KIERKEGAARD DEFENSE OF THE COMMON MAN -- NINE

 KIERKEGAARD DEFENSE OF THE COMMON MAN – NINE

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© June 11, 2012

*     *     *

This concludes this nine-part series on Kierkegaard’s defense of the common man.  It came about by rereading my unpublished novel (A GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA).  It had been several years since I pulled one of his volumes down from my library shelf. 

Once I did, and started reading, I discovered how much the internal dialogue of my novel matched Kierkegaard’s existentialism.  The Danish philosopher argued moral and scientific thinking together were not enough to get to the core of human existence, and, therefore, its essence.  

He saw the Establishment retreating from the individual and leaving in his wake synthetic constructs that he argued were a curse to authentic man, to the content, spirit and character of his personality.  He opposed the coterie of the cultivated (aristocracy) and the state church (Danish Protestantism) as being the main barriers to the rise of the common man.

For him, the times were seen in style and content too abstract and remote to the concrete experience and requirements of everyday man.  He lived for an idea; that by expending his consciousness, at whatever cost, he could bring himself closer to relating to the ideal.  For this stand, he was rebuked and humiliated by his own class as well as by the common man, being seen as eccentric, a clown, and a malcontent, when he was, in fact, introducing his contemporaries to the modern world.  . 

Devlin in the novel is Kierkegaard’s common man, an individual who has had a meteoric career from modest circumstances as student, athlete, chemist, chemical engineer, salesman, manager, and corporate executive only to run into his conscience in South Africa in 1968.  Unprepared for the concrete world he has entered, he is owned by the abstract world that he has left, something Kierkegaard wrote so eloquently about more than a hundred years ago.

It is a mystery how influences work.  You read an author, highlight and make notes on the margins of the pages, then allow the information to retreat into the shadow of your mind, only to discover it is on your fingertips.  .

Kierkegaard is evident on the fingertips of Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre and Heidegger, Dostoyevsky and Chekhov.  His ideas are apparent in the American Declaration of Independence and the “Liberty, Equality, Fraternity” of the French Revolution.  His starting point of philosophical thinking can be seen in theology, drama, art, literature and psychology.  As my writing is based on my actual experience, or reaction to my cognitive biases, it is my introduction of the reader to him or herself.

KIERKEGAARD LEGACY OF A MAVERICK

On these pages, I have attempted to capture the essence of a man who touched the spirit of his time and my life.  He gave voice and meaning to my anger and angst.  He did it with his essays on the common man.

Cultural barriers caused him to erupt in print to bring attention to the follies of his time but they were often seen as rants and even slanderous.  . 

So it was and will be as long as thinking man challenges the artificial systems discourage self-understanding and self-regard and the possibility of attaining higher consciousness. 

Changing times require fluidity and the recognition that self-ignorance and rigidity block attempts to deal effectively with problems.  When the status quo is protected with intrusive and insidious devices to control, when those in charge conduct business as usual with infallible authority despite monstrous failures, idealists and new social psychological ideas are likely to be vilified.  The times are never kind to authentic man. 

Kiekegaard took on the coterie of the cultivated, the clergy and the state church.  He challenged the rising status of science and scholarship, as if such people in the know were superior to those that weren’t.  Christianity had retreated to pomp and circumstance, to the deification of the clergy resplendent in robes and ritual of authority, pontificating doctrines and dogma teaching the way for common man to become subjective, to become a subject instead of an objective independent person. 

Science learns through observation on being objective. The scientist wants visible evidence; the church wants subjective loyalty, while neither gives attention to the inner world that dominates common man. 

Much of Kierkegaard’s work deals with individualism giving priority to concrete reality over abstract thinking and artificial constructs (e.g., rules and regulations, position power, command and control).  Upward mobility or class warfare were not germane to his thinking, but individual responsibility to make choices and be committed to acts that enhanced inner peace and personal involvement, that is, the common man in charge. 

He saw Christianity not Christian, its clergy not honest, and the Establishment a corrupting influence in opposition to the interests of the common man.  His model for Christian conduct was the “Imitation of Christ” (ca 1418) by Thomas a’ Kempis, which was bereft of ostentation or self-aggrandizement.      

His approach was to get inside ideas to gain self-understanding.  Christianity was existential to him, identifying with the higher consciousness possible with the devotions of Thomas a’ Kempis.  Once Christianity was reduced to survival at the expense of its mission, it became an illusion to him, diametrically opposed to what he thought of as its essence. 

