Sunday, July 22, 2012
Art Over Biology
Art Over Biology
Adam Kirsch
The New Republic
http://www.tnr.com/article/books-and-arts/magazine/104870/charles-darwin-evolution-art-kirsch
For the artist to deny any connection with the enterprise of life, then, is to assert his freedom from this universal imperative; to reclaim negatively the autonomy that evolution seems to deny to human beings. It is only because we can freely choose our own ends that we can decide not to live for life, but for some other value that we posit
The exhilarating assault on bourgeois values that was modernism, in all the arts and in politics too, rested on the assumption, nurtured through the nineteenth century, that there was nothing enviable about what T.S. Eliot bitterly derided as the cycle of “birth, copulation and death.” Art, according to a modern understanding that has not wholly vanished today,July 22, 2012 9:20 AM is meant to be a criticism of life, especially of life in a materialist, positivist civilization such as our own
Denis Dutton’s much-discussed book The Art Instinct, which appeared in 2009: For Dutton, the exposure of the Darwinian origins of art was meant to build a case against the excesses of postmodernism. If human aesthetic preferences—for representation in visual art, tonality in music, and narrative in literature—are the product of hundreds of generations of evolutionary selection, then it follows that art which rejects those preferences is doomed to irrelevance
As Dutton put it: “The universality of art and artistic behaviors, their spontaneous appearance everywhere across the globe ... and the fact that in most cases they can be easily recognized as artistic across cultures suggest that they derive from a natural, innate source: a universal human psychology
Stephen Jay Gould suggested that art was not an evolutionary adaptation but what he called a “spandrel”—that is, a showy but accidental by-product of other adaptations that were truly functional
Boyd begins with the premise that human beings are pattern-seeking animals: both our physical perceptions and our social interactions are determined by our brain’s innate need to find and to make coherent patterns. Art, then, can be defined as the calisthenics of pattern-finding
human art refines our performance in our key perceptual and cognitive modes, in sight (the visual arts), sound (music), and social cognition (story
The problem, for Boyd as for Richards before him, is that there is not the slightest plausibility to the claim that art renders us more “organized” or more “fit,” and there is considerable evidence to the contrary
As Kant famously taught, the very definition of the aesthetic is that it is disinterested, that it has meanings but not utilities, that it suspends our involvement with practical and goal-oriented life, that it puts life at a distance so that we can judge it and escape it and even reject it.
Shakespeare had three children, one surviving grandchild, and no great-grandchildren: he singularly failed to perpetuate his genes. Yet he is regarded as one of the most successful, the most worthwhile, the most consequential men to have ever lived, because his spiritual children have thrived beyond measurement
Pagel argues that “culture became our species’ strategy for survival, a biological strategy, not just some bit of fun and amusement on the side.” This argument involves the vexed question of “group selection”—that is, the problem of whether evolution can select for traits that benefit a group while being detrimental to an individual
Pagel argues that so-called “cooperative altruism” can succeed if each of its participants and recipients share a gene for it. In this way, my death allows copies of my altruism gene to go on living in my neighbors’ bodies
the use of the arts is indirect: they promote group cohesion, and the survival of the group in turn promotes the survival of the gene
But what cannot at all be explained in this way is any art that works to separate the individual from the group—which is to say, most art, and certainly most modern art
much of the greatest modern art proclaims the value of the individual in direct opposition to the group, ruthlessly interrogating tribe, nation, class, and family sentiment
Kandel recognizes that between our genes and, say, our enjoyment of a painting there intervene two levels of experience that cannot be paraphrased away in Darwinian language. The first is intellectual: what we see in a painting is determined by our knowledge of art history and artistic convention. The second is neurological: what we see in a painting is determined by the way different parts of our brains respond to visual stimuli
Perception, Kandel shows, is not a matter of the brain passively receiving information about the outside world. It is, instead, a highly active process, dependent on the particular capacities our brains have evolved. This is not a new idea—Kant, again, explained how our knowledge of phenomena is inevitably structured by the categories of our understanding—but new advances in technology make it possible to locate the brain’s capacities with amazing precision
neurological analysis of our experience of art tells us as little about the meaning of that experience
Today’s Darwinists treat the aesthetic as if it were a collection of preferences and practices, each of which can be explained as an adaptation. But the preferences and the practices are secondary, made possible only by the fact that the aesthetic itself is a distinct dimension of human experience—not the by-product of something more fundamental, but itself fundamental.
Monday, July 9, 2012
George Santayana - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
| Science provides explanations of natural phenomena, but poetry and religion are festive celebrations of human life born of consciousness | ||
| philosophers have to take off the bandages of epistemology and metaphysics altogether, accept the finite and fallible status of their knowledge claims, and get on with confessing their belief in the things that make life worth living | ||
| Drawing attention to what is given in an instant of awareness (the smallest conceivable moment of consciousness), he maintains that any knowledge or recognition found in such an instant would have to be characterized by a concept (or “essence” to use Santayana's term). Concepts cannot be limited to particular instances; rather the particular object is seen as an instance of the concept (essence). Thus, pursuing doubt to its ultimate end, one is confined by the “solipsism of the present moment.” That is, in a single instant of awareness there can be no knowledge or belief, since both require concepts not bounded by a moment of awareness | ||
| Philosophy must begin in medias res (in the middle of things), in action itself, where there is an instinctive and arational belief in the natural world: “animal faith" | ||
| Ours is a long-standing primitive credulity, and our most basic beliefs are those of an animal creed: “that there is a world, that there is a future, that things sought can be found, and things seen can be eaten | ||
| there are certain inevitable beliefs; they are inescapable given nature and our individual physical history. And like Wittgenstein, he maintains that these beliefs are various and variable. They are determined by the interplay between environment and psyche, i.e., between our natural conditions and the inherited, physical “organisation of the animal” (the psyche). | ||
| The environment determines the occasions on which intuitions arise, the psyche — the inherited organisation of the animal — determines their form, and ancient conditions of life on Earth no doubt determined which psyches should arise and prosper | ||
| the origins of all events in the world are arbitrary, temporal, and contingent. Matter (by whatever name it is called) is the principle of existence | ||
| Matter is the non-discursive, natural foundation for all that is. In itself, it is neither good nor evil but may be perceived as such when viewed from the vested interest of animal life. Latent animal interests convert matter's non-discernible, neutral face to a smile or frown. But “moral values cannot preside over nature" | ||
| An essence is a universal, an object of thought, not a material force. However, consciousness of an essence is generated by the interaction of a psyche and the material environment | ||
| Santayana uses the term “spirit” to mean consciousness or awareness | ||
| Awareness evolved through the natural development of the physical world, and he demurs to scientific accounts for explanations of that development. Almost poetically, he sees spirit as emerging in moments of harmony between the psyche and the environment. Such harmony is temporary, and the disorganized natural forces permit spirit to arise “only spasmodically, to suffer and to fail | ||
| Accepting the world's insecure equilibrium enables one to celebrate the birth of spirit. Reasoning, particularly reasoning associated with action, is a signal of the nascent activities of the psyche working to harmonize its actions with the environment, and if successful, reason permits individual and social organization to prosper while spirit leads to the delight of imagination and artistry | ||
| His view of consciousness is more celebrational, as opposed to being a burden or eliciting action. Spirit is “precisely the voice of order in nature | ||
| explanations of human life, including reason and spirit, lie within the sciences. The nature of truth simply is correspondence with what is, but since humans, nor any other conscious being, are able to see beyond the determinant limits of their nature and environment, pragmatism becomes the test of truth rather than correspondence | ||
| Pragmatism is rooted in animal life, the need to know the world in a way that fosters successful action | ||
| Most commentators classify Santayana as an extreme moral relativist who maintains that all individual moral perspectives have equal standing and are based on the heritable traits and environmental circumstances of individuals. This naturalistic approach applies to all living organisms | ||
| The moral terrain of animals, viewed from a neutral perspective, places all animal interests and goods as equal. Each good stems from heritable physical traits and is shaped by adaptations to the environment | ||
| There are specific goods for each animal depending on the specific heritable traits and interests of the psyche and on the specific circumstances of the environment. Self-knowledge, then, is the distinguishing moral mark. The extent to which one knows one's interests, their complexity and centrality, will determine whether one can achieve a good life, provided the environment is accommodating | ||
| Self-knowledge requires a critical appreciation of one's culture and physical inheritance, and the ability to shape one's life in streams of conflicting goods within oneself and within one's community | ||
| His basic contention that individual suffering is the worse feature of human life, not social inequality, causes him to focus more on the natural dilemmas of the individual rather than on social action | ||
| Santayana's focus is on the individual, and the role of the state is to protect and to enable the individual to flourish | ||
| it is the celebration of life in its festivities. It is Aristotle's practical wisdom: structuring individual life as it is, living it joyfully, and assuring that one's commitments are conducive to the delights of the intellect and consistent with the demands of the time and tradition | ||
| Consciousness essentially is only awareness, an attention to what is given, rather than being an instrument in reshaping the world. Consciousness, emerging late in the evolutionary pathway, is a flowering of happy circumstances that celebrates what is given, and when truly recognized, does only that. It is joyful, delighting in what is presented, and not troubled by where it leads or what it means | ||
Spirit, or consciousness, is momentary, fleeting, and depends on the physical forces of our bodies and environment in order to exist. Shaping one's life to enhance these spiritual, fleeting moments, extending them as long as is practical, is one of the delights of living
| ||
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Buddha
The image that stays with me at the end of Karen Armstrong's Buddha is Ananda's tears. Ananda was Siddhatta Gotama's cousin and one of his earliest followers, accompanying Gotama through his long career. But Ananda did not reach enlightenment during the Buddha's life, and he openly wept when he realized that his friend Gotama had finally laid down to die. "When the Buddha heard about Ananda's tears, he sent for him. 'That is enough, Ananda,' he said. 'Don't be sorrowful; don't grieve.' Had he not explained, over and over again, that nothing was permanent but that separation was the law of life? 'And Ananda,' the Buddha concluded, 'for years you have waited on me with constant love and kindness. You have taken care of my physical needs, and have supported me in all your words and thought. You have done all this to help me, joyfully and with your whole heart. You have earned merit, Ananda. Keep trying, and soon you will be enlightened, too.'" So why, in a book about the Buddha, is it Ananda that I most admire? Why does he feel more fully human?
This is my third time through Buddha, and even though it is a slender book trying to capture the life of Siddhattha Gotama, it spoke more to me now than through my first two readings. Of course, trying to judge the accuracy of the book when Gotama's life is shrouded in even more legend and mystery than most biblical characters is virtually impossible. The first written accounts come at least 400 years after he died, and estimates for the dates of his life range from as early as about 570 to as late as 400 BCE. A number of historians question whether he even existed. From what little I know, however, Armstrong's take on his life seems a good place to start.
I especially appreciate her characterization of the social and intellectual milieu of the “Gangetic plains” around the time of Gotama's life. Developing iron age technologies allowed for the cultivation of more land and the production of surplus grains, stimulating trade and an increase in wealth. New social conditions called for increasing specialization, a growing merchant class, and a much more mobile society. These conditions set in motion a growing dissatisfaction with the established Vedic tradition that emphasized social caste, animal sacrifice and Brahmanic domination of ritual. "Since [the] new men fit less and less easily into the caste system, many of them felt that they had been pushed into a spiritual vacuum."
