THE WONDER OF WONDERS

THE WONDER OF WONDERS

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.
© October 28, 2008

“I often think its comical how nature always does contrive, that every boy and every gal, that’s born into the world alive, is either a little liberal, or else a little conservative.”

Steven Pinker, THE BLANK SLATE: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (2002), p.283.

Through the miracle of television, and by the accident of channel hopping, the other day I came across a lecture of Dr. Steven Pinker of Harvard, eminent cognitive psychologist, delightful writer with clear vision of the cognitive world, and now a presence. It was C-Span, and he was giving a lecture on “Denial of Human Nature.” The lecture actually took place in October 2002, when his book on the subject came out.

It is one thing to read the works of an author, and quite another to see and hear him addressing an audience of astute readers of his works. I say “astute” because the Q&A after his lecture confirmed this.

Pinker doesn’t believe we come into the world with a blank slate. Indeed, he believes and has science to prove it that our genes are already actively involved in apprehending the landscape, activating speaking mechanisms to generate language, and process and interpret social interchange.

Briefly, he acknowledged the work of etymologist E. O. Wilson and his sociobiology, which hypothesizes that there is genetic carryover from parent to sibling to give a child a running start. Almost in the same breath, he mentioned a hero of mine, Steven Jay Gould, the paleontologist who contests Wilson’s claim, Gould being a totally dedicated Darwinist.

It was nice to see, as one person in the audience pointed out, that the tug of war between the two scientists was as much for show as anything. I mention this because Wilson and Gould are not very different from us. What is more, they don’t claim to be. Their work involves asking tough questions that we take for granted or refuse to consider. They stick to issues often stumbling in the dark to find the light switch to Life’s mysteries.

One statement that Pinker made is so true, that is, it is wonderful to be alive, to be conscious and cognitive. We should not only make the most of every day, but of every moment.

If you ever pick up one of his books, you will see he is writing to us as well as his colleagues. The key to good writing is to be able to communicate to a diverse audience and at several levels. This is obvious in the three books of his I have read: “The Blank Slate” (2002), “How the Mind Works” (1997), and “Words and Rules” (1999). He uses popular culture including comic strip cartoons to illustrate his points. You don’t have to agree with all his premises but the reading will refresh you.

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My BB is a subscriber to the “Smithsonian,” which I often don’t find time to skim much less peruse, but the November issue has a timely article on “Election Day 1860” from the book “Lincoln President-Elect” (2008) by Harold Holzer.

There are photographs of Lincoln and his home in Springfield, the state capitol, and his famous opponent Stephen Douglas, along with two other candidates John Breckinridge of the Northern Democrats and John Bell of the Constitutional Union Party.

BB and I once toured these grounds along with his former residences in Indiana and Kentucky. The Lincoln Library in Springfield is different than any other presidential library I have visited in that it has a carnival atmosphere.

Holzer captures Lincoln’s quiet strength, burning but carefully masked ambition, and the steel in his cutting humor. You also get a sense of Lincoln’s self-doubt, something that Barak Obama in candid aside admitted to a television interviewer. Holzer writes:

“Lincoln had confided to a caller that he would have preferred a full term in the Senate, ‘where there was more chance to make reputation and less danger of losing it – than four years in the presidency.’ It was a startling admission. But having lost two senatorial races over the past five years, most recently to Stephen A. Douglas – one of the two Democrats he now opposed in his run for the White House – Lincoln’s conflicted thoughts were understandable.”

Given how momentous the 1860 election was, it surprised me to learn that Lincoln’s handlers wanted him to do no campaigning. It was apparently in bad taste in 1860 to be out on the stump campaigning. Today, candidates spend nearly a half billion dollars attempting to win the presidency.

William Cullen Bryant of the New York Evening Post, bluntly reminded Lincoln that “the vast majority of your friends want you to make no speeches, write no letters as a candidate, enter into no pledges, make no promises, nor even give any of those kind words which men are apt to interpret into promises.” Lincoln obliged.

Unalterably opposed to slavery, his handlers urged him the day before the election to assure voters he wouldn’t act rashly on the issue. Holzer writes:

“Lincoln branded such men as ‘liars and knaves,’ explaining hotly, ‘this is the same old trick by which the South breaks down every Northern victory. Even if I were personally willing to barter away the moral principle involved in this contest for the commercial gain of a new submission to the South, I would go to Washington without countenance of the men who supported me and were my friends before the election. I would be as powerless as a block of buckeye wood.’”

