Proud to be an American?

In a recent ethics class one of the student presentations had been about Injustice and the State, and the discussion, naturally, slid over into torture and state-sponsored terrorism. As usual then, at least for those who know me even the slightest bit, at the end of the presentation Teacher held forth on the unacceptable-ness (an Aikenesque neologism) of State involvement in committing acts of injustice, and especially on the subject of America’s participation in such activities… complete with the usual, “We (i.e., Americans) should be better than that!,” and all—the whole enchilada. So it caught me a bit short when, on the way out at the end of class, a student asked me if I were still proud to be an American.

            I admit—the question took me by surprise. At first, looking at her a bit askance and askew as is my teacherly (another A-n) wont when unsure about whether I am being mocked, I could not decide whether or not she was being facetious with her question, as I had been cranking rather unambiguously on the U.S. critique-machine; so, frankly, irony could certainly have been in her mind. Even now I am undecided about whether the student intended to serve up a cold portion of irony with this question.

            At any rate, what she got from me in response was still my philosophical stock in trade answer – I am only proud of things when I actually have personal merit or involvement. As an erstwhile disciple of that old Stoic Slave-Master, Epictetus, there can be no other possible answer to such a question than his:

6. “Don't be prideful with any excellence that is not your own. […] What, then, is your own? Only your reaction to the appearances of things. Thus, when you behave conformably to nature in reaction to how things appear, you will be proud with reason; for you will take pride in some good of your own.”

Or again:

44. … These reasonings are connected: "I am richer than you, therefore my property is greater than yours;" "I am more eloquent than you, therefore my style is better than yours." But you, after all, are neither property nor style (as rendered by Ms. Carter on the MIT site).”

So the simple, and philosophically correct answer to my student’s question is that no, I am not in the least proud of some “condition” over which I had no control. My birthright is neither “mine” nor my “possession” in any normal or meaningful sense of that word, so it would be philosophically inappropriate for me to make it a subject of my pride. It is this same Stoic common-sensical (yet another A-n) critique that also makes social constructs such as {Patriotism + Pride=American value} so patently and philosophically meaningless.

            Being proud of where I am born is akin to being proud of having naturally curly hair or good skin… these are not personal “accomplishments” that demonstrate any particular character on my part. So one who is proud, or not proud, or who has any strong opinion whatsoever about where he is born, is exactly like the little mole who wanted to know who did a poo on his head, and who then proceeded to walk around beshat (beshatten? beshitten? beshyted?) for the entire duration of his investigation. What is frankly important here is not whose business it is, but what I personally do(o) about it now that I am besplattered. So let us choose to be different from our little molish friend, and, by asking the correct questions up front, try to draw out the best possible conclusions. Chances are much better that we will act well if we begin our quest by thinking well.

Answer by List. Perhaps there are other philosophical considerations relevant to my student’s question. How might it be meaningful to make the connection between personal and individual pride and the fact of being the fruit of American loins? This reflection then is an endorsement of no American party or of any candidate, but rather of a value – Justice.

·      In my generation it was trendy not to be proud of America’s involvement in Vietnam, for all the various and sundry reasons; it therefore stood to reason that I was not proud to be an American in that season, because it seemed to mean that I was implicated and therefore complicit in America’s Asian involvement.

            However, I was distinctly proud of the fact that individual Americans, including my younger self, would take to the streets to protest that war– I was proud to engage my thought, and my time, and my energy in the real-life working out of a people’s democracy.

·      I was not proud to be an American in the era of U.S. segregationist policies; but I was distinctly proud of the moment in America’s history when she was able to get beyond the issue of color in order to see the man—because I actively supported that transition into social justice in my political choices, and because, although racism is far from dead in America, I personally continue to refuse to allow racist opinions of all the ilks (gender, color, nationality, etc.,) to influence my thinking and my actions.

·      According to Human Rights Watch, America seems to have an active policy of putting its convicted youth in solitary confinement. So, while I have to admit that I have known some pretty rowdy and even out-of-control young people in my time, this particular American philosophe is not proud that he hales from a modern western 1^st world country that locks up its troubled young people in solitary confinement. If someone in prison needs medical or psychological attention, it would seem reasonable that we Americans could and should find a more appropriate manner that addresses these problems, which would include a whole range of professional approaches and solutions.