Two main trends began to fill the void. Along the western areas of the Ganges, thinkers reinterpreted the Vedic texts and ideas as emphasizing individual spiritual realization. These ideas eventually coalesced into the Upanishads, giving rise to Vedanta and other schools of Hindu thought. In the forests to the east of the Ganges, more emphasis was put on spiritual liberation through renunciation of the householder's life, living in small communities (sanghas) of beggar monks, and engaging in extreme ascetic or yogic practices.
The spiritual anomie caused by disillusionment with traditional answers reflected a much broader spiritual crisis and awakening during the first century B.C.E. that Armstrong, following Karl Jaspers, calls the Axial Age. Traditional ritualistic religions gradually yielded to ideas of individual responsibility, guilt and salvation in different areas of the world from about 700 to 200 BCE, giving rise to Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, the Hebrew prophets and the Ionian enlightenment. "The Axial Age marks the beginning of humanity as we know it. During this period, men and women became conscious of their own existence, their own nature and their limitations in an unprecedented way. Their experience of utter impotence in a cruel world impelled them to seek the highest goals and absolute reality in the depths of their being.” This concept of the Axial Age has been roundly criticized by a number of historians as overlooking too many differences between the different traditions and encompassing too broad a span of time to be meaningful, but a number of other scholars, notably Robert Bellah and Jurgen Habermas, have found the idea to be useful in exploring the nature and evolution of religious practices.
The Buddha's message, then, begins with the "inescapable reality of pain"--dukkha. It is the first of the Four Noble Truths--"suffering...informs the whole of human life." The cause of our suffering comes from desire, which "makes us grab or cling to things that can never give lasting satisfaction." These were common assumptions among the forest monks, but Gotama said that the way out--Nirvana--was not through the extreme ascetic or yogic practices which he had tried and eventually abandoned but through a "middle way"--the eightfold path--that emphasized morality, meditation, and wisdom. Gotama taught techniques of mindfulness and awareness that stressed intense examination of thoughts, emotions and actions, leading to realization of the truths of anicca (impermanence), anatta (non-self)--the ego and the self had no reality but were just streams of sensations and thoughts held together out of fear. Contrary to other schools of thought, Gotama did not posit an eternal Self or soul or any other kind of metaphysical entity. (One recent commentator stated, "The Buddha was an atheist. There's no getting around it.") Nor did he insist on the infallibility of any of his teachings. His Dhamma (instructions or methods) were to be judged only by their consequences--how well they worked. But he felt that the monks who followed his path would find that "by meditation, concentration, mindfulness and a disciplined detachment from the world...it was possible to live in this world of pain, at peace, in control and in harmony with oneself and the rest of creation."
Which brings me back to Ananda’s tears. Since all living beings suffer, Gotama extended his compassion to the four corners of the universe, but it was a “wholly disinterested benevolence, “an attitude of total equanimity,” which “demanded that he abandon all personal preference.” Here was the one man, Ananda, who had accompanied Gotama on his journeys for over 40 years, shedding tears for the loss of his beloved companion and teacher, and the Buddha chided Ananda for his grief, in essence saying to him, you still don’t get it, do you. Gotama could not deal with his best friend’s sorrow (well, ok, he did not allow himself to have a bff), and that’s where Mr. Gotama and I begin to part company.
I have been a fellow traveller with Buddhism for, what, close to 45 years now. I have had a great affinity for the ideas of Buddhism, especially the radical agnosticism that seems to underlie much of Buddhist thought. Anatta and anicca seem to be truths that fit comfortably with the findings of science and can even accommodate the weirdness of quantum mechanics. As I keep track of the current debates over personal responsibility with the current findings of neuroscience, Buddhism made the same points about 2500 years ago. Gotama could have agreed with Michael Gazzaniga's "left brained interpreter that is coming up with the theory, the narrative and the self image, taking the information from various inputs, from the neuronal workspace, and from the knowledge structures, and gluing it together, thus creating the self, the autobiography, out of the chaos of input." And, certainly, as I grow older, the concept of dukkha fits with the decay and the suffering of old age.
But I never took my Buddhism to the next level, to that of practice, and as Armstrong really makes clear to me this time, it don't mean jack shit until then. Ideas don't mean nothing in the Buddhist scheme of things until they have been thoroughly and totally assimilated through the full acceptance and practice of the Eightfold path and the incorporation of samadhi, jhana, and praja--meditation, concentration, and wisdom. Only those people who have taken the vows to triple refuge--to the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha--can hope to get there. "The full Dhamma was possible only for monks---the Noble Truths were not for laymen; they had to be "realized" and this direct knowledge could not be realized without yoga, which was essential to the full Buddhist regimen....the laity were never able to graduate to serious yoga." The "full Buddhist regimen," then, eventually means "going forth" (taking the vows) and renunciation of the self--a renunciation of who I am and what I have stood for. And that ain't going to happen.
I guess when it comes down to it, my Buddhism has been more about self actualization rather than self renunciation. It's been more related to sports psychology or the path of achievement than to the eightfold path, more about trying to remove limitations, doubts, negativity than about acknowledging suffering and seeking release. I wanted more tools in my mental arsenal to help me deal with my own problems. I don’t want to give up my best friends, my goals, my values, my personality
Perhaps it’s my inability to accept the centrality of suffering as the main fact of life. Armstrong begins her narrative of Gotama's life with the premise that, "the spiritual life cannot begin until people allow themselves to be invaded by the reality of suffering, realizing how fully it permeates our whole experience, and feel the pain of all other beings." Or as paraphrased by Diarmaid McCulloch in his review of The Great Transformation, "Life is a bastard, and then you die."
Well, frankly, I've spent the better part of my life trying to hide that little nastiness from myself. You would have thought that wallowing around in my own shallow mediocrity would have driven that point home by now, but somehow I've managed to keep hold of the hope that life is good, still trying to escape the limitations that time, place, age, and circumstance have laid on me, trying to be better than I am even though the energy and the physical presence have inevitably started draining away. It's kind of like what Waldo (Mr. Emerson) said as he came towards the end of his life, "One of these days, before I die, I still believe I shall do better." Probably it's all delusion. Or as my man Michael (Mr. Montaigne) might have said, I'm really pretty fucking lucky to have gotten this far, I guess, without undue suffering and hardship. It doesn't feel very noble or heroic, but well, it’s all I’ve got. "I grow old...I grow old..."
So, I guess I'll continue to be a fellow traveler, and maybe even spend more time on my zafu, waiting for my meditation app to tell me that I've done enough for the day. But I have no hopes about reaching any kind of enlightenment, and a whole lot of doubts about how desirable it even is. I'll just kind of muddle along and grow older and suffer--and then die, as confused about it as ever. So be it.
This is my third time through Buddha, and even though it is a slender book trying to capture the life of Siddhattha Gotama, it spoke more to me now than through my first two readings. Of course, trying to judge the accuracy of the book when Gotama's life is shrouded in even more legend and mystery than most biblical characters is virtually impossible. The first written accounts come at least 400 years after he died, and estimates for the dates of his life range from as early as about 570 to as late as 400 BCE. A number of historians question whether he even existed. From what little I know, however, Armstrong's take on his life seems a good place to start.
I especially appreciate her characterization of the social and intellectual milieu of the “Gangetic plains” around the time of Gotama's life. Developing iron age technologies allowed for the cultivation of more land and the production of surplus grains, stimulating trade and an increase in wealth. New social conditions called for increasing specialization, a growing merchant class, and a much more mobile society. These conditions set in motion a growing dissatisfaction with the established Vedic tradition that emphasized social caste, animal sacrifice and Brahmanic domination of ritual. "Since [the] new men fit less and less easily into the caste system, many of them felt that they had been pushed into a spiritual vacuum."
Two main trends began to fill the void. Along the western areas of the Ganges, thinkers reinterpreted the Vedic texts and ideas as emphasizing individual spiritual realization. These ideas eventually coalesced into the Upanishads, giving rise to Vedanta and other schools of Hindu thought. In the forests to the east of the Ganges, more emphasis was put on spiritual liberation through renunciation of the householder's life, living in small communities (sanghas) of beggar monks, and engaging in extreme ascetic or yogic practices.
The spiritual anomie caused by disillusionment with traditional answers reflected a much broader spiritual crisis and awakening during the first century B.C.E. that Armstrong, following Karl Jaspers, calls the Axial Age. Traditional ritualistic religions gradually yielded to ideas of individual responsibility, guilt and salvation in different areas of the world from about 700 to 200 BCE, giving rise to Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, the Hebrew prophets and the Ionian enlightenment. "The Axial Age marks the beginning of humanity as we know it. During this period, men and women became conscious of their own existence, their own nature and their limitations in an unprecedented way. Their experience of utter impotence in a cruel world impelled them to seek the highest goals and absolute reality in the depths of their being.” This concept of the Axial Age has been roundly criticized by a number of historians as overlooking too many differences between the different traditions and encompassing too broad a span of time to be meaningful, but a number of other scholars, notably Robert Bellah and Jurgen Habermas, have found the idea to be useful in exploring the nature and evolution of religious practices.
The Buddha's message, then, begins with the "inescapable reality of pain"--dukkha. It is the first of the Four Noble Truths--"suffering...informs the whole of human life." The cause of our suffering comes from desire, which "makes us grab or cling to things that can never give lasting satisfaction." These were common assumptions among the forest monks, but Gotama said that the way out--Nirvana--was not through the extreme ascetic or yogic practices which he had tried and eventually abandoned but through a "middle way"--the eightfold path--that emphasized morality, meditation, and wisdom. Gotama taught techniques of mindfulness and awareness that stressed intense examination of thoughts, emotions and actions, leading to realization of the truths of anicca (impermanence), anatta (non-self)--the ego and the self had no reality but were just streams of sensations and thoughts held together out of fear. Contrary to other schools of thought, Gotama did not posit an eternal Self or soul or any other kind of metaphysical entity. (One recent commentator stated, "The Buddha was an atheist. There's no getting around it.") Nor did he insist on the infallibility of any of his teachings. His Dhamma (instructions or methods) were to be judged only by their consequences--how well they worked. But he felt that the monks who followed his path would find that "by meditation, concentration, mindfulness and a disciplined detachment from the world...it was possible to live in this world of pain, at peace, in control and in harmony with oneself and the rest of creation."
Which brings me back to Ananda’s tears. Since all living beings suffer, Gotama extended his compassion to the four corners of the universe, but it was a “wholly disinterested benevolence, “an attitude of total equanimity,” which “demanded that he abandon all personal preference.” Here was the one man, Ananda, who had accompanied Gotama on his journeys for over 40 years, shedding tears for the loss of his beloved companion and teacher, and the Buddha chided Ananda for his grief, in essence saying to him, you still don’t get it, do you. Gotama could not deal with his best friend’s sorrow (well, ok, he did not allow himself to have a bff), and that’s where Mr. Gotama and I begin to part company.
I have been a fellow traveller with Buddhism for, what, close to 45 years now. I have had a great affinity for the ideas of Buddhism, especially the radical agnosticism that seems to underlie much of Buddhist thought. Anatta and anicca seem to be truths that fit comfortably with the findings of science and can even accommodate the weirdness of quantum mechanics. As I keep track of the current debates over personal responsibility with the current findings of neuroscience, Buddhism made the same points about 2500 years ago. Gotama could have agreed with Michael Gazzaniga's "left brained interpreter that is coming up with the theory, the narrative and the self image, taking the information from various inputs, from the neuronal workspace, and from the knowledge structures, and gluing it together, thus creating the self, the autobiography, out of the chaos of input." And, certainly, as I grow older, the concept of dukkha fits with the decay and the suffering of old age.
