Stoic Sites

For a nice list of Internet resources to do with Stoicism, see following link (French site, but most of the resources cited are in English):

Le stoïcisme sur Internet : tour d’horizon

Worth Reading…

Serious question: when is outrage appropriate? Because I’m a progressive democrat and Donald Trump is now president of the United States. As I write this, my Facebook feed is falling apart. I’ve seen videos of riots in the streets, people punching each other in the face, friend unfriending friend, and many deleting their accounts from pure…

via On Outrage: Trump is the Obstacle and the Way by Marco Bronx — Modern Stoicism

Some Movement (re prior blog entry, ‘Stereotypes’)

Salvete, qui legentes —

Just after I’d posted the blog entry ‘Stereotypes’ the other day, the news came out that the attack in San Bernardino was indeed politically and religiously motivated — although strangely targeted.  It’s apparently the same old Wahhabist anti-Western violence, this time on a more modest suburban scale.  (Guns furnished, gladly, by the membership of the NRA. That’s another and potentially salutary group, apparently currently composed of nincompoops, that needs to wake up — but that’ll be a different story.) 

The news-worthier part of the story is this:  that American Muslims are raising money to give help the families of the victims of that attack.  Here’s a link to the article:  http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-muslim-fundraise-20151208-story.html , and to the organization:  http://www.celebratemercy.com/ .  The fund itself is called “Muslims United for San Bernardino”; they acknowledge that donations of money will not correct the evil done or ameliorate the suffering of the survivors, “but we do hope to lessen their burden in some way.”  God knows, there will be funeral expenses and more such petty miseries.  But what is news-worthy is this:  American Muslims are human, and despite their particulars many of them have simple human sympathy for the victims and their devastated friends and families. 

“Since 9/11, we’ve felt we need to come out of our cocoons,” said Shaykh Mohammed Faqih of the Islamic Institute of Orange County [ https://www.facebook.com/m.ibnfaqih/info/?tab=page_info ]. “We’re as American as anyone else … but if society is not feeling it, it means I’m not doing enough.”  Again, Sheik Faqih is of a younger and American-grown generation of Muslims, but by God! he’s got the right attitude.  He is connected with a religious organization called the AlMaghrib Institute [ http://almaghrib.org/ ]. 
Dr. Faisal Qazi, the Southern Californian neurosurgeon who initiated the fund for the families, has several interesting things to say.  “The American Muslim community has had extensive and intense conversations in the last decade about our role in society.  What you’re seeing is the coming of a new generation of American Muslims being emotionally and physically invested in whatever transpires in society.” 

Some Muslims do speak out against the violence, despite those voices sounding weak.  But they are there, nonetheless.  For example, see www.m-a-t.org/ , a Canadian Muslim organization that speaks against it, albeit with a conservatively religious voice.  Across the pond in the UK, there is a yearly “UK Arbaeen Procession” which is a Muslim-organized multi-faith march for “unity and friendship between people of all ages and cultures” [ http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/hundreds-muslims-marching-against-terrorism-6977099 ]. 
 
Better still, to me, is www.freemuslims.org , a group proud to be an American-Muslim organization “willing to attack extremism and terrorism unambiguously.”  They acknowledge that too many Muslim-American authority figures are not so willing and some are indeed sympathetic to terrorist aims.  This adds a note of realism to their stance, that they admit that people in Muslim-American communities have divergent opinions on the crisis.  “Free Muslims will challenge these beliefs and target the sympathetic support given to terrorists by Muslims”, says their ‘About Us’ blurb on their website (above).  

All in all, this gives me hope.  American Muslims may finally be waking up, especially the younger of them.  Now, could some of these sympathetic organizations actually be concealing terrorist supporters?  Sure, it’s possible.  But in what part of human history has there not been angry people?  The Republican Party is made of little else, it sometimes seems.  There have been more peaceful times, certainly.  But think about it:  the USA and her republic have survived the Depression, World War II’s Nazi Bund, urban riots in the 60’s, and (of course) the September 11 attack.  Even if — okay, when — there is more terrorist bloodshed here at home, still the republic, the American way of life, will survive.  It’s too good to be thrown away.  And I think a lot of American Muslims would say the same.

