Let me quickly introduce this by saying that after letting the election outcome settle in for a couple of hours, after wondering if anybody really ‘won’ anything – i.e.
Through most of Canada’s history, it has had at least one and often two strong national parties to choose from. Three straight minority governments have laid plain the void that exists today. While the Conservatives must focus first and foremost on the business of government, they must join the Liberals in considering where they have gone wrong. [Globe and Mail]
– I started to worry that the biggest winner of the night might turn out to be the cynicism meme. This silly election is just one of many reasons to become more cynical (I’m not saying we should become more cynical, not at all; I’m just saying it’s becoming much more difficult to not be cynical).
Among other problems, the TSX, like the rest of the world’s market indexes, might still swing wildly this week for no other reason than people are worried that it could (Cass Sunstein had a great column a couple of days ago at the New Republic on how “cascading information” works like that) and within the context of global events, I feel kind of guilty that we (and more importantly, our politicians) were goofing around with this election while there are many serious challenges to address.
Just as these thoughts entered my head I stumbled on this surprising column by Harold Bloom in the New York Times, on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s response to a financial crisis in his own time, with a historical introduction:
The bank failures of 1837 were followed by high unemployment that lasted into 1843. Foreign over-investment (chiefly British) had augmented the bubble, which burst when the wily English pulled their money out. President Martin Van Buren, a Jacksonian Democrat, refused any government involvement in a bailout, and so was widely blamed for the panic. Van Buren was defeated in his re-election bid in 1840 by his Whig opponent, William Henry Harrison.
Of course, it hasn’t got as bad (yet) now as it was then, but Emerson’s words are still deeply, frighteningly resonant in our own day:
“I see a good in such emphatic and universal calamity as the times bring, that they dissatisfy me with society… The present generation is bankrupt of principles and hope, as of property. I see man is not what man should be… Behold the boasted world has come to nothing. Prudence itself is at her wits’ end.”
Most importantly, and encouragingly, he looked at that as an opportunity:
“Let me begin anew. Let me teach the finite to know its master. Let me ascend above my fate and work down upon my world.”
I’ve dealt with Emerson’s idea of history already. His political theory (as summarized by Bloom), the way he intellectualized “ascendence above fate” in more practical civic affairs, is newer to me:
Beyond literary tradition, Emerson has maintained an effect upon American politics and sociology. The oddity of Emerson in the public sphere is that he has the power to foster fresh versions of the two camps he termed the Party of Memory and the Party of Hope. The political right appropriates his values of remembering private interests as part of the public good, while the left follows his exaltation of the American Adam, a New Man in a New World of hope. The rivalry between these polarized camps is very much apparent in this election.
That duality reminds me of Edmund Burke, the great British politician and commentator on the revolutions in America and France, who I’ve picked up a bit recently, and whose latest biography is reviewed here (I found both Bloom’s column and the Burke review, at Bookforum; the Sunstein piece was there too). Compare the polarities between the last passage from Bloom and this one from the Burke review, quoting Winston Churchill:
“His soul revolted against tyranny, whether it appeared in the aspect of a domineering Monarch and a corrupt court and parliamentary system, or whether, mouthing the watchwords of a non-existent liberty, it towered up against him in the dictation of a brutal mob and wicked sect. No one can read the Burke of Liberty and the Burke of Authority without feeling that here was the same man pursuing the same ends, seeking the ideals of society and government, and defending them from assaults, now from one extreme, now from the other.”
We need this kind of “integrated thinking” (as U of T’s Rotman dean, Roger Martin calls it) now more than ever. This is what I was getting at in my Scorpion and the Frog post, about the difficulty of getting big banks to behave nicely, even when the government is wheelbarrowing taxpayer-backed cash through the front door. And it’s what I was trying to get at in my New Pragmatist essay, especially here:
A ‘pragmatic plasticity’ is required to be both tough and soft – rigid at times and malleable at others. On one hand we need to use hard facts and rules to avoid or overcome subjective excesses. On the other hand, the desired aim of life is subjective well-being and freedom.
So I’m going to suggest a couple of terms to describe two complementary aspects of the pragmatic approach to working, learning, and living: ‘open objectivity’ and ‘tempered subjectivity.’ Tempered subjectivity is the supposed end, and open objectivity is the means to that end.
Still much more to be said but I’m not making much more progress at this absurdly late (early) hour of the night/morning. Gotta take it one day at a time, prudently developing ideas and insights to address the great challenges and opportunities of our age.
One last thought, regarding how Emerson managed to be optimistic about the economic crisis: to put it simply, I suspect he loved the challenge.
I might just be projecting my own attitude on him, but consider it pragmatically: what are the practical costs and benefits of loving these challenges?
This is why I’m always droning on about “the love of learning”: I’ve worked it out as both a universal lubricant and solvent. But it isn’t an inert principle or idea. It lives, which is why I think it’ll work.