But I never took my Buddhism to the next level, to that of practice, and as Armstrong really makes clear to me this time, it don't mean jack shit until then. Ideas don't mean nothing in the Buddhist scheme of things until they have been thoroughly and totally assimilated through the full acceptance and practice of the Eightfold path and the incorporation of samadhi, jhana, and praja--meditation, concentration, and wisdom. Only those people who have taken the vows to triple refuge--to the Buddha, the Dhamma, and the Sangha--can hope to get there. "The full Dhamma was possible only for monks---the Noble Truths were not for laymen; they had to be "realized" and this direct knowledge could not be realized without yoga, which was essential to the full Buddhist regimen....the laity were never able to graduate to serious yoga." The "full Buddhist regimen," then, eventually means "going forth" (taking the vows) and renunciation of the self--a renunciation of who I am and what I have stood for. And that ain't going to happen.
I guess when it comes down to it, my Buddhism has been more about self actualization rather than self renunciation. It's been more related to sports psychology or the path of achievement than to the eightfold path, more about trying to remove limitations, doubts, negativity than about acknowledging suffering and seeking release. I wanted more tools in my mental arsenal to help me deal with my own problems. I don’t want to give up my best friends, my goals, my values, my personality
Perhaps it’s my inability to accept the centrality of suffering as the main fact of life. Armstrong begins her narrative of Gotama's life with the premise that, "the spiritual life cannot begin until people allow themselves to be invaded by the reality of suffering, realizing how fully it permeates our whole experience, and feel the pain of all other beings." Or as paraphrased by Diarmaid McCulloch in his review of The Great Transformation, "Life is a bastard, and then you die."
Well, frankly, I've spent the better part of my life trying to hide that little nastiness from myself. You would have thought that wallowing around in my own shallow mediocrity would have driven that point home by now, but somehow I've managed to keep hold of the hope that life is good, still trying to escape the limitations that time, place, age, and circumstance have laid on me, trying to be better than I am even though the energy and the physical presence have inevitably started draining away. It's kind of like what Waldo (Mr. Emerson) said as he came towards the end of his life, "One of these days, before I die, I still believe I shall do better." Probably it's all delusion. Or as my man Michael (Mr. Montaigne) might have said, I'm really pretty fucking lucky to have gotten this far, I guess, without undue suffering and hardship. It doesn't feel very noble or heroic, but well, it’s all I’ve got. "I grow old...I grow old..."
So, I guess I'll continue to be a fellow traveler, and maybe even spend more time on my zafu, waiting for my meditation app to tell me that I've done enough for the day. But I have no hopes about reaching any kind of enlightenment, and a whole lot of doubts about how desirable it even is. I'll just kind of muddle along and grow older and suffer--and then die, as confused about it as ever. So be it.
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Self Reliance
To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. loc: 7416
Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; loc: 7417
In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. loc: 7421
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; loc: 7426
nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. loc: 7449
But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken with eclat, he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account. loc: 7453
Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. loc: 7459
would be a man must be a nonconformist. loc: 7463
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. loc: 7464
No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. loc: 7468
truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, — else it is none. loc: 7475
I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim loc: 7477
Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony. loc: 7494
I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. loc: 7496
you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. loc: 7498
It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. loc: 7498
objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character. loc: 7501
But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. loc: 7504
Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. loc: 7509
There is a mortifying experience in particular, which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; I mean “the foolish face of praise,” the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease in answer to conversation which does not interest us. loc: 7513
nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. loc: 7517
the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. loc: 7520
other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. loc: 7526
Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? loc: 7529
foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? loc: 7534
will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, loc: 7547
Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. loc: 7550
Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now. loc: 7551
Be it how it will, do right now. loc: 7552
Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom, and trade, and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor working wherever a man works; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the centre of things. Where he is, there is nature. He measures you, and all men, and all events. loc: 7562
Character, reality, reminds you of nothing else; it takes place of the whole creation. The man must be so much, that he must make all circumstances indifferent. Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design; — and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients. loc: 7566
magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? loc: 7592
The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin. loc: 7595
We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought. loc: 7599
We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. loc: 7601
Whenever a mind is simple, and receives a divine wisdom, old things pass away, — means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now, and absorbs past and future into the present hour. All things are made sacred by relation to it, — one as much as another. loc: 7613
Whence, then, this worship of the past? The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul. loc: 7618
is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say ‘I think,’ ‘I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage. loc: 7621
But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time. loc: 7625
If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. When we have new perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish. loc: 7633
When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the foot-prints of any other; you shall not see the face of man; you shall not hear any name;—— the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange and new. loc: 7638
The soul raised over passion beholds identity and eternal causation, perceives the self-existence of Truth and Right, and calms itself with knowing that all things go well. loc: 7642
only avails, not the having lived. loc: 7646
This one fact the world hates, that the soul becomes; for that for ever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside. loc: 7647
is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on this, as on every topic, the resolution of all into the ever-blessed ONE. Self-existence is the attribute of the Supreme Cause, and it constitutes the measure of good by the degree in which it enters into all lower forms. All things real are so by so much virtue as they contain. loc: 7655
Power is in nature the essential measure of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. loc: 7659
we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith, let us at least resist our temptations; let us enter into the state of war, and wake Thor and Woden, courage and constancy, in our Saxon breasts. This is to be done in our smooth times by speaking the truth. loc: 7676
I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints. loc: 7682
But so you may give these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their sensibility. loc: 7688
We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. loc: 7705
We are parlour soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of fate, where strength is born. loc: 7709
Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg. loc: 7731
Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. loc: 7739
Our sympathy is just as base. We come to them who weep foolishly, and sit down and cry for company, instead of imparting to them truth and health in rough electric shocks, putting them once more in communication with their own reason. The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. loc: 7741
men’s prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect. loc: 7747
The pupil takes the same delight in subordinating every thing to the new terminology, as a girl who has just learned botany in seeing a new earth and new seasons thereby. It will happen for a time, that the pupil will find his intellectual power has grown by the study of his master’s mind. loc: 7754
But in all unbalanced minds, the classification is idolized, passes for the end, and not for a speedily exhaustible means, so that the walls of the system blend to their eye in the remote horizon with the walls of the universe; the luminaries of heaven seem to them hung on the arch their master built. loc: 7756
In manly hours, we feel that duty is our place. The soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home, and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still, loc: 7764
He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, loc: 7770
At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. loc: 7773
The intellect is vagabond, and our system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate; and what is imitation but the travelling of the mind? Our houses are built with foreign taste; our shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments; our opinions, our tastes, our faculties, lean, and follow the Past and the Distant. loc: 7778
on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; loc: 7786
Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. loc: 7791
never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. loc: 7798
civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. loc: 7805
The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His note-books impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; loc: 7808
No greater men are now than ever were. loc: 7813
is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not. The same particle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons who make up a nation to-day, next year die, and their experience with them. loc: 7826
so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance. loc: 7828
a cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property, out of new respect for his nature. Especially he hates what he has, if he see that it is accidental, — came to him by inheritance, or gift, or crime; then he feels that it is not having; it does not belong to him, has no root in him, and merely lies there, loc: 7831
Our dependence on these foreign goods leads us to our slavish respect for numbers. loc: 7836
It is only as a man puts off all foreign support, and stands alone, that I see him to be strong and to prevail. loc: 7840
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles. loc: 7849
Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; loc: 7417
In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. loc: 7421
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; loc: 7426
nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. loc: 7449
But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken with eclat, he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account. loc: 7453
Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. loc: 7459
would be a man must be a nonconformist. loc: 7463
Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. loc: 7464
No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. loc: 7468
truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, — else it is none. loc: 7475
I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim loc: 7477
Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony. loc: 7494
I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. loc: 7496
you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. loc: 7498
It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. loc: 7498
objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character. loc: 7501
But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. loc: 7504
Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. loc: 7509
There is a mortifying experience in particular, which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; I mean “the foolish face of praise,” the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease in answer to conversation which does not interest us. loc: 7513
nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. loc: 7517
the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. loc: 7520
other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them. loc: 7526
Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? loc: 7529
foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? loc: 7534
will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, loc: 7547
Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. loc: 7550
Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now. loc: 7551
Be it how it will, do right now. loc: 7552
Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom, and trade, and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor working wherever a man works; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the centre of things. Where he is, there is nature. He measures you, and all men, and all events. loc: 7562
Character, reality, reminds you of nothing else; it takes place of the whole creation. The man must be so much, that he must make all circumstances indifferent. Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design; — and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients. loc: 7566
magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? loc: 7592
The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin. loc: 7595
We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought. loc: 7599
We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. loc: 7601
Whenever a mind is simple, and receives a divine wisdom, old things pass away, — means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now, and absorbs past and future into the present hour. All things are made sacred by relation to it, — one as much as another. loc: 7613
Whence, then, this worship of the past? The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul. loc: 7618
is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say ‘I think,’ ‘I am,’ but quotes some saint or sage. loc: 7621
But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time. loc: 7625
If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. When we have new perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish. loc: 7633
When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the foot-prints of any other; you shall not see the face of man; you shall not hear any name;—— the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange and new. loc: 7638
The soul raised over passion beholds identity and eternal causation, perceives the self-existence of Truth and Right, and calms itself with knowing that all things go well. loc: 7642
only avails, not the having lived. loc: 7646
This one fact the world hates, that the soul becomes; for that for ever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside. loc: 7647
is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on this, as on every topic, the resolution of all into the ever-blessed ONE. Self-existence is the attribute of the Supreme Cause, and it constitutes the measure of good by the degree in which it enters into all lower forms. All things real are so by so much virtue as they contain. loc: 7655
Power is in nature the essential measure of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. loc: 7659
we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith, let us at least resist our temptations; let us enter into the state of war, and wake Thor and Woden, courage and constancy, in our Saxon breasts. This is to be done in our smooth times by speaking the truth. loc: 7676
I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints. loc: 7682
But so you may give these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their sensibility. loc: 7688
We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. loc: 7705
We are parlour soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of fate, where strength is born. loc: 7709
Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg. loc: 7731
Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. loc: 7739
Our sympathy is just as base. We come to them who weep foolishly, and sit down and cry for company, instead of imparting to them truth and health in rough electric shocks, putting them once more in communication with their own reason. The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. loc: 7741
men’s prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect. loc: 7747
The pupil takes the same delight in subordinating every thing to the new terminology, as a girl who has just learned botany in seeing a new earth and new seasons thereby. It will happen for a time, that the pupil will find his intellectual power has grown by the study of his master’s mind. loc: 7754
But in all unbalanced minds, the classification is idolized, passes for the end, and not for a speedily exhaustible means, so that the walls of the system blend to their eye in the remote horizon with the walls of the universe; the luminaries of heaven seem to them hung on the arch their master built. loc: 7756
In manly hours, we feel that duty is our place. The soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home, and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still, loc: 7764
He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, loc: 7770
At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. loc: 7773
The intellect is vagabond, and our system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate; and what is imitation but the travelling of the mind? Our houses are built with foreign taste; our shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments; our opinions, our tastes, our faculties, lean, and follow the Past and the Distant. loc: 7778
on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; loc: 7786
Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. loc: 7791
never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. loc: 7798
civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. loc: 7805
The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His note-books impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; loc: 7808
No greater men are now than ever were. loc: 7813
is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not. The same particle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons who make up a nation to-day, next year die, and their experience with them. loc: 7826
so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance. loc: 7828
a cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property, out of new respect for his nature. Especially he hates what he has, if he see that it is accidental, — came to him by inheritance, or gift, or crime; then he feels that it is not having; it does not belong to him, has no root in him, and merely lies there, loc: 7831
Our dependence on these foreign goods leads us to our slavish respect for numbers. loc: 7836
It is only as a man puts off all foreign support, and stands alone, that I see him to be strong and to prevail. loc: 7840
Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles. loc: 7849
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
KAREN ARMSTRONG'S AXIAL AGE: ORIGINS AND ETHICS
- The Heythrop Journal
- Monotheism emerged among the Jews, the philosophical foundations of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism were laid down in northern India; Confucianism and Daoism appeared in China, while the Western intellectual tradition began in Greece
- her feeling that the world religions hit upon something profound and true in their inception – in the Axial Age – but have since ossified in unfortunate ways. That something is ethics, no less – and not much more. This, in turn, can be condensed as the Golden Rule:
- all the Axial teachers insisted that kindness should not be guided by kinship or kingship; everyone now belonged to the great tribe of the suffering
- most other scholars have located it in something called the ‘transcendentalist breakthrough’
- Eisenstadt has defined the transcendentalist breakthrough as the erection of two sharply distinguished orders of reality and modes of behaviour. This is indeed a powerful way of lending coherence to the apparently disparate ancient philosophies.