Although Marx came after him, he would have had little trouble with the communist thinker’s declaration that religion is the opiate of the people, or eye candy for the soul.  He would have opposed, however, Marx’s crowd psychology and the unfreedom of Hegel’s anthropology. 

He shared much in common with Eastern philosophers and metaphysicians in their interest in awakening man to heightened awareness.  He found few wanted to hear, and if they heard, did not want to do the hard work to self-discovery.  The climate the clergy promoted spiritually, and academia and the commercial world advanced secularly were a hindrance to his effort. 

The complacency of the multitude astonished him.  He blamed it on these sources.  The common man was unaware that his freedom was undermined and that truth had little relevance to his actual life.  And so he ranted against the ineffective clergy and corrupt aristocracy.  He laments:

“Holy people are characterized by unfreedom and lack of inwardness.  They think by ranking as holy people they rank higher than others.”

Pastors and officials of the state church, he declared, had nothing to do with the religious life of the common man, except as a hindrance.  It was a monstrous illusion to him.  “I am not a Christian, but I know what Christianity is.”  He expressed similar sentiments with regard to academia and those who considered themselves knowledgeable.  “I am an ignorant man,” he declared, demonstrating the influence of Socrates, another outsider, maverick and constant pain to the mainstream. 

SOCRATIC CONNECTION

Kierkegaard’s psychological approach explored the emotions and feelings of the individual when faced with life choices.  Socrates and the Socratic method influenced his thinking and approach.  Like Socrates, he repeatedly emphasized that he was without authority or special knowledge.  He was content to present the ideal and allow the individual to make free choices. 

As Plato shows in his writings, the web of reflections that went into the Socratic dialogues were in reality an attack on the status quo and the passivity of Greek citizens. 

Likewise, Kierkegaard’s actions, while indirect in form, were an attack on the power of the clergy and the authority of the Establishment that prevented common man reaching higher consciousness.  He sums up this sentiment, “I am neither leniency nor strictness.  I am human honesty.” 

“Socrates and the Common Man” was written as a reflection of that influence.  It started with his dissertation on Socrates for his doctorate and then continued through his short life.  He was a street person mingling with common citizens, as Socrates was wont to do.  Often he collapsed in the street from exhaustion.  One day he fell unconscious, and knew death was near.  Two months before he died (September 1, 1855), he writes:

“You (Socrates), noble, simple man of antiquity: you are the only human being I acknowledge with admiration as a thinker.  Very little has been preserved about you, who of all human beings are the only true martyr to intellect, equally great as a person of character and as a thinker.”

Socrates battled against the sophists as he did against the pastors and politicians.  Socrates challenged the thinking of his time, but did not claim to have answers or that he was knowledgeable.  On the contrary, he insisted he was ignorant. 

Kierkegaard claimed a similar ignorance, and could not in good conscience call himself a Christian. 

How could anyone dismiss Socrates or Kierkegaard?  “If these men are ignorant, what are we?”  Everyone knew in their hearts they were just as ignorant as Socrates, and as little Christian as Kierkegaard.

That said citizens of Athens wanted to ignore Socrates, and go on as they were.  People of Denmark wanted to ignore Kierkegaard and busy themselves with their preferred nonsense.   Of course, it never works.  It is why such men surface periodically.

*     *     *

KIERKEGAARD DEFENSE OF THE COMMON MAN -- NINE

 KIERKEGAARD DEFENSE OF THE COMMON MAN – NINE

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© June 13, 2012

*     *     *

This concludes this nine-part series on Kierkegaard’s defense of the common man.  It came about by rereading my unpublished novel (A GREEN ISLAND IN A BLACK SEA).  It had been several years since I pulled one of his volumes down from my library shelf. 

Once I did, and started reading, I discovered how much the internal dialogue of my novel matched Kierkegaard’s existentialism.  The Danish philosopher argued moral and scientific thinking together were not enough to get to the core of human existence  

He saw the Establishment retreating from the individual and leaving in his wake synthetic constructs that he argued were a curse to the authentic individual, to the content, spirit and character of his personality.  He opposed the coterie of the cultivated (aristocracy) and the state church (Danish Protestantism) as being the main barriers to the rise of the common man.

