking also foster the counter-feeling of independence Stoics seek? It does. In the modern urban context especially, as with biking, the ability to transport mind and body at will is a tremendous source and stimulus of self-reliance. Stoics always were and always will be walkers by temperament. And bikers. But the togas have to go.

Walk in the sunshine

Aristotle "in a nutshell," from astute non-academic Tom Butler-Bowdon:

Happiness comes from expressing what we have rationally decided is good for us over the longer term. Happiness is not pleasure, but a by-product of a meaningful life.

Butler-Bowdon's 50 Philosophy Classics is an impressively wide-ranging, alphabetically-ordered compendium of nutshell clarity. Surprisingly impressive, perhaps, to those academics who've been miseducated to suspect and discount the work of non-credentialed generalists.

I don't think I'm one of those, but I was suspicious that the latest volume in a drab-seeming series of 50s (spiritual, self-help, success, prosperity, psychology, no "shades of grey") might be a bit lite. It's not. It strikes just the  right balance between accurate explication, insightful contextual analysis, and breezy illustrative anecdote.

I hadn't known, for instance, of A.J. Ayer's encounter with Mike Tyson at a New York party. Ayer interceded when Tyson "assaulted" his date, and replied cooly to the thug's "Do you know who I am? I am the heavyweight champion of the world." -"And I am the former Wykeham Professor of Logic..." My esteem for Ayer just tripled.

But the Butler-Bowdon quote I found most moving and helpful (and relevant to my present project) yesterday was not in 50 Classics but in his twitter stream:

“I always knew that someday I would once again feel the grass under my feet and walk in the sunshine as a free man. I am fundamentally an optimist. Whether that comes from nature or nurture, I cannot say. Part of being optimistic is keeping one’s head pointed towards the sun, one’s feet moving forward. There were many dark moments when my faith in humanity was sorely tested, but I would not and could not give myself up to despair.”

That was Nelson Mandela, whose meaningful life will continue to be a source of human happiness.

Sympathetic peripatetics

"Peripatetic": terrific word, fabulous idea. One day early in the Fall semester I'm going to fulfill a lifelong ambition and conduct class peripatetically.

From the time of Aristotle until 86 BC there was a continuous succession of philosophers in charge of the school in the Lyceum. The common name for the school, Peripatetic, was derived either from the peripatos in the Lyceum grounds or from Aristotle’s habit of lecturing while walking [but, you call this walking?]... The Lyceum’s fame-and the fame of other schools in Athens-attracted increasing numbers of philosophers and students from all over the Mediterranean world...

The utter destruction of Athens in AD 267 probably ended this renaissance of scholarly activity. The work of Peripatetic philosophers continued elsewhere, but it is unclear whether they returned to the Lyceum. Nothing certain is known about the Lyceum during the remainder of the third through early sixth centuries AD. Any remaining philosophical activity would certainly have ended in AD 529, when the emperor Justinian closed all the philosophical schools in Athens. 

We don't seem to know much for sure about the ancient peripatetics.

According to the tradition, Andronicus of Rhodes was the eleventh successor of Aristotle as head of the Peripatos, the school that Aristotle founded in Athens (Ammonius, In De Int. 5.28-29). We have good reasons to doubt this tradition. 

Well, we almost always have good reasons to doubt every tradition. Aristotle's Lyceum and its walking philosophers ended in Athens but "continued to exist in the form of a philosophical sect," and more importantly continues to exist as an idea, a state of mind, and a style of living. Walk this way...

A good way to think

I've always assumed Socrates must have been a walker. I mean, not just a guy who walked, from necessity and utility (how else was he going to carry himself down to the Agora for work each day, after all?); but an active appreciator and celebrant of the pleasures and benefits of reflective motility.

But until I picked up The Hemlock Cup by Bettany Hughes, I hadn't really considered it. He was not alone, pounding the Athenian pavements.

Men of all degrees walked through the winding streets, brushing shoulders with one another. Prostitutes could confidently ply their trade by slipping on customized little hobnail boots... All life was here. Socrates, himself a great walker (we hear in one of the Platonic dialogues, the Phaedrus, that contemporaries thought walking 'a good way to think'), would have traveled through an Athenian landscape of surprising parity...

Socrates was a great walker. He talks about travelling 25-mile distances without a second thought. Walking and thinking seem to have been a true pleasure to him... 

So he wouldn't have been "permanently pissed," Pythons. But his mood would have been cheery, his tone  buff and vital. He would have plied his trade with confidence too. Humble and confident, not cocksure and arrogant. Curious and inquiring. Peripatetic. Aristotelian. But Plato, they say...