- Once could condense her story thus: the religious vision of the early civilizations was on the whole quite benign – before climate change, increasing competition for land and the arrival of charioteer nomads brought cataclysm. A dark age followed and the religious imagination darkened too. Warrior gods come to the fore, myths revealed the power of chaos to tear apart human society or were structured by agonistic struggle
- traditional means of ameliorating and explaining suffering through ritual and myth must also come to seem inadequate.
- pain appears to be equated with an anxiety about impermanence
- urbanization, growing trade, introduction of new metals, formation of state power
- reality was now outstripping the old rites and old stories simply too quickly.
- An answer could be found in a vision of the transcendent, which floats free and serene above ‘reality’ by virtue of its ineffability
- Change was not only witnessed in people's lifetimes, it was also being tracked over generations thanks to the new technologies of memorization: literacy or exacting methods of oral repetition.
- The relativizing powers of historical consciousness were unleashed.
- Thus the Axial Age: the pursuit of meaning not the practice of ritual – because just doing the rituals doesn't work any more; inwardness not exteriority – because we have mastery over our minds but little else; challenge not status quo – because the status quo is obviously deficient; ethics not law – because the law is the creature of power. These indicate a loss of faith in man's ability to better himself through mundane activity. This is also a loss of faith in politics.
- As Karl Jaspers recognized, all occur in ‘an interregnum between two great ages of empire, a pause for liberty, a deep breath bringing the most lucid consciousness’– between the collapse of the Zhou dynasty and the unification of the warring states under the Qin in China, between Harappan civilization and the Mauryan empire in India, between Mycenae and Alexander in Greece.
- Breakthroughs have therefore tended to emerge from the ruins of dead empires – or on the margins of ones that are very much alive.
- demand for moral self-scrutiny
- The warrior god was no longer merely fighting on behalf of his people but challenging them to fight their own evil within.
- origins in collective rather than personal suffering, in the need to make sense of political disaster.
- The Axial Age vision is the achievement of a new breed of peripatetic intellectual, who roamed this fragmented political landscape offering their minds for hire.
- Already living outside the normal flow of life and its round of assumption and convenience, they then drew a breach across reality entire
- the Greeks cannot seem to get beyond the First Noble Truth, determinedly staring into the abyss without straining to look up into the immensity above
- Debate having become a spectator sport and a means to celebrity, any proposition inherited or invented now became subject to scrutiny, and the chains of reason abstract, dense and open-ended. The difference is that in India this dialogic exuberance was yoked to techniques of sustained introspection and altered consciousness: meditation and yoga. These brought not only cognitive illumination but a more wholesale transformation of being, a lightening of one's mortal load. This is why India's philosophical sea-change was poured into the vessel of religion. If here too reason brushed aside traditional habits of thought, it was to clear the ground for a fully-realized and intimately-explored vision of the transcendent.
- the most analytically useful formulation of that breakthrough (as the conception of two sharply distinguished orders of reality and modes of behaviour) may not serve to define all the traditions. We have noted that this seems to be an awkward image to apply to Chinese philosophy, and some scholars of the Theravada would even object to the characterization of early Buddhism as a transcendentalist system, given its rejection of any form of absolutism. Moreover, the concept seems ultimately marginal to the Greek breakthrough.
- her text does disclose a more profound connection between ethics and transcendence: it arises from what happens to the self. This is most clearly seen in the Indian tradition, a great deal of the logical energy of which was directed towards trying to grapple with the nature of consciousness – this thing at once ungraspable yet unavoidably fundamental,
- all the Axial movements evince a sense that as soon as the self has been identified it has become something to worry about
- One might say, that just as the self was discovered so too was mankind, which makes its first appearance here as an undifferentiated moral community.
- all transcendentalisms have to destroy our normal understanding of life in order to imagine its continuation
- But the logic is clear: one asserts that divine forms do exist and can be known, that our shadowy cave can be left behind for the light of the sun, but that since these things are entirely hidden from everyday life then apprehending them is not exactly like falling off a log. That task will fall to the moral and intellectual virtuosi, who will return to the cave with a unique authority: their account of reality is unimpeachable, and their desire to re-order it in accordance with their vision the most important message in the world.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Reason : the God that fails, but we keep socially promoting…. : Gene Expression : Discover Magazine
on a whole range of issues and behaviors people simply follow the consensus of their self-identified group
from a proximate (game-theoretic rational actor) and ultimate (evolutionary fitness) perspective ditching reason is often quite reasonable
Calculus and mechanics is included in the curriculum not because all of the individuals who decide the curriculum understand these two topics in detail, but because individuals whom they trust and believe are worthy of emulation and deference, as well as past empirical history, tell them that this is the “reasonable” way to go.
The basic model is that you offload the task of reasoning about issues which you are not familiar with, or do not understand in detail, to the collective with which you identify, and give weight to specialists if they exist within that collective. Why do we do X and not Y? Because in the past our collective unit did X, not Y
Traditional conservatives argue that the past has wisdom through its organic evolution, and the trial and error of customs and traditions
Liberal utopians....rely on their reason in the here and now, more or less, to “solve” the problems which they believe are amenable to decomposition via their rational faculties
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/05/reason-the-god-that-fails-but-we-keep-socially-promoting/
from a proximate (game-theoretic rational actor) and ultimate (evolutionary fitness) perspective ditching reason is often quite reasonable
Calculus and mechanics is included in the curriculum not because all of the individuals who decide the curriculum understand these two topics in detail, but because individuals whom they trust and believe are worthy of emulation and deference, as well as past empirical history, tell them that this is the “reasonable” way to go.
The basic model is that you offload the task of reasoning about issues which you are not familiar with, or do not understand in detail, to the collective with which you identify, and give weight to specialists if they exist within that collective. Why do we do X and not Y? Because in the past our collective unit did X, not Y
Traditional conservatives argue that the past has wisdom through its organic evolution, and the trial and error of customs and traditions
Liberal utopians....rely on their reason in the here and now, more or less, to “solve” the problems which they believe are amenable to decomposition via their rational faculties
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/gnxp/2012/05/reason-the-god-that-fails-but-we-keep-socially-promoting/
Monday, May 28, 2012
Religion and Empire in the Axial Age
Religion and Empire in the Axial Age
A review of Robert Bellah Religion in Human Revolution
Peter Turchin
http://cliodynamics.info/PDF/Bellah_RBB.pdf
‘U-shaped curve of despotism' in human evolution (p. 178) – from highly inegalitarian great apes (whose social arrangements, presumably, also characterized direct human ancestors) to egalitarian small-scale societies of hunter-gatherers, and then to large-scale hierarchical societies with their great inequities in the distribution of power, status, and wealth
equality requires active maintenance. People living in small-scale societies possess numerous norms and institutions designed to control ‘upstarts,' those individuals who attempt to dominate others in order to control an unfair share of resources.
strong pull of social solidarity, especially as expressed in ritual, that rewards renunciation of dominance with a sense of full social acceptance
the invention of agriculture c.10,000 years ago enabled evolution of large-scale societies. Once the size of cooperating group increased beyond 100–200 people, even gigantic human brains were overwhelmed by the computational demands of face-to-face sociality (Dunbar and Shultz 2007). The solution that social evolution found was hierarchical organization, with large human groups integrated by chains of command.
The group size grows by adding additional hierarchical levels; a process that has no physical limit. The great downside of hierarchical organization, however, is that it inevitably leads to inequality.
the opening wedge for a successful upstart is most often militarization. … In a situation of endemic warfare, the successful warrior emanates a sense of mana or charisma, and can use it to establish a following.
the primary selection pressure for the evolution of large-scale societies is endemic warfare itself (as the French military proverb goes, “God is on the side of big battalions”).
the state of endemic warfare selects for more effective (which means centralized) military organizations.
In order to ensure a greater degree of permanence, large-scale societies needed to make the transition from the domination by military chiefs to “a new form of authority, of legitimate hierarchy … which involves a new relation between gods and humans, a new way of organizing society, one that finds a significant place for the disposition to nurture as well as the disposition to dominate” (p. 261). In other words, the central argument in Bellah's book is that a major driver in the evolution of religion was the need to reconcile the tension between the need for hierarchy and the need for legitimacy and equity
The first, archaic phase was characterized by enormous fusion of power in the person of the ruler (p. 207). Archaic states invariably were characterized by some sort of divine kingship, and usually practiced human sacrifice on a massive scale
we also observe the appearance of ‘gods,' who are distinguished from other powerful supernatural beings in that they are worshipped
Then, something happened during the first millennium BCE, which resulted in the rise of qualitatively new forms of social organization – the larger and more durable axial empires that employed new forms of legitimation of political power. One aspect of this change was the first appearance of a universally egalitarian ethic, which was largely due to the emergence of “prophet-like figures who, at great peril to themselves, held the existing power structures to a moral standard that they clearly did not meet”
Bellah connects these developments to the “legitimation crisis of the early state”
It seems apparent that some degree of unease about the state of the world must have been relatively widespread
destabilizing social consequences of considerable economic growth
wide-spread use of iron was “more important in increasing the efficiency of warfare than in transforming the means of production
an even more important development, as I have argued elsewhere (Turchin 2009), was the invention of mounted warfare by Iranian pastoralists c. 1000 BCE. Putting together horse riding with sophisticated and powerful compound bows that shot iron-tipped arrows created a ‘weapon of mass destruction' that enabled the nomads to put an enormous amount of pressure on the neighboring agrarian societies.
all axial cases except China experienced Persian pressure at critical moments in their development
there is another common factor shared by all axial cases, including Persia and China, – they all experienced pressure from the mounted archers originating from the Great Eurasian Steppe
the first axial states, such as the Median-Persian Empire and later Hellenistic empires, served as conduits of steppe influences, because they used mounted warfare against their neighbors
As new forms of warfare diffused out from the Eurasian steppe, they dramatically increased the role of warfare as a force of cultural group selection. More intense selection for large size resulted in the early and recurrent pattern of imperial development in the steppe-frontier belt stretching from Anatolia to North China.
the new scale of larger empires, whose rulers had even more resources to aggrandize themselves, that precipitated the legitimation crisis of the early axial state.
a key axial innovation was the universalistic nature of religion that allowed axial empires to integrate ethnically diverse populations on a very large scale.
