Transcendentalism in the Age of Trump

Concord’s Transcendental Conscientious Objector
Presented at the Orchard House
2017 Summer Conversational Series
July 19, 2017
by
Jason Giannetti
The Master said, “Do not think I have come to bring peace to the world. No, I did not come to bring peace, but a shofar.”
- Zohar Pardes, For Arete: The Aporia to Living Well, “The Destruction of the Walls”
This talk is taking “conscientious objector” in a very broad sense of the phrase. In my first talk this week I discussed the meaning of and the justification for civil disobedience. Now I would like to take up the question of what it means to be a conscientious objector.
The first year that I was invited to the Summer Conversational Series here at the Orchard House, in 2009, the question was posed to the Pulitzer Prize winning author, John Matteson, whether it is possible to be a Transcendentalist today. Two years later, at my next appearance here, I addressed that question in the affirmative, saying not only is it possible to be a Transcendentalist today, but it is more necessary now than ever.
Today I would like to reaffirm this claim again, even more assertively, but in a new context — the very different context of 2017. Alcott, Fuller, Emerson, Thoreau and their circle faced great challenges in their times: rampant degradation of nature, slavery and segregation, a country rapidly growing more polarized, issues of gender inequality, infringement of the rights of Native Americans, and questions of the role of government. Today, in ways unimaginable in the mid nineteenth century, we are facing those same challenges.
There is no doubt that progress has been made in all the above mentioned areas. But progress is one of those ambiguous words that could imply improvement or, as in the case of “the infection has progressed,” it could mean continued movement in the same direction. On the one hand, the exponential growth of industrialism has brought us to the brink of possible self-extinction. Slavery and segregation in America has “evolved” into a situation where the US has 5% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s prison population. Of that prison population, African Americans and Hispanics are incarcerated at a rate of 5 times that of white Americans. In terms of polarization, I need not mention the ubiquitous ways in which we, as a nation are divided today: economically, between the top 1% of wealth and the bottom 99%; politically, between left and right; and yet again, along racial divides. Issues of gender are at the forefront of our society, not only in terms of gender equality, but with regard to sexual identity and gender rights. The plight of the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation and the state of Native American lands are testaments to the “progress” which has been made since Emerson passionately wrote to President Martin Van Buren against the taking of the Cherokee Nation’s land. And finally, with regard to the role of the federal government in general. . . well, let’s just leave it there.
The New England Transcendentalists, in their time, were not disembodied beings of pure light. Far from it. No matter how lofty their ideas and writings, they were always politically engaged. Much ink has been spilt trying to define or characterize the New England Transcendentalist movement. But it could be said that what characterized them the most was that they were informed transcendentally (that is, by the eternal principles they discerned through their reading of Nature and its reflection in the timeless classics of literature), and they were dedicated to transforming their times through social, political, economic, religious, spiritual, educational, and literary activism. They were no mere academics, they were activists.
In terms of the improvement aspect of progress, the Transcendentalists were, no doubt, progressive. The essay “Nature” by Emerson and, of course Walden by Thoreau, planted the seeds of the deep ecology movement in America and eventually around the world.
Bronson Alcott was not content merely to be abolitionist in theory. He integrated his school, he actively participated in the underground railroad. He invited those he was harboring through his home as part of the underground railroad to sit and eat whim himself and his family at his table. Emerson, and even more so, Thoreau, were such avid abolitionists that they created quite a stir in Concord by holding an impromptu memorial for John Brown upon hearing word of his being put to death for the Harper’s Ferry incident.
All of the Transcendentalists were prescient in their concerns about Capitalism and Industrialism and not only the inequalities it could produce, but also the degradation to the spirit the worship of money would cause.
Margaret Fuller recognized, long before first, second, or third wave feminism, that the disenfranchisement of women from the social, political, economic, and spiritual life was not a stand-alone issue, but intersected with all the other oppressions: Capitalism, racism, and the plight of Native Americans. She did much to turn the attention of her fellow Transcendentalists to see the intersectionality of all these causes.
And finally, as I discussed earlier this week with regard to Civil Disobedience, the New England Transcendentalists understood that patriotism was not a blind obedience to and support of America First. When President Tyler wanted to annex Texas as a slave state, Bronson Alcott refused to pay his pole tax, even at threat of imprisonment. About two years later, Henry David would do the same thing with regard to the Mexican-American war and would actually suffer the consequences of his action.
On all of these fronts, the New England Transcendentalists laid the groundwork and provided the tools and inspiration for generations to come in the long battle of true progress over the power of inertia.
Because of their efforts and actions, the trajectory of America has been altered. But the battles are not won nor the war at an end. Quite the contrary. Today, more than ever before, the forces of sloth, greed, short-sightedness, anthropocentrism, fear, prejudice, and privilege have raised the stakes to a degree that makes apathy an existential threat. This is not a time for quaint reflection, but of active resistance.
But it is precisely here that we are entering dangerous territory, for, in our day and age, the deadly toll exacted by men of action (and usually they are men) is all-too-ubiquitous. Osama Bin Laden calls for action in the name of God and terror rains down from the skies. George W. Bush calls for action, also in the name of God, and on March 19, 2003 a war began which is still claiming lives today.
I suggested in my paper on Civil Disobedience that there is a principle by which we adjudicate the justness and injustice of laws. That principle can, in certain instances, be another law, such as the Constitution, for laws do have hierarchies. But there has to be something beyond human law by which all human laws are evaluated. This is not merely a wish, this is an empirical observation. Very briefly, for the substance of this argument is made elsewhere, that measure of law by which the law is judged to be either a just law or not is the idea of Justice itself. It is this which is transcendental. It is this which is embedded in Nature.[1]
For many years, it was my strongly held belief that the way to improve the world was to improve ourselves. As the oft-quoted humorous parable says: If you find the earth’s surface to be jagged, don’t go making a leather covering for it; shoe your own two feet.
