Pleasantville:
Everyone has a unique self, a nature.
You should discover who you are, what that self is like.
You should have be who you are:
Conventional society will hake it hard for you if you do
But you should have the integrity and courage to be who you
are anyway:
•you shouldn’t put the gray makeup back on
•you shouldn’t make deals about what colors you’ll
paint with
If you do have the courage to be who you are, it may be
Contagious. Society may change to conform to you.
These are powerful enduring ideas in our culture.
Where did they come from?
The traditional culture
1. Puritanism
2. Protestant work ethic
3. Natural gender roles
In modern usage, the word puritan is often used as an
informal pejorative for someone who has strict views on
sexual morality, disapproves of recreation, and wishes to
impose these beliefs on others. . . .
As Mark Twain once said: “A Puritan is someone who is
Haunted by the fear that someone, somewhere, is having
A good time.”
The popular image oversimplifies Puritanism, but gives us a
Reasonable caricature of Puritans in colonial America, who
were among the most radical Puritans and whose social
experiment took the form of a Calvinist theocracy.
Puritans believed they had a covenant with God
This covenant required them to be a godly people
If lived up to, God would reward them--on this earth
It was essential then that Puritans police the morality, the
behavior, the religious beliefs of its members
It was a theocracy: the rule of a a religious elite according
To religious beliefs.
It was a community that stressed conformity to a single
Set of beliefs and behavior
It was not a community that allowed for individualism or
Deviance from the accepted standards.
Jonathan Edwards's fearsome "Sinners in the
Hands of an Angry God". . . defined the role of
the individual:
1. to subordinate oneself to the doctrine of the
community, to conform to the values of the
community.”
2 to live for the future: salvation not present
welfare
3. To accept the authority of others as one’s own
truth
In Puritan New England, the family was the fundamental
unit of society, the place where Puritans rehearsed and
perfected religious, ethical, and social values and
expectations of the community at large. The English
Puritan William Gouge wrote: “…a familie is a little
Church, and a little common-wealth, at least a lively
representation thereof, whereby triall may be made of
such as are fit for any place of authoritie, or of subjection
in Church or commonwealth. Or rather it is as a schoole
wherein the first principles and grounds of government
and subjection are learned: whereby men are fitted to
greater matters in Church or common-wealth.” Authority
and obedience characterized the relationship between
Puritan parents and their children. Proper love meant
proper discipline.
Mill expressed the Puritan notion this way:
“The one great offense of man is self-will. All the good of
Which humanity is capable is comprised in obedience.
You have no choice: thus you must do and no otherwise.
“whatever is not a duty is sin.” Human nature being
Radically corrupt, there is no redemption for anyone
Until human nature is killed within him.”
--from On Liberty, ch. 3
The Franklin work ethic: the
self-made man
1. Work hard; do not waste time
2. Aim for worldly success:wealth
3. Delay gratification
4. Be practical.
5. Take responsibility for oneself: “rugged
individualism”
FWE modified Puritanism:
1. It accepted practicality and hard work; agreed that time
Should not be wasted on frivolities.
2. It substituted worldly success for Puritan success in the next
world. (Puritans did tend to see worldly success as a sign of
salvation.
3. It agreed that gratification should be delayed but not until the
next life. Gratification will come in this life if one works hard.
4. It inverted the Puritan notion of community responsibility for
The welfare and salvation of all. Instead it argued that each
Individual was on his own, responsible for his own success.
One was no longer expected to look after others nor to expect
Them to look after one. They were no longer their brothers’
Keepers.
Ben Franklin popularized and epitomized the legend of the
Self-Made Man, and its corollary idea that America was the
Land of Opportunity, where anyone who worked hard and
used his (and sometimes her) head could get ahead in the
world. Any boy could grow up to be President. Anyone could
make the climb from Rags to Riches. Characteristically this
climb was done alone, one stood on one's own two feet, and
lifted oneself by the bootstraps. One's success (or failure)
depended on oneself and oneself only. This typical American
individualism is due largely to Franklin as well. More than
any other single myth this idea that what America was about
was the prospect of individual prosperity and wealth has
governed our idea about who we are. If anything this
preoccupation with wealth has intensified in the 200 years
since Ben Franklin. Wherever this ethos prevails, romanticism
grows in opposition..
The maxims of Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack
…celebrated the virtues of hard work, sobriety, moderation, thrift
and self-improvement.
It was a production ethic. The great virtues it taught
were industry, foresight, thrift and personal
initiative. The workman should be industrious in order
to produce more for his employer; he
should look ahead to the future; he should save money
in order to become a capitalist himself;
Then he should exercise personal initiative and found
new factories where other workmen would
toil industriously, and save, and become capitalists
in their turn.
De Tocqueville reported at about the time of the first
Romantics:
The American is devoured by the longing to make his
fortune; it is the unique passion of his life; he has. . . no
inveterate habits, no spirit of routine; he is the daily
witness of the swiftest changes of fortune, and is less
afraid than any other inhabitant of the globe to risk
what he has gained in the hope of a better future, for
he knows that he can without trouble create new
resources again...Everybody here wants to grow rich
and rise in the world, and there is no one but believes in
his power to succeed in that.
Democracy in America 2 vols 1835, 1840
Frances Trollope reported in the early 19c on
Some of the results of the combination of the
Puritan ethic and Franklin’s maxims, which
Included “a penny saved is a penny earned.”
I never saw a population so totally divested of
gayety. They have no fetes, no fairs, no
merrimaking, no music in the streets...If they
see a comedy or a farce, they may laugh at it,
but they can do very well without it; and the
consciousness of the number of cents that must
be paid to enter a theater, I am very sure turns
more steps from its door than any religious
feeling.
In a famous lecture of the late 19c called "the Gospel of Wealth"
Baptist minister Russell Crowell said
Never in the history of the world did a poor man without capital have such
an opportunity to get rich quickly and honestly as he has now. I say that
you ought to get rich and it is your duty to get rich. How many of my
pious brethren say to me, "Do you, a Christian minister, spend your
time going up and down the country advising young people to get rich,
to get money?”"Yes, of course I do." They say ”Isn't that awful!
Why don't you preach the gospel instead of preaching
about man's making money?" ”
Because to make money honestly is to preach the gospel."
Toward the end of the 19th century the name
Horatio Alger became synonymous with the idea of
“Rags-to-Riches”: anyone no matter how poor could rise
to wealth and success in America.
(1868)
Edward Said says of his Palestinian father living in Cairo:
My father was ruled by the practice of self-making...
he came to represent...rationalistic discipline and
repressed emotions, and all this had impinged on me
my whole life...In me remains his relentless insistence
on doing something useful, getting things done, never
giving up, more or less all the time. I have no concept
of leisure or relaxation, and more particularly, no sense
of cumulative achievement.
Rugged individualism:
The belief that all individuals, or nearly all individuals, can
succeed on their own and that government help for people
should be minimal.
--The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition. 2002
Gender traditionalism
1. Women as lesser men
2. Difference
3. Separate spheres
“pre-industrial society set definite standards of gender
. . . There was no sense of evolution in gender relationships.
They seemed fixed by God and by history. . . Most people
Believed that men and women had unalterable God-given roles.
Model 1: Puritanism
The relation of women to men was frequently explained on the
Model of the Great Chain of Being, with woman appearing as
A sort of inferior man, with similar but lesser abilities and
Qualities. Women were also seen as innately evil, on the model
Of Eve: tempting men into sin by their sexuality.