For him, the times were seen in style and content too abstract and remote to the concrete experience and requirements of everyday man.  He lived for an idea; that by expending his consciousness, at whatever cost, he could bring himself closer to relating himself to the ideal.  For this stand, he was rebuked and humiliated by his own class as well as by the common man, being seen as eccentric, a clown, and a malcontent, when he was, in fact, introducing his contemporaries to the modern world.  . 

Devlin in the novel is Kierkegaard’s common man, an individual who has had a meteoric career from modest circumstances as student, athlete, chemist, chemical engineer, salesman, manager, and corporate executive only to run into his conscience in South Africa in 1968.  Unprepared for the concrete world he has entered, he is owned by the abstract world that he has left, something Kierkegaard wrote so eloquently about more than a hundred years before.

It is a mystery how influences work.  You read an author, highlight and make notes on the margins of the pages, then allow the information to retreat into the shadow of your mind, only to discover it is on your fingertips.  .

Kierkegaard is evident on the fingertips of Nietzsche, Camus, Sartre and Heidegger, Dostoyevsky and Chekhov.  His ideas are apparent in the American Declaration of Independence and the “liberty, equality, fraternity” of the French Revolution.  His starting point of philosophical thinking can be seen in theology, drama, art, literature and psychology.  As my writing is based on my actual experience, or reaction to my cognitive biases, it is my invitation to introduce the reader to himself.

KIERKEGAARD LEGACY OF A MAVERICK

On these pages, I have attempted to capture the essence of a man who touched the spirit of his time and my life.  He gave voice and meaning to my anger and angst.  He did it with his essays on the common man.

Cultural barriers caused him to erupt in print to bring attention to the follies of his time but they were often seen as rants and even slanderous.  . 

And so it was and will be as long as thinking, wondering man challenges the artificial systems designed to stimulate rote response, barriers to discourage self-understanding and self-regard or the possibility of attaining higher consciousness. 

Changing times require fluidity; recognition of self-ignorance and how rigidity blocks attempts to deal effectively with problems.  The status quo is protected no matter how intrusive or insidious.  Those in charge conduct business as usual with infallible authority no matter how monstrous the failures.  Idealists and new ideas are vilified.  The times are never kind to the authentic individual. 

Kiekegaard took on the coterie of the cultivated, the clergy and the state church.  He challenged the rising status of science and scholarship, as if to know deemed people superior to those that didn’t.  Christianity had retreated to pomp and circumstance, to the deification of the clergy resplendent in the robes and station of royalty, pontificating infallible doctrines and dogma, rites and rituals, teaching the common man the way to become subjective, to become a subject. 

Science learns through observation, on being objective. The scientist wants visible evidence; the church wants subjective loyalty, while neither gives attention to the inner world that dominates the common man. 

Much of Kierkegaard’s work deals with individualism giving priority to concrete reality over abstract thinking and artificial constructs (e.g., rules and regulations).  Upward mobility or class warfare were not germane to his thinking, but individual responsibility to make choices and be committed to acts that enhanced inner peace and involve personal experience, that is to say, the individual is in charge of his life. 

He saw Christianity not Christian, its clergy not honest, and the Establishment acting in opposition to the interest of the common man.  His model for Christian conduct was the “Imitation of Christ” (ca 1418) by Thomas Kempis, which was bereft of ostentation or self-aggrandizement.      

He got inside ideas in an attempt to gain self-understanding.  For example, Christianity was existential to him, that is, he identified with the consciousness of the faith that is so evident in the devotions of Thomas a’ Kempis.  Once Christianity became all about power and influence, it became an illusion for him, and diametrically opposed to what he found as its essence. 

Although Marx came after him, he would have had little trouble with the communist thinker’s declaration that religion is the opiate of the people, as it has been evolved as eye candy for the soul.  He would have opposed, however, Marx’s crowd psychology and the unfreedom of Hegel’s anthropology. 

He actually had much in common with Eastern philosophers and metaphysicians in the shared interest in awakening and enlightening man to heightened awareness.  People did not want to hear, and if they heard, did not want to do the hard work to self-discovery.  The climate and culture that the clergy promoted spiritually and academia and the commercial world advanced secularly were a hindrance to this effort. 

The complacency of the multitude astonished him.  He blamed it on these sources.  The common man was unaware that his freedom was undermined and that truth had little relevance to his actual life.  And so he ranted against the ineffective clergy and corrupt aristocracy. 

“Holy people are characterized by unfreedom and lack of inwardness.  They think by ranking as holy people they rank higher than others.”

