Group Think

In these times, when one feels despair about the intellectual state of America, it is enlightening (a word used advisedly here) to look at other times, other places. I speak of the Enlightenment itself. In connection with a book I am reviewing concerning literary journals in 18th-century Germany, I have been led to read a piece that appeared in an online forum called Republic of Letters, in which appeared, in 2008, a piece by the scholar Elena Russo, entitled "Slander and Glory in the Republic of Letters: Diderot and Seneca Confront Rousseau." It is of course an exceedingly arcane subject, concerning a quarrel between two of the major French philosophes. Diderot, it seems, was channeling the Roman philosopher Seneca in order to demolish intellectually the status of Rousseau. In a familiar tale, the two had as young men been friends, but in the course of time fell out. Rousseau could be quite contrary, and Diderot seemed to fear for the slander that Rousseau might publish about him. So, intellectual feuds come and go.

The terms of the argument in Diderot's essay, however, strike a familiar note in respect of contemporary attacks on people with different opinions. Herewith two quotes from the essay. In the first, the author is discussing Rousseau. I include the footnote, which renders Rousseau's own words:

1. "The Dialogues and the Essai [writes Elena Russo] evoke a world in which individuals cannot endure being alone, but are eager to make themselves subservient to the opinion of the majority, regardless of what evidence and reality tell them": 'Once the spin is set in motion, each and everyone follows the current and increases its force. How can one mistrust one’s own opinion when one sees that it is shared by everybody else?'”[19]

[19] “Quand une fois le branle est donné, chacun suivant le torrent en augmente l’impulsion. Comment se défier de son sentiment, quand on le voit être celui de tout le monde?” (ibid., 892).

2. The other quote is from Diderot, in which he speaks of the intellectual fraternity that should guide public opinion, i.e., men like himself, which he calls an "invisble church."

"I am talking about that small flock, that invisible church which listens, observes, meditates, and speaks in muted tones, but whose voice prevails in the long run and shapes public opinion." [24]

[24] Je parle de ce petit troupeau, de cette église invisible qui écoute, qui regarde, qui médite, qui parle bas, et dont la voix prédomine à la longue et forme l’opinion générale.

Finally, the author says the following about Rousseau:

Rousseau, who had always seen the philosophical church as a malevolent secret society entirely devoted to his personal destruction, had been living in that hell for a long time.

"Invisible church" is an interesting expression, for it conveys rules and dogma such that they become established, every bit as much as those of a "visible church, but, unless you are contrary (like myself), you accept the dogma and even believe that there is nothing intellectually conformist or repressive about it. It becomes "naturalized," indeed "enlightened"; after all, everyone YOU know thinks the same way, right, and even use the same words. Faced someone who disagrees with the dogma, the "muted tones" that Diderot invokes disappear, to be replaced by screams that drown out the words of heretics.

Elite American youth

When I write "elite," I am referring to white kids who have gone to good universities, sometimes the Ivies, but also good state universities. They are, I believe, at the heart of the mobs that are currently protesting and, as I wrote in my previous post, have learned their hatred of American institutions from their professors. They are not the redneck-like protesters that were maligned by the press during the early days of lockdown. In fact, the photo above (in a recent issue of Book Forum), at a demonstration against Scott Walker a year ago, shows a young, buff, rather attractive male. I think he is recognizable as one of the elite white kids I am referring to. Were it not for the sign he holds above his head, one might guess he was a student at the University of Wisconsin, a very good university. I say U Wisconsin, because the political figure being protested by the sign was until 2019 the governor of Wisconsin. (Click to enlarge.)

What takes me aback is the sign about the young man's head. We know from it that he finds Scott Walker revolting, but his words reflect on him as well. Why would a well-bred young man be so vulgar? The vulgarity does not land on Walker; it lands on the young man. And why, when it is so easy to laugh at rednecks for their inelegant ways, does one not find this elite class equally offensive?

But most of all: What is with these young, privileged white males displaying themselves in all their vulgarity?

Photo credit: Mark Peterson Steidl/Redux Pictures

American self-hatred

This is an addendum to my previous post in which I mentioned the idealism of the college students I used to teach. The students were seriously interested in matters like:

-- What is the meaning of life?

-- Is there a God?

-- If there is a God, why are there bad things in the world?

These are questions that philosophers have thought about for millennia. Our earliest ancestors, even before they developed reading and writing, were concerned with these questions. It is a human thing. It was once the purpose of a humanities education to thrash these issues out with our students and to help them to understand the complexities of human existence. The advent of deconstruction did away with the need. Deconstruction informed students that anything that happened before them was evil, that their ancestors were bad people. They had not wisdom to offer. After all, look at how badly they did. They saw nothing good.