Bene valete.

(When I was 58 …)

[An old draft entry that I just checked for errors and then inadvertently published for the very first time.  58 would make this ca. 2013 or so.  So view it as something ‘historical’.]

Salvete, qui legunt –

I am 58 years old at this point. Compared to many, I’ve never had a life – but that’s to be judged from which point of view? My default (or automatic) point of view is that I’ve had a simply defective life; that others have had the laurels, the striving, the “bling” of it all. Why do I even reflect on that? I am not the others; I am not “normal”. If I am polite, it comes of fear – the need to manage people to avoid negative face – blame, shame and anger. If I read, it is because I search for some Bling of Knowledge that will validate what I am and save me the expense of hardship and self-discipline. Or I read for pleasure, to escape work, work, work….

From a more reflective point of view, I’ve simply had MY life – personal, inconsiderable, and more or less unique.  In these later years, I’m still trying to come to terms with my own ignorance, and with my own tendency (seen above) to wallow in facile self-criticism. 

Valete.

Stereotypes

Salvete, qui legentes —

The stereotype of the Muslim Terrorist is omnipresent, and, of course, all the more so now after the November attacks in Paris. 

But I myself would like to know more about the people who de facto share the supposed traits of such a Terrorist and yet are NOT themselves supporters of terrorism.  This is because of my desire to answer a question: Why is there no appreciable voice coming out of the more-or-less Islamic world generally that repudiates or better yet denounces Muslim absolutism?  Are there people of a Mid-Eastern background, a Muslim background, an Arab background, and so on, who can or will solidly denounce Islamic Terror?  If there are, they appear to be invisible or at best, timid. 

I see multiple possible reasons for the silence.
(a)  News is made by violence and extremism, and not by being reasonable. Tales of terrorism and its horrors sell more commercial spots than reason or decency would. 
(b)  The voices might be there, but have simply been ignored by the media as not news-worthy! 
(c)  The voices might be there, but the speakers lacking mutual knowledge, organization or motivation by which to amplify their arguments.
(d)  People who are not maniacs are often absorbed by living their lives, rather than debating foreign policy or inviting trouble. 
(e)  Where poverty and testosterone are prevalent, they strongly inform popular opinion.  This leads to manias and brutally simplistic — even “Final” — solutions.  This “legitimizes” violence for a lot of people. 
(f)  In popular opinion in all cultures, blame is assigned first to foreigners (e.g., “Mexicans are thieves”, etc.) or to fellow-citizens of an opposite political bent (e.g., “Liberals are traitors”, etc.).  Detachment and reason are not to be expected in popular culture, and blame will automatically be assigned to “the usual suspects”, “THOSE people”.  Many people, in other words, don’t know any better. 
(g)  In the modern cultural environment of the Middle East and quite probably in the world diaspora of Middle-Easterners, the anti-Western terrorists are often seen as heroes: to decry them would invite not only verbal retribution against the speaker but also physical assault and murder.  In a word, popular repression silences those who might speak up.
(h)  As in most cultures, “If you’re not with us, then you’re against us!” is very likely the political rule-of-thumb of many in Middle Eastern and Islamic communities.  This amplifies (e), (f) and (g) above; see also (i), following.
(i)  Any criticism of Arab or Muslim extremism will, following the fallacy in (h) above, be received popularly as support for Israel, and as disloyalty to the Palestinian cause.  This could be a problem not only of outward coercion, but of inward conscience as well. 
(j)  In Islamic culture generally, there has perhaps never been much of a dividing line between God, religion and the state.  As a basic and popular idea, then, law may mean religion more than society, and when push-comes-to-shove in debate, religion becomes (mentally, automatically) the constitutional foundation.  As a result, absolutism lies ever-ready in the mind, and God is already installed as the ultimate magistrate of things earthly.  This is a strait-jacket on the mind and not limited to Islamic culture, by any means.
(k)  Tit-for-tat:  It is believed that foreign soldiers and American drones are routinely killing the innocent along with the guilty all over the Middle East, and therefore that every massacre of Westerners (or even other Middle-Easterners) may be seen as justified on a kind of eye-for-an-eye basis. 

