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April 10, 2010
What Would Emerson Say?
Richard G Geldard
As an author of several books on the life and works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, I find myself wondering, when American culture and politics shift and change dramatically, how the sage of Concord would respond. He was, after all, one of our founding thinkers, writing essays half the year on all matters public and private and during the other half traveling the country giving talks. His subjects were often the practical matters of getting on in life, how we are to cope with disaster, how to avoid financial ruin and how to find fitting work.
Generally, Emerson was conservative in matters of public policy, following his friend Henry Thoreau in saying that government is best that governs least. But he was also vehement on guaranteeing basic human rights, urging the government to set firm policies on protecting native American tribes from forced removal from their lands and taking a firm stand on slavery, an issue he took up with President Lincoln as war loomed. Indeed, some of his most passionate writing after 1850 centered on slavery.
Most often a rational writer not given to passionate utterance, he sometimes let loose the reins of his outrage and care for the human condition with language surprising for a retiring scholar and former Unitarian minister. One such outburst came in an essay entitled “Considerations On The Way,” from a series published in 1860 in “Conduct of Life.” Here is the relevant passage: Continue reading What would Emerson Say?
December 3, 2009
Speak Without Interruption is a site where writers can post their thoughts, ideas, opinions, and beliefs regarding any topic or category that interests them. Our site is a completely impartial place where writers can interact with other writers, and viewers, in an atmosphere of free speech and openness. We welcome all [...]
July 21, 2009
You Are Brilliant, and the Earth is Hiring by Paul Hawken
Paul Hawken’s commencement speech at the University of Portland, Oregon, on May 3, 2009, is one for the record books.
Paul Hawken is a renowned entrepreneur, visionary environmental activist, and author of many books, most recently Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw It Coming. He was presented with an honorary doctorate of humane letters by University of Portland president Father Bill Beauchamp, C.S.C., on May 3, 2009, when he delivered this superb speech.
When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” Boy, no pressure there.
But let’s begin with the startling part. Hey, Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation – but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement.
Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.
This planet came with a set of operating instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, and don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food – but all that is changing.
There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING. The earth couldn’t afford to send any recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done. Continue reading Your Are Brilliant, and the Earth by Hiring Paul Hawken
June 24, 2009
What is this body to me?
by Richard Geldard
Imagine for a moment that we’re in a graduate seminar in philosophy, sitting around a long table, with a professor at one end. “The topic today,” she begins, “is the human body, specifically, your own body. I’d like to know how you think of your body, if you think about it.”
Silence, until finally one student says, “Well, I am this body. It’s who and what I am: thoughts, feelings, bodily functions, all of it.”
“Ok,” says the professor, “that suggests that you’re a naturalist, or what we call naive Realism. The naturalist sees the so-called “real” world and identifies himself with it. You consider the physicality of the body and identify with that as well.” Anyone else?
Another student. “I don’t think of my body that way. It feels detached from my mind, although I guess my mind is part of it. But it feels different from what the body does, from feelings and actions, like running or sleeping. The mind is separate from all that.”
Continue reading What is this body to me?
June 17, 2009
Death in the Control Group
Something has been bothering me for a long time: the fate of people and animals who are on the wrong end of a scientific control group. Here’s a piece from the NY Times for June 17 about the loss of control in people’s lives:
In a study of elderly nursing home patients , one group was told they could decide how their room would be arranged, and could choose a plant to care for. Another group had their rooms set up for them and a plant chosen and tended to for them. Eighteen months later 15 percent of the patients in the group given control had died, compared with 30 percent in the passive group.
Now I’m pretty sure that the psychologists running this little experiment had a pretty good idea what they were looking for and even what the result would be. I’m thinking about the 15% of the people in the passive group who died because they were not given any control over their environment, that is, assuming that the other 15% would have died just in the course of the time allotted for the experiment. Continue reading Death in the Control Group
May 6, 2009
Promotions & Awards -
Richard Geldhard:
Larson Publications is pleased to announce a new book by
Richard Geldard
Emerson and the Dream of America Finding Our Way to a New And Exceptional Age “As readers have discovered in the classic book, The Spiritual Teachings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Richard Geldard is unmatched as a [...]
March 26, 2009
No Laffer Matter
by Richard G. Geldard
Back in the late Seventies (that fast-fading century), I was toiling in the administration of a school in Southern California where a child of Arthur Laffer’s was enrolled. A group of us used to sit around the faculty lounge debating the famous Laffer Curve and its implications. Laffer, who was then teaching economics at USC, was beginning to make a name for himself as a supply-side economist, and unfortunately for us, he caught the attention of Ronald Reagan and Dick Cheney, who bought the notion of trickle down theory, and the rest, as we say, is history.
According to Laffer’s now famous maxim, there existed an optimum tax rate that if applied correctly, would yield the maximum revenue to the government. According to the Laffer Curve, the rate in the Carter administration was much too high, especially for the top ten percent of incomes in the population. Continue reading No Laffer Matter
March 25, 2009
(Richard Geldard was one of SWI’s initial contributors – we felt our viewers might be interested in Richard’s interview, below, with Arthur Paul Patterson)
EMERSON SCHOLAR Richard Geldard has authored three books on Emerson. He was interviewed by Arthur Paul Patterson, editor of Watershed Online.
Watershed Online: Emerson started out as a minister in the Unitarian Church and gradually distanced himself from all forms of institutional Christianity. What were the causes of his disaffection? How did his reaction to, and assumption of, his Christian past influence his Transcendentalism?
Continue reading Interview of Richard Geldard by Watershed Online
February 18, 2009
Emerson’s Questions by Richard Geldard Ralph Waldo Emerson was one of America’s founding thinkers and one of his central concerns was to wake us up, to help us become conscious of ourselves in our environment and to resist the easy conformity that our society demands. As part of that effort at awakening, he posed [...]
February 13, 2009
Everything Has Changed by Richard Geldard
Albert Einstein once said, “Everything has changed except our way of thinking.” He was talking about the aftermath of Relativity and the end of the Newtonian clockwork universe. What Einstein showed us is that space tells matter how to move and matter tells space how to bend. [...]
February 11, 2009
In Plato’s “Apology,” in which Socrates pleads his case before the Athenian Assembly, he is quoted as saying, “The unexamined life is not worth living” (or worth ‘having’ in most Greek manuscripts). He was trying to convince the Athenians that a consciously lived life was not just advantageous but necessary. Philosophy and the examined [...]
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Books by SWI Contributors
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Human Mind and Internet Mind
Human Mind and Internet Mind
by Richard G. Geldard
It appears we human beings are having a crisis of identity. The culprit is the Internet. In the current issue of Harper’s Jaron Lanier, author of You are Not a Gadget has this to say about the web: “…it is the idea that the Internet as a whole is coming alive and turning into a superhuman creature.” Lanier’s book comes out at a time when the Internet is becoming the focus of serious philosophical investigation. On Edge.org, John Brockman’s informal collection of some of the world’s interesting minds, the current question is “Has the Internet changed the way you think?”
Brockman begins the inquiry by quoting the avant garde musician John Cage as proposing “There’s only one mind, the one we all share.” One thinks of Jung’s collective unconscious becoming conscious.
The one mind idea, however, is a very ancient one, emerging from the Hindu Vedas and the Pre-Socratic Greek thinkers. Historically, it comes under the heading of Panpsychism, which according to – you guessed it – the Internet, is “the doctrine that mind is a fundamental feature of the world which exists throughout the universe.” Another example is the first sentence of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay “History:” “There is one mind common to all individual men.” And Emerson meant a universal mind. Continue reading Human Mind and Internet Mind