Interestingly, the United States is the only country in the world where this idea took hold. Despite the crimes perpetrated by Germany in the 20th century, you will find very few Germans, of the Left or the Right, who hate their country the way that Americans do.

Why this doctrine became prevalent among American academics is perplexing. The generation that spread it was among the best educated in American history. This generation first went to school in the 1950s, where they learned the 3 Rs, how to write a legible hand, and how to sit quietly at their desks. A small number of them went to college in the mid-1960s,  just when the universities were encouraging foreign-language education. Many like myself studied a foreign language and even studied abroad. In the early 1970s we entered the professions -- and turned around and began introducing the doctrine of deconstruction into the study of literature.

The literary works that these academics taught were part of what is called the "Western" literary tradition or the "Western canon." Most of the works, however, were by European writers, not (initially anyway) American ones. It was these works in which this generation of scholars had been trained. For instance, my dissertation was on the German writer Goethe (1749-1832). Was it perhaps because of a certain felt inferiority of Americans (vis à vis Europeans) that they began to undermine the Western canon of literature?

Material spirituality

The title of this post appears to contain a contradiction, but stay with me. Many years ago, while teaching a course in which several 19th-century European novels were on the syllabus, I was struck by the presence in the center of these novels of a nostalgia for something lost, something that could not be named. It also struck me that the nostalgia lay heavily on certain objects and places and that these objects and places took on a resonance that, in itself, is not inherent in objects and places, i.e., in material things. Proust, I suppose, is the 20th-century writer who has most notably portrayed the effects of such resonance.

But objects are unreliable, and they cannot always retain their resonance, and what further struck me was that the nostalgia was not simply about the objects, but concerned a deep human longing to attach value, a longing that is at the center of our being. Unfortunately,  the industrialization going on in the 19th century was accompanied by materialist philosophies that asserted that there was no such deep center to our being. The rest is history, as they say.

At the time I thought that a course might be instituted, alongside the traditional courses in literature departments and proposed to call it "The Literature of Spirituality: the 19th Century." I had in mind not only the writings of 19th-century Europeans and Americans, but also non-Western writers whose works portrayed the effects of a society being catapulted into the midst of secular culture and spiritual disorientation. This was back in 1994, when I attended an MLA conference in Toronto and heard a talk by Nathan A. Scott, Jr. It was a sign of the way that certain discourses had been already marginalized by 1994 that, despite five years in a Ph.D. program, I had never heard of Professor Scott. The occasion was the presentation of a kind of lifetime achievement award on behalf of the "Christianity and Literature" section of the MLA, and his talk concerned his own life and introduction to literature.

His intellectual journey began in the 1950s, and it was one of indomitable inner strength and conviction of a black man desirous of learning in the face of the prevailing norms of society in those years. Already in 1994, such a journey was already classified as a sell-out by certain portions of black leadership. The academics followed suit, not because Scott was black, but because the goal on which he had set his sights and which he achieved was, in their eyes, no longer of value. By 1994 humanities professors were infected with the virus of deconstruction. At its core, deconstruction concerns exposing the submerged ideology of power, racism, misogyny, repression, and so on that is hidden below the overt text of a novel. In other words, the past is a bad place, and the values of the past had to be "deconstructed."

When professors stopped talking about Milton’s prose and began pointing out his treatment of his daughters, students got the point immediately. Why would eighteen-year-olds hang around to confirm what they knew only a year or two earlier, anyway: that anyone born before their own birth year doesn’t have a clue? The result, over the last several decades, has been the deterioration of literature departments throughout the U.S. Scholars now talk primarily to themselves.

The above is a long-winded way of approaching the subject of the current "woke culture" among young people today. “Woke” is so apposite, such a culturally apt description of the thinking (!) of kids who have been raised deconstructively.  From my own long-ago experience teaching undergraduates, they are not only highly susceptible to overestimating their own worth, but they are also very idealistic. One has only to teach the novels of Hermann Hesse to a class of undergraduates to know this. (Remember Demian? Or Siddhartha?)  Novels are the only place where you can get into the mind of another person, but the minds of the young protesters are virginal, without depth, without empathy for differences of point of view, because they were taught to repudiate the kinds of novels that once helped young people to overcome their own vanities or that encouraged them to measure up to the standards of literary heroes.

