Circles Squared

This summer I re-discovered one of (if not the) America’s greatest thinkers, Ralph Waldo Emerson. I picked up Emerson at a rather low period in my life this summer, one in which I needed some inspiration, some words of wisdom, some encouragement from somebody, and I found them in his words.

Emerson had a very difficult life, despite a seemingly cozy, entitled position. Because of his revolutionary and challenging viewpoints, he was ostracized for nearly 3 decades from his alma mater of Harvard before eventually being anointed with an honorary doctorate, once clearer minds prevailed and realized what a treasure he was for them.  Often that is the sign of a truly “great mind,” to be marginalized on knee-jerk reactions only to eventually be recognized by a measured response, though just as often this may come long after his or her death. For Emerson, it came within his lifetime, but he was no stranger to hardship and tragedy as death shrouded his life with many younger relatives and friends dying early deaths.

From those experiences though, Emerson did not shirk, nor did he resign himself to quiet desperation as many in his place would have. Somehow, somewhere, he delved deep within and found a strength to continue to write, to continue to speak, to continue to live, never outwardly bemoaning his fate, even after the death of his son Waldo from Scarlet Fever.

Instead, Emerson met each adversity with writing and lecturing. He did not withdraw from the marketplace, but rather used his strength to overcome his tragedies and to share that strength with others through his words.

In his essay “Circles,” Emerson writes:

Life is a series of surprises. We do not guess to-day the mood, the pleasure, the power of to-morrow, when we are building up our being. Of lower states, of acts of routine and sense, we can tell somewhat, but the masterpieces of God, the total growths, and universal movements of the soul, he hideth; they are incalculable.

For as far as I can tell, Emerson did not wallow in the Past, nor did he try to divine the Future, but rather was firmly rooted in the Present.

As with Kant’s concept of the impossibility for our human reason to comprehend the totality of Space and Time, Emerson gives us the same caveat. There are just some things we cannot do. That is not failure, but it is the necessary imperfection of life that we must encounter on a daily basis. We can respond with despair, or we can embrace the imperfection and move forward. In those moments of embrace, we can discover new worlds within our own, or maybe just see what is right in front of us all along.

Life is indeed a series of surprises. Although I don’t like to be “scared” (never was a fan of Haunted Houses), I embrace the surprises because as Emerson said, we cannot measure what tomorrow may bring. As such, to expend the energy of fretting about something we cannot know, is futile. A difficult, yet necessary lesson to learn, and one that needs to be refreshed on a daily basis, lest we drink the waters of the river Lethe and forget.

Death and the Madman, A Tragedy of Sorts

On January 3, 1889, Friedrich Nietzsche broke down.

Living in Torino (Turin), Italy, while sitting on the Piazzo Carlo Alberto, he cracked. He had long been plagued by migraines, possibly from a suspected illness ranging from diagnoses of syphilis to manic-depression to full-blown psychosis. No consensus has been reached.

In my romanticized version, I believe it was a philosophical crisis that broke him. Since the medical field has yet to come up with a more plausible cause, I will go with that.

I was talking with a friend about this event the other day, regarding the various contradictions of his life, as Nietzsche indeed is a self-fulfilling prophecy when it comes to being misunderstood. He welcomed it as much as he shunned it.

A favorite example of mine is the phrase that Nietzsche is most famous and simultaneously infamous for, that is, “Gott ist Tot!” (God is dead!) This comes from a scene in which a madman is running into a marketplace, proclaiming this shocking news, to which he is mocked and derided for his madness. This is often picked up as “proof” that Nietzsche was indeed the Anit-Christ or that he was an atheist, or it is picked up by angry, all-too-angry young people who don’t quite get the nuance of the situation.

None of them is accurate. Nietzsche proclaimed himself to be the Anti-Christian, in much the same way that his near contemporary Kierkegaard (a staunch believer of Christ, but also Anti-Christian) was against the hypocrisy of the Christian church in Europe near the turn of the 19th Century. Nietzsche wrestled with God, but did not deny It/Him/Her. That would be too simple.

The fuller version of that familiar phase is never, like the motto of Socrates , or at least seldomly repeated, namely “Gott ist tot! Gott bleibt tot! Und wir haben ihn getötet!” (God is dead! God remains dead! And, we have murdered him!). According to Nietzsche, the God of humans was created and murdered by humans, because we can only know what it is to be human, be-ing humans, and thus create a god in our image. Nietzsche was quite aware that there was something bigger, much bigger and more powerful than we are.

However, what he introduced is the oft-maligned, highly mis-contextualized and tragically mis-appropriated by the Nazis (Nietzsche was catatonic from 1889 until his death in 1900, long before the Nazis. His sister Elizabeth is responsible for that connection...though that is for another time...) concept of the Übermensch, or the Superman, though literally the Overman.

In short, for Nietzsche, this meant that humans could be better than what we are, but only one person at a time, and the only person who could better him or herself, was, you guessed it, yourself. No one else can make you better or worse. You are responsible for your self, and you can be better. The name comes from the idea of over-coming your weakness. For Nietzsche, the human being was a work of art in progress and the artist was the individual. He had high hopes, perhaps too high, for humans, and in January of 1889, I believe that illusion had its fatal and chronic consequences.

As the story goes, Nietzsche saw a man beating a tired and sick draught horse on the square. The horse was shrieking, but was too feeble to fight. The man continued to beat the horse mercilessly. Nobody moved to help or intervene. Not my business. Nietzsche is reported to have run to the horse, and embraced it, as it died. Although Nietzsche lived for another 11 years, he never uttered an intelligible word after that incident, and relatively soon thereafter spent his remaining life in a drooling, catatonic paralysis.