Model 2: Difference
Toward the end of the 18th century, understandings of gender
Shifted, sharply, to stress the difference between men and
Women. . . . Because of woman’s God-given “innate sexual
Essence,” she had a “uniquely feminine” nature
By the end of the 19th century this had become
Model 3: separate spheres
Men and women each had their own natural sphere where
they were properly dominant. Men’s sphere was the public
World of work and politics. Women’s sphere was the private
Sphere of the home and family.
Women (and men) who tried to rebel against these “natural”
roles were condemned as “unnatural,”not “true women” and
so on.
Traditional Wisdom
1. Live for the future (sacred or secular); delay
gratification
2. Subordinate oneself to one’s community
3. Women are different than men and should
stay in their proper place
4. Accept the authority of others as one’s own truth
5. Aim for worldly success:wealth
6. Work hard; do not waste time: “nose to the
grindstone
6. Be practical, not a dreamer: Rationalistic discipline
7. Repress emotions: they are not useful
8. Repress one’s nature: it is corrupt
9. Take responsibility for oneself: “rugged individualism”
What we find then is that at any give period there is a
Dominant traditional and conventional morality: a set of
Pre-designed scripts that people are supposed to follow
In living their lives.
And there is a majority of people--defenders of the status quo,
The Establishment, the orthodox, the conservative (in the
Traditional sense), the conventional--who live by those scripts,
Defend their validity and universality, and attempt to impose
Them on everyone.
These orthodox scripts broadly include
Adherence to traditional gender roles & family structure
A belief in working hard at conventional jobs and getting
ahead; a belief that life success is defined by success
at work.
A fairly restrictive sexual morality centering sex around
marriage; a condemnation of homosexuality or
unorthodox sexual activities of any kind
A tendency to want to impose conventional morality on
everyone and to condemn those who do not follow it:
a belief that correct morality is defined by the community
or by an orthodox religion and a condemnation of
freedom of moral choice for individuals.
Adherence to one of the conventional religious denominations.
A rather cautious unadventurous outlook on life.
A belief in obedience and respect for authority.
A skepticism or negativism about human nature leading to a
belief that people need to be fairly tightly controlled.
But we find that there is a countercurrent to this
Orthodox view of life in America, to the American Dream
As so defined. This counterculture, is broadly defined by
Individualism in morality and a belief in individual freedom of
conscience and morality; + tolerance-“live and let live”
attitude toward others
A belief in the goodness of human nature.
A belief that people should be allowed to develop that nature
into a unique character even if that results in violating
conventional behavior. A belief in nonconformity.
A rejection of conventional gender roles, sexual behavior,
and religiosity
A rejection of conventional work in favor of rewarding challenging
avocations (art is typical).
A belief in expressing rather than suppressing emotions
A refusal to defer gratification into the future; “seize the day”
An adventurous “anything goes” attitude toward life
Disrespect for authority unless it is earned.
We can find the first traces of this counterculture
within Puritanism itself:
This was the “antinomianism” of Anne Hutchinson
When the Puritan elders were busy consolidating their
Authority, she denied they had any and argued
That the only authority was the “unmediated power of the
Holy Ghost in their souls”
Thus she was the first important American figure to speak
For the sacredness of the individual conscience as a guide
To how one should live and to defy the right of the orthodox
To tell her how to live.
Anne Hutchinson began meeting with other women for prayer
and religious discussion. Her charisma and intelligence soon
also drew men, including ministers and magistrates, to her
gatherings, where she developed an emphasis on the
individual's relationship with God, stressing personal revelation
over institutionalized observances and absolute reliance on
God's grace rather than on good works as the means to
salvation. Hutchinson's views challenged religious orthodoxy,
while her growing power as a female spiritual leader threatened
established gender roles.
Hutchinson claimed direct revelation
from God and argued that "laws, commands, rules, and edicts
are for those who have not the light which makes plain the
pathway,"
While both sexes carried the stain of original sin, for a girl,
original sin suggested more than the roster of Puritan
character flaws. Eve’s corruption, in Puritan eyes, extended
to all women, and justified marginalizing them within
churches' hierarchical structures. An example is the different
ways that men and women were made to express their
conversion experiences. For full membership, the Puritan
church insisted not only that its congregants lead godly lives
and exhibit a clear understanding of the main tenets of their
Christian faith, but they also must demonstrate that they had
experienced true evidence of the workings of God’s grace in
their souls. Only those who gave a convincing account of
such a conversion could be admitted to full church
membership. Women were not permitted to speak in church
after 1636 (although they were allowed to engage in
religious discussions outside of it, in various women-only
meetings), thus could not narrate their conversions.
In addition to stepping outside the bounds of conventional
women's behavior, her denunciation of the colony's ministers
and her belief that "he who has God's grace in his heart cannot
go astray" set her at odds with the religious establishment.
They moved to prosecute the woman Massachusetts's new
governor, John Winthrop, criticized for having "a very voluble
tongue, more bold than a man." According to Harvard professor
Rev. Peter J. Gomes, at her trial "she bested the best of the
Colony's male preachers, theologians, and magistrates."
Despite her vigorous defense of her beliefs, she was
excommunicated and banished in 1638, and moved with her
family and other followers to Rhode Island. She is considered
one of the founders of that colony, the first to establish complete
separation of church and state and freedom of religion in what
would become the United States.
The trial of
Anne
Hutchinson
1638
Hutchinson denied the power of authorities over her or
Her soul.
She argued that only grace within could tell whether
Someone was saved.
She denied that good works could get salvation.
When grace as the source of inner truth was replaced
By Nature, one had something close to Romanticism
“Hutchinson’s vision of grace was personal, immediate,
Revolutionary. . . It was the 17th century equivalent
Of Romantic individualism.
The Puritan authorities, intent on ensuring that all their
Members lead godly lives, could not put up with such
Individualism.
They could not allow each member to decide for himself.
So they expelled Anne Hutchinson
She moved to Rhode Island where Roger Williams had
Established a colony allowing for religious freedom
And six years later was killed in New York state during an
Indian attack.
The Puritan elders characterized her in a way that will
Become familiar in our history:
“Hutchinson seduced her followers. . . Inducing them to cast
Off their self-control. She threatened to leash immorality,
Even moral anarchy. She disrupted the godly order by
Refusing to stay in her place--she would not be subordinate,
Silent, or domestic
Cast this in secular terms and it approximates what generations
Of defenders of the status quo, of the “establishment”, have
Said about generations of Romantic rebels.
Anne Hutchinson’s individualistic
Revolt failed in Massachusetts among the Puritans.
“But her kind would be back. We will see many long, hot battles
Over the same moral territory. On the one side, the moral
Rules reinforce civic order, social status, and political
Power.
On the other, a faith stirring within individuals impress them
To attack the status quo.”
-James Morone, Hellfire Nation
The Franklin Work Ethic also contributed in its own way
To the Romantic Counterculture and its successors:
Its extreme individualism, its message to look out for one’s
Own self, its lack of community spirit fed into the
individualism of Romanticism
Individualism was thus already there for Romanticism to
Build upon
All it needed to do was to change the focus from external
To internal
From finding one’s identity and self-worth in material
Success to finding it in spiritual success: success in realizing
One’s being according to natural rather than social
standards
Major figures in the 19th century
Romantic movement
Known as Transcendentalism:
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Henry David Thoreau
Margaret Fuller
Walt Whitman
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1802-1882)
Trust thyself:
every heart vibrates
to that iron string.