Scott's publications include Adversity and Grace: Studies in Recent American Literature; The Poetry of Civic Virtue: Eliot, Malraux, Auden; Three American Moralists: Mailer, Bellow, Trilling. And he contributed the foreword to the original 1966 edition of The Gospel According to Peanuts. By the 1990s the spiritual grounding that informed the writings of scholars like Scott had been marginalized. And continue to be so. Young people now channel their idealism into spouting shibboleths, and have become spooky commissars merrily carrying on the work of deconstruction. What could be more deconstructive that toppling historical monuments? After all, they know what kids instinctively know: they are always right.

A Day in the Life

At West 86th Street Subway Station

Empty Platform

Chelsea Yard

Time Square

Three months into the lockdown. The country is as crazy as it was when last I posted. Today I took the subway for the first time in three months. That seemed a big deal, but what surprised me was the effect of walking around in a different neighborhood, Chelsea, for a while before meeting my friend Peter. My brain felt as if I had just had a big dose of B12 or some other power vitamin. The streets with their well-tended townhouses are of course lovely, but it was a beautiful day and such a delight to be looking so intently at the new sights. I stopped to shop at Eataly before coming home. Crossing Sixth Avenue on the way to the subway afterward, I caught an M5 bus. How good is that, I thought: sixty blocks, including traveling through busy midtown, before I would reach home, but I had an novel with me and sat happily reading, until suddenly the bus turned east on 44th Street: end of the line. So, I hoofed it to Times Square to catch the subway. All the bright lights were there, but hardly any people. I passed a group of cops and thanked them as I passed. They were so pleased!

Herewith some pictures of my day.

Times Square Station at Rush Hour

Corona virus and Trump Derangement Syndrome

At the beginning of the awareness, in the U.S., in any case, of the pandemic nature of the virus, I suspected that the accounts I read reflected a degree of hysteria. And that, indeed, the accounts might be fueling it. Which is not to deny the serious nature of what we are facing, especially as regards institutional preparedness for dealing with such a widespread health issue.

I don't want to mitigate the alarm (anxiety, apprehension, whatever you want to call it) that concerns us, and I too am affected by the social mood that the virus has generated. My life style seems healthy, but still ... And yet, while taking all precautions that I can, I want to continue to focus on my own work. And, believe me, I have plenty of it. (And it can be done at home!) So, I restrict my reading about the virus. In any case, the available information doesn't offer any certainties, but is endlessly repetitive. I even get emails from my credit card companies retailing the same information about health safety that are forwarded to me from the allergy doctor.

Whatever my intentions about focusing on my work, however, all conversations of late begin and are often totally dominated by the virus. Thus, the title of this post. The obsessive nature of our thoughts about the virus reminds me of TDS. Living on the Upper West Side of New York City and with many connections to "intellectuals" and academics, I have long found that the subject of Trump pops up in discussions that initially have nothing to do with Trump. It can be an academic presentation on an recondite subject like the Books of Hours, and still Trump is mentioned. He is a low-burning (often high-burning) obsession with "liberals," and it is amazing to me how in so many conversations they find a way to insert some reference to him, negative of course. The derangement over Trump felt by liberals resulted in the mass hysteria that went on in Congress last year. I relate this derangement also to climate hysteria and  other anxieties felt by what appear to be the "smart" people in America.

Yesterday, I went for a long walk with a friend along the Hudson River -- we have a wonderful greenway extending from Wall Street up to almost the George Washington Bridge. My friend is a real Trump hater, but we generally manage to avoid politics. But perhaps because of the widespread obsession with the virus, she made some comments about what she considered Trump's failures in regarding to dealing with it. I immediately felt the kind of strangling sensation that overcomes me in these situations -- it's like all the air is being sucked from the atmosphere -- but we managed to quell things and, in the end, enjoyed our outing.

In the evening I went to what may be one of my last social outings for a while. My neighbor two buildings down and I have become pretty good friends over the last couple of years, and she invites me to events at her place. Not too long ago, for instance, there was a Super Bowl party. Last night, she fixed dinner ("smothered chicken," so good!), and, along with four others, we played a card game resembling gin rummy. And we played for money, which added a lot of competitiveness to a game that we might have otherwise been nonchalant about it. Our minds were really focused: there was a pot of $120. At some point, however, it was mentioned that Trump had been tested negative for the virus. Two of my fellow card-players expressed disappointment that the test had not been positive. To which I said, "Do you want the president to die?" Both practically jumped from their seats to say "yes!"

