[lbo-talk] Maximise or satisfice? (was:stupid americans?

Carl Remick carlremick at hotmail.com
Wed Sep 29 13:39:25 PDT 2004



>From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>
>Carl Remick wrote:
>
>>[Caution: extreme flight of fancy follows] I think one reason is that the
>>national cult of individualism has decayed into easily manipulable mass
>>narcissism (a la Christopher Lasch) and lost any of the positive qualities
>>individualism can have
>
>>That line of thought might sound screwy, but at least in part it has had
>>some popular resonance in US history. I would cite the leading example of
>>Ralph Waldo Emerson. RWE might have been Mr. Frosty Freeze in temperament
>>(as Doug would surely agree)
>
>Not only that - he was our ur-narcissist! In the dissertation I never
>wrote, I was planning to examine the transformations of narcissism in
>American culture from Emerson though Whitman and onto Stevens and Ashbery.
>RWE's was more "heroic" and "imperial" than Stevens and Ashberry's
>interiorized and aestheticized one, but they're all part of the same
>lineage. Ralph's notions of self-creation and self-reliance are largely
>bereft of any idea of the social, and his individual exists almost in
>opposition to the social.

Au contraire, Emerson was the guy who said, "Every man I meet is in some way my superior." RWE was fixated on social harmony and mindful of the fact that society as a whole loses when any one individual does not fulfill his/her potential. E.g., from Emerson's essay "Uses of Great Men":

... great men:- the word is injurious. Is there caste? ... The idea dignifies a few leaders, who have sentiment, opinion, love, self-devotion; and they make war and death sacred;- but what for the wretches whom they hire and kill? The cheapness of man is every day's tragedy. It is as real a loss that others should be as low as that we should be low; for we must have society.

Is it a reply to these suggestions to say, Society is a Pestalozzian school: all are teachers and pupils in turn? We are equally served by receiving and by imparting. Men who know the same things are not long the best company for each other. But bring to each an intelligent person of another experience, and it is as if you let off water from a lake by cutting a lower basin. It seems a mechanical advantage, and great benefit it is to each speaker, as he can now paint out his thought to himself. We pass very fast, in our personal moods, from dignity to dependence. And if any appear never to assume the chair, but always to stand and serve, it is because we do not see the company in a sufficiently long period for the whole rotation of parts to come about. As to what we call the masses, and common men,- there are no common men. All men are at last of a size; and true art is only possible on the conviction that every talent has its apotheosis somewhere. Fair play and an open field and freshest laurels to all who have won them! But heaven reserves an equal scope for every creature. Each is uneasy until he has produced his private ray unto the concave sphere and beheld his talent also in its last nobility and exaltation....

<http://www.emersoncentral.com/greatmen.htm>

Carl



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