 Pastors and officials of the state church, he declared, had nothing to do with the religious life of the common man, except as a hindrance.  It was a monstrous illusion to him.  “I am not a Christian, but I know what Christianity is.”  He expressed similar sentiments with regard to academia and those who considered themselves knowledgeable.  “I am an ignorant man,” he declares, demonstrating the influence of Socrates, another outsider, maverick and constant pain to the mainstream. 

SOCRATIC CONNECTION

Kierkegaard’s psychological approach explored the emotions and feelings of the individual when faced with life choices.  Socrates and the Socratic method influenced his thinking and approach.  Like Socrates, he repeatedly emphasized that he was without authority or special knowledge.  He was content to present the ideal and allow the individual to make free choices. 

As Plato shows in his writings, the web of reflections that went into the Socratic dialogues were in reality an attack on the status quo and the passivity of Greek citizens. 

Likewise, Kierkegaard’s actions, while indirect in form, were an attack on the power of the clergy and the authority of the Establishment that prevented higher consciousness in reaching the common man.  He sums up this sentiment, “I am neither leniency nor strictness.  I am human honesty.” 

“Socrates and the Common Man” was written as a reflection of that influence.  It started with his dissertation on Socrates for his doctorate and then continued through his short life.  He was a street person mingling with common citizens, as Socrates was wont to do.  Often he collapsed in the street from exhaustion.  One day he fell unconscious, and knew death was near.  Two months before he died (September 1, 1855), he writes:

“You (Socrates), noble, simple man of antiquity: you are the only human being I acknowledge with admiration as a thinker.  Very little has been preserved about you, who of all human beings are the only true martyr to intellect, equally great as a person of character and as a thinker.”

Socrates battled against the sophists as he did against the pastors and politicians.  Socrates challenged the thinking of his time, but did not claim that he was knowledgeable.  On the contrary, he insisted he was ignorant. 

Kierkegaard claimed a similar ignorance, and could not in good conscience call himself a Christian. 

People couldn’t dismiss Socrates or Kierkegaard because “If these men are ignorant, what are we?”  Everyone knew in their hearts they were just as ignorant as Socrates; and everyone knew in their hearts they were as little Christian as Kierkegaard.

That said citizens of Athens wanted to ignore Socrates, and go on as they were.  People of Denmark wanted to ignore Kierkegaard and busy themselves with their preferred nonsense.   Of course, it never works.  It is why such men surface periodically.

*     *     *

KIERKEGAARD DEFENSE OF THE COMMON MAN -- EIGHT

 KIERKEGAARD DEFENSE OF THE COMMON MAN – EIGHT

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© June 8, 2012

IN SEARCH OF THE HONEST MAN

“When one does not focus upon the differences between one person and another, one has the consolation of being able to find in the common man an honest person who can and will understand,” Kierkegaard writes.  He goes on to say, “It is in ordinary people the greatest strengths are to be found.”

He was aware of the tensions between the common man and the disembodied Establishment.  Controlled by ambition, the Establishment often lost its way in quest of wealth, power, influence and popularity.  Yet, he warned, talent and ability without honesty were a search in vain for meaning.  Integrity was the preserve of common people as even their vices were excusable.

On the other hand, the “spoiled-child nonsense” of the coterie of the cultivated acted as if they had a license to cheat, steal, fornicate, corrupt and do as it pleased with impunity, as it possessed the light, the wisdom and the right to decide what was best, when its stupid decisions only impacted negatively the powerless.  Kierkegaard writes:

“To be in a position to live for an idea, to be able to expend all one’s time on it, is indeed closer to relating oneself to the ideal …But the people, the great mass of people who must spend most of their time in menial tasks, earning the necessities of life – with respect to them, it would be a terrible thing to jack up the price.  In their case, the humane thing is of course to provide consolation and gentleness, because the most fundamental worry and concern of these people can certainly be the pain caused by their inability to live for something higher …(Alas) it is just as important to be a maidservant, if that is what one is, as to be the most brilliant genius.  Thus is also the course of my almost exaggerated sympathy for the simple class of people, the common man.  And therefore I can become depressed and sad because they have been taught to laugh at me, thus depriving themselves of the one person in this country who has love them most sincerely.”

He saw the common man between bookends of the Establishment on the one hand and the mob and guttersnipes on the other, neither pursuing interests of the people.  He was tired of the cool superiority of his peers who avoided him for fear of being exposed to his taunts and insults.