Given that some or all of this is accurate — I do NOT know that it is, I hasten to say, but some of it seems most likely to an outsider like myself — then it would be no wonder to me if Muslims tended to fall in line in silent support of terror, and to ignore their own consciences in favor of their over-zealous “heroes” out on the prowl, who have bagged yet more infidel victims. 

Vobis voluntatis bonae omnibus, bene valete.  To you of goodwill, all, be ye well. 

Ah, Give Me the Cold War …

In the 1960s, poised beneath the uncertain nuclear stalemate between the USA and USSR, there continued to be hope for universal peace — the hoped-for product of World War II.  The First World War’s “never again!” notion had gone to hell with the rise of Bolshevism, the world-wide Depression, and the subsequent rise of Fascism in various formats the world over.  World War II made a monstrous desert of much of the earth and a pause ensued — a hostile one, which began to be amended in the 60s and 70s.

At my age, I long for the age of nuclear standoff, when there was still a hope in Hell that Russians and Americans might figure out how to get along.  I have to remind myself that to be fond of such a time is to be unfair to those who had suffered in the Gulag and otherwise behind the Iron Curtain. Still, what fond hopes.

But this is life, and friction governs.  Universally, the molecules and animals are all itchy and will not be patient, fair or just.  Reason goes far to make weapons, only a small way to create peace.  Mao Tse-Tung (the fat old spider) ran China into the ground; Pol Pot arose in Cambodia to patriotically murder and destroy his own people; old Russian fascism (Bolshevism, Stalinism, etc.) got its comeuppance in Afghanistan (little did Americans supporting Muslim resistance realize who they were abetting in their covert operations).  No, not freedom but new fascisms reveal themselves everywhere, and nowhere so well as in their various forms in the Middle East.  Even Israel, child of Jews, a whole people homeless and abused for centuries, succumbed to the Rule of Brutality, and in defending itself became a conqueror and colonizer of others’ lands, aping the success of their own Nazi persecutors and the bile and xenophobia of their racist Arab opponents.

What a world.

Contrary Old Nature Consuming Me

Salvete, quicumque legātis –

The one thing we know the Universe likes is friction. Collisions, mutations, heat, stress, movement of life, consumption of life by life – it seems to me the broad essential link is movement and conflict, whether it’s at the sub-microscopic levels of nuclear particles, or among the rude little multicellular animals in a scummy pool, or between technologically endowed nations or movements throwing terror at each other, or in the collisions of asteroids, or in the super-nuclear super-heating of ineffably massive stars. Even light, as a body, collides and warms.

Speaking of mutation: According to my doctors, I’ve been visited by a nasty variety of it – squamous cell cancer. I have just turned 60 and now – bang – Nature plays the cancer card. More to come in terms of medical imaging and medical guesswork and treatment. The timing, of course, is less than ideal. A very bad way to begin Lunar New Year.

Once again – just as when I went to pieces in 2006, and then when someone near and dear to us ruined our finances that same year – events are crowding us out. My kids are still trying to find their niches in the new Republican slave economy, trying to become self-sufficient! I’m not expecting, at this point, that I will ever see my grandchildren. My 85-year-old mother (God keep her!) will quite possibly outlast me!

Still, what can you do? Death will come; it will take each down to dissolution. I have no particular fear of death, but I do have a lurking horror of the pain and suffering that may precede it. The final suffering will most likely be horribly intense and lonely, but I shan’t dwell on that. That’s all in the future, and beyond my control. (After all, I can hardly conjure up my death throes and tell them, “No; not that way! I won’t have it!”)

What is, after all, our one sure goal in life? Not conscious, not chosen, but entirely assured? Our death. Each man’s arc of life ends up there, sooner or later, but assuredly. It’s as natural as our facility of movement, our impulses, as universal as germination and birth.