            This America does not make me proud; but the fact that I can actively and loudly join my critical voice to that of the people at Human Rights Watch makes me proud, because it gives me the opportunity to play a role, no matter how small, in creating an America that is good and just.

·      Also according to the HRW, America got away with torture during the Bush Administration (2001-2008). This was a violation of both US and international law, not to speak of the U.S. Army Field Manual (since 1956 until its revision in 2006 under the Bush Administration); but to address all the arguments relevant to torture and our need for intelligence in one fell swoop—at the end of the day it does not even matter whether or not torture “works” in getting that all-too-important intelligence we keep hearing about. It is ILLEGAL, a violation of American constitutional law, and therefore we Americans should not be practicing it. I am not proud of America’s renegade conduct in this matter.

            By the way, the science is in – torture should be out, unless we are just absolutely dead-set on creating the next generation of terrorists by means of our own state-sanctioned terrorist conduct. On the other hand, if America should wish to practice torture, then it should follow the legal and political channels of American democracy to have torture voted into law and ourselves voted to be taken out of the U.N. This is how the people work in a democracy.

            However, because this step toward the legalization of torture has not yet occurred in the U.S., I am therefore delighted that this current President decided that America and her president should act within the confines of the U.S. Constitution, as well as in agreement with the treaties the U.S. has signed with the United Nations; and I am proud that I cast my vote on the side of a man of this character that values Justice, who still has a vision of America that reflects the America I have known in my life. So nix to Gitmo and torture—almost…

·      There are approximately 196 countries in the world, and, in theory, we all, each and every one, individually as well as nationally, at least pay lip-service to the idea of Justice in the world. I am proud to be of this number. Also, I know of no one, personally, who has ever convincingly made the case that we humans should not strive for Justice.

            Of these 196 nations in our world, 193 are members of the United Nations. I am proud to say that America is of this (latter) number, and that I have also played my part by teaching students the importance of justice and civilized conduct in our relationships, both close to home and beyond our shores.

·      However, in publishing its 2012 Facts and Figures, Amnesty International supplies a corrective to my rose-colored understanding of America’s engagement for Justice in the international community, because the country of my birth is plainly playing a non-supportive role in the theater of global justice. I am not proud of this side of America. The International Criminal Court (ICC) was founded in 2002 with the following transnational statement of value: “The investigation and prosecution of international crimes—including genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes—is a fundamental component of transitional justice.”

            To date, 121 nations of the world have signed up to the ICC; simple math tells me that 75 have not, which includes the United States. It would seem that on the question of International Justice the U.S. is playing keep-up-with-the-Joneses with North Korea and Somalia, two bad boys of the world’s most repressive societies. Sheesch… Even Uganda, of Idi Amin fame, and Nigeria, perhaps the most historically corrupt country on the planet, are signatories to the ICC. I am not proud of this American fact.

            According to the Internet-God on this question, the Clinton Administration signed the original Rome Statute in 2000, but failed to submit the treaty to the U.S. Senate for ratification; and the Bush Administration, again according to the above source, made quite clear that the U.S. would not join the ICC. For these two facts I am not proud, because this does not reflect the justice I value for America and for the world community of nations.

            However, I am proud that the current American Administration has reestablished a working relationship with the ICC. My pride about this comes from the fact that I have not only taught my students about Justice, but that I have also worked together with other people who value justice to choose this current President as the representative of an America of Justice.

            It is when we support just men and just women that we create Justice in our world.

While we all may hope that God might bless these United States of America, per the Greenwood song, you and I, My Fellow Americans, must still not fail in our day job—which is to create everyday in our own personal actions an America where, in Dr. King’s words, “justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

Piggyback Worlds

Sometimes the life we live is not completely our own. My life, for example, is simply too full of moments when my own personal experience, in addition to being my own, is so representative of just about everyone’s experience of the Human Condition, that I become, even if merely for the blink of an eye, Everyman.

Dream a Little Dream of Me. The other morning my wife informed me that I, yet again, woke her up in the middle of the night with another of my dream-world lectures. Now I am obviously dead asleep at the time and have to trust my wife that she is in fact telling me the truth, but apparently I hold forth as only a sleeping philosopher can—on the damnedest subjects. So my wife, with a giggle, was telling me that on this particular middle-of-the-night my theme was “Wielding his sword,” in which I was discoursing on some Epic Hero, as is my wont, but then the point of my oration (so I am assured, anyway) was that this hero’s “sword” was not really his sword, but rather a metaphor for the hero “wielding” some other, more untoward, object of incision.