Great men can, at times, be quite venial and self-pitying.  Kierkegaard was no exception.  To endless meanness and mockery from his peers and the press, he writes:

“I am not complaining even though it might seem to be a hard fate that I, who had I lived in any other country, would have earned a great fortune, would have been counted among the most eminent geniuses, and would have enjoyed wide and pervasive influence – by having been born in a demoralized provincial town, have quite predictably achieved status as a sort of local madman, known and insulated by (quite literally) every guttersnipe, even by convicted criminals … Only a dead man can stop and avenge such infamy, in which an entire nation is more or less implicated.  But all you who have suffered will be avenged .. Retribution is coming!”

It is perhaps easier for the outsider to be more honest than for insiders who must appear honest.  The outsider is not in the business of winning friends and influencing people for profit and prestige to the extent that the insider must to satisfy the demands of his station.  .

Kierkegaard pondered the unchangeable constant of human nature, the dichotomy between good and evil in the subterranean life of the soul as revealed in war and government, economics and academia, politics and religion.  He zeroed in on evil as it compromised defenseless good people, showing how these good people became servile and humble to the demands of the powerful when such evil was on display. 

He was forged by the cultivated world that rejected him and by the mob that attacked him, coming to see himself as the martyr of the moment.  He writes:

“The conflict, the world-movement, is between two concepts: the interesting and the simple.  The times have gone astray and continue to be carried away by the interesting.  The movement to the simple should be made …By falsifying my task I could have become the hero and idol of the moment.  If I had done so, I would indeed have abandoned the movement toward the simple and would have converted all my power into the interesting and into the moment.  I remained true to my task, understood in the eternal sense.  I became the martyr of the moment, and this is precisely the proof that I remained true to the task.”

The Danish philosopher was a walking paradox wrapped in a contradiction.  Little wonder he confused people.  To pursue truth he insisted required “awakening.”  Typically, when a religious sect claimed such awakening to truth, he took exception to such an assertion finding its truths untruths and therefore the awakening in error, expecting approval the sect instead felt his wrath. 

Kierkegaard saw his religious faith on a collision course with the wider world “that otherwise would have escaped me, overly concerned as I was with inner sufferings.”  This led to confusion, as he was not interested in the external circumstances of religion, but only in its existential dimensions.  In other words, he saw his faith, as practiced, an obstruction to awakening.

The continuing source of his pain was his inability to rally the common man, who had been his friend, to his understanding.  Instead, the common man came to laugh at him along with the others seeing him as an odd and comical person.  All his life he had talk about being an individual, and now he had become one in the highest existential way, “the incarnation of my category.”  

He had made his choice, and felt no envy for those who had backers, who held high office, or who were inclined to wear constant disguises.  It was 1849, six years before his death, and he was totally alone, God’s clown among men, the scourge of his church, in the snake pit of his times.  To protect himself from the disdain of people, the prudent course, it would seem, would be to withdraw, and laugh at the stupidity of the mob and the silliness of his culture, but he couldn’t. 

His talent and genius would not allow for retreat.  He embraced his resistance to pain, and held fast to his love of the common man, who knew not what he did.  He saw them misled by pastors from the pulpit, the cruel press, and by the Establishment who knew well what they were doing. 

The balance of his life was to search for ten righteous honest men.  He addressed common man in his syntax and idiom in an attempt to rescue him from the coterie of the cultivated so he could at least say “yes” or “no,” “Either” or “Or” to the reality of his choices.  His ideas congealed into angst.  He writes:

“How few are they who understand the common man and understand the extent to which contact with him is usually based upon the hardheartedness and cruelty of class distinction and respectability.  Then to have this contact denied me, to have it regarded as a ridiculous exaggeration, so that I can no longer do anything for the common man, because I exist for him as a sort of half-mad figure.”

*     *     *

As the reader follows this journey with me in delineating Kierkegaard’s true greatness, I encourage that same reader to reflect on how outside forces steer one away from the inner authentic self, how obsession with race, religion, politics, class and economics are used to drive stakes into the ground to enclose one in a cage, a cage, which has little to do with choice but more to do with a failure to embrace pain, and soar above self-imprisonment.

.

Remember the words of Shakespeare:

“And this above all unto thine own self be true and it shall follow as the day the night thous canst be false to any man.”

*     *     *

AN ALERT TO FOLKS BURNING THE CANDLE AT BOTH ENDS!