Born in Boston, son of a Unitarian
minister. Graduated Harvard at age 18.
First a schoolmaster, then a Unitarian
minister. Left the ministry because of
doubts about Communion. Moved to
Concord Mass 1835. Founded Transcendental Club. “Nature”
published 1836. Writer/Lecturer, famous orator, abolitionist
Henry David Thoreau
1817-1862
Born Concord Mass. Would have
Graduated from Harvard but refused
to pay $5 for his diploma. Schoolteacher,
Dismissed for not spanking his pupils.
Mostly worked in family pencil factory.
Naturalist, advocate of simple living, tax
resister & author of Walden & “Civil
Disobedience”, fervent abolitionist. Lived
in Cambridge MA. Inspiration for Gandhi
& Martin Luther King.
Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.
It is never too late to give up our
prejudices. No way of thinking or
doing, however ancient, can be
trusted without proof. What everybody
echoes or in silence passes by as true
to-day may turn out to be falsehood
to-morrow
--Thoreau, Walden
Margaret Fuller
1810-1850
First true advocate for women’s
rights. Learned Latin at 5. Editor
of The Dial. Wrote Woman in
the 19th Century.
Literary critic for NY Herald
Tribune--1st female journalist on
major paper. Died when the
boat carrying her back to
America from Europe sank.
Great aunt of Buckminster
Fuller
What Woman needs is not as a woman to act or rule, but
as a nature to grow, as an intellect to discern, as a soul to
live freely and unimpeded.
Emerson, Thoreau and Fuller were all friends
and neighbors in the Boston area in the mid
1800’s. They with a few others formed a
genuine and self-conscious intellectual and
religious movement, known as
Transcendentalism. Included in that circle were
those who created the first American commune
or intentional community: Brook Farm
Walt Whitman (1819-1892
Possibly greatest American poet. Wrote
Leaves of Grass. Born in Brooklyn.
NY newspaperman. Nursed wounded
during Civil War: wrote Specimen Days.
Outraged Victorian America with his
open sexuality in his poems and even
more so by the homoeroticism they
expressed. Perhaps best known for
“Oh Captain! My Captain!” expressing his
grief at the death of Lincoln.
After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics,
conviviality, and so on - have found that none of these finally
satisfy, or permanently wear - what remains? Nature remains.
Walt Whitman
Was born in Brooklyn and was neither a friend
of the others nor a member of their circle. He
is a Romantic but a Transcendentalist only in
an honorary sense due to the presence of
Romantic and Transcendentalist themes in his
Poetry.
Transcendentalism refers specifically to that
Small but influential group surrounding Emerson
And Thoreau.
Romanticism is the name for the general beliefs
And outlooks that were held by Transcendentalists
But also by many others throughout American
History. Transcendentalists were the first, but not
The last American Romantics.
Homer Simpson, after discovering that a grave his father told him
was his dead mother's was actually that of Whitman, says, along
with intermittent kicks to the gravestone, "Damn you Walt
Whitman! I … hate … you … Walt … freakin' … Whitman! Leaves
of Grass my ass!")
"it was as a revolutionary that Whitman
began his work; and a revolutionary he
remained to the end...It was this
revolutionary spirit that made him the
friend of all rebellious souls past and
present...Conventional law and order he
frankly despised and those individuals
who sought their own law and followed it
awoke his admiration. Thoreau's
"lawlessness" delighted him-"his going
his own absolute road let hell blaze all it
chooses,: It is a coward and a poltroon
who accepts his law from others....:
Among the characteristic attitudes of Romanticism
were the following: a deepened appreciation of the
beauties of nature; a general exaltation of emotion
over reason and of the senses over intellect; a
turning in upon the self and a heightened
examination of human personality and its moods
and mental potentialities; a preoccupation with the
genius, the hero, and the exceptional figure in
general, and a focus on his passions and inner
struggles; a new view of the artist as a supremely
individual creator, whose creative spirit is more
important than strict adherence to formal rules and
traditional procedures; an emphasis upon
imagination as a gateway to transcendent
experience and spiritual truth;
I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart's
affections, and the truth of Imagination.What the
Imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth--whether it
existed before or not,--for I have the same idea of all our
passions as of Love: they are all, in their sublime, creative
of essential Beauty . . .. . .The excellence of every art is
its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables
evaporate from their being in close relationship with
Beauty and Truth . . . several things dove-tailed in my
mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a
Man of Achievement, , especially in Literature, and which
Shakespear possessed so enormously--I mean Negative
Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in
uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable
reaching after fact and reason.
--Keats
Romanticism
1. Self-Discovery of one’s true nature
• Listen to the still small voice
• Ignore conventional wisdom
2. Authenticity & Integrity:
Express one’s true nature:
•be nonconformist
•develop one’s inborn abilities
•Have the courage to sustain
one’s authenticity in the face of
difficulties and temptations.
3. Change the world by personal example.
Part I: Self-Discovery
1. Discover one’s authentic nature
• Intuition: Listen to the still small
voice within you
• Ignore conventional wisdom
People have an inborn nature.
That nature is good.
Pleasantville shows people finding
their real selves hidden under the
conventional selves they have adopted
to fit the social conventions of what
boys & girls, men & women are supposed
to be. As they find themselves, they turn color.
One must discover one’s true
nature
by listening to one’s
intuition
The heart has its reasons of which reason
knows nothing.
--Blaise Pascal
It seems as if the Deity dressed each soul
which he sends into nature in certain virtues
and powers not communicable to other men,
and sending it to perform one more turn through
the circle of beings, wrote, "Not transferable"
and "Good for this trip only," on these garments
of the soul.”
Emerson "Uses of Great Men"
The voice of nature:
Emerson’s reasons for
listening to one’s heart
Every natural process is a version of a
moral sentence. The moral law lies at the
centre of nature and radiates to the
circumference. It is the pith and marrow of every
substance, every relation, and every process.
All things with which we deal, preach to us.
Nor can it be doubted that this moral sentiment
which thus scents the air, grows in the grain,
and impregnates the waters of the world,
is caught by man and sinks into his soul. The
moral influence of nature upon every individual
is that amount of truth which it illustrates to him.
Who can estimate this? Who can guess how
much firmness the sea-beaten rock has taught
the fisherman?
I hear and behold God in every object . . .
Why should I wish to see God better than this day?
I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four . . .
I find letters from God dropt in the street
And everyone is signed by God’s name
Whitman, “Song of Myself”
The inquiry leads us to that
source, at once the essence of
genius, the essence of virtue,
and the essence 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.
-Emerson, “Self-Reliance”
Conventional truth is not
your truth;
you are unique;
You must find your own truths
By looking for your own
Individual and unique nature
(your “genius”).
The Transcendentalist vision: the mind can
apprehend absolute spiritual truths directly
without having to go through the detour of the
senses, without the dictates of past authorities
and institutions, and without the plodding labor
of ratiocination.
From Immanuel Kant, the transcendentalists borrowed
A distinction between Understanding and Reason
Understanding is the analytical, rational, calculating side of the
Mind. It’s the Franklin mind: commonsensical, practical,
“realistic.” It’s “Yankee ingenuity”; the kind of intellect used
In business and trained in schools.