I am sure I will not be the first or the last to point out the connection between the kind of hysteria engendered by a pandemic and the other panic that afflicts half of the population. In connection with the latter, I have long avoided reading the news on a regular basis or following any blogs. And thank goodness I don't have a TV. I have thus for the most part been able to maintain "social distance" from politics and continue to focus on my own work. The virus presents a new challenge to the ability to keep one's distance. Still, we must try.

Image source: Leo Green

Boomers in retirement

That doesn't look like gelato.

Anyone who is over fifty years of age, which I am, receives the monthly AARP Bulletin. The piece in the November issue on the financial journalist Jane Bryant Quinn, who is retiring and moving to Rome, got me to thinking about why younger folks really hate us old ones. It's probably best not to advertise too widely how well we older Boomers are doing. Jane writes about her coming retirement:

"My husband retired last year, and ... we are going to follow a dream and live in Rome for a year. Art. Music. Gelato! After Rome, my calendar is a blank. Like every other new retiree, I'll have to invent a life for myself. ... So much has changed in the world since the day I launched as a baby financial reporter in 1963. When it comes to what to do with our money, we have tons of options that didn't exist back then. So which should we choose?"

I have nothing against JBQ, but these comments made me again aware of why I hate my own generation so much. There is so much "entitlement" in them. Not that JBQ and many Boomers are not entitled to the rewards of having worked hard in their lives and the choices now before them. And not because I am in agreement with a growing sense among younger Americans that the Boomers are becoming a burden. A piece in the online forum Medium addressed the issue in this way: "What the Hell Are We Going to Do About the Boomers? Nothing has prepared us for the baby boomers' return to infancy." As that title suggests, the article is about the demands that elderly people make not only on the healthcare system but also on their younger family and other relatives.

Boomers, according to the article, grew up with practically free college education (at state universities like the one I attended) and good infrastructure, but have since then hollowed out the benefits they enjoyed,  not to forget locking "their own health care money into place -- through state and company pensions and Medicare -- and then slashed it for everyone else."

The author of the piece, one Bernie Bleske, waxes positively when it comes to the contributions the Boomers made to fighting "the sins and demons their parents never fully conquered — racism, sexism, disease, and poverty" — but he is incensed that they would prefer to pass on their inheritance to charities rather "than to their own children or government institutions or into future savings. Fifty-seven percent said each generation should earn their own (damn) money (thank you very much). More than half thought it was more important to invest in children than adults, though heaven forbid that investment applies to schools."

While it is true that infrastructure has gone to hell -- a subject to which Donald Trump has drawn attention -- trillions of dollars that might have gone to infrastructure were instead diverted to transfer payments that have deincentivized standing on your own two feet. This has affected not only what was once known as the underclass; great numbers of Americans have grown up in middle-class homes and are whining babies.

The problem, however, does lie with the Boomer generation. We came of age in the austere 1950s, when options were limited and when we were drilled into habits and attitudes, by parents and teachers alike, that would make us successful. Those of that generation like myself who first went to school in the 1950s learned to read, write, and compute, and absorbed the ability to sit quietly at our desks for long periods, all without Ritalin. These habits were also instilled in us by the surrounding society, which disapproved of failure. Back then we said "broken marriage," not the nonjudgmental "single parent." Back then there was no safety net for the ordinary, garden-variety failures of life, no welfare, not to mention no Parents without Partners, no therapy in which to talk your problems to death. Unless you wished to exist on the fringes of the social order, you were forced to take responsibility for the choices you had made, to do what was called the right thing.

Those habits served us well when we left high school or went to college as the economy took off in the 1960s. We were the first beneficiaries. And the first thing we did was to institutionalize indulgence. In 1973, the Boomers began to preside over a vast spending spree: the Great Society. Year by year, a many-tentacled octopus produced a national attitude and an accompanying bureaucracy of programs and entitlements designed to prevent people from … well, from feeling hurt, from having to face the consequences of bad choices, of failures. Half a century later, unlike in the 1950s, if you make mistakes, you are supposed to turn to the government to bail your out, to allow someone else to pay for your shortcomings. If you become fat, it's not from overindulgence, but from a medical condition. If you can't read beyond third-grade level after eight years in school, you move on to high school anyway. Parents can no longer spank their own children, teachers can't fail them, and everyone agrees that competition is bad for the psyche. And don’t forget the foremost legal victory of my generation, Roe v. Wade. Whatever the effect on the nation’s psyche of this 1973 legal decision, it spawned a huge bureaucratic network, one promoting indulgence, lack of personal responsibility, and a loss of inner starch.

So, by all means, blame the Boomers, but blame them for having turned the U.S. into an "entitlement" society. And then grow up and try to change the direction of things.