First, the rulers have been increasingly constrained to act in ways promoting the public good, rather than their own interests (most recently, as a result of the introduction of democratic forms of governance). Second, structural forms of human inequality have been gradually disappearing: most notably, the abolition of human sacrifice, slavery, and distinctions in the legal status (e.g., between nobles and commoners; although some would argue that our track record in reducing economic inequality has not been as impressive). Third, gods evolved from anthropomorphic to transcendental supernatural beings, and some religions/ideologies even dispensed with gods altogether.
A review of Robert Bellah Religion in Human Revolution
Peter Turchin
http://cliodynamics.info/PDF/Bellah_RBB.pdf
‘U-shaped curve of despotism' in human evolution (p. 178) – from highly inegalitarian great apes (whose social arrangements, presumably, also characterized direct human ancestors) to egalitarian small-scale societies of hunter-gatherers, and then to large-scale hierarchical societies with their great inequities in the distribution of power, status, and wealth
equality requires active maintenance. People living in small-scale societies possess numerous norms and institutions designed to control ‘upstarts,' those individuals who attempt to dominate others in order to control an unfair share of resources.
strong pull of social solidarity, especially as expressed in ritual, that rewards renunciation of dominance with a sense of full social acceptance
the invention of agriculture c.10,000 years ago enabled evolution of large-scale societies. Once the size of cooperating group increased beyond 100–200 people, even gigantic human brains were overwhelmed by the computational demands of face-to-face sociality (Dunbar and Shultz 2007). The solution that social evolution found was hierarchical organization, with large human groups integrated by chains of command.
The group size grows by adding additional hierarchical levels; a process that has no physical limit. The great downside of hierarchical organization, however, is that it inevitably leads to inequality.
the opening wedge for a successful upstart is most often militarization. … In a situation of endemic warfare, the successful warrior emanates a sense of mana or charisma, and can use it to establish a following.
the primary selection pressure for the evolution of large-scale societies is endemic warfare itself (as the French military proverb goes, “God is on the side of big battalions”).
the state of endemic warfare selects for more effective (which means centralized) military organizations.
In order to ensure a greater degree of permanence, large-scale societies needed to make the transition from the domination by military chiefs to “a new form of authority, of legitimate hierarchy … which involves a new relation between gods and humans, a new way of organizing society, one that finds a significant place for the disposition to nurture as well as the disposition to dominate” (p. 261). In other words, the central argument in Bellah's book is that a major driver in the evolution of religion was the need to reconcile the tension between the need for hierarchy and the need for legitimacy and equity
The first, archaic phase was characterized by enormous fusion of power in the person of the ruler (p. 207). Archaic states invariably were characterized by some sort of divine kingship, and usually practiced human sacrifice on a massive scale
we also observe the appearance of ‘gods,' who are distinguished from other powerful supernatural beings in that they are worshipped
Then, something happened during the first millennium BCE, which resulted in the rise of qualitatively new forms of social organization – the larger and more durable axial empires that employed new forms of legitimation of political power. One aspect of this change was the first appearance of a universally egalitarian ethic, which was largely due to the emergence of “prophet-like figures who, at great peril to themselves, held the existing power structures to a moral standard that they clearly did not meet”
Bellah connects these developments to the “legitimation crisis of the early state”
It seems apparent that some degree of unease about the state of the world must have been relatively widespread
destabilizing social consequences of considerable economic growth
wide-spread use of iron was “more important in increasing the efficiency of warfare than in transforming the means of production
an even more important development, as I have argued elsewhere (Turchin 2009), was the invention of mounted warfare by Iranian pastoralists c. 1000 BCE. Putting together horse riding with sophisticated and powerful compound bows that shot iron-tipped arrows created a ‘weapon of mass destruction' that enabled the nomads to put an enormous amount of pressure on the neighboring agrarian societies.
all axial cases except China experienced Persian pressure at critical moments in their development
there is another common factor shared by all axial cases, including Persia and China, – they all experienced pressure from the mounted archers originating from the Great Eurasian Steppe
the first axial states, such as the Median-Persian Empire and later Hellenistic empires, served as conduits of steppe influences, because they used mounted warfare against their neighbors
As new forms of warfare diffused out from the Eurasian steppe, they dramatically increased the role of warfare as a force of cultural group selection. More intense selection for large size resulted in the early and recurrent pattern of imperial development in the steppe-frontier belt stretching from Anatolia to North China.
the new scale of larger empires, whose rulers had even more resources to aggrandize themselves, that precipitated the legitimation crisis of the early axial state.
a key axial innovation was the universalistic nature of religion that allowed axial empires to integrate ethnically diverse populations on a very large scale.
First, the rulers have been increasingly constrained to act in ways promoting the public good, rather than their own interests (most recently, as a result of the introduction of democratic forms of governance). Second, structural forms of human inequality have been gradually disappearing: most notably, the abolition of human sacrifice, slavery, and distinctions in the legal status (e.g., between nobles and commoners; although some would argue that our track record in reducing economic inequality has not been as impressive). Third, gods evolved from anthropomorphic to transcendental supernatural beings, and some religions/ideologies even dispensed with gods altogether.
What is Axial About the Axial Age?
What is Axial About the Axial Age?
Robert Bellah
Arch.europ.sociol., XLVI, 2005
http://genealogyreligion.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Axial-Age-Bellah.pdf
Ritual in tribal societies involves the participation of all or most of the members of the group in classic Durkheimian fashion, if the ritual goes well, it leaves the group filled with energy and solidarity
In stark contrast, ritual in archaic societies focuses above all on one person, the divine or quasi-divine king, and only a few people, priests or members of the royal lineage, participate. The rest of society acts sometimes as audience, but sometimes knows only of the great rituals by hearsay, since their presence would profane the high mysteries.
It would seem that maintaining the coherence of such large and extensive societies required that the attention and energy that tribal ritual focused on the whole society now be concentrated on the ruler, elevated beyond normal human status, in relation to beings who were now not only powerful, but required worship. The elevation of rulers into a status unknown in tribal societies went hand in hand with the elevation of gods into a status higher in authority than the powerful beings they were gradually replacing.
A dramatic symbolism that combined dominance and nurturance produced a new sense of divine power combined with social power, enacted in entirely new forms of ritual, involving, centrally, sacrifice ¢ even human sacrifice as a concrete expression of radical status difference.
Intermittent periods of state breakdown raised serious questions about the cosmological order: Where is the king? Where is the god? Why are we hungry? Why are we being killed by attackers and no one is defending us?
a central principle that has governed all my work on religious evolution: Nothing is ever lost. Just as the face-to-face rituals of tribal society continue in disguised form among us, so the unity of political and religious power, the archaic ‘‘mortgage'', as Voegelin called it, reappears continually in societies that have experienced the axial ‘‘breakthrough''
two aspects of the axial age that we will have to consider in more detail. One refers to the background features of societies that are in several ways ‘‘more developed'' than the societies that preceded them. The other refers to new developments in the realm of thought ¢ political, ethical, religious, philosophical ¢ that he sums up with the significant term ‘‘criticism''
The Origin and Goal of History implies. His dates are slightly different: He finds that the ‘‘axis of history is to be found in the period around 500 B.C., in the spiritual process that occurred between 800 and 200 B.C.'' It is there, he writes, that ‘‘Man, as we know him today, came into being
none of what he calls the axial ‘‘breakthroughs'', a term we will need to consider further below , occurred in the centers of great empires. Rather, in all cases, ‘‘There were a multitude of small States and cities, a struggle of all against all, which to begin with nevertheless permitted an astonishing prosperity, an unfolding of vigour and wealth''
the competition between small states created the possibility for the emergence of itinerant intellectuals not functioning within cen-tralized priesthoods or bureaucracies, and therefore more structurally capable of the criticism that Momigliano found central to the axial age, and that Jaspers defined as the capacity for ‘‘questioning all human activity and conferring upon it a new meaning''
it is only in the axial age that coinage became widespread trade was increasing all across the old world market relations tend to destabilize long-established kinship and status relationships incessant warfare between small states rise of large territorial states militarily more efficient than their Bronze Age predecessors,
all the axial cases except China experienced Persian pressure at critical moments in their development.
basic tension between the transcendental and mundane orders'', and on ‘‘the new type of intellectual elite'' concerned with the possible restructuring of the world in accordance with the transcendental vision
Johann Arnason has pointed out that Jaspers's ‘‘most condensed statement'' of the axial age, describing it as the moment when ‘‘man becomes conscious of Being as a whole, of himself and his limitations'', and ‘‘experiences absoluteness in the depths of selfhood and in the lucidity of transcendence'', is remarkably similar to Jaspers's own version of existential philosophy
mythic culture, which Donald describes as ‘‘a unified, collectively held system of explanatory and regulatory metaphors. The mind has expanded its reach beyond the episodic perception of events, beyond the mimetic reconstruction of episodes, to a comprehensive modeling of the entire human universe''
episodic culture, with which humans along with all higher mammals learn to understand and respond to the immediate situation they are in.
mimetic culture, the pre-linguistic, but not necessarily pre-vocal, use of the body both to imaginatively enact events and to communicate with others through expressive gesture
Theoretic culture is the fourth and most recent of Donald's stages. Since it will be my argument that the axial breakthrough was essentially the breakthrough of theoretic culture in dialogue with mythic culture as a means for the ‘‘comprehensive modeling of the entire human universe''
The key elements of theoretic culture developed gradually; they consisted in graphic invention, external memory, and theory construction
External memory is a critical feature of modern human cognition, if we are trying to build an evolutionary bridge from Neolithic to modern cognitive capabilities or a structural bridge from mythic to theoretic culture. The brain may not have changed recently in it genetic makeup, but its link to an accumulating external memory network affords it cognitive powers that would not have been possible in isolation. This is more than a metaphor; each time the brain carries out an operation in concert with the external symbolic storage system, it becomes part of a network.
theoretic culture, which is the ability to think analytically rather than narratively, to construct theories that can be criticized logically and empirically .
What made first millennium Greece unique in Donald's eyes was ‘‘reflection for its own sake'', going ‘‘beyond pragmatic or opportunistic science'', and eventuating in ‘‘what might be called the theoretic attitude''
Second-order thinking is ‘‘thinking about thinking'', that is, it attempts to understand how the rational exposition is possible and can be defended. One of the earliest examples is geometric proof, associated with Pythagoras in early Greece.
it is precisely the emergence of second-order thinking, the idea that there are alternatives that have to be argued for, that marks the axial age.