Consequently, Lincoln’s campaign for president ended as it began in adamant silence.

I smiled when I read how Lincoln described presidential campaigns. I’ve called them quadrennial madness. His metaphor is more apt:

“Elections in this country were like ‘big boils’ – they caused a great deal of pain before they came to a head, but after the trouble was over the body was in better health than before.”

The 1860 presidency was contentious with some predicting unhappily that “the obscure and coarse Lincoln” would be “elected by the sectional Abolition Party of the North.”

Close to my hometown of Clinton, Iowa is Galena, Illinois, the hometown of Ulysses S. Grant who “was by no means a Lincoln man,” but was a loyal Republican. He was retired from the military trying to make a living in the leather goods business in Galena, not realizing that destiny would, indeed, make him Lincoln’s man. .

Lincoln, as many of you know, rose from a humble background but was a prominent, you could even say rich lawyer in Springfield, Illinois. He had argued cases at the Supreme Court, and had an outstanding jurisprudent record. Yet, in terms of national politics, he had served but a single term in the US Congress from 1847 – 1849. So, there was little evidence at the outset that he would be a good much less great president.

If you have read the poet Carl Sandburg’s four volumes on Lincoln, you know that he makes quite a case of Lincoln’s toughness. Prior to the election, Lincoln received many cables and telegrams, many unsettling. One was from Ozias Hatch, a former Congressman, was especially so. After reading it, Lincoln turned to one of his people, and said, “This man would bear watching.” It was the first indication that he was confident he would be the next president.

As the tallies rolled in, Lincoln saw he had won Chicago by 2,500 votes, and Cook County by 4,000. In nine Southern states he wasn’t even on the ballot. At midnight, still not knowing the outcome, he went for ice cream at William W. Watson & Son’s across from Capitol Square.

When a telegram came from Philadelphia, all eyes were fixed upon the tall form of Lincoln and his slightly trembling lips, as he read in a clear and distinct voice, “The city and state for Lincoln by a decisive majority,” and immediately added in slow, emphatic terms, and with a significant gesture of the forefinger, “I think that settles it.”

Lincoln was elected as the sixteenth president of the United States by carrying every Northern state save New Jersey with 180 electoral votes while needing only 152. He received 1, 866,452 but only 40 percent of the total east, second only to John Quincy Adams as the smallest share ever collected by a victor. In the entire South, he collected only 26,000 votes, most of them in Missouri and the city of St. Louis, where there was a large German-born Republican constituency.

Once he had won, he felt “oppressed with the overwhelming responsibility upon him.” Barak Obama has said something to that effect recently.

I will end this little piece with an observation. If you wonder why some people attain what is construed as greatness and others celebrity, and still others fame, fortune or significant achievement in science, art, engineering, or literature, take heart in this:

“From boyhood up, Lincoln had confided to his old friend Ward Hill Lamon that ‘my ambition was to be President.’”

It is no accident. We achieve what we can see ourselves achieving. It takes ambition fueled by vision for a career to climb above the lowest rungs of Life’s Ladder.

Someone asked me recently what it takes to be a writer. I paused and said, “Writers are not made. Writers are born.” I believe that to be true. Yes, some people scribble this or that and get it published because they are a celebrity or distinguished in some other endeavor, but writers, real writers are born. They have no choice but to write. It is in their blood, their bones, and their genes.

Lincoln’s ambition was to be president. He lived the idea several lives before it reached fruition stumbling and bumbling along the way, but never losing sight of the target.

I’m writing a novel of South Africa. It goes slow. But if God gives me the energy and the mind to finish it, I will. That is my ambition, to tell a story that only I can tell because only I have lived it. Will it be a great novel?

I smile when people ask me that question. First, I don’t measure quality in terms of chronological but psychological time. Ambition has no chronology. Lincoln’s ambition was to be president, not necessarily a great president but to fulfill that ambition. Its horizon never left his sight.

Greatness had nothing to do with it. So, the question whether my novel will even get published is academic. The process of writing it is an end in itself. That is the secret of ambition that so many miss.