AN ALERT TO FOLKS BURNING THE CANDLE AT BOTH ENDS!

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© June 7, 2012

If you happen to have watched PBS’s “Use Your Brain to Change Your Life,” and thought, “Ho hum, this is another expert throwing a clinker into my fun,” think again. 

You only have to look at the visual of a healthy brain and one of a guy who claims never to have been drunk only having four or five drinks a day after work to know how fragile this sacred organ is. 

The daily drinking man's brain looked like a raisin compared to a healthy brain.  He was also 100 pounds overweight and a candidate for every conceivable illness. 

Dr. Daniel Amen, world-renowned clinical neuroscientist, psychiatrist, and brain image expert, claims that the brain can be healthy, alive and supple as the body inevitably ages.  It is why writers, composers, artists, artisans, social workers, community activists, the clergy (priests, ministers, rabbis, nuns), and yes, politicians often enjoy long and productive lives.

Looking at the brain as if a raisin, I couldn’t help but think what effect booze, cigarettes, drugs such as marijuana might have on the brain.  Dr. Amen, who admits the cause of Alzheimer’s disease is not known, sees it reaching epidemic proportions in the future.  My wonder is there a connection. 

Dr. Amen says people who imbibe since they were young, and think they have won a pass, should think again.  He says the symptoms are unlikely to show up for 30 to 50 years after the indulgence has become routine, then all hell can break loose into assorted health issues. 

He corroborates what I have read elsewhere that a single cigarette a day shortens life and health of the body as well as the brain, and that binge drinking, or having a cocktail after work every day can have negative effects and affects on the brain. 

What was implied was that such self-indulgence even if corrected still carries the damage already done in the brain.  Nature is unforgiving.  Aging is natural, and exercise, and eating healthily, but still drinking as a matter of routine feeling the other behaviors compensate for the excess could prove delusional. 

The brain is the window to the soul and our conception of God as we would or would not see our relationship to the universe.  Dr. Amen is not implying that one should live one’s life without stimulants, but is advocating moderation in all things, as one’s brain is the most precious aspect of being human.

*     *     *

COMMENT/RESPONSE TO KIERKEGAARD -- SEVEN

COMMENT/RESPONSE TO KIERKEGAARD – SEVEN

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© June 4, 2012

A EUROPEAN READER WRITES:

Dear Jim,

As you have lived in many countries, including Europe, I'm a little bit amazed about your judgment regarding the dominance of the U.S.

From my point of view, the U.S. had a real dominance shortly after WWII.  It lost that dominance in the cold war (East Block was as powerful at least in military terms). 

Can you give me one military engagement since WWII the U.S. actually won?  You yourself point out that the work ethic and the quality of work in the U.S. has faded dramatically.

I deplore that situation very much, because the U.S. still has the role of political leadership and stabilizing influence in the world.  I think it only can change from its weaknesses when it honestly analyzes its existing deficiencies.

Please don't be upset about my response.  It is just a spontaneous reaction from a Non-US-citizen. You know how much I respect you.

Be always well,

Manfred

DR. FISHER RESPONDS:

Manfred,

I cherish your thoughts and perspective.  When I wrote this --  In that short time, America has been dominant more than a century.  Few societies have risen so quietly to explode so violently and reach global significance so quickly.  It was, and is a formula that would inevitably be copied  -- my intention was to show cultural rather than military dominance. 

True, we seem to make a mess of things in our wars since WWII (Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Iran).  With the exception of WWII, when the country was totally behind the military, Americans have displayed ambivalence towards war, but a natural proclivity to isolation. 

Close to ninety percent of Americans have never been abroad, most high school and college students cannot find most countries on the map or have any idea what their respective cultures are like.  Only ten percent of Americans read books outside of school and only twenty five percent read daily newspapers.   

Could our failure in war be traced to a lack of will and military genius?  I once accused my son, an excellent tennis player in his youth, as lacking the killer instinct.  There is no such thing as a country half victorious in war, or an athlete in sport.

America is not into controlling land but rather into controlling minds with ideas of democracy and capitalism.  Since Americans, as a people, have been egocentric from the beginning, they have shown little tolerance and even less understanding of people of difference.  This is paradoxical because the United States is the melting pot of nations, but that melting pot is expected to brew only Americanism. 