New models of reality, either mystically or prophetically or rationally apprehended, are propounded as a criticism of, and alternative to, the prevailing models''
second-order think-ing about cosmology, which for societies just emerging from the archaic age meant thinking about the religio-political premises of society itself.
‘‘Transcendental breakthrough occurred when in the wake of second-order weighing of clashing alternatives there followed an almost unbearable tension threatening to break up the fabric of society, and the resolution of the tension was found by creating a transcendental realm and then finding a soteriological bridge between the mundane world and the transcendental''
Because transcendental realms are not subject to disproof the way scientific theories are, they inevitably require a new form of narrative, that is, a new form of myth, myth with an element of reflective theory in it,
The way to change a mythic culture is to tell a different story, usually only a somewhat different story, which does not involve denying any previous story .
The monotheistic revolution of Akhenaten was not only the first but also the most radical and violent eruption of a counter-religion in the history of humankind.
The Aten, the sun disk, is the source of light, and light is the source of life and of time itself. Ritual and myth are not abandoned, but they focus exclusively on Aten.
But though Akhenaten cut to the root of traditional myth, he did not leave the mythic mode in finding light to be the fundamental reality of the cosmos, Akhenaten was more a ‘‘natural philosopher'', a precursor of the pre-Socratics
Akhenaten's religion reaffirmed the archaic unity of god and king, and however much a precursor of the axial age, it failed to raise the critical question of the relation between god and king, the very hallmark of the axial transformation.
Theoretic culture is added to mythic and mimetic culture which are reorganized in the process but they remain in their respective spheres indispensable. Theoretic culture is a remarkable achievement, but always a specialized one, usually involving written language in fields inaccessible to ordinary people. Everyday life continues to be lived in the face-to-face interaction of individuals and groups and in the patient activities of making a living in the physical world. It is first of all mimetic
daily life consists in endless ‘‘interaction ritual chains''. ‘‘Ritual'', he says, ‘‘is essentially a bodily process''. He argues that ritual requires bodily presence, mimetic (enactive, embodied) culture does not just continue to exist alongside theoretic culture: it reclaims, so to speak, some of the achievements of theoretic culture. Hubert Dreyfus has shown in detail how skills learned with painstaking attention to explicit rules, through becoming embodied and largely unavailable to consciousness, are in the end far more efficient
If mimetic culture has interacted vigorously with theoretic culture once the latter has appeared, such is also the case with narrative culture. There are things that narrative does that theory cannot do. The psychologist, Jerome Bruner, has noted that narrative actually constitutes the self, ‘‘the self is a telling''. Not only do we get to know persons by sharing our stories, we understand our membership in groups to the extent that we understand the story that defines the group
Note: Self as narrative and show group membership. So, is abandonment of self abandonment of both narrative and membership? That would certainly be the case for sanyasin
in important spheres of life stories cannot be replaced by theories. when utilitarians say that ethics should be based on the consideration of the greatest good for the greatest number, they require a substantive account of the good to get started: they still need a story about the good.
Efforts to create a ‘‘religion within the bounds of reason alone'' run up against the same problem: they end up replacing old stories with new ones.
Note:
So what Bellah calls narrative, Karen Armstrong calls mythos
Narrative is not only the way we understand our personal and collective identities; it is the source of our ethics, our politics and our religion.
Mythic (narrative) culture is not a subset of theoretic culture, nor will it ever be. It is older than theoretic culture and remains to this day an indispensable way of relating to the world.
The earliest writing seems to have been largely utilitarian, keeping accounts of income and outgo in temple and palace economies. However, when writing was used for extended texts, those texts were apt to be narrative not theoretic. They recorded, but did not replace, spoken language.
The oral word, as we have noted, never exists in a simply verbal context, as a written word does. Spoken words are always modifications of a total, existential, situation, which always engages the body . Bodily activity beyond mere vocalization is not adventitious or contrived in oral communication, but is natural and even inevitable.
Breakthroughs involve not only a critical reassessment of what has been handed down, but also a new understanding of the nature of reality, a conception of truth against which the falsity of the world can be judged, and a claim that that truth is universal, not merely local
periods of severe social stress which raise doubts about the adequacy of the existing understanding of reality,
He suggests it was the threat of the Persians to the kind of city that the Greeks thought necessary for human life that may have stimulated the Greek breakthrough; the pressure of Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia on the ancient Israelites that made them seek a transcendent cause; and possibly similar disruptions in ancient China and India that lay behind the axial innovations there.
second-order thinking is, by its very nature, limited to an intellectual elite
Formal theoretic developments seem virtually absent in ancient Israel. Compared to the other three cases, Israel approaches theoretic culture only asymptotically, yet it was there, perhaps, that the revolution in mythospeculation was most profound.
those responsible for the most radical innovations were seldom successful. In the short run they usually failed
The Axial Period too ended in failure. History went on''
The insights, however, at least the ones we know of, survived.
Robert Bellah
Arch.europ.sociol., XLVI, 2005
http://genealogyreligion.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/Axial-Age-Bellah.pdf
Ritual in tribal societies involves the participation of all or most of the members of the group in classic Durkheimian fashion, if the ritual goes well, it leaves the group filled with energy and solidarity
In stark contrast, ritual in archaic societies focuses above all on one person, the divine or quasi-divine king, and only a few people, priests or members of the royal lineage, participate. The rest of society acts sometimes as audience, but sometimes knows only of the great rituals by hearsay, since their presence would profane the high mysteries.
It would seem that maintaining the coherence of such large and extensive societies required that the attention and energy that tribal ritual focused on the whole society now be concentrated on the ruler, elevated beyond normal human status, in relation to beings who were now not only powerful, but required worship. The elevation of rulers into a status unknown in tribal societies went hand in hand with the elevation of gods into a status higher in authority than the powerful beings they were gradually replacing.
A dramatic symbolism that combined dominance and nurturance produced a new sense of divine power combined with social power, enacted in entirely new forms of ritual, involving, centrally, sacrifice ¢ even human sacrifice as a concrete expression of radical status difference.
Intermittent periods of state breakdown raised serious questions about the cosmological order: Where is the king? Where is the god? Why are we hungry? Why are we being killed by attackers and no one is defending us?
a central principle that has governed all my work on religious evolution: Nothing is ever lost. Just as the face-to-face rituals of tribal society continue in disguised form among us, so the unity of political and religious power, the archaic ‘‘mortgage'', as Voegelin called it, reappears continually in societies that have experienced the axial ‘‘breakthrough''
two aspects of the axial age that we will have to consider in more detail. One refers to the background features of societies that are in several ways ‘‘more developed'' than the societies that preceded them. The other refers to new developments in the realm of thought ¢ political, ethical, religious, philosophical ¢ that he sums up with the significant term ‘‘criticism''
The Origin and Goal of History implies. His dates are slightly different: He finds that the ‘‘axis of history is to be found in the period around 500 B.C., in the spiritual process that occurred between 800 and 200 B.C.'' It is there, he writes, that ‘‘Man, as we know him today, came into being
none of what he calls the axial ‘‘breakthroughs'', a term we will need to consider further below , occurred in the centers of great empires. Rather, in all cases, ‘‘There were a multitude of small States and cities, a struggle of all against all, which to begin with nevertheless permitted an astonishing prosperity, an unfolding of vigour and wealth''
the competition between small states created the possibility for the emergence of itinerant intellectuals not functioning within cen-tralized priesthoods or bureaucracies, and therefore more structurally capable of the criticism that Momigliano found central to the axial age, and that Jaspers defined as the capacity for ‘‘questioning all human activity and conferring upon it a new meaning''
it is only in the axial age that coinage became widespread trade was increasing all across the old world market relations tend to destabilize long-established kinship and status relationships incessant warfare between small states rise of large territorial states militarily more efficient than their Bronze Age predecessors,
all the axial cases except China experienced Persian pressure at critical moments in their development.
basic tension between the transcendental and mundane orders'', and on ‘‘the new type of intellectual elite'' concerned with the possible restructuring of the world in accordance with the transcendental vision
Johann Arnason has pointed out that Jaspers's ‘‘most condensed statement'' of the axial age, describing it as the moment when ‘‘man becomes conscious of Being as a whole, of himself and his limitations'', and ‘‘experiences absoluteness in the depths of selfhood and in the lucidity of transcendence'', is remarkably similar to Jaspers's own version of existential philosophy
mythic culture, which Donald describes as ‘‘a unified, collectively held system of explanatory and regulatory metaphors. The mind has expanded its reach beyond the episodic perception of events, beyond the mimetic reconstruction of episodes, to a comprehensive modeling of the entire human universe''
episodic culture, with which humans along with all higher mammals learn to understand and respond to the immediate situation they are in.
mimetic culture, the pre-linguistic, but not necessarily pre-vocal, use of the body both to imaginatively enact events and to communicate with others through expressive gesture
Theoretic culture is the fourth and most recent of Donald's stages. Since it will be my argument that the axial breakthrough was essentially the breakthrough of theoretic culture in dialogue with mythic culture as a means for the ‘‘comprehensive modeling of the entire human universe''
The key elements of theoretic culture developed gradually; they consisted in graphic invention, external memory, and theory construction
External memory is a critical feature of modern human cognition, if we are trying to build an evolutionary bridge from Neolithic to modern cognitive capabilities or a structural bridge from mythic to theoretic culture. The brain may not have changed recently in it genetic makeup, but its link to an accumulating external memory network affords it cognitive powers that would not have been possible in isolation. This is more than a metaphor; each time the brain carries out an operation in concert with the external symbolic storage system, it becomes part of a network.
theoretic culture, which is the ability to think analytically rather than narratively, to construct theories that can be criticized logically and empirically .
What made first millennium Greece unique in Donald's eyes was ‘‘reflection for its own sake'', going ‘‘beyond pragmatic or opportunistic science'', and eventuating in ‘‘what might be called the theoretic attitude''
Second-order thinking is ‘‘thinking about thinking'', that is, it attempts to understand how the rational exposition is possible and can be defended. One of the earliest examples is geometric proof, associated with Pythagoras in early Greece.
it is precisely the emergence of second-order thinking, the idea that there are alternatives that have to be argued for, that marks the axial age.
New models of reality, either mystically or prophetically or rationally apprehended, are propounded as a criticism of, and alternative to, the prevailing models''
second-order think-ing about cosmology, which for societies just emerging from the archaic age meant thinking about the religio-political premises of society itself.
‘‘Transcendental breakthrough occurred when in the wake of second-order weighing of clashing alternatives there followed an almost unbearable tension threatening to break up the fabric of society, and the resolution of the tension was found by creating a transcendental realm and then finding a soteriological bridge between the mundane world and the transcendental''
Because transcendental realms are not subject to disproof the way scientific theories are, they inevitably require a new form of narrative, that is, a new form of myth, myth with an element of reflective theory in it,
The way to change a mythic culture is to tell a different story, usually only a somewhat different story, which does not involve denying any previous story .
The monotheistic revolution of Akhenaten was not only the first but also the most radical and violent eruption of a counter-religion in the history of humankind.
The Aten, the sun disk, is the source of light, and light is the source of life and of time itself. Ritual and myth are not abandoned, but they focus exclusively on Aten.
But though Akhenaten cut to the root of traditional myth, he did not leave the mythic mode in finding light to be the fundamental reality of the cosmos, Akhenaten was more a ‘‘natural philosopher'', a precursor of the pre-Socratics
Akhenaten's religion reaffirmed the archaic unity of god and king, and however much a precursor of the axial age, it failed to raise the critical question of the relation between god and king, the very hallmark of the axial transformation.