The 300’s Prayer

A good bit: one particular rendering of the famous Spartan epitaph from Thermopylae:

Go, way-farer, bear news to Sparta’s town
That here, their bidding done, we laid us down.

–rendered by Cyril E. Robinson

Couple of Quotes….

A couple of quotes from browsing today: 

This quote is one that we should all bear in mind – especially ‘believers’ who have not yet gone hardcore; this is what we’ve seen throughout history, and we’re still seeing in bloody political theatre with ISIS/ISIL in Iraq, and so on:

“… religious violence seldom limits itself to one target and expands to reach the maximum number of available victims.”

(from ‘The First Victims of the First Crusade’, Feb 13, 2015 – by Susan Jacoby (New York Times)   http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/15/opinion/sunday/the-first-victims-of-the-first-crusade.html

A little less grim, from Orson Welles:

“We’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we’re not alone.”
 
And another:

“If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.”

Lawsuit over Support of Terrorism

Terrorism Trial, NY Times, 2015-Feb-24

　

NY Times: “The Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization were found liable on Monday by a jury in Manhattan for their role in knowingly supporting six terrorist attacks in Israel between 2002 and 2004 in which Americans were killed and injured.

“The damages are to be $655.5 million, under a special terrorism law that provides for tripling the $218.5 million awarded by the jury in Federal District Court.

“The verdict ended a decade-long legal battle to hold the Palestinian organizations responsible for the terrorist acts, an effort that encompassed fights over jurisdiction, merit and even practicality: History has shown that it is difficult for victims of international terrorism to bring their civil cases to trial, let alone to recover damages.”

“Money is oxygen for terrorism,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Kent A. Yalowitz.  Can’t disagree there.  And the deservedly bitter hatred arising from the endless carnage of Israeli retaliations and the popular Arab Fascist bigotry towards Israel and the West both together provide endless fuel for the terrorist engines.  

“… citing testimony, payroll records and other documents, the plaintiffs showed that many of those involved in the planning and carrying out of the attacks had been employees of the Palestinian Authority [had been, at the time of their terror work?], and that the Authority had paid salaries to terrorists imprisoned in Israel [ooops] and had made martyr payments to the families of suicide bombers.”  Ooops again. But perhaps these politically expedient gestures were necessary for the Authority to survive, since it has to try to maintain some kind of “good image” amid the hate-filled Arab & Palestinian mainstream.

Dr. Mahmoud Khalifa, the Palestinian Authority’s deputy minister of information, reportedly said:

“This case is just the latest attempt by hardline anti-peace factions in Israel to use and abuse the U.S. legal system to advance their narrow political and ideological agenda.”

Disagree with the characterization; he’s trying to shift blame.  Such Israelis may well be behind these suits, but don’t these suits stand on their merits?  Were not violent crimes committed?  (Sadly, there is no one to prosecute the United States or the Russian Federation or Israel for their criminal acts.)  That the Palestinians supported and fostered Hamas and its ilk to begin with is simply criminal.  

Moreover, if you want to talk about a “narrow political and ideological agenda”, then let’s talk about Hamas and Islamic Fascism generally.

Khalifa also called the decision “a tragic disservice to the millions of Palestinians who have invested in the democratic process and the rule of law in order to seek justice and redress their grievances.”

Agree. As the Palestinian state struggles to realize itself, badgered by Israel and entirely infiltrated by Hamas and so on, it is a damned sad thing to find US Courts kicking it while it’s down.

But this brings us to another point:   Logically, Israel should be SUPPORTING a Palestinian state, as Israel’s only hope of any sort of peace.   As Khalifa points out, only the Palestinian Authority represents the rule of law, at least in principle; plainly the PLO and Hamas never have. 

Moreover, since the Israeli people and governments had in years gone by utterly failed to even TRY to integrate the Palestinians into what is now Israel, that avenue has lapsed.  They will have to make peace (if peace is even ON the Putin-esque Netanyahu agenda) in some other way.  But this way, and without realizing what they’re doing, intransigent retaliatory Israel is actually bowing to the will of Hamas, forging ahead with endless war – adding yet more fuel to the well-oxygenated flame of Mid-Eastern Fasicsm. 
 