That said I don’t differ with your sadness at our inclination to lead with weakness.  We are creatures of history and historians have given us much to ponder.  Perhaps it is not our weakness that is the deciding construct, but the clash of peoples and cultures that has changed the calculus of everyone's existence.

PERSPECTIVE

The discovery of the Americas in 1492 led to the dominance of Europe and changed the world forever technologically, culturally, economically and politically. We have that same wind at our backs today. 

Europe was not a main player in the world over the previous 500 years.  It was an agricultural society with small guilds, and dominated by the Catholic Church. 

The Conquistadors of Spain came to the Americas in the early sixteenth century with their technology, military weapons, agricultural knowledge, and disease.  Brutal conquests and widespread disease wiped out 95 percent of native populations.  This signaled the disappearance of several ancient civilizations in the New World. 

After the collapse of the Roman Empire, and the thousand years required to climb out of the Dark Ages, the Arabs brought their math, science and technology to Spain and across to Italy.  European traders used Arabic numerals to record their trades. 

Then the twelfth and thirteen century Crusaders encountered Arab military technology, the canon.  They took this technology back to Europe and perfected the rifle to fire small canon balls called bullets.  This was the weapon of choice of the Conquistadors.      

When Columbus came to America, he used triangular sails invented by the Arabs, and a compass invented by the Chinese.  His voyage and the subsequent voyages bridged the Atlantic Ocean with three continents, Europe, Africa and the Americas.  Trade flourished and the world population increased from 400 million (1492) to 900 million (1792). 

Sugar was a product brought back from the Middle East by the Crusaders.  Europe couldn’t grow sugar in its climate, but came to crave it.  So, the Conquistadors created sugar plantations in the New World.  Since they didn’t want to work the sugar cane fields, they imported slaves from West Africa.  This marked the beginning of the slave trade in America.

Sugar is an important brain food, which results in an appetite for it that is hard to satisfy.  Since the eighteenth century, it has become a Western addiction. 

OVER THE CENTURIES

In 1700, most Europeans lived simple lives with 70 percent of the work by human muscle power and wood the primary fuel. The use of coal as fuel replaced wood once forests were depleted.  Mining coal encountered water, which had to be pumped out.  In 1712, German Thomas Newcomen invented the first coal fueled steam driven internal combustion engine to pump this water out. 

This invention started a fast retreat from human muscle power to machine power, to the factory, to the steamboat, and to train driven steam powered locomotives. This accelerated trade and commerce, but also led to other geopolitical consequences.  Europe fragmented into nation states with political and technological revolutions, which would spark the American and French Revolution. 

In 1800, the hub of political, cultural and technical power was that of Europe with Europeans and its descendants controlling 35 percent of the land of the globe. 

In 1900, Europe controlled 85 percent of all land on earth.  Today Europe controls about 10 percent.

By the end of WWI, European dominance was in rapid retreat, less a product of war than a rise in the national conscience.  The other factor was technology.  The perfection of the gasoline fueled internal combustion engine, and mass production of automobiles, changed the social conscience in norms and morals with an appetite for freedom.  It also led to more deadly weapons of war. 

In the twentieth century, three times as many people were killed as a result of war than in the previous 2,000 years.  Despite this, the population has increased from 900 million in 1792 to 1.6 billion in 1900 to 6 billion by 2000 to roughly 7 billion projected in the early twenty first century.  We appear without a controllable conscience the puppet of technology, which commenced in 1492 and seems only to be accelerating exponentially.

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My purpose in sharing these essays on Soren Kierkegaard is to suggest that we are driven by our unconscious, something that he explored quite thoroughly, which seems beyond the grasp of the common humanity of common man.  Religion and militarism are expressions of this unruly unconscious but they deal with it in absolute terms.  We are slow to learn the world is not a zero sum game of absolutes.

Be always well,

Jim

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COMMENT/RESPONSE TO KIERKEGAARD -- SEVEN

KIERKEGAARD DEFENSE OF THE COMMON MAN -- SEVEN

 KIERKEGAARD DEFENSE OF THE COMMON MAN --SEVEN

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© June 2, 2012

You get a sense of how young the United States is when you realize you have lived one-third of its existence.  In that short time, America has been dominant more than a century.  Few societies have risen so quietly to explode so violently and reach global significance so quickly.  It was, and is a formula that would inevitably be copied.

As Niall Ferguson points out in his “Civilization of the West and the Rest” (2012), America’s influence extends from dress (bluejeans) to music (Rock & Roll) as well as economically and technologically to be nearly totally intrusive to the rest of the world. 