Theoretic culture is added to mythic and mimetic culture which are reorganized in the process but they remain in their respective spheres indispensable. Theoretic culture is a remarkable achievement, but always a specialized one, usually involving written language in fields inaccessible to ordinary people. Everyday life continues to be lived in the face-to-face interaction of individuals and groups and in the patient activities of making a living in the physical world. It is first of all mimetic
daily life consists in endless ‘‘interaction ritual chains''. ‘‘Ritual'', he says, ‘‘is essentially a bodily process''. He argues that ritual requires bodily presence, mimetic (enactive, embodied) culture does not just continue to exist alongside theoretic culture: it reclaims, so to speak, some of the achievements of theoretic culture. Hubert Dreyfus has shown in detail how skills learned with painstaking attention to explicit rules, through becoming embodied and largely unavailable to consciousness, are in the end far more efficient
If mimetic culture has interacted vigorously with theoretic culture once the latter has appeared, such is also the case with narrative culture. There are things that narrative does that theory cannot do. The psychologist, Jerome Bruner, has noted that narrative actually constitutes the self, ‘‘the self is a telling''. Not only do we get to know persons by sharing our stories, we understand our membership in groups to the extent that we understand the story that defines the group
Note: Self as narrative and show group membership. So, is abandonment of self abandonment of both narrative and membership? That would certainly be the case for sanyasin
in important spheres of life stories cannot be replaced by theories. when utilitarians say that ethics should be based on the consideration of the greatest good for the greatest number, they require a substantive account of the good to get started: they still need a story about the good.
Efforts to create a ‘‘religion within the bounds of reason alone'' run up against the same problem: they end up replacing old stories with new ones.
Note:
So what Bellah calls narrative, Karen Armstrong calls mythos
Narrative is not only the way we understand our personal and collective identities; it is the source of our ethics, our politics and our religion.
Mythic (narrative) culture is not a subset of theoretic culture, nor will it ever be. It is older than theoretic culture and remains to this day an indispensable way of relating to the world.
The earliest writing seems to have been largely utilitarian, keeping accounts of income and outgo in temple and palace economies. However, when writing was used for extended texts, those texts were apt to be narrative not theoretic. They recorded, but did not replace, spoken language.
The oral word, as we have noted, never exists in a simply verbal context, as a written word does. Spoken words are always modifications of a total, existential, situation, which always engages the body . Bodily activity beyond mere vocalization is not adventitious or contrived in oral communication, but is natural and even inevitable.
Breakthroughs involve not only a critical reassessment of what has been handed down, but also a new understanding of the nature of reality, a conception of truth against which the falsity of the world can be judged, and a claim that that truth is universal, not merely local
periods of severe social stress which raise doubts about the adequacy of the existing understanding of reality,
He suggests it was the threat of the Persians to the kind of city that the Greeks thought necessary for human life that may have stimulated the Greek breakthrough; the pressure of Assyria, Babylonia, and Persia on the ancient Israelites that made them seek a transcendent cause; and possibly similar disruptions in ancient China and India that lay behind the axial innovations there.
second-order thinking is, by its very nature, limited to an intellectual elite
Formal theoretic developments seem virtually absent in ancient Israel. Compared to the other three cases, Israel approaches theoretic culture only asymptotically, yet it was there, perhaps, that the revolution in mythospeculation was most profound.
those responsible for the most radical innovations were seldom successful. In the short run they usually failed
The Axial Period too ended in failure. History went on''
The insights, however, at least the ones we know of, survived.
Where Does Religion Come From?
-
- the beginnings of drama, of plays, were so close to ritual that the difference between the actors and the audience was minimal
- The idea of utopia is always a kind of play, because we know it's not real--it's just what we can imagine. But it has the serious possibility of saying, "Look, the world the way it is didn't have to be that way. It could be different."
- dealing with a complex band of people you don't know if you can trust or not, and you love some of them and you hate some of them—that's a pretty high demand on your cognitive growth. I think the brain grows fast when groups get larger and more complicated and maneuvering yourself in a social world starts to be at the heart of what your life is all about. Since our intelligence grew above all in relating to other people, it is natural that we think of the world in general in interpersonal terms
- The world is full of questions and we can't take anything for granted, because the more we know, the more questions are raised
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- A vote of thanks to the bacteria is surely in order” because, as Bellah explains, “The Age of Bacteria transformed the earth from a cratered moonlike terrain of volcanic glassy rocks into the fertile planet in which we make our home
- The DNA in cells presaged a fundamental trait of biological life—an ability to conserve its past and to introduce change into the past. Indeed, in evolution, something like “agency” comes into the world, an ability of a cell not only to adapt to its environment but to shape and respond to its environment.
- Thanks to these prophets, we humans are free to think and act in terms of “universals.” Prompted by revelations unique to the human scene, religion provides its believers with a platform for understanding truth and duty that cannot be reduced to genetic origins or the commands of the powerful.
- From the Big Bang to an Einstein and the Internet, there intervened a lot of unpredictable evolution of atoms into self-conscious organisms. Strangest of all, came human creatures who could describe and take account of this universal history, who have been freed to be in direct, living relation to the world
- Bellah liberates us to live more consciously in a home affirmed for us in Psalm 8: “all the earth.” In their accounts of our common humanity, Isaiah, Socrates, the Buddha, and Confucius freed us, in mind, spirit, and heart, for caring about each other and also a universe. We are part of this universe. We have been equipped to study, love, and know gratitude for the whole of it
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- Life is a bastard, and then you are dead: this is a basic philosophy of religion available to all of us.
- So systems of religion flourish: they reveal their inadequacies, and in their collapse, leave behind a residue for some new experiment in imagination: in turn that collapses, and so on, until often all that is left is a profound and rueful silence. But human beings still feel the wonder
- in all statements about God there must be paradox and silence - a sense of the absurdity of us poor mortals talking at all about such things
- The Jaspers thesis is a baggy monster, which tries to bundle up all sorts of diversities over four very different civilisations, only two of which had much contact with each other during the six centuries
- I suggest (hardly originally) that we are seeing an optical illusion in the apparent start of the axial age
- scepticism or mysticism don't generally require or leave much infrastructure. Only gradually did the sceptics and mystics usurp the aristocrats, hierarchical priests and bureaucrats who had invented writing, got their hands on the new technology and recorded their thoughts. Over the previous millennia all is now silence, because we cannot now hear the cacophony. Human beings have been physically much the same and have enjoyed the same brain capacity for around 150,000 years. It is to exercise the worst sort of condescension of posterity to think that only in the last 3,000 of those long years did humankind jack itself up to think creatively and variously about the tragedy of existence
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Monday, May 21, 2012
History
History loc: 7005
There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has be-fallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent. loc: 7020
Of the works of this mind history is the record. loc: 7024
all the facts of history preexist in the mind as laws. Each law in turn is made by circumstances predominant, and the limits of nature give power to but one at a time. loc: 7027
If the whole of history is in one man, it is all to be explained from individual experience. loc: 7031
The fact narrated must correspond to something in me to be credible or intelligible. loc: 7038
is the universal nature which gives worth to particular men and things. loc: 7045
We sympathize in the great moments of history, in the great discoveries, the great resistances, the great prosperities of men; — because there law was enacted, the sea was searched, the land was found, or the blow was struck for us loc: 7053
all that is said of the wise man by Stoic, or oriental or modern essayist, describes to each reader his own idea, describes his unattained but attainable self. loc: 7059
world exists for the education of each man. There is no age or state of society or mode of action in history, to which there is not somewhat corresponding in his life. loc: 7070
I believe in Eternity. I can find Greece, Asia, Italy, Spain, and the Islands, — the genius and creative principle of each and of all eras in my own mind. loc: 7082
All history becomes subjective; in other words, there is properly no history; only biography. Every mind must know the whole lesson for itself, — must go over the whole ground. What it does not see, what it does not live, it will not know. loc: 7085
Note: This certainly gives new and wider meaning to background knowledge.
must be this or it is nothing. Every law which the state enacts indicates a fact in human nature; that is all. We must in ourselves see the necessary reason of every fact, — see how it could and must be. loc: 7090
inquiry into antiquity, — all curiosity respecting the Pyramids, the excavated cities, Stonehenge, the Ohio Circles, Mexico, Memphis, — is the desire to do away this wild, savage, and preposterous There or Then, and introduce in its place the Here and the Now. loc: 7096
The progress of the intellect is to the clearer vision of causes, which neglects surface differences. To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. For the eye is fastened on the life, and slights the circumstance. Every chemical substance, every plant, every animal in its growth, teaches the unity of cause, the variety of appearance. loc: 7111
Note: Does there have to be a metaphysic to this beyond that of Spinoza? Does Emerson have to repeat Deacartes' error?
Genius studies the causal thought, and, far back in the womb of things, sees the rays parting from one orb, that diverge ere they fall by infinite diameters. loc: 7117
Note: Could he be talking about the big bang here?
Genius watches the monad through all his masks as he performs the metempsychosis of nature. loc: 7118
Note: Obviously reference to Liebniz
Genius detects through the fly, through the caterpillar, through the grub, through the egg, the constant individual; through countless individuals, the fixed species; through many species, the genus; through all genera, the steadfast type; through all the kingdoms of organized life, the eternal unity. loc: 7119
Note: What would E. O. Wilson think about this?
Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. loc: 7145
the furrows of the brow suggested the strata of the rock. loc: 7149
Note: I think that this is built into the neuroscience of perception, that we see similarities because that is the way we perceive things--cf Gazzaniga on edge perception or facial recognition or the orders of magnitude and rhythm that underlie our perceptions of beauty
like manner, all public facts are to be individualized, all private facts are to be generalized. Then at once History becomes fluid and true, and Biography deep and sublime. loc: 7200
The Grecian state is the era of the bodily nature, the perfection of the senses, — of the spiritual nature unfolded in strict unity with the body. loc: 7228
The Greek had, it seems, the same fellow-beings as I. The sun and moon, water and fire, met his heart precisely as they meet mine. loc: 7250
Note: Is this true? Are our natures and our concerns really so similar, or are the Greeks really different enough from us that we wouldn't even have the same values. How much does time and place and circumstance and culture shape who we are, how we think, and how we feel so as to make us possibly totally alien and foreign to each other? In other words, how much of this essay is total bullshit?