            Even afterwards, as I read this paragraph aloud to her, she reminded me in a very sniggering and distinctly ungracious tone, that she had told me the story truly, and that the sword was not a sword at all, but some interestingly comparable human body-part apparently gone berserk.

            So this is a reflection about piggyback worlds; worlds that contain a surplus of realities none of which are ever exactly what they seem; worlds within worlds, or more precisely, worlds in which every other world carries along with it, inseparably and almost indistinguishably, still more other worlds – piggyback worlds. Like the Story told by his wife to the dreamer, who dreamed unawares the Story of an Epic Hero holding a sword which may also have been a sword, but which was certainly perceived by the Dreamer (and giggling wife) to be something rather more. Intruding realities from piggyback worlds are always somewhat vague, their boundaries fluid and unclear; and sometimes these essences of a piggyback sort will be less, but most of the time they will be more than they seem. The piggyback nature of our Worlds is nicely reflected in the classic onion metaphor where, peeling back layer after interminable thin layer of enfolding skins of meaning, we discover a rather small and not terribly tasty “tendril-like” root hiding at the core.

“Being” Invisible. There are many things that I do in the world. I do the things that a teacher does, a husband, a dog-owner, a philosophical blogger, a hardy olive-tree planter, an untalented house painter, a laborer, a traveler—all of which are noun descriptors of a verbalizing sort being used appositionally, which is to say that they point back to the subject/individual in the midst of some function. The verbalizing nouns may then also be strengthened afterwards by adding any number of adjectives, depending on how much obfuscation is desired.

            These verbalizing nouns describe, in fact and in deed, how I am performing my life; but they also collectively beg the question as to whether there is any “tendril-like” “being” invisibly stashed underneath all these actions… some true and authentic “I” that has integrity and inherent worth apart from these myriad life-actions. How are we to interpret or understand the individual body-being who is acting out the functions of living? Some philosophers, like Heraclitus, clearly think that the individual, as such, is not a “thing” separable from its acting; indeed, the individual self has no distinct or unique being apart from its performance of it-self. Therefore, Heraclitus famously writes, “What we do habitually is who we are or who we become.” What- or who-ever I think I am is inseparable from what I do, an observation that has, in Heraclitus’ eyes, almost as much importance metaphysically as ethically. This observation about individual authenticity, of course, will resurge many centuries later to become the “tendril-like” root out of which the tree of modern existential thought will spring.

            As I think of all the things I “am,” what I come up with are the typical interpretive anthropological categories of sex, gender, race, religion, color, etc., etc., etc. (remember to pronounce this like Yule Brenner in the King and I just for the fun of it!), which are really not “me,” but rather piggyback groups that normalize qualities of all who are such-as-me. On this view I “am” by analogy.

            Alternatively, as I think of all the things I “am,” I peel back an almost infinite number of layers of all the things I can be or become as a result of my actions. Through my actions I can position my-doing-“self” in a variety of narrative categories or Archetypes, as Hero, Anti-hero, Villain, Rascal, or Savior. In this case I “am” allegorically.

            “Me” by analogy or “me” by allegory – in either case Heraclitus called it correctly: “me” equals the sum of all the piggyback versions of me-interpreted and me-doing or me-having-done.

The Acts of Living. What a philosopher Shakespeare was… and a phenomenologist of Heraclitean persuasion to boot! Remember Jaques in As You Like It, (Act 2, Scene 7) who translates Heraclitus’ vision of man into theatrical terms: 

“All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages.”

Theater (or film or literature) is a wonderful analogy for the piggyback nature both of Human Understanding and of the Human Condition. In the best of cases, the analogy is informative precisely because theatrical re-presentation tends to blur the lines between the layers of our onion-worlds as easily as it blurs the lines between genres, and it seldom makes any pretense of finding some “tendril-like” essence at the center.