Reason is intuitive, wild, mystical. It forms larger patterns of
order out of the information gathered by Understanding. It
creates meaning out of data. It needs wilderness and nature to
be brought out: the busy-ness of commerce and cities and
ordinary life tends to drown it out.
Thus Thoreau retreats to Walden to seek truth that eludes
him in the city and among other people.
Nature in the sense of wilderness allows Reason to make
sense of things for him. It allows his own Nature to speak,
to suppress the ordinary Understanding to reach for
deeper meaning, a more natural, more trustworthy, meaning.
This Understanding is trustworthy because the voice
of Nature is the voice of God.
This inner sense is one’s unique “genius.” We all have it, we
can all discover it.
Listening to one’s heart will
Reveal one’s true nature.
Intuition is the voice of Nature
Speaking in you.
It is the “still small voice” that
Will reveal the truth to you.
"Talent thinks, genius sees.”
-William Blake
For 18th-century English artist and poet William Blake, art
was visionary, not intellectual. He believed that the arts
offered insights into the metaphysical world and could
potentially redeem a humanity fallen into materialism and
doubt. His belief that imagination is the artist's critical filter
indicated the dawn of Romanticism, but his peers failed to
recognize his genius
An answer in words is delusive; it is really no
answer to the questions you ask. Do not
require a description of the countries
towards which you sail. The description
does not describe them to you, and tomorrow you arrive there, and know them by
inhabiting them.
--Emerson
Only the dreamer shall
understand realities, though
in truth his dreaming must be
not out of proportion to his
waking.
--Margaret Fuller
By virtue of this inevitable nature, private will is
overpowered, and, maugre our efforts or our
imperfections, your genius will speak from you,
and mine from me. That which we are, we shall
teach, not voluntarily, but involuntarily. Thoughts
come into our minds by avenues which we never left
open, and thoughts go out of our minds through
avenues which we never voluntarily opened.
--Emerson
Conventional views will lead you away
from the truth
Men have looked away from themselves, and at
things, so long that they have come to esteem ...the
religious, learned, and civil institutions, as guards of
property...They measure their esteem of each other,
by what each has, and not by what each is. But a
cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property,
ashamed of what he has, out of new respect for his
being.
--Emerson
Be suspicious of conventional wisdom
1. It will mislead you about how you should live
2. It will blind you to your true and unique nature.
3. It will lead you into conventional “scripts” that
will not suit you
4. These “scripts” will occupy your time and your
imagination, deafening you to your intuition,
stunting your imagination, preventing you
from imagining alternatives to the status quo.
5. It will put your mind in a straitjacket, preventing
you from seeing things that do not fit those
views.
• I have lived some thirty years on this planet,
and I have yet to hear the first syllable of
valuable or even earnest advice from my
seniors. They have told me nothing, and
probably cannot tell me anything to the
purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great
extent untried by me; but it does not avail me
that they have tried it.
– -Thoreau, Walden
• The greater part of what my neighbors
call good I believe in my soul to be bad,
and if I repent of anything, it is very
likely to be my good behavior. What
demon possessed me that I behaved so
well?
– -Thoreau, Walden
Would not genius be
common as light if men
trusted their higher
selves?
– Margaret Fuller
“If we keep an open mind, too
much is likely to fall into it.”
--Natalie Clifford Barney (1876-1972),
Emerson, et. al. had no idea
• The process of self-discovery is not
necessarily easy:
• Why, even I myself, I often think know
little of my real life; only a few hints, a
few diffuse faint clues and indirections I
seek for my own use. . .
• -Walt Whitman
A sign that you need to seek your true self is:
Alienation or
Estrangement
“I’m a stranger in a strange land.”
Signs that you’re a stranger in a strange land:
•
•
•
•
•
You don’t know the rules
You don’t speak the language
You don’t feel at home
No one is like you
You are anxious
If you’re actually in a strange land, this is normal.
But if the “strange land” is your home, then you are
alienated, estranged.
• If the people who are closest to you, family, friends. ..
Seem like strangers to you
• If they seem to be playing a game whose rules you
don’t know
• Or you know the rules but don’t feel comfortable
playing by them
• You suffer anxiety (angst) just from “normal” living.
Alienation or estrangement is thus
• When your nature doesn’t fit
the scripts provided by your society
Having discovered one’s true self by
Listening to one’s intuition which is the
voice of Nature inside one
and by
Avoiding the traps set by conventional wisdom
One must now
Express that true self in one’s life
and
Protect it from social pressures
Thoreau’s retreat to Walden and other things Romanics
Say may give the impression that one first discovers
Who one is, by retreating from the hurly-burly of everyday
Life into nature,
And there is that strain:
One discovers who one is by inner communion, by
retreat from others and from society.
But:
• But in another view:
• Discovery and expression are not sequential.
• One doesn’t first, conclusively and once and for all,
discover who one is and then express that nature in
one’s life.
• Discovery of one’s true nature will continue to occur
• As one expresses that nature in one’s life.
Expression
• Is part of discovery and discovery is part of
expression.
Part II. Authenticity &
Integrity
•express one’s nature:
•develop one’s inborn abilities
•Have the courage to resist coercion
out of one’s authentic life and
seduction back into a conventional
life.
What Woman needs is not as a woman to
act or rule, but as a nature to grow, as an
intellect to discern, as a soul to live freely
and unimpeded.[Men] think that nothing is
so much to be dreaded for a woman as
originality of thought or character.
--Margaret Fuller
most of Walt Whitman’s "Song of
Myself" has to do not with the self
searching for a final identity but
with the self escaping a series of
identities which threaten to destroy
its lively and various spontaneity
Scripts will destroy the true self.
If you follow conventional paths,
You will lose touch with your intuition;
Your imagination will wither.
authenticity
Once one has discovered one’s
true nature or self, one must
express that self in one’s entire
way of life and work
Gandhi said:
“Thoreau taught nothing that he was not
prepared to practice in himself.”
The end of man. . . Is the highest and most harmonious
development of his powers to a complete and consistent
whole. . . For this there are two requisites, freedom, and
a variety of situations and from the union of these arise
individual vigor and manifold diversity which combine
themselves in originality
-Wilhelm von Humboldt (as paraphrased
by J.S. Mill
In the long run, men hit only what
they aim at. Therefore
though they should fail immediately,
they had better aim at something
high.
--Thoreau
Self-development
The most important thing in life is
to develop the talents Nature gave youwhatever they may be.
Very early, I knew that the only
object in life was to grow.
-Margaret Fuller
That Envy is ignorance; imitation is suicide; that he must
Take himself for better or worse as his portion. . .
A friend suggested, “But these impulses may come from
below,not from above.” I replied, “They do not seem to me
to be such, but if I am the devil’s child, I will live then
from the devil.”
-Emerson, “Self-Reliance”
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately,
To front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could
Not learn what it had to teach, and not, when it came
Time to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish
To live what was not life, living is so dear, nor did I wish
To practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary.
I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life. . .
To drive life into a corner and reduce it to its lowest
Terms, and if it proved to be mean, why then to get
The whole and genuine meanness of it.
--Thoreau, “Walden”
It is a vulgar error that love, a
love, to woman is her whole
existence; she is born for
Truth and Love in their
universal energy.
---Margaret Fuller
Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconfor
nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of yo
own mind.