Walking with Socrates can still be arranged, for a fee. (Or you can take a course.) But wouldn't that be sophistry?

Small steps & solid foundations

5:40 a.m. Annoyed that I can't get a wifi connection out back on my writing porch this morning, but I'm not going to take the time right now to go and investigate the cable and router etc.  Mobile Blogger app's not available either, thanks to an unfortunate pool incident I'd rather not go into.

I do have my notebook and Notepad, though, so here we go. Web publishing doesn't have to be instantaneous and Right Now, the specious present will wait. My wireless high-wire act must go on.

[5 hours later, service restored, specious present reclaimed]

I've been thinking about how in my own mind the connection between walking and spacefaring is intuitive and obvious, but may be opaque to others. Woke this morning with a thought that may begin to clarify, prompted I guess by my subconscious processing of a video moment I registered the other day.

Cool how frequently that happens, by the way. John McPhee has written of the crucial importance of always having a working draft in process and in mind, so that little light bulb revelations like the one I'm about to describe get a chance to glow.

But first, let me snatch one more digressive reflection: three Super Earth exoplanets reportedly have just been discovered only 22 light years away.  Hey ho, let's go! Meanwhile, back on the only home we've ever known...

This morning's waking hunch: on Monday I referenced a new report on the humanities (lately written of, in the Times, by David Brooks and Verlyn Klinkenborg)  and growing worries that they're being allowed to wither in the shadow of economic distress and public demand for educational cash-value (i.e., jobs). The report's website includes a trailer, in which some young schoolkids are being made (presumably by a teacher) to watch Neil Armstrong's "one small step/giant leap." One says "it doesn't look like much of a leap to me."

Paucity of imagination is the inevitable result of starving the disciplines and the activites (like walking, and spacefaring) that feed it. See the connection? My intuition's becoming more intuitive to me, at least.

While orienting at Rhodes last weekend we heard from history prof Tim Huebner, whose work on the Civil War includes overseeing the Shelby Foote archive. Tim told us, kids and parents alike, that it's a mistake to think of humanities courses as something to get "out of the way." Do you get the foundation of your house out of the way, in order to build it? Or is it always there, always supporting everything you do? Right.

And speaking of Shelby Foote, who lived just a couple of stone's throws down the East Parkway from his papers' permanent abode in the beautiful Barret library at Rhodes: I love what he told Paris Review about work and life, in 1999... and of course I love that "superb edifice" he and his pal Percy built to last on the bluff at Brinkwood. In their published correspondence, not long before Walker's death but already more than a decade now since Shelby's, he wrote: "My god, my god. Fifty years... (!)"

The importance for life and the human search, of a firm foundation, cannot be overstated.

High on the wire, high on life

There was some discussion around our alfresco dining table last night, some mild dispute, as to the nature and praiseworthiness of Mr. Walenda's canyon stunt. Wife and Younger Daughter expressed admiration for the skill and fortitude involved in his high-wire act. Doing it without a net made it even more impressive, they said. Made it more lucrative for him, I said. TV wasn't going to pay big bucks to watch somebody dive into a net, were they?

The whole spectacle was garish and tasteless, like most sponsored television entertainment. The fact that some people will risk gambling away the gift of life in exchange for fame or notoriety or money is not surprising. But it isn't especially elevating, either.

It's not just the money, though. In Let the Great World Spin, one of Colum McCann's New Yorkers reacts to Phillipe Petit's 1974 World Trade Center tower walk with a feeling similar to mine, similarly inarticulate. There's just something cheap and low and hard to verbalize, about such an enterprise, even if you've not pre-arranged a vast audience and a big paycheck.

On the other hand, as Henry says:

We should go forth on the shortest walk, perchance, in the spirit of undying adventure, never to return—prepared to send back our embalmed hearts only as relics to our desolate kingdoms. If you are ready to leave father and mother, and brother and sister, and wife and child and friends, and never see them again—if you have paid your debts, and made your will, and settled all your affairs, and are a free man—then you are ready for a walk.

I do try to capture something of  that spirit, with every saunter. The great adventure, the great balancing act, involves carefully toeing the line of the present moment while also fearlessly stepping out into the undiscovered country of tomorrow, and tomorrow. "Read your fate, see what is before you, and walk on into futurity."

The abyss immediately at our feet is nothing, compared to the vast and sprawling expanse that nobody's paying us to cross. We all have to find intrinsic motivation for that journey, and the courage to live. We can't just be in it for the money. Or the adrenaline. Or Daddy's approval. Or anything merely personal and ego-driven. What life may become, beyond the distractions and amusements of the moment, is our great and vital question. None of us has a net.

