-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of Doug Henwood Sent: Thursday, February 03, 2005 2:17 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] God's humor [was RE: Bulletin: Nothinginthosesquare pants!]
Carl Remick wrote:
>Hmm, I can't see how RWE's "I am nothing" is "all about the
>disappearance of the *rest* of humanity"; how it translates into
>"some fanatasy of self-sufficiency"; or how it points the way to the
>America, Fuck Yeah! fever that grips us now.
Here's the passage again:
>Crossing a bare common, in snow puddles, at twilight, under a
>clouded sky, without having in my thoughts any occurrence of special
>good fortune, I have enjoyed a perfect exhilaration.I am glad to the
>brink of fear. In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the
>snake his slough , and at what period soever of life, is always a
>child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations
>of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is
>dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a
>thousand years. In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I
>feel that nothing can befall me in life, -- no disgrace, no
>calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair.
>Standing on the bare ground, -- my head bathed by the blithe air,
>and uplifted into infinite space, -- all mean egotism vanishes. I
>become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents
>of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle
>of God. The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and
>accidental: to be brothers, to be acquaintances, -- master or
>servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of
>uncontained and immortal beauty.In the wilderness, I find something
>more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil
>landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man
>beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.
He's "in the woods." There's no one around. The name of "the nearest friend sounds...foreign and accidental" - society is nothing but "a trifle and a disturbance." Can it be much clearer than that?
"I am nothing" is followed by an identification with nothing less than the universe - a nice instance of the narcissistic personality, with feelings of emptiness defended against by grandiosity. At the end, nature becomes a projection of "man" - or in this case, Representative Ralph.
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It doesn't follow that the narcissism is a result of the experience Emerson is attempting to describe. Exhibit A of a non-narcissist:
http://www.pansocal.org/einstein.html But there is a third stage of religious experience which belongs to all of them, even though it is rarely found in a pure form: I shall call it cosmic religious feeling. It is very difficult to elucidate this feeling to anyone who is entirely without it, especially as there is no anthropomorphic conception of God corresponding to it.
The individual feels the futility of human desires and aims and the sublimity and marvelous order which reveal themselves both in nature and in the world of thought. Individual existence impresses him as a sort of prison and he wants to experience the Universe as a single significant whole. The beginnings of cosmic religious feeling already appear at an early stage of development, e.g., in many of the Psalms of David and in some of the Prophets. Buddhism, as we have learned especially from the wonderful writings of Schopenhauer, contains a much stronger element of this.
The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling, which knows no dogma and no God conceived in man's image; so that there can be no church whose central teachings are based on it. Hence it is precisely among the heretics of every age that we find men who were filled with this highest kind of religious feeling and were in many cases regarded by their contemporaries as atheists, sometimes also as saints. Looked at in this light, men like Democritus, Francis of Assisi and Spinoza are closely akin to one another.
How can cosmic religious feeling be communicated from one person to another, if it can give rise to no definite notion of a God and no theology? In my view, it is the most important function of art and science to awaken this feeling and keep it alive in those who are receptive to it.
[snip]