The Spartan Invocation

A good bit, a particular rendering of the famous Spartan epitaph from Thermopylae: 

Go, way-farer, bear news to Sparta’s town

That here, their bidding done, we laid us down. 

–rendered by Cyril E. Robinson

A Forgotten Little Treasure….

Looking for something else among my files today, I came across this title:  “IOHANNENSIA HYPOMNEMATA”.  (Hypomnemata is the plural of a Greek word meaning variously a reminder, a commentary, an anecdotal record, and so on.)  I could not recall creating the file, and upon checking I find it to be a collection of my own observations from some years back.  I’m going to post a few, but you’ll notice that they’re all concerned with MY issues, inferiority-complex-type stuff, and certainly not with issues that All-Americans and Hot Shots deal with.

(Also, not unnaturally, it’s all couched in a generic masculine, pronoun-wise.)

A crisis can be valuable for rendering you empty: your despair can allow you to ‘Not Feel’, to sever the link between your habitual ‘good’ and ‘bad’. In this way, disillusionment can be a chance to plant your feet on firmer ground, on truer ground.

The weak man, the fool – what is the nature of the problem for him? The problem is a lack of a sober view, or a lack of ways to cope.

… But be clear: It is not your job to “not be you”.

Remember that there are pointless pleasures in life we should pass up and effortlessly avoid; so also, many pointless distresses.

And the fussy, fearful, paralyzed man must learn, above all, that there is no ‘solution’ to the vicissitudes, no end to adversity, no one ‘key’. He cannot wait for the ‘right moment’ or he will wait forever. He must learn that the particulars, ultimately, are Indifferentia, do not matter, that we are all dead men and women, simply abiding our dissolutions. There is no rescue. Given this, we may as well use what we have for good in place of bad.

A brave coward is better than a cowardly one.

These may be of help to someone struggling with perpetual dismay and suicidal thoughts.

Felix est quem ….

Participating in our present age’s revival of Stoicism, I have often had occasion to ask myself: How in the world can I, arguably an abject slave of pleasure and indolence, a rattle-headed, timid, and puerile old do-nothing, how can I of all people call myself a Stoic? For many is the time that my own native scrupulousness has argued that I was a hypocrite to do so while I remained so full of petty defects and so short on decisive willpower; and many is the time that I’ve been tempted to just jump ship and go native, to simply devote myself to whatever overpowering pleasure I can find.

Well, I haven’t jumped ship. In fact, you might say that I’m still aboard, swabbing the deck. I haven’t given up because I remember (a) that Nature is anything but simple, anything but black and white – that almost nothing is perfect or absolute; (b) that half a man is better than none, and an educated half-a-man may well be better still; and (c) that God has given me a certain problem to work on (i.e., myself), unknown to others, and that therein I have my work cut out for me.

And there’s another rationalization that I think has substantial weight to it: (d) that “Felix quem faciunt aliena pericula cautum” (which I read as: “Happy is he whom other people’s dangers make cautious”). In other words, why not improve oneself?  Moreover, even if I am not living a Cynic’s life, homeless on the street, even if am neither Saintly nor Sagely, even if I cannot BE perfect, I can at least participate in the transmission of this most useful philosophy and way of life. Helping others to learn and understand how to live, in the course of living my own transient, microscopic little life, this benefits them, myself, and the world at large.

We are all aliens and strangers, and each comprises a little hidden world of his or her own. If we recuse absolutism and fanaticism and set about living decent lives, in toleration if not in real harmony, then the good of one can rub off on the good of another.  In fact, the more that people are decent — or better yet, virtuous — the more lives and souls can be spared violence or the guilt of violence. Apply your Stoicism, apply your virtues, and try to live well. It’s what we’re meant to do.

Challenges and Confessions (reblogged from Paul Bryson)

From a colleague out of the Stoic College….