Memphis in the meantime

Back after a long weekend in Memphis, slowly orienting to the idea of releasing Older Daughter to her destiny as a newly minted Rhodes scholar.

It was an immersive orientation, as we and she were introduced to representatives of just about every corner of the college. My old classmate from Vandy was there to speak up for the humanities, and he did such a good job that she signed on for a boatload of Fall courses in the disciplines (English, philosophy, history etc.) widely and exaggeratedly rumored  to be in deep trouble all across the land. Looks to me like they're doing fine there.

Walking in Memphis this time was a bit disappointing. We stayed out in Germantown, where I'd read that the mayor's new push for a more bikeable and walkable community had really taken hold. But the beefy Hyatt concierge was not only unfamiliar with the new Greenway, he didn't really even grasp the concept. "You can see how much I exercise, hahaha." Went out for a stroll anyway. Sidewalk kept ending on me.


Turns out the Wolf River Greenway is a work-in-progress. Maybe it'll be finished some time in the next four years, before Older Daughter finishes her formal education. I'll keep looking.

Walking home

Buddhists are typically great walkers and walking meditators, walking both to get somewhere, pilgrim-style, and for the sheer sake of journeying along a worthy path. Their big prize, of course, their "goal," is Enlightenment and its sub-genres compassion, empathy, kindness, and shared happiness through mutual relief from suffering. One could do worse than follow or practice Buddhism.

That scroll message from the Dalai Lama, about life's meaning emerging from our contributions to other people's happiness, is not so different from other admirable statements of what meaning means. William James's concise summary is still my favorite:

The solid meaning of life is always the same eternal thing,— the marriage, namely, of some unhabitual ideal, however special, with some fidelity, courage, and endurance; with some man’s or woman ‘s pains.—And, whatever or wherever life may be, there will always be the chance for that marriage to take place. “What Makes a Life Significant”

But, back to Buddhist walkers...

In Wanderlust: A History of Walking, Rebecca Solnit quotes a French scholar saying that Buddhist practitioners are walkers insofar as they do not think of themselves as residing permanently in any one locale but are transients of the spirit, unmoored, unsituated, and thus abiding in "emptiness."

Well, I get that. But I'd put it more positively. In my own experience, anywhere I can walk is home. And since I can walk anywhere, home is everywhere. I'm not homeless, my abode is not empty, it's full and getting fuller with every new lap, hike, and orbit.

Walkers are cosmopolitans, as Carl Sagan liked to say, citizens of the cosmos. We're right at home here. We belong.

And did you hear? Next month we're getting our pale portrait updated!

Flag's still here

Older Daughter came home from Bonnaroo with tales of music and interactive aromatic adventure, and with just the right Fathers Day souvenir:

I don't think she walked around the festival grounds enough, by my peripatetic standards; but from what I hear she definitely contributed to others' happiness. Maybe survival, even. And how cool is it that her weekend highlight was the indefatigable Friday night performance of a Beatle, older than her envious old man! 

That contributes to my happiness in indescribably meaningful ways.

==
NOTE. Today's post commences a new chapter of my dawn blog, reconstituted here on Blogger as Up@dawn 2.0. The old Wordpress archives going back to April 2009 remain intact, linked at the original site (scroll down & right) and in the sidebar here. Only the host has changed, motive and intent (wakefulness, punctuality, clarity, energy, insight) remain the same.

May dawn's early light continue to cast its reflective spell!

Most festival goers are just there for the party, I know, and some for the experience, while a few are seeking something spirited and meaningful and liberating.

Your life is your life, don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission… etc.

Older Daughter says she’s “just trying to accept that I’ve got three more days of this.” I think that’s the sunburn and travel fatigue talking, but she’s usually not one for Greek-style party mysticism. Jennifer Hecht has interesting thoughts on all this.

We first-world moderns are not like everybody else. Historically the average person expected to be a little miserable most of the time, and ecstatic on festival days. We now expect to be happy all the time, but never riutously so.

I usually expect to be happy while walking around looking at stuff and thinking about things, or not. It definitely looks to me like there’s plenty to walk around and gawk at the ‘roo-fest. I should go. Can any of my music friends get me backstage to see Paul? He should still remember a thing or two about manic ecstasy.

Sometimes, particularly in summer, I surprise myself at the end of a walk by deciding, impulsively and unpremeditatively, to just do something I’ve been putting off forever.

Yesterday morning I strolled home and suddenly decided to just clean out that unnavigable overstuffed “potting shed.” Told myself it would take just a few minutes. Of course, it ended up taking hours. And of course, yesterday was the first really summery day we’ve had here. It hit 90 before I was through.