I have my own stern claims . . . If anyone
imagines that this law is lax, let him keep
its commandment one day.
--Emerson
In every work of genius we recogn
our own rejected thoughts; they come ba
a certain alienated majesty. Great works o
have no more affecting lesson for us than
They teach us to abide by our spontaneou
impression with good-humoured inflexibil
then most when the cry of voices is on the
side. Else tomorrow a stranger will say wit
good sense precisely what we have thoug
all the time, and we shall be forced to take
our opinion from another.
--Emerson
Those who seem overladen
with electricity frighten those
around them,
• --Margaret Fuller
It is never too late to give up our
prejudices. No way of thinking or
doing, however ancient, can be
trusted without proof. What everybody
echoes or in silence passes by as true
to-day may turn out to be falsehood
to-morrow
--Thoreau, Walden
It is astonishing what force,
purity, and wisdom it
requires for a human being
to keep clear of falsehoods.
- Margaret Fuller
You shall not look through my eyes
either, nor take things from me,
You shall listen to all sides and filter
them from your self.
• Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”
To dream magnificently is not a gift given to
all men, and even for those who possess it,
it runs a strong risk of being progressively
diminished by the ever-growing dissipation
of modern life and by the restlessness
engendered by material progress. The ability
to dream is a divine and mysterious ability;
because it is through dreams that man
communicates with the shadowy world which
surrounds him. But this power needs solitude
to develop freely; the more one concentrates,
the more one is likely to dream fully, deeply.
--Charles Baudelaire
• The Pleasantville rebels have to learn
the truth originally from an outsider.
There is no wisdom in Pleasantville that
will tell them.
Live life to the full
As if one could kill time without
injuring eternity
-Thoreau, Walden
Be open
Be sensual
Be unafraid
“Seize the day”
"I only regret, in my chilled old age, certain
occasions and possibilities I didn’t embrace."
--Henry James to Hugh Walpole
"Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son
Turbulent, fleshy, sensual, eating, drinking,
and breeding
No sentimentalist, no stander above men
and women or apart from them”
Whitman was most emphatic in rejecting the Puritan
view that the body was corrupt and its urges to be suppressed:
Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat,
Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture,
not even the best,
Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.
I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning,
How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn'd
over upon me,
And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your
tongue to my bare-stript heart,
And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you held
my feet.
--”Song of Myself”
I believe in the flesh and the appetites
Seeing, hearing, feeling are miracles,
And each part and tag of me is a miracle.
Divine am I inside and out,
And I make holy whatever I touch. . .
--Whitman, “Song of Myself”
“Oh, I don’t think your father would ever do anything like that, dear
The Puritan view, firmly rejected by Whitman
Thoreau claimed that there was no
time when he was at Walden Pond.
His days at Walden are such that he
can sit rapt in a revery, amidst the pines...
in undisturbed solitude and stillness...
his time there is not segmented into
hours and fretted by the ticking of a
clock. he said that he grew like corn
by sitting on his doorstep from dawn
to noon, too busy to engage in work of
head or hand
One thing only Margaret Fuller demanded of all her friendsthat they should have some extraordinary generous seeking;
that they should not be satisfied with the common routine of
life, that they should aspire to something higher, better, holier,
than they had now attained. Where this element of aspiration
existed, she demanded no originality of intellect, no
greatness of soul. If these were found, well; but she could
love, tenderly and truly, where they were not. She never
formed a friendship until she had seen and known this germ
of good, and afterwards judged conduct by this. To this germ
of good, to this highest law of each individual, she held them
true.
• And this natural unclocked time is not
"idleness" in the sense that the men of the
village, the Ben Franklins would understand
it, and condemn it for being so. It is rather the
best possible use of time. It's one's own time,
unsold to anyone else, undevoted to the
chores of the world, it's a sacred chunk of
one's life, which is nothing but time, so one
better be careful how one spends it.
– Thoreau, walden
REJECT the TYRANNY of
the FUTURE
Don’t postpone living now for the sake of
some future goal.
“Seize the day”
“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.”
Don’t be cautious; live in the moment.
Its nature is satisfied and it satisfies nature in
all moments alike. There is no time to it. 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.
--Emerson, “Self-Reliance”
REJECt the WORK ETHIC
Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, encouraging his
followers not to worry about their worldly needs:
“Why take ye thought for raiment? Consider
the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not,
neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you that
even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like
one of these.”
Men for the sake of getting a
living forget to live.
--Margaret Fuller
Success in dealing with the
world as it is inevitably
diminishes the ability to
imagine it as it might be.
--Thomas Carlyle
Ordinary work suppresses individuality
QuickTime™ and a
TIFF (Uncompressed) decompressor
are needed to see this picture.
The true Romantic refuses (or is unable) to fit in.
Jason Robards as Murray in A Thousand Clowns
Part 3: Integrity
1. Discover one’s nature
• Listen to the still small voice
• Ignore conventional wisdom
2. Express one’s nature:
•be nonconformist
•Develop one’s inborn abilities
3. Have the integrity to resist coercion
out of one’s authentic life and
seduction back into a conventional life.
4. The personal is political: change the world by
changing yourself
• One option when one is alienated or starting on the first steps to
Romantic liberation is to
• Conform
• To pick a script and follow it anyway, regardless of the fact that it
crimps you
This is what most people do, say Romantics.
Thoreau: “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation”
• But it is not what Romantics
recommend.
• If there is no script that fits you in your
society, then create a new script that
does fit you.
• Be a nonconformist
• Degrees of conformity:
• Compromising conformity: get a “day job”
but try to be yourself at other times
(“Sunday painters e.g.)
• Inevitabilist conformity: you might as well
b/c society will win in the end and you’ll
save yourself a lot of trouble.
• Developmental conformity: rebellion is just
a stage that one goes through; then one
grows up and conforms
• Positive conformity: Society provides
adequate scripts: rebellion is willful
deviance.
• Repressive conformity: Puritanism. e.g.
The natural self is corrupt and evil and
should be crushed. Conformity is a positive
good
Conformity suppresses what is natural in us.
Fear of being different can lead us right back into the closet.
• "It is the best part of the man, I sometimes think,
that revolts most against his being the minister"
Emerson wrote as a young minister himself in
January 1831when he was 29, "His good revolts
from official goodness. . .We. . . fall into institutions
already made and have to accommodate ourselves
to them to be useful at all, and this accommodation
is, I say, a loss of so much integrity. . . and power.”
• There will soon be no more priests. A superior
breed shall take their place. A new order shall arise
. . . And every man shall be his own priest.
» ---Walt Whitman
Difficulties in authenticity
expressivism
self-development
& integrity
• It takes strength of character.
• Freedom is frightening: fear may make one run back
to the closet
• The outcome is unknown, the future uncertain
• Conventional society will attempt to
punish you.
For nonconformity, the world
whips you with its displeasure.
-Emerson
Nations, like families, have great men only in
spite of themselves. They do everything in their
power not to have any. And therefore, the great
man, in order to exist, must possess a force of
attack which is greater than the force of
resistance developed by millions of people.
--Charles Baudelaire
Freedom is frightening because no
one can tell you the way
• There are no road maps, no well-trodden
paths to follow, no scripts.
• One has to make it up as one goes, with only
one’s instincts to follow
• No one will be able to give you advice.