Stoic Lawyer

I haven’t posted much recently, for some good reasons and some bad reasons. The good reasons are easy to discuss–I’m focusing on building my practice; I don’t believe in blogging when I don’t have anything worth while to say; I’ve had client work and family time to attend to.

The bad reasons aren’t so easy to write about. One towers over the others. For the last few weeks, I’ve been a raving lunatic.

That isn’t entirely fair. Not to me and not to anyone who has ever been unkindly described as a lunatic. Mental illness isn’t anything to take lightly. I should know. For the last few weeks, I’ve been going through the process of weaning off of Paroxetine Hydrochloride, and it hasn’t been a fun time for anyone close to me. Any side effect of withdrawal that I could have, I had–suicidal ideations, dizziness, headache, anxiety, irritability… All of…

View original post 1,384 more words

Iohannian Blogs

Salvete, qui legunt – 

At present I find myself with three blogs, in effect – this one on Blogger here, http://iohannkn.blogspot.com/;   my WordPress one  https://iohannkn.wordpress.com/  (a left-over from Microsoft’s personal pages days);   and now a shared one, the Redwood Stoa site at  http://redwoodstoa.wordpress.com/, where I can post as “the Redwood Stoa” along with my co-Stoics.  I’m wondering if I can link all three?  I usually find the software side of all this, even just the user interface side, somewhat baffling; my expectations as to interface and utility are often frustrated.  So I’ll have to poke around a bit.  The alternative is to dump one of the two personal blogs.  

When next I post, I want to look at my son’s personal Desu ex Machina,  “The Four Agreements” of Don Miguel Ruiz, a self-help book with a lot of Stoic parallels.  

Vale valeteque.

Salvete, qui legunt –

At present I find myself with three blogs, in effect – this one on Blogger here, http://iohannkn.blogspot.com/;   my WordPress one https://iohannkn.wordpress.com/  (a left-over from Microsoft’s personal pages days);   and now a shared one, the Redwood Stoa site at http://redwoodstoa.wordpress.com/, where I can post as “the Redwood Stoa” along with my co-Stoics.  I’m wondering if I can link all three – the software side of all this, even the user interface side, I usually find somewhat baffling (interface and utility expectations frustrated), so I’ll have to poke around a bit.  The alternative is to dump one of the two personal ones. 

When next I post, I want to look at my son’s personal Desu ex Machina, “The Four Agreements” of Don Miguel Ruiz, a self-help book with a lot of Stoic parallels. 

Vale valeteque.

Post-Midterm Elections, 2014

“Dear Diary – ”

“But every time there’s a thunder storm around Marshfield, they say you can hear his rolling voice in the hollows of the sky. And they say that if you go to his grave and speak loud and clear, ‘Dan’l Webster–Dan’l Webster!’ the ground’ll begin to shiver and the trees begin to shake.  And after a while you’ll hear a deep voice saying, ‘Neighbor, how stands the Union?’ Then you better answer the Union stands as she stood, rock-bottomed and copper sheathed, one and indivisible, or he’s liable to rear right out of the ground.”  –The Devil and Daniel Webster, by Stephen Vincent Benet

It’s certainly better that Republicans have their turn than that more of them go underground and turn their backs on the United States’ republic itself.  I am content if “the Union stands” and hasn’t gone fascist. 

When President Obama was elected back in 2008, the American Right went insane – Birchers, racists, Confederate-sympathizers and conspiracy nuts came out of the woodwork, and the Tea Party spontaneously formed around the hard-assed and dissatisfied among us.  It was a “Yokai Dai Sensou” American-style, and it found itself well-funded and popular, and it went right to work.  In 2012, like last night, I was glad that – at the least – there was no coup attempt, no death-squads, no assassination attempt; that the United States’ republic still stood and the rule of law still stood.  Even drowned in Republican super-pac money, the house still stands.

As individuals we have no control over life, over others, or over how others think.  All you can do with regard to political opposites is point out their fallacies, their immoralities, and their hostility to life.  Beyond that, it’s all about looking at that life and reviewing your own perceptions against reality and good sense. 

And so on and so forth.  Valete.