I believe that Nietzsche saw man for whom he was, just a man. It was too much. This was not the man who could over-come himself. It was a creature that would beat a dying horse to death with his bare hands while the rest of humanity walked idly by.

Yesterday, just days after having this conversation about Nietzsche’s breakdown, I saw an article in the online Belgium newspaper. It was about a video, which was included and that I watched, from US troops in Afghanistan. It is only thirty seconds. It is nauseating. An infantry man bludgeons a goat to death with an aluminum bat. You can hear each metallic clang, followed by someone saying “what the fuck?” about the damn, stubborn goat who keeps getting up, staggering, twitching and going ultimately collapsing into a seizure. Cheers from young Afghan boys fill the air and “manly” guffaws and encouragement from the Troops goads the assailant on. Finally, the goat stops twitching after several more direct blows to its skull, rounded of by a chorus raucous of cheers, high-fives and hell yeahs.

That is man.

Tragedy originally means “goat song” in ancient Greek as it represented the darkest in humanity, the saturnine, the sadistic, and the satyr.

That is the message that some of our Super-men are sending to the world.  I don’t care if it is isolated. It is part of our reality, as humans, and we need to wonder at what we see.

WTF People?

Remembering Tragedy

I flew with my five year-old daughter from Brussels Zaventem to the newly refurbished Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport in Amarillo, Texas, where incidentally the album, "The Best of Bread's" inner spread photo was taking in the 70's. Looks quite different from that old black and white album jacket that I have.

Husband, who was a commander of the Space Shuttle Columbia when it exploded in 2003, was honored earlier this week as the new Amarillo terminal was unveiled. You could still smell the "new car" smell of the carpet, walking out into the 97-degree Fahrenheit, twilight atmosphere. Quite a change from the significantly colder, wetter climes of Belgium that we had left some twenty hours prior.

Appropriate timing for Husband's tribute as the Space Shuttle Atlantis marked an end of an era last week as the final Space Shuttle mission was launched. The end of the Space Shuttle is truly a demarcation of time for me. I was born in 1969, the year of the Lunar landing, which for some is the greatest achievement that America has ever had during the heated Iron-Curtain era space race with the Russians, set upon a world stage.

For my generation, it was the Space Shuttle. And, unfortunately the explosions, for tragedy often leaves a deeper impression than triumph.

I remember very well when Space Shuttle Challenger exploded. I was a junior at Amarillo High School, and we had a moment of silence over the intercom. It was an odd experience for us all. Normally, in a "typical" high school, straight out of Grease or, closer to home, small-town Texas à la Friday Night Lights, announcements on the intercom where usually times to chat, goof off, ignore, or whatnot. But, that day, an eerie silence covered the halls. I remember one of my favorite teachers from Junior High, Mr. Devoe, had wanted to be a teacher selected to be on the Shuttle. That fatal day, Christa McAuliffe, the teacher picked for the Teacher in Space program, died in the explosion, along with the six other crew members, who have come to be known as American Heroes for their sacrifice.

When the Columbia exploded, I also remember quite well where I was and what I was doing. I was at a water polo tournament in Florida, acting as coach and player.

We had flown all of the way over from Texas for this event. No one really knew who this team from Austin was. We blew them away, until the game that counted. We lost the one game we needed to win to put us into the finals, against a B-team, whose A-team we had already beaten. We choked. As a coach, you take responsibility for your team's loss, even when it is not your fault. It is not the refs' fault, nor the fans, but you, the coach, must shoulder the burden. As Hopper from "A Bug's Life" says, "First rule of management, it's always your fault."

As we were transferring planes in Houston, we passed a crowd of onlookers watching the World Cup Womens' soccer finals, and the US team dismantling within seconds during the penalty kicks. Lots of disappointment in the terminal. The news commentary afterwards was essentially that even though it was a loss for the US, it was a gain for soccer "appreciation." On small penalty kick for woman, one giant leap for soccer...Perhaps, Americans are fickle fans with women's sports, and soccer.

After the disappointing loss in Florida, I remember talking with my team, who all had their tails tucked under their legs, like dejected puppy dogs who had just been caught peeing on the carpet, again. I was also going through a very difficult time as a teacher, as one of my favorite students had just been admitted to psychiatric hospital back in Austin that I had visited the day before we left.

I told my team that there were far worse losses and defeats in life. People were currently picking up body parts in a field from the Space Shuttle's second disaster, and one of my most cherished students was currently so doped up on anti-psychotic medication that I barely recognized this brilliant young man any longer. Perspective changes a great deal of self-pity.

In September 2001, I remember teaching my course, The Curse of Socrates, and the events of September 11th became a crucial component of that course. Walking into class that day, literally minutes after seeing the second tower fall, I walked into a room of complete and utter shock. The kids were sullen, speechless, bawling their eyes out. One latecomer, Mark, the only student who did not condemn Socrates to death when we voted after reading the Apology, saw the seen, had not heard the news and quipped, "Woah, I need to watch TV more often, I guess."

We talked about everything that happened. It was a no-holds-barred discussion. Anything went. One young man decided on the spot to join the Army, which he did. Others decided to change their majors. Many things were decided in the next 90 minutes, their lives had changed forever. They had grown up in a matter of minutes from goofy college kids to adults. Without fail, each one of them later recounted to me that every other class they had that day had gone on that day as if nothing had happened. Nobody talked about what had happened that morning. I was stunned.

People often deal with tragedy with the most damaging way of all, we ignore it. However, later, the memorials do come. But, have the emotions already passed?