By the accident of those born in the 1930s, they have witnessed this theatre of the absurd.   I have attempted to chronicle this absurdity in a series of books, articles and missives on these pages over the last quarter century. 

Niall Ferguson uses the information age jargon of "aps" to point out the power and cultural shift from the West to the East.  My objective is more modest.  I chronicle America’s senseless retreat from its roots into complacency, senseless consumption, shameless indolence, reckless hubris, leaderless leadership and a hysterical mania for conformity. 

The American work ethic, still the best in the world, is only a shadow of it once was.  We have faded from Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America” (1834).   

This is the reason I have offered this series of essays on Soren Kierkegaard, who knew the price of cultural retreat a century and one half ago in his native Denmark.

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REALITY: TRIAL BY FIRE

Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855) in his short life was such a prolific author of pseudonymous works, edifying writing, and journals that contemporaries couldn’t keep abreast of this avalanche.  People were impressed or irritated at once, and felt little discomfort or need to change.  Most ignored what he said, and weren’t around when the wisdom of his thought came to influence Western Civilization from Europe to the United States, giving birth to philosophers, writers, politicians and the common man. 

What is ignored cannot be forgotten because reality is always a trial by fire.

Kierkegaard didn’t split hairs between what was legal and ethical but instead insisted that ethics was the individual’s responsibility and primary task in life.  We have made what is ethical and legal synonymous, but at our peril. 

Perhaps he had a premonition he would have a short life.  In any case, solitude and silence was the template used to discover the wisdom of the common man through an exploration of his own innermost self.  He knew those at the controls of his society were not the future, but the common people who tested the fire of reality on a daily basis. 

We think our times loaded with strive, but strive is relative and differs in character rather than content from one age to the next.  Kierkegaard understood this.  His secret was self-understanding, which was his guide to authentic man. 

He used satire as his weapon.  Satire, he understood, was the reverse of the emotional, but paradoxically, generated the more genuine feeling.  To speak negatively by attacking rather than praising a thing was his route to the positive. 

Put another way, what we say and choose to think might be precisely the opposite of what drives us to action.  Our motives are often a puzzle to us.  Feelings buried or disregarded find us immersed in what we would rather avoid.  Given this disposition, reality ultimately cuts us to the quick when we least expect it.  We can neither retreat from the concrete and the real, nor can we blame our circumstances on outside forces for very long until reality intervenes.

That said evidence of this inclination is found in what Kierkegaard coined “the public,” and Gustave Le Bon “the crowd,” and which is now manifested in the “Tea Party” and “Occupy Wall Street.”  

Kierkegaard did not see such movements leading to fellowship or harmony, but rather to discord, and a mania for the abstraction of “the public cause,” where ideas are diluted into unrealistic principles. 

He saw an army of journalists “deceiving the people, misleading and insulting the common man” by placating man’s revolutionary instincts with the ballot box.  It was not the ballot box, per se, but how it was used that infuriated him.  For this stand, many questioned his sincerity, including common people.  It didn’t help that he was inclined to be caustic and sarcastic.

Suspected of using the common man to conduct psychological experiments, which he was guilty of, he was nonetheless sincere, direct, and without ulterior motives.  When pressed, he claimed his pursuits were for the sake of everyman. 

Bold thinkers, and he surely was one, often are in trouble with dominant cultural institutions, even those they support.  Kierkegaard was a devout Christian but was at constant war with Christian self-deception.  He saw this in religious movements that swallowed up the individual with its norms so that the only identity allowed thereafter was that of the group.  He paid dearly for these Christian attacks. He writes in his defense:

“(In Copenhagen) I am regarded as a kind of Englishman, a half-mad eccentric, with whom every damned one of us, from the highest aristocrats to guttersnipes, imagine we can have a bit of fun.  My work as an author, that enormous productivity, the intensity of which, it seems to me, could move stones, the individual segments of which not one living writer can compare with: the writing is regarded as a sort of hobby, like fishing and such.  Those who could produce something themselves envy me and remain silent.  And the others understand nothing.  I do not receive the support of a single word from reviews and the like.  I am plundered by small-time prophets in foolish lectures as religious meetings and the like.  But mention me by name?  No, that isn’t necessary.”

We ponder Kierkegaard's wisdom with a sense that identity and individualism is no less threatened today for the common man.

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