• You will be uncertain and anxious without
others like you to give you reassurance
For the ease and pleasure of treading the old road,
accepting the fashions, the education, the religion
of society, he takes the cross of making his own,
and, of course, the self-accusation, the faint heart,
the frequent uncertainty and loss of time, which are
the nettles and tangling vines in the way of the
self-relying and self-directed; and the state of virtual
hostility in which he seems to stand to society,
and especially to educated society. For all this loss
and scorn, what offset? He is to find consolation in
exercising the highest functions of human nature.
One may suffer
• Unpopularity
• Ridicule
• Loss of career
• Loss of friends
• Social oppression
• Poverty
• Even death
America is no place for an artist: to be an artist is to be a
moral leper, an economic misfit, a social liability. A corn-fed
hog enjoys a better life than a creative writer, painter, or
musician.-Henry Miller, The Air-Conditioned Nightmare p. 16
Attempting to rape Betty
Part 3: Politics
The personal is political: change the
world by changing yourself
Antinomianism: disrespect for law
and authority as such
Only good laws deserve to be
obeyed.
The only people who deserve
respect are those who
have earned it.
Good men must not obey the law too well.
-Emerson, “On Politics”
One evening in July of 1846, Henry David Thoreau was
Arrested and jail for refusal to pay his poll tax.
Thoreau refused as a protest against slavery, and against
A government that made slavery legal.
Such a government was not worthy of his support, he said.
The next day a mysterious “veiled woman” paid the poll tax
For him and he was told he was free to go.
Thoreau refused on the grounds that since he himself had not
Paid the tax, he was still guilty of the crime and should remain
In jail.
The story is told that while he was in jail, Thoreau was
Visited by his friend and neighbor Emerson, who
Said: “Henry, what are you doing in there?”
To which Thoreau responded
“Waldo, what are you doing out there?”
Implying that all conscientious moral citizens should also
Refuse to pay taxes to a government that engaged in immoral
Activities such as allowing slavery.
The proper place for a man of conscience is in jail, not
Being a respectable law-abiding citizen.
To explain his position to his fellow townsmen who could not
understand his wish to be incarcerated, Thoreau delivered a
lecture before the local lyceum, giving the rationalization for his
seemingly bizarre behavior—that if only every citizen who
abhorred slavery would join him in jail, the government, forced
to choose between having its best citizens imprisoned and
abandoning slavery, would, under the pressure of public
opinion, take the latter course. Thoreau’s lecture, later
published as “Civil Disobedience,” became the manual of arms
for Mahatma Gandhi in his successful campaign to free India
from the British Empire. Danish resisters used it in their fight
against the Nazi invaders during World War II. Martin Luther
King depended upon it in his battle against racial segregation
in our own South. And anti-Vietnam protesters used it to force
Lyndon Johnson to abandon plans for a second term of his
Presidency
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty.
The obedient must be slaves...
Let your life be a counter friction to stop the machine.
—Henry David Thoreau
To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts,
nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live
according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence,
magnanimity and trust. It is to solve some of the problems
of life, not only theoretically, but practically.
--Thoreau, Walden
And most importantly those problems of life include the
Moral problems of how to life justly and rightly and how to
Live in such a way as to satisfy one’s conscience.
Thoreau concluded that it is not enough to refrain from
Harming others oneself, one must not be complicit in the
Harm done by others, including one’s own government.
He saw this however as a problem how the individual should
Live: he did not believe that he had a duty to join the
Abolitionist movement in order to abolish slavery.
One can see three levels of individual morality:
1. To refrain from doing harm oneself.
2. To refuse to support or otherwise have complicity in the
Harm done by others.
3. To actively assist others who are being harmed; to do
Positive good.
Thoreau drew the line for himself between 2 and 3.
Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree,
resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every
man a conscience then? I think that we should be men
first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to
cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.
The only obligation which I have a right to assume is to
do at any time what I think right.
-Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience”
“Civil Disobedience” was his answer to two questions that
Plagued him after his arrest:
(1) Why do some men obey laws without asking if the laws
are just or unjust; and,
(2) why do others obey laws they think are wrong?
When Mahatma Gandhi was imprisoned as a young lawyer
In South Africa, prior to returning to India to begin his long
Nonviolent campaign to free India from British rule, he
Pondered why so many passively accepted injustice:
Placed in a similar position for refusing his poll tax, the
American citizen Thoreau expressed similar thought in 1849.
Seeing the wall of the cell in which he was confined, made of
solid stone 2 or 3 feet thick, and the door of wood and iron a
foot thick, he said to himself, “If there were a wall of stone
between me and my townsmen, there was still a more difficult
one to climb or break through before they could get to be as
free as I was.”
Whilst I do what is fit for me, and abstain from what is
unfit, my neighbor and I shall often agree in our means,
and work together for a time to one end. But whenever
I find my dominion over myself not sufficient for me,
and undertake the direction of him also, I overstep the
truth, and come into false relations to him. I may have
so much more skill or strength than he, that he cannot
express adequately his sense of wrong, but it is a lie,
and hurts like a lie both him and me. Love and nature
cannot maintain the assumption: it must be executed
by a practical lie, namely, by force. This undertaking
for another, is the blunder which stands in colossal
ugliness in the governments of the world.
-Emerson, “On Politics”
the State must follow, and not lead the
character and progress of the citizen; . . . they
only who build on Ideas, build for eternity; and
that the form of government which prevails, is
the expression of what cultivation exists in the
population which permits it. The law is only a
memorandum. We are superstitious, and
esteem the statute somewhat: so much life as
it has in the character of living men, is its
force. The statute stands there to say,
yesterday we
agreed so and so, but how feel ye this article
today? -Emerson, “On Politics”
What the tender poetic youth dreams, and
prays, and paints today, but shuns the ridicule
of saying aloud, shall presently be the
resolutions of public bodies, then shall be
carried as grievance and bill of rights through
conflict and war, and then shall be triumphant
law and establishment for a hundred years, until
it gives place, in turn, to new prayers and
pictures.
-Emerson “On Politics”
"Cautious, careful people always
casting about to preserve their
reputation or social standards never
can bring about reform. Those who
are really in earnest are willing to be
anything or nothing in the world's
estimation, and publicly and privately,
in season and out, avow their
sympathies with despised ideas and
their advocates, and bear the
consequences."
—Susan B. Anthony
EQUALITY
1. One’s worth is inborn: it is not measured by one’s
social status or wealth or race or gender.
2. We all have a Natural genius, we are all worthwhile.
No one exists simply to serve someone else.
3. Insist that your life matters and is not to be
lightly thrown away or wasted.
The influence of Kant:
Act always in such a way as to treat others never as a
means only but always as an end in themselves.
One must never use someone as if they didn’t matter.
Everyone’s purposes matter; one must always take account
of those purposes when one acts.
Never treat a person as a thing.
The Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have
Others do unto you.
"The day will come when men will
recognize woman as his peer, not only at
the fireside, but in councils of the
nation. Then, and not until then, will there
be the perfect comradeship, the ideal
union between the sexes that shall result
in the highest development of the race."
—Susan B. Anthony
Fuller called for complete equality between males and females,
and compared the struggle for women's rights with the
abolition movement. She insisted that all professions be
opened to women and contended that women should not be
forced to submit to the men in their lives: husbands, fathers,
or brothers. The book was highly controversial in its time;
critics believed Fuller's notions would destroy the stability
and sanctity of the home. Some objections were lodged on
religious grounds as her ideas were considered contrary to
the divine order.
