The smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times
As I prepare to move abroad in July, to a locale not yet chosen, I have been rereading the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson is among the Old Masters that I reread for familiar wisdom, along with Lao Tzu and Hunter S. Thompson, but I last read RWE at length during the summer of 2001 as I prepared to move back to the US from Stockholm. The ease with which Emerson dismisses society’s judgements is inspiring as I hear the complaints politely rephrased as questions from people who are already happy or secure with their station and location in life. I admit I might not even realize if I found such a place, but I’ll definitely know when it is time to move on.
So here are some passages I found too good not to post:
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
In this kingdom of illusions we grope eagerly for stays and foundations. There is none but a strict and faithful dealing at home, and a severe barring out of all duplicity or illusion there. Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth. I look upon the simple and childish virtues of veracity and honesty as the root of all that is sublime in character. Speak as you think, be what you are, pay your debts of all kinds….
There is no chance, and no anarchy, in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere. The young mortal enters the hall of the firmament: there is he alone with them alone, they pouring on him benedictions and gifts, and beckoning him up to their thrones. On the instant, and incessantly, fall snow-storms of illusions. He fancies himself in a vast crowd which sways this way and that, and whose movement and doings he must obey: he fancies himself poor, orphaned, insignificant. The mad crowd drives hither and thither, now furiously commanding this thing to be done, now that. What is he that he should resist their will, and think or act for himself? Every moment, new changes, and new showers of deceptions, to baffle and distract him. And when, by and by, for an instant, the air clears, and the cloud lifts a little, there are the gods still sitting around him on their thrones, — they alone with him alone.
books &ideas posted by: dan @ 11 Jun 2008 7:57
Posted：13 Jun 2008 3:52 1. By：JC
The past and present wiltI have filld them, emptied them,
And proceed to fill my next fold of the future.
Listener up there! Here, you! What have you to confide to me?
Look in my face, while I snuff the sidle of evening;
Talk honestlyno one else hears you, and I stay only a minute longer.
Do I contradict myself?
Very well, then, I contradict myself;
(I am largeI contain multitudes.)
I concentrate toward them that are nighI wait on the door-slab.
Who has done his days work? Who will soonest be through with his supper?
Who wishes to walk with me?
Will you speak before I am gone? Will you prove already too late?
–Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass (1900)