#97 AMERICANA

AMERICAN JOURNEY REFLECTED IN THE MANNER LIFE IS CONDUCTED

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

W

hy we are who we are and become who we are is often left to the unpredictability of any given circumstance, perhaps involving fortune today and, more often than not, eventually the recuring misfortune the next day.

Tragedy too often defines who we are even more so than those positive influences in our lives that encourage individualism within a shared community.

People often mirror success but in other respects people tend to move forward and find the best way forward from adversity through a path of self-discovery.

In all cases, hard work often becomes a deciding factor. And in these unfortunate times, whenever and wherever misfortune finds us, people endeavor to construct a justice out of an injustice, a right from a wrong and a clean start after muddy waters.

The strongest individuals among us survive through self-reliance in a dialectic dance with the earth and all circumstances.

Individual consciousness may be derived from the outcome of our actions in this constant struggle with the circumstances found on earth at any given time. This philosophy bodes well for those who face adversity because outcome is more important than the tragedy of life‘s misfortune.

People act in a certain way and find meaning in the results of their actions.

PEOPLE FIND MEANING IN THE RESULTS

A belief in God, for example, gives life meaning by influencing everything else within the range of individual perceptions. The consequential actions of a believer therefore become colored with metaphysical thoughts in how to act and what choices to make along the way that generate particular results in which the individual finds further meaning.  God is good. God is great often regardless of the outcome.

The metaphysics of why humanity exists on this world, though, often become sidelined to pragmatism and a bit of game theory estimating positive end results. The end result is measured in part by the choices made to get there.

Americana has become a product of this pragmatism as well as this positivism meant to compel desired outcomes.

People proceed under the compulsion that in America the difficult journey will be well rewarded. The worst possible decision made by an individual is not to try at all.

This frontier mentality is very much still in the consciousness of Americans, changed through various incantations to become a vibrant capitalism in which not everyone succeeds, but those people who do succeed are well rewarded.

The initial escapism from religious persecution in Europe gives way to the positivism required to survive in the new wilderness, just one more winter without a harvest – and just arriving on the shores of New England is not in itself quite good enough, even though something special in the character of the person is required to make the long journey across the ocean in the first place.

Similarly, economic refugees arriving each day, pushed by the escapism that has compelled them this far north, eventually give way to the practical necessity of surviving on the journey through the northern ‘frontier’.

This earthly pragmatism is just one part of Native American philosophies derived from living experiences on the Earth. And then in turn, each new generation of Native Americans becomes shaped by nature through the teachings and reteaching of those philosophies. People are part of nature, as much as the turtle and the owl, who find the best end result by practicing those natural outcomes they can witness and experience for themselves.

The prescription for survival is already written in nature with a distinct morality of winners and losers. This moral universe constructed under the moon and stars does soon enough become lost under the spotlight to carney tricks. The moral philosopher becomes part minstrel as the climate deteriorates.

The earth becomes damaged and suffers as a result. And the creatures gradually begin to disappear. The buffalo slaughter was, after all, a bit of a carney trick as part of the broader wild west show.

For sure, the Founding Fathers of America were philosophers crafting the relationships between free individuals and the state at a time when the whole world sought definition on those terms. The monarchy had been by destiny and design imposing a strict inequality of the people.

Philosophers sought purpose in real politic, and stayed there in that position as if struck in place by a lightning bolt – perhaps Benjamin Franklin was the first real magician performing tricks with electricity under the white circus tent.

The American Revolution defined new terms for America with such reach and depth as to ignite the French in their tinder box of ideas involving liberty, equality, fraternity as the rising middle class fell into Revolution a few years later after the fires were all but burnt out off the coast of New York, Massachusetts, Virginia and Georgia by 1783.

Monarchical rule dissolved soon enough all across Europe like lumps of sugar in hot tea.

And a new Americana emerged, with the politician becoming, perhaps begrudgingly, part philosopher and part celebrity, part pragmatist and positivist, and above all God fearing.

The politicians transformed more and more into pure celebrities. And so, the rest of America found their philosophers there as well.

The contemplative life may be impractical but thought and work still have a role to play together to muster a purpose for all of it. If this task is left to Artificial Intelligence, humanity will eventually become led by a bland puree of information to which humans will become numb and stop thinking for themselves.

The day may arrive soon enough when an artificial intelligence machine explains away the universe like no one before them, but there will still exist the need to explain the unwritten world yet to be.

Even with the rise of Artificial Intelligence, America does still have need for an old school intellectual, I’m sure of it.

Consumers are already almost there with the influence of branding. And even fashion designers find profitability in producing multiple copies for the masses – instead of placing themselves on standby as the copycat machinists find the price points for much cheaper reproductions.

TALENT HAS ALREADY MOVED TO CELEBRITY

But you know, in these electronic media times, talent has already moved to celebrity and then celebrity to celebrity a long time ago.

Poets found song lyrics more profitable and the celebrity that came along with that mass publishing of ideas a lot more fun than the solitude found in putting pen to paper under dripping candlelight. The fame and currency that comes with celebrity is much more compelling, like the difference between being a paper clip and a fridge magnet.

In these hi-tech times, a lot of talent is moving to the design of algorithms that control or will control if they already have not, the on-line world – mesmerized like looking too closely and for too long at a Jackson Pollack painting.

The power discovered in having the ability to manipulate the online world is seductive, with the online world becoming exponentially dominant on the earth, and increasingly influencing individuals to act in a certain way in the real world.

Black civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr and feminist Gloria Steinem blended ideas and politics to create compelling oratories. These iconic civil rights identities dissolved soon enough into celebrity which more often benefitted their cause in a kind of fast food franchise way, but in the end, limited themselves and their cause by becoming popular caricature.

It is not that these people were not philosophers, but that people chose not to call them as such, choosing not to look at them as such, making them, as a result, something less.

Decidedly then, the linguists became the new vanguard intellectuals. The audience was listening to the radio instead of painting lilies and sunflowers. Then the audience began watching and listening to television, instead of reading American philosopher William James.

The linguists defined the fascination with electronic media as a bit of social engineering driven by the new electronic machines as opposed to the operators of the machines being compelled by what the audience wanted. Then, the linguists by happenstance also created a handbook on how to manipulate the medium.

Andy Warhol combined the electronic message with art, by creating the first really decriminalized commodification of art in the electronic media age.

It is not that there aren’t any, it is more so that no one recognizes them as such.

Only a minstrel would seek political power over fame and fortune unless power, fame and fortune could be found all together under the same white circus tent. These political passions, confused under the spotlight with narcissism and greed, betray the idea of America.

Marshall McLuhan foreshadowed the treason of the intellectuals who would manipulate the electronic message for specific purposes – almost becoming message bearers for a generation who stopped reading for themselves.

But then, eventually, even the linguists became fascinating enough to be sent on the talk show junket.

American Indian Thought, Edited by Anne Waters, Malden, Blackwell Publishing, 2004. Philosophy Americana, by Douglas R. Anderson, New York, Fordham University Press, 2006. The Treason of the Intellectuals, Julien Benda, New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 1969. Does ‘consciousness’ exist?, William James, Classic American Philosophers, Edited by Max H. Fisch, New York, Fordham University Press, 1996.