I am the poet of the woman the same as the man,
And I say it is as great to be a woman as to be a man,
And I say there is nothing greater than the mother of men.
-Whitman, “Song of Myself”
Whitman’s poetry was the first to celebrate ordinary men &
Women, and ordinary life, rather than classical themes:
I saw the marriage of the trapper in the open air in the far west,
the bride was a red girl,
Her father and his friends sat near cross-legged and dumbly
smoking, they had moccasins to their feet and large thick blankets
hanging from their shoulders,
On a bank lounged the trapper, he was drest mostly in skins, his
luxuriant beard and curls protected his neck, he held his bride
by the hand,
She had long eyelashes, her head was bare, her coarse straight
locks descended upon her voluptuous limbs and reach'd to her
feet.
Do you know so much that you call
the meanest ignorant?
Do you suppose you have a right to a good sight,
and he or she has no right to a sight?
Do you think matter has cohered together
From its diffuse float, and the soils on the
Surface, and water runs, and vegetation sprouts
For you only and not for him and her?
--Whitman, “I Sing the Body Electric”
I know that all the men ever born are also my brothers,
And the women my sisters and lovers.
The grass. . . is a uniform hieroglyphic,
And it means, Sprouting alike in broad zones and narrow
Zones,
Growing among black folks as among white,
Kanuck, Tuckahoe, Congressman, Cuff, I give them
the same, I receive them the same.
What is commonest, cheapest, easiest, nearest, is Me
--Whitman, “Song of Myself”
I give the sign of democracy,
By God! I will accept nothing which all
cannot have
their counterpart of on the same terms.
--Whitman, “Song of Myself”
This is the meal equally set, this the meat for
natural hunger,
It is for the wicked just same as the righteous, I
make
appointments with all,
I will not have a single person slighted or left away,
The kept-woman, sponger, thief, are hereby invited,
The heavy-lipp'd slave is invited, the venerealee is
invited;
There shall be no difference between them and the
rest.
--Whitman, “Song of Myself”
No greater men are now than ever were.
A singular Equality may be observed
between the great men of the first and of
the last ages.
Kingdom and lordship, power and estate,
are a gaudier vocabulary than private
John and Edward in a small house and
common day’s work: but the things of life
are the same to both:
-Emerson, “Self-Reliance”
A note on freedom
The meaning of the word “freedom” has undergone an evolution
in American history.
In the early days of the Republic when Americans said “we are a
free people” they meant that they were a sovereign nation, no
Longer under the dominion of England. They meant independence
Later the word came to have a primarily domestic usage:
Americans boasted of their freedom meaning that they were
politically free. They voted, they decided what policies would be.
This became associated with democracy. Americans were
free because they lived in a democracy
Under the influence of Romanticism “free” came to have a third
meaning: to be able to live as one wanted, free from the
requirement to live as others lived, free from the requirement
that they live according to the morality of their communities.
John Stuart Mill expressed this new sense in his
classic work “On Liberty”
All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.
Eccentricity has always abounded when and where
strength of character had abounded; and the amount of
eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to
the amount of genius, mental vigor, and courage which it
contained.
I am not aware that any community has a right to force
another to be civilized.
If mankind minus one were of one opinion, then mankind is
no more justified in silencing the one than the one - if he
had the power - would be justified in silencing mankind.
The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing
hindrance to human advancement.
Protection therefore against the tyranny of the
magistrate is not enough;there needs protection
also against the tyranny of the prevailing
opinion and feeling; against the tendency of
society to impose, by means other than civil
penalties, its own ideas and practices as rules
of conduct on those who dissent from them, to
fetter the development, and if possible, prevent
the formation of, any individuality not in
harmony with its ways, and compel all
characters to fashion themselves upon the
model of its own.
John Stuart Mill, On Liberty, 1859
In On Liberty Mill proposed a rule for the
acceptability of government and social action that
has since become the standard around which
Romantics rally:
The sole end for which mankind are warranted,
individually or collectively, In interfering with the
liberty of action of any of their number, is selfprotection.The only purpose for which power can
be rightfully exercised over any member of a
civilized community, against his will, is to prevent
harm to others.
This means that we cannot coerce or compel anyone
To act a certain way just because we think it is
Morally correct or respectable or normal.
People are free to live as they wish as long as their
Actions don’t directly harm someone else.
They may be unconventional, offensive, eccentric,
Weird, rude, and even immoral in the eyes of others,
But they have a right to be so without interference
From others.
And if people find their behavior unacceptable, they
Are free to try to persuade the weirdos to change
Their ways: but they may not compel them to do so.
Mill continues:
Human liberty requires “liberty of conscience. . . Liberty of
thought and feeling; absolute freedom of opinion and
aentiment on all subjects. . .the principle requires
liberty of tastes and pursuits; of framing the plan
of our life to suit our own character;of doing as we like,
subject to such consequences as may follow without
impediment from our fellow creatures, so long as
what we do does not harm them, even though they should
think our conduct foolish, perverse, or wrong.. .
The only freedom which deserves the name is that of
pursuing our own good in our own way
so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs,
or impede their efforts to attain it.
Mill uses a quote from Wilhelm von Humboldt
As the epigram for his book:
The grand leading principle . . .
is the absolute and essential importance of
human development in its richest diversity.
Emerson agrees:
Whilst I do what is fit for me, and abstain from what is unfit, my
neighbor and I shall often agree in our means, and work
together for a time to one end. But whenever I find my dominion
over myself not sufficient for me, and undertake the direction of
him also, I overstep the truth, and come into false relations to
him. I may have so much more skill or strength than he, that he
cannot express adequately his sense of wrong, but it is a lie, and
hurts like a lie both him and me. Love and nature cannot
maintain the assumption: it must be executed by a practical lie,
namely, by force. This undertaking for another, is the blunder
which stands in colossal ugliness in the governments of the
world. It is the same thing in numbers, as in a pair, only not quite
so intelligible. I can see well enough a great difference between
my setting myself down to a self-control, and my going to make
somebody else act after my views: but when a quarter of the
human race assume to tell me what I must do, I may be too
much disturbed by the circumstances to see so clearly the
absurdity of their command. Therefore, all public ends look
vague and quixotic beside private ones
It was Mill, himself a very proper Victorian English
gentleman, who put forth the idea that a society needed
to encourage eccentrics because, he said,
they are a laboratory for social experimentation.
It is they who try things out that should not be first
tried on a large-scale, things that most of us would
be unwilling or afraid to try. We all benefit, Mill argues,
because we can learn from these experiments, and
then incorporate whatever works and avoid whatever
doesn’t.
Let those 18th century communards and those
20th century hippies experiment with “free love”-if all goes well, perhaps we can loosen the conventional rules about courtship to allow pre-marital sex
and living together before marriage.
Every law, every convention or rule of art that
prevents self-expression or the full enjoyment
of the moment should be shattered and
abolished. Puritanism is the great enemy.
The crusade against puritanism is the only
crusade with which free individuals are justified
In allying themselves
Malcolm Cowley (1898-1989), literary critic
Freedom
Anti-authoritarian in religion, in politics, in
education, across the board
Anti-Puritan: freedom to enjoy one’s self, to
enjoy free sexualiity, to live as one wants. .