Removed a large, mostly empty large wooden crate my Dad gave me many years ago (after confiscating it from a negligent renter). I used to keep dogfood in it, lately it’s been home to spiders and empty space.

Also removed that large platform I got from I don’t recall where, that I imagined I’d someday repurpose as a daybed for my Little House.

Now they’re both down the hill in the dog barn, to gather new coats of dust and house the next generations of spiders.

Threw away a ton of forgotten stuff, including a few broken pots. Younger Daughter’s moldy old Hannah Montana purse, and her doll stroller. Kept the little red wagon.

And a light bulb came on: the rapacious rabbits won’t eat elevated potted petunias, will they?

So now I have a “clean” shed and a fresh planting project.

And a new metaphor. Gretchen Rubin says projects are better than journeys. I like both.

Most of a walker’s milestones are unremarkable and unremarked. Yesterday Older Daughter took a short walk across a tented stage and passed a big one: High School. She graduated with distinction, accomplishment, praise, and promise. Congrats, lucky class of ’13!

And now, in a few fleeting summer weeks, she gets to head out and do it again. Four more years, if her path is straight and clear, to her next short walk milestone and a college degree. Oh the places she’ll go!

And there’s Younger Daughter, stepping up to take her place in the procession right behind. If the stars align we’ll be celebrating a pair of graduations in 2017. May we all remember, between now and then, to savor the journey.

“Que sais-je?” And what do I know about Einstein? I know he was a walker.

“Yes, I saw Einstein often walking on Mercer Street… sweater hanging down, sandals… We heard that his stepdaughter wanted to give him a car, but he preferred walking.”

“He was very friendly. It seems as though it was almost every day… He always walked.”

And did you know that Einstein loved to smoke?

As he walked between his house and his office at Princeton, one could often see him followed by a trail of smoke. Nearly as part of his image as his wild hair and baggy clothes was Einstein clutching his trusty briar pipe. In 1950, Einstein is noted as saying, “I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs,” Although he favored pipes, Einstein was not one to turn down a cigar or even a cigarette.

And he loved to ride.

Screen Free

It was the last day of class, before finals. We squeezed in a slew of reports in Bioethics: Tim’s on fracking (as a public health issue), Jacob’s on a legislator’s idiotic proposal to eliminate peer review as a criterion of federal funding for science, William’s on justice, fairness, & equality, Joshua’s on happiness, Nick’s on violence, Mike’s on organ donation, and Caleb’s on hyper-parenting. They were all timed and terrific, occasionally even TED-like in their crisp clock-awareness. I think I learned something yesterday.

But the big news is from Bell Buckle: Older Daughter smashed a triple over the center fielder’s head (and darn near over the fence) to drive in the tying run late in the game, and then scored the go-ahead. Her team won! They’re in the regionals, playing tomorrow in Donelson. Go Tigers!!

And, coincidentally: it’s “Screen Free Week“… perfect time for me to unplug and get busy grading. Later.

My temporary hot-spot’s shaky (cable guy’s coming later), so to cut promptly to the chase: the Bioethics topic today is eugenics.

It means simply “well born,” and while that sounds aspirationally modest and reasonable we know it’s had a chilling history. “Three generations of imbeciles are enough,” said Justice Holmes in one of the more shocking expressions of judicial imperialism on record. Hitler hadn’t yet given it a bad name in 1935 LA, coerced sterilization was still going on in some U.S. states in the ’70s, incentivized “voluntary” eugenics is going on in places like Singapore today, and “free market” eugenicists call for its revival. James Watson thinks it might be cure the “disease” of stupidity (though the market does seem to bear quite a lot of that).

Michael Sandel brings us back to the central issue as I see it: unconditional parental love, and reciprocal filial gratitude, will both be at severe risk if we turn childbirth into a bazaar. By all means, let’s continue to improve our “stock” if we can. The way to do that is by encouraging our kids to seek their own bliss, not validate ours.

Selling and buying eggs for 50K is not the way.

Happy Earth Day!

Still no wifi, but it’s not the end of the world. I feel fine. Awoke humming “Sweet Caroline” (not chanting “U-S-A”… morons!) & looking forward to having a catch w/girls (YD’s back from DC) to break in my 1st new glove in decades. Life is sweet this a.m. But I still hate thumbing. Pen & paper most reliable word-proc’ing tech’y.

All thumbs, this a.m.– our internet service is out, so I’m posting this via the wordpress mobile app while monitoring the latest alarming reports from Boston. Strange days. I hear they’ve found hospitable worlds just 1200 lt yrs away. Where can I book a flight?