Transcendentalism and America

During prison I again read Henry David Thoreau's Walden. Another old acquaintance I had let down. Another lesson I had forgotten. Now, I think of my motel room as my Walden Pond. We need time for contemplation, our moral lives need tending as much as our material lives.

But Transcendentalism has its critics and they do have valid points:

Today, this influence feels stronger than ever. Transcendentalist ideas, once radical and experimental, have long since been stripped of a singular ideological or political orientation. The broad tenets that many of these writers outlined in the nineteenth century—a faith in the sacred divinity of the individual and a generally distrustful stance toward public institutions—continue to animate American life and belief systems. Both libertarian anti-masking advocates and “resistance” liberals might conceivably trace their intellectual and emotional roots to insights articulated by American Transcendentalist writers. Many of us continue to feel moved by an idea that we might learn, as Thoreau put it, how to “live deep and suck out all the marrow of life,” even as those desires have become fully corporatized (#wellness). Transcendentalism tapped into an elemental American stew of naïveté, individualistic self-love, and longing that has never really loosened its grip....

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 Without these voices present in the book, it is hard for readers to fully grasp how, in their attempts to transcend the past rather than face it, both Emerson and Thoreau fit into a long tradition of American disavowal of that past. Transcendentalism’s longing individualism did more than just upend communal traditions: It soothed the very people who were enacting the harm and served as cover for this harm’s ongoing existence.

Gore Vidal wrote often enough about America's historical amnesia. I agree with him. I have tried to avoid this amnesia. Reading around in Orthodox Christian writings, I believe we are individuals living in a social world. We cannot fully remove ourselves from the world. Actually, that intertwining of individual and group is an idea I long held. What Orthodoxy added was that this world is not inherently evil. The universe may not care as it destroys us but it is not acting out of evil motives. Therefore, we must tend our moral/spiritual selves for the good of all. We need solitariness not to be selfish but to accomplish a wider good.

sch 4/28/22