Freedom to explore alternative lifestyles, to
be eccentric, to be nonconformist
What Woman needs is not as a woman to
act or rule, but as a nature to grow, as an
intellect to discern, as a soul to live freely
and unimpeded.[Men] think that nothing is
so much to be dreaded for a woman as
originality of thought or character.
--Margaret Fuller
It should be remarked that, as the
principle of liberty is better
understood, and more nobly interpreted,
a broader protest is made in behalf of
women. As men become aware that few
have had a fair chance, they are
inclined to say that no women have
had a fair chance.
--Margaret Fuller
I have urged on woman independence of man, not
that I do not think the sexes mutually needed by one
another, but because in woman this fact has led to
an excessive devotion, which has cooled love,
degraded marriage and prevented it her sex from
being what it should be to itself or the other. I wish
woman to live, first for God's sake. Then she will not
take what is not fit for her from a sense of weakness
and poverty. Then if she finds what she needs in
man embodied, she will know how to love and be
worthy of being loved.
--Margaret Fuller
"I cannot witness the glaring inequalities of
condition, the hollow pretensions of pride, the
scornful apathy with which many urge the
prostration of man, the burning zeal with which they
run the race of selfish competition, with no thought
for the elevation of their brethren, without the sad
conviction that the spirit of Christ has well-nigh
disappeared from tour churches, and that the fearful
doom awaits us, 'Inasmuch as ye have not done it
unto the least of these, ye have not done it unto
me.'"
George Ripley, founder of Brook Farm, A Letter Addressed to the Congregational
Church in Purchase Street, 1840.
Social Change:
The personal is political
• “Go love thy infant; love thy woodchopper; be good-natured and modest;
have that grace; and never varnish your
hard, uncharitable ambition with this
incredible tenderness for black folk a
thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite
at home.”
• --Emerson, “Self-Reliance”
Would that the simple maxim, that
honesty is the best policy, might be laid
to heart; that a sense of the true aim of
life might elevate the tone of politics and
trade till public and private honor
become identical.
--Margaret Fuller
”
the revolutionary process of changing ...external
conditions is comparatively easy; what is difficult
and necessary is the inner change of thought and
desire”
emma goldman
• A greater self-reliance-a new respect for
the divine in man--must work a revolution in
all the offices and relations of men--in their
religion, in their education in their pursuits;
their modes of living; in their property; in
their speculative views.
• -Emerson, “Self-Reliance”
If you are true, but not in the same
truth with me,cleave to your
companions;
I will seek my own.
-Emerson, “Self-Reliance”
We’re going to explore some of these companionable
and Romantic Cleavings:
• The Beats in the 50’s,
•the 60’s counterculture,
•Punk in the 70’s.
Two forms of political action
• Individual retreat & purely personal
change: e.g. Walden
• “Cleaving to one’s companions”:
– Brook Farm
– Sixties communes
• Brook Farm began in April of 1841 with
Web Site George Ripley as the founder,
his wife, Sophia Ripley, and about
fifteen other members.
• "Our objects, as you know, are to ensure a more natural
union between intellectual and manual labor than now exists;
to combine the thinker and the worker, as far as possible, in
the same individual; to guarantee the highest mental
freedom, by providing all with labor, adapted to their tastes
and talents, and securing to them the fruits of their industry;
to do away with the necessity of menial services, by opening
the benefits of education and the profits of labor to all; and
thus to prepare a society of liberal, intelligent, and cultivated
person, whose relations with each other would permit a more
simple and wholesome life, than can now be led amidst the
pressures of our competitive institutions.”
• George Ripley
• A few individuals, who, unknown to each other, under different disciplines of
life, reacting from different social evils, but aiming at the same object,--of
being wholly true to their natures as men and women; have been made
acquainted with one another, and have determined to become the Faculty of
the Embryo University.In order to live a religious and moral life worthy the
name, they feel it is necessary to come out in some degree from the world,
and to form themselves into a community of property, so far as to exclude
competition and the ordinary rules of trade;--while they reserve sufficient
private property, or the means of obtaining it, for all purposes of
independence, and isolation at will. They have bought a farm, in order to
make agriculture the basis of their life, it being the most direct and simple in
relation to nature.
• The spiritual good will always be the condition of the temporal. Every one
must labor for the community in a reasonable degree, or not taste its
benefits. The principles of the organization therefore, and not its probably
results in future time, will determine its members. These principles are
cooperation in social matters, instead of competition or balance of interests;
and individual self-unfolding, in the faith that the whole soul of humanity is in
each man and woman. The former is the application of the love of man; the
latter of the love of God, to life. Whoever is satisfied with society, as it is;
whose sense of justice is not wounded by its common action, institutions,
spirit of commerce, has no business with this community;
• neither has any one who is willing to have other men
(needing more time for intellectual cultivation than
himself) give their best hours and strength to bodily
labor, to secure himself immunity therefrom. And
whoever does not measure what society owes to its
members of cherishing and instruction, by the needs
of the individuals that compose it, has no lot in this
new society.
• -- Elizabeth Peabody The Dial, I, Jan. 1842
• Romantics tend to value personal
change rather than social activism.
• But at least thrice, events led them to
ally themselves with social movements:
Transcendentalists with abolitionism
pre-Civil War & with women’s rights
movements; counterculturalists with
anti-Vietnam War movement in 60’s
• The runaway slave came to my house and stopt outside,
• I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the woodpile,
• Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw him limpsy
and weak,
• And went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured him,
• And brought water and fill'd a tub for his sweated body and
bruis'd feet,
• And gave him a room that enter'd from my own, and gave him
some coarse clean clothes,
• And remember perfectly well his revolving eyes and
his awkwardness,
• And remember putting piasters on the galls of his
neck and ankles;
• He staid with me a week before he was recuperated
and pass'd north,
• I had him sit next me at table, my fire-lock lean'd in
the corner.
• -Whitman, “Song of Myself”
Summing up: Romanticism emphasized
the individual,
the subjective,
the irrational,
the imaginative,
the personal,
the spontaneous,
the emotional,
the visionary.
In three major categories:
discovery of the authentic self
expression of that self
integrity in maintaining that self
political equality, democracy, freedom
" These writers set down the intellectual framework for hip.
Celebrating the individual and the nonconformist,
advocating civil disobedience, savoring the homoerotic,
and above all claiming the sensual power of the new,
the writers articulated a vision of hip that we now carry
everywhere like an internal compass. The hip felicities
that have come since--the uncapped solos of bebop and
hip-hop, the gnostic blur of the Lost Generation and the
Beat Generation, the indie purism of Chapel Hill or Olympia,
the altered consciousness of the drug culture-all built on the principles they threw down. . .
Leland, Hip: A History pp. 40-41
Important
Hip/shadow/countercultural eras
Mid 1800’s: Whitman, Emerson, Fuller, Thoreau et al
Pre-WWI: The Lyric Left
1920’s: The Harlem Renaissance
1920’s: The “Lost Generation”
1950’s: Beats & Bebop,
1960’s: Counterculture, “hippies”
1970’s: Patti Smith, Punk
In another view:
Discovery and expression are not sequential.
One doesn’t first, conclusively and once and for all,
discover who one is and then express that nature in
one’s life.
Discovery of one’s true nature will continue to occur
As one expresses that nature in one’s life. Expression
Is part of discovery and discovery is part of
expression.
.