Religion…

Religions and Gods are like technology – in themselves they don’t matter, but how we use them DOES matter.  Sadly, human nature makes a weapon of EVERYTHING. 

Al-Qaeda?  God = Murder; and the Prophet is hailed as Murderer-in-Chief. 

(sigh)

Sharing Another Blogger’s Resentment, Worry and Despair – and My Comments (Which I Think are Worthwhile)

I just finished posting a long, long comment on a fellow blogger’s site – “Help, They Want Me to Socialize!”.  He was worrying about his future, and so much of what he was rehearsing was exactly the kinds of things that I’ve had to cope with and have learned to understand over 59 years of less-than-ideal life.  In any event, I see my comment as a sort of manifesto or wake-up-call for people with depression, and am sharing it here.

You can follow this link to the site and my comments:

http://helptheywantmetosocialise.wordpress.com/2014/06/04/my-uncertain-future/comment-page-1/#comment-36

Emerson – my Introduction

When I wandered into the library the other day and perused the philosophy section (as I am wont to do when I can catch the reduced-hours library still open), I found a book on “Transcendentalism in America”, by Koster. The very first page is a three-photo splash of Thoreau, Emerson and Whitman. Perhaps, I thought, this book will explain just what these folks were all about, what the thread of Transcendentalism was, and most important in satisfying my ignorance, what Emerson was all about, he the most famous of the three and the least accessible to me. 

So, I am reading. 

Was Emerson a philosopher?  He thought so, I guess.  And the quotes from him in this book tend to cover ground seemingly Neo-Platonic and even, perhaps, Stoic: 

“A man is fed, not that he may be fed, but that he may work.”

“A leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time, is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.  Each particle is a microcosm, and faithfully renders the likeness of the world.” 

“What we are, that only can we see.” 

“As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg.”

But what remains most apparent is that Emerson’s cart always seems to be hitched neither to stolid horses nor to hard men, but to clouds of mystic supposition.  I read Koster’s remarks on him and I say, Yes, our pertinent time IS indeed the “everlasting now”, “the present, which is all there is” (as Koster puts it – for there is no past, except in its forming of  “Now”, and no future, except in its becoming “Now”).  Or I say, Yes, we see things not as they are, but as we are (quoting Anais Nin, I believe).  But then at other times Emerson loses me:

“Empirical science is apt to cloud the sight, and by the very knowledge of functions and processes to bereave the student of the manly contemplation of the whole.” 

“Nature is not fixed but fluid. Spirit alters, moulds, makes it….  Every spirit builds itself a house, and beyond its house a world, and beyond its world a heaven.”

“No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature…. the only right is what is after my constitution; the only wrong what is against it.”

“Who shall define to me an Individual?; I behold with awe and delight many illustrations of the One Universal Mind; I see my being imbedded in it….  I can even with a mountainous aspiring say, I am God, by transferring my Me out of the flimsy and unclean precincts of my body, my fortunes, my private will, and meekly retiring upon the holy austerities of the Just and the Loving – upon the secret fountains of Nature.”

Emerson finds it important “to feel after the evidence of things not seen”; and then, in the same breath and in supposed apposition, explain that one does that “to explain the mazes of mortal things.”  The first I mistrust; the second (quite rightly a task for men, whether philosophers, laborers or businessmen) I must think can be explained only (if at all) with reference to concrete things.  For the Emerson-inclined, how can he or she escape the wishful thinking that “feeling after” the misty “evidence” of still mistier “things not seen” only too easily leads to?  How can one avoid a merely personal, pseudo-mystical cloud?  How can one get a grip, EXCEPT by the corroboration and criticism provided by example and hard proof? 

Notion vs. Ignorance vs. Facts vs. Blather.  These are the four corners, you might say, of any serious discussion.  Will or an idea or a need urges us a Notion, our Ignorance shapes it, then the visible or provable Facts re-shape it, and we repeat the re-shaping, continuing to trim away the mere Blather.  Emerson went through this but, perhaps, either got stuck venerating the Blather, or simply dismissed as unimportant the facts available to refer to.