However, change that begins by taking a good look at oneself and working on the image in the mirror is not enough. Transcendentalism begins with introspection, it’s true. But the improvement of the self is not merely narcissistic self-improvement. It is an act of social change, for, as “Self-Reliance” demonstrates, the self is never in isolation. Even Thoreau’s experiment on the banks of Walden was an attempt, in his own way emulating Alcott’s Brook Farm and Fruitlands before him, at creating a utopian society or a model thereof. It was not an essay of isolationism, but idealism.
For the New England Transcendentalists, Nature, God, and conscience all had equal authority because ultimately they referenced in different ways the same source. One way I like to describe this, using metaphor, of course, for the “facts” of the matter are no facts that can be pointed to like other material objects, is to say that Nature is the visible face of God. If we imagine a tapestry, Nature presents to us the back of the tapestry where we see the warp threads. The front or weft-faced weaving of the completed tapestry is God. If we examine that which is visible (but not the full image), we can gain a glimpse into that which is invisible to our eyes.
To use another yet more modern metaphor, the conscience within us acts as does the antenna and receptor device of a radio for picking up the messages of the divine. We all have this instrument; it is a matter of tuning it that is wanting. How do we tune it? By bringing it as close to the broadcasting tower as possible, that is, going into Nature and then turning down and tuning out all the other extraneous noise.
However, the individual’s conscience can be mistaken due to our inherent ignorance. That is why peaceful, civil disobedience is necessary, rather than any means necessary. Claims to knowledge can claim lives and justice requires us to have comportment to our own ignorance such that we act in accord with the injunction to first do no harm and second, if possible, help others. In a world of competing claims of conscience, the nature of peaceful civil disobedience is such that it incorporates into its practice the acknowledgement that one may in fact be wrong and thus one refrains, to the extent possible, from engaging in actions which would or could harm others.
If we look, for instance, at Malcolm X, who popularized Sartre’s slogan, “by any means necessary,” we see that though he advocated such tactics as a young man, by the end of his autobiography, Malcom X underwent a conversion of sorts. Though he may have not completely renounced his earlier positions, specifically his espousal of violence as a justified means to bring about social, political, racial, and economic change, when he arrived at Mecca for the Hajj, he began to appreciate that the world is literally and figuratively not as black-and-white as he had previously understood it to be.
The great challenges of the Transcendentalists, as I said, are the great challenges of our times: the environment, racism, disenfranchised populations, etc. And this is only a partial list of the multitudinous problems facing us in the early years of the 21st century.
In a world so broken, where do we begin to mend?
The “Star Thrower” story, as it’s become known in the popular imagination, has been adapted and adapted again from its origins in Loren Eiseley’s book, The Star Thrower. So, why not adapt it yet once more?
Daimon
An old writer used to walk on the beach at dawn.
Once, upon the shore he saw another looking forlorn.
Feeling compassion for his fellow morning companion,
The first asked the second, “What travesty has happened?”
“Can’t you see?” asked the second to the first,
“The midnight’s storm has these starfish cast upon the earth.”
The first had not taken notice of the starlife’s distress,
But now cognizant, was horrified by their looming death.
“What’s to be done?” asked the old man of the young.
Without word or despair, he picked up one
And into the sea he tossed it that it may live.
“Surely you realize,” said the old man condescendingly,
“That will make no difference in the grand scheme of things.”
“Tell me, old man,” replied the youth, “what good is all your writing?”
“It is good for me and for posterity,” said the author to the thrower of stars.
“Can’t you see how insignificant it is since Time swallows all in her jaws?”
“That I do,” said the old man contemplating his mortality, “but in it I find my purpose.”
“Just so,” said the youth tossing another, “for this starfish I have made a difference.”
Each in his own way they sought stars to cast to the sea.
Choosing with care and returning wisely,
A star for each seeker;
A seeker for every star.
The question of which cause to dedicate oneself to is as vexing as which occupation to pursue. And, I submit, discerning the answer to the two are not unrelated. With the latter, it is a matter of following one’s bliss, as Joseph Campbell famously said. If you wish to divine the trajectory of your labor, investigate the pattern of your play and therein you shall discover the work which is its own reward.
As for how to proceed among the multitude of ills that require repair, aware that we can only address a limited number, it is a matter of careful listening to the sympathetic strings of one’s heart. Which issue is it that most resonates with your innermost composition?
For me, that means being an attorney by occupation, a writer and philosopher by vocation, and an artist at heart. Yet they are all of a piece.
For me, that means confronting the shadow side of my vocation: the threat of purveyors of false knowledge in the form of false prophets.
There is an oft recurring image, ubiquitous in the years after 9/11, depicting a white robed Osama Bin Laden walking amid the rocks, caves, and crags of Afghanistan, looking like a modern day holy man, brandishing a Kalashnikov. This antipodinal apparition of the saint provokes me to continue the noble work of Jones Very in his attempt to wake up his fellow Transcendentalists and others to the fact of his incarnating of God and their doing likewise. Armed only with a pen and his compelling power of locution, he challenged his neighbors to realize their own divinity.
And so I stand before you here, today, to call upon you to recognize that you are Concord’s Transcendental Conscientious Objector. You are the ones imbued with the divine, with the power to receive the message, and the power to rise up and resist. And so I reiterate today, in the face of all the work we have yet to do: Let us not write an ode to dejection, but brag as lustily as chanticleers in the morning, standing on the roost, if only to wake the neighbors up!
[1] I’ve written on this extensively in my forthcoming book, The Way of Arete. But, for the empirical claim made here, see the excellent opening to C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity.
[Jason Giannetti can be reached at: jasongiannetti@yahoo.com]