in that protest which each considerate person makes against the superstition of his times, he repeats step for step the part of old reformers, and in the search after truth finds like them new perils to virtue. loc: 7278
beautiful fables of the Greeks, being proper creations of the imagination and not of the fancy, are universal verities. loc: 7289
Beside its primary value as the first chapter of the history of Europe, (the mythology thinly veiling authentic facts, the invention of the mechanic arts, and the migration of colonies,) it gives the history of religion with some closeness to the faith of later ages. loc: 7290
so out of the human heart go, as it were, highways to the heart of every object in nature, to reduce it under the dominion of man. A man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots, whose flower and fruitage is the world. loc: 7344
every history should be written in a wisdom which divined the range of our affinities and looked at facts as symbols. loc: 7387
There is one mind common to all individual men. Every man is an inlet to the same and to all of the same. He that is once admitted to the right of reason is made a freeman of the whole estate. What Plato has thought, he may think; what a saint has felt, he may feel; what at any time has be-fallen any man, he can understand. Who hath access to this universal mind is a party to all that is or can be done, for this is the only and sovereign agent. loc: 7020
Of the works of this mind history is the record. loc: 7024
all the facts of history preexist in the mind as laws. Each law in turn is made by circumstances predominant, and the limits of nature give power to but one at a time. loc: 7027
If the whole of history is in one man, it is all to be explained from individual experience. loc: 7031
The fact narrated must correspond to something in me to be credible or intelligible. loc: 7038
is the universal nature which gives worth to particular men and things. loc: 7045
We sympathize in the great moments of history, in the great discoveries, the great resistances, the great prosperities of men; — because there law was enacted, the sea was searched, the land was found, or the blow was struck for us loc: 7053
all that is said of the wise man by Stoic, or oriental or modern essayist, describes to each reader his own idea, describes his unattained but attainable self. loc: 7059
world exists for the education of each man. There is no age or state of society or mode of action in history, to which there is not somewhat corresponding in his life. loc: 7070
I believe in Eternity. I can find Greece, Asia, Italy, Spain, and the Islands, — the genius and creative principle of each and of all eras in my own mind. loc: 7082
All history becomes subjective; in other words, there is properly no history; only biography. Every mind must know the whole lesson for itself, — must go over the whole ground. What it does not see, what it does not live, it will not know. loc: 7085
Note: This certainly gives new and wider meaning to background knowledge.
must be this or it is nothing. Every law which the state enacts indicates a fact in human nature; that is all. We must in ourselves see the necessary reason of every fact, — see how it could and must be. loc: 7090
inquiry into antiquity, — all curiosity respecting the Pyramids, the excavated cities, Stonehenge, the Ohio Circles, Mexico, Memphis, — is the desire to do away this wild, savage, and preposterous There or Then, and introduce in its place the Here and the Now. loc: 7096
The progress of the intellect is to the clearer vision of causes, which neglects surface differences. To the poet, to the philosopher, to the saint, all things are friendly and sacred, all events profitable, all days holy, all men divine. For the eye is fastened on the life, and slights the circumstance. Every chemical substance, every plant, every animal in its growth, teaches the unity of cause, the variety of appearance. loc: 7111
Note: Does there have to be a metaphysic to this beyond that of Spinoza? Does Emerson have to repeat Deacartes' error?
Genius studies the causal thought, and, far back in the womb of things, sees the rays parting from one orb, that diverge ere they fall by infinite diameters. loc: 7117
Note: Could he be talking about the big bang here?
Genius watches the monad through all his masks as he performs the metempsychosis of nature. loc: 7118
Note: Obviously reference to Liebniz
Genius detects through the fly, through the caterpillar, through the grub, through the egg, the constant individual; through countless individuals, the fixed species; through many species, the genus; through all genera, the steadfast type; through all the kingdoms of organized life, the eternal unity. loc: 7119
Note: What would E. O. Wilson think about this?
Nature is an endless combination and repetition of a very few laws. loc: 7145
the furrows of the brow suggested the strata of the rock. loc: 7149
Note: I think that this is built into the neuroscience of perception, that we see similarities because that is the way we perceive things--cf Gazzaniga on edge perception or facial recognition or the orders of magnitude and rhythm that underlie our perceptions of beauty
like manner, all public facts are to be individualized, all private facts are to be generalized. Then at once History becomes fluid and true, and Biography deep and sublime. loc: 7200
The Grecian state is the era of the bodily nature, the perfection of the senses, — of the spiritual nature unfolded in strict unity with the body. loc: 7228
The Greek had, it seems, the same fellow-beings as I. The sun and moon, water and fire, met his heart precisely as they meet mine. loc: 7250
Note: Is this true? Are our natures and our concerns really so similar, or are the Greeks really different enough from us that we wouldn't even have the same values. How much does time and place and circumstance and culture shape who we are, how we think, and how we feel so as to make us possibly totally alien and foreign to each other? In other words, how much of this essay is total bullshit?
in that protest which each considerate person makes against the superstition of his times, he repeats step for step the part of old reformers, and in the search after truth finds like them new perils to virtue. loc: 7278
beautiful fables of the Greeks, being proper creations of the imagination and not of the fancy, are universal verities. loc: 7289
Beside its primary value as the first chapter of the history of Europe, (the mythology thinly veiling authentic facts, the invention of the mechanic arts, and the migration of colonies,) it gives the history of religion with some closeness to the faith of later ages. loc: 7290
so out of the human heart go, as it were, highways to the heart of every object in nature, to reduce it under the dominion of man. A man is a bundle of relations, a knot of roots, whose flower and fruitage is the world. loc: 7344
every history should be written in a wisdom which divined the range of our affinities and looked at facts as symbols. loc: 7387
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Literary Ethics
Ethics
An Oration delivered before the Literary Societies of Dartmouth College, July 24, 1838 loc: 1724
Hence the historical failure, on which Europe and America have so freely commented. This country has not fulfilled what seemed the reasonable expectation of mankind. loc: 1741
men here, as elsewhere, are indisposed to innovation, and prefer any antiquity, any usage, any livery productive of ease or profit, to the unproductive service of thought. loc: 1749
The whole value of history, of biography, is to increase my self-trust, by demonstrating what man can be and do. loc: 1777
To feel the full value of these lives, as occasions of hope and provocation, you must come to know, that each admirable genius is but a successful diver in that sea whose floor of pearls is all your own. loc: 1794
ask it of the enveloping Now; the more quaintly you inspect its evanescent beauties, its wonderful details, its spiritual causes, its astounding whole, — so much the more you master the biography of this hero, and that, and every hero. Be lord of a day, through wisdom and justice, and you can put up your history books. loc: 1806
All men, in the abstract, are just and good; what hinders them, in the particular, is, the momentary predominance of the finite and individual loc: 1821
The hero is great by means of the predominance of the universal nature; loc: 1824
Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great. loc: 1826
The vision of genius comes by renouncing the too officious activity of the understanding, and giving leave and amplest privilege to the spontaneous sentiment. loc: 1826
The man who stands on the seashore, or who rambles in the woods, seems to be the first man that ever stood on the shore, or entered a grove, his sensations and his world are so novel and strange. loc: 1850
Translate, collate, distil all the systems, it steads you nothing; for truth will not be compelled, in any mechanical manner. But the first observation you make, in the sincere act of your nature, though on the veriest trifle, may open a new view of nature and of man, loc: 1880
thought renews itself inexhaustibly every day, and the thing whereon it shines, though it were dust and sand, is a new subject with countless relations. loc: 1895
why must the student be solitary and silent? That he may become acquainted with his thoughts. loc: 1901
But go cherish your soul; expel companions; set your habits to a life of solitude; then, will the faculties rise fair and full within, like forest trees and field flowers; loc: 1903
Think alone, and all places are friendly and sacred. loc: 1909
Silence, seclusion, austerity, may pierce deep into the grandeur and secret of our being, and so diving, bring up out of secular darkness, the sublimities of the moral constitution. loc: 1924
Fatal to the man of letters, fatal to man, is the lust of display, the seeming that unmakes our being. loc: 1928
He must draw from the infinite Reason, on one side; and he must penetrate into the heart and sense of the crowd, on the other. From one, he must draw his strength; to the other, he must owe his aim. The one yokes him to the real; the other, to the apparent. At one pole, is Reason; at the other, Common Sense. If he be defective at either extreme of the scale, his philosophy will seem low and utilitarian; or it will appear too vague and indefinite for the uses of life. loc: 1980
Note: Ironically, it's Emerson who appears vague and indefinite, too lacking in common sense. Edit
When you shall say, ‘As others do, so will I: I renounce, I am sorry for it, my early visions; I must eat the good of the land, and let learning and romantic expectations go, until a more convenient season;’ — then dies the man in you; loc: 2009
Be content with a little light, so it be your own. Explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize, nor accept another’s dogmatism. loc: 2015
Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, for the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? loc: 2017
An Oration delivered before the Literary Societies of Dartmouth College, July 24, 1838 loc: 1724
Hence the historical failure, on which Europe and America have so freely commented. This country has not fulfilled what seemed the reasonable expectation of mankind. loc: 1741
men here, as elsewhere, are indisposed to innovation, and prefer any antiquity, any usage, any livery productive of ease or profit, to the unproductive service of thought. loc: 1749
The whole value of history, of biography, is to increase my self-trust, by demonstrating what man can be and do. loc: 1777
To feel the full value of these lives, as occasions of hope and provocation, you must come to know, that each admirable genius is but a successful diver in that sea whose floor of pearls is all your own. loc: 1794
ask it of the enveloping Now; the more quaintly you inspect its evanescent beauties, its wonderful details, its spiritual causes, its astounding whole, — so much the more you master the biography of this hero, and that, and every hero. Be lord of a day, through wisdom and justice, and you can put up your history books. loc: 1806
All men, in the abstract, are just and good; what hinders them, in the particular, is, the momentary predominance of the finite and individual loc: 1821
The hero is great by means of the predominance of the universal nature; loc: 1824
Nothing is more simple than greatness; indeed, to be simple is to be great. loc: 1826
The vision of genius comes by renouncing the too officious activity of the understanding, and giving leave and amplest privilege to the spontaneous sentiment. loc: 1826
The man who stands on the seashore, or who rambles in the woods, seems to be the first man that ever stood on the shore, or entered a grove, his sensations and his world are so novel and strange. loc: 1850
Translate, collate, distil all the systems, it steads you nothing; for truth will not be compelled, in any mechanical manner. But the first observation you make, in the sincere act of your nature, though on the veriest trifle, may open a new view of nature and of man, loc: 1880
thought renews itself inexhaustibly every day, and the thing whereon it shines, though it were dust and sand, is a new subject with countless relations. loc: 1895
why must the student be solitary and silent? That he may become acquainted with his thoughts. loc: 1901
But go cherish your soul; expel companions; set your habits to a life of solitude; then, will the faculties rise fair and full within, like forest trees and field flowers; loc: 1903
Think alone, and all places are friendly and sacred. loc: 1909
Silence, seclusion, austerity, may pierce deep into the grandeur and secret of our being, and so diving, bring up out of secular darkness, the sublimities of the moral constitution. loc: 1924
Fatal to the man of letters, fatal to man, is the lust of display, the seeming that unmakes our being. loc: 1928
He must draw from the infinite Reason, on one side; and he must penetrate into the heart and sense of the crowd, on the other. From one, he must draw his strength; to the other, he must owe his aim. The one yokes him to the real; the other, to the apparent. At one pole, is Reason; at the other, Common Sense. If he be defective at either extreme of the scale, his philosophy will seem low and utilitarian; or it will appear too vague and indefinite for the uses of life. loc: 1980
Note: Ironically, it's Emerson who appears vague and indefinite, too lacking in common sense. Edit
When you shall say, ‘As others do, so will I: I renounce, I am sorry for it, my early visions; I must eat the good of the land, and let learning and romantic expectations go, until a more convenient season;’ — then dies the man in you; loc: 2009
Be content with a little light, so it be your own. Explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize, nor accept another’s dogmatism. loc: 2015
Why should you renounce your right to traverse the star-lit deserts of truth, for the premature comforts of an acre, house, and barn? loc: 2017
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