            The winner of the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival was the Italian film, Cesar Must Die (Cesare deve morire). What makes this film so challenging, which is also precisely what makes it so very interesting, is that it seems deliberately to confuse the “edges” between metaphor, allegory, social philosophy, cinema, and straightforward theatre. This film, which used real (and some formerly real dangerous) prison convicts as the actors, can be construed to be a meta-type applied-reworking of Shakespeare’s Julius Cesar; or to be a docu-drama, although in a radio interview aired on France Inter’s Cosmopolitaine (Sunday, 21 October 2012) the director brothers denied this interpretation. Likewise, Cesar Must Die can also be considered an updating of Shakespeare’s piece, i.e., a recasting of the Julius Cesar narrative in the modern arena for modern viewers; or, again, as a statement about social politics and the penal system. So what are we members of the audience actually supposed to do with this narrative? How are we intended by the directors to interpret this Story, and is there only one interpretation, or even a best interpretation? Are we supposed to seek some kind of meaningful application to our lives through this narrative, or to become informed on issues of social justice and redemption? Or are we simply to let the visual event wash over us as “entertainment,” with no more thought or value than we might attribute to a Mozart divertimento?

            This brings us to one of the very interesting problems associated with theatrical devices, like metaphor, in marketing and advertising, where the goal is to get the dollars out of our pockets and into someone else’s bank accounts. Oh, the dangers of irony on this stage of our world, which becomes even more pocked should advertisers become “playful” with the already blurry lines between motivated information, i.e., information with an agenda, and deliberate dis- or misinformation.

Sometimes the life we are living is not fully our own. The edges of all of our lives, and the identity of the various personae we play in the course of those lives, are not clear and distinct essences, as a Descartes might have said, but rather are full of blurred lines and abandoned layers of onion peels. Heraclitus gives the preferential reading on the question of our human authenticity: ours is more of a fire-sort of reality. It is inevitable, then, that the roles we play will cross over the boundaries of tragedy and comedy, farce and drama, and that all of our lives will be plagued by interpretations and misinterpretations, hearings and mis-hearings, takings and mis-takings, errors and corrections.

Dying Things Sing the Blues.

My wife was lying very quietly in bed the other morning waiting for me to wake up—her stare boring intently into my left ear. She had been staring silently and patiently at the side of my slumbering head for quite some time until I finally stirred. It was early. With not even a “good morning” or a “by your leave” to warm the cockles of her waking husband’s heart, her opening broadside salvo went something like this: “I know you don’t necessarily agree with my position, but I just wanted to make sure that you really understood my argument about Achilles’ wrath in Homer’s Iliad. The real reason for his anger was a deep-seated rage against his own mortality...”

            She was right, of course – I did not agree with her psychologizing interpretation of Achilles’ rage; but that is a subject perhaps for another blog. So began my morning, even before the coffee, which I had to get up and make myself.

Most of us have heard or at least heard of “the blues” as a musical expression (my cultural reference is Lady Sings the Blues, based on the life story of blues singer Billy Holliday); but have you ever wondered why the expression, “the blues”, came to be linked to music? Have you ever had a feeling of sadness after watching a great movie or finishing a good book? The Internet-God gave 28,800,000 results to that question after only 0.26 seconds. The English novelist, Charlotte Bronte, wrote: “In the midst of life we are in death”; but Gandhi also reminds us that Janus has another face, and that “In the midst of death life persists.”

            Then, of course, the medical corporation also adds their two-cents to the “blues” question by “problematizing” the phenomenon, and we learn that around 19 million American adults are majorly depressed, which does not even include all the other types of depressions (minorly and in-betweenly types) with which one could be diagnosed. This, in addition to all the other types of medically defined “blues” linked to depression, such as separation anxiety (an original form of existentialism) and the blueness event associated with the post-coital condition.

 There is, at the very least, one clear piece of information that we can salvage from this jungle of cultural expressions and medical definitions surrounding our emotional persona: that nostalgia, or the sadness of living, is on everyone’s mind. Our ambient cultural voices show us ways that we might meaningfully express our blues, while our various medical industries seek to cure us of the blues. Normal people generally seem inclined, culturally, to muddle along through their blue periods by giving voice to them, and our medical professionals see the blues as a health problem to be fixed through drugs and other types of therapy.

            However, as we look to the philosophers and poets for some kind of clarification on this question of the blues, it would seem that the wise of the world have not understood the blues as some kind of problem to be fixed; but rather, as a deep-seated reaction that gushes up and wells-out, in the face of a common experience of Living and Dying, from some hidden place in our body.

In a rather famous moment in poetic history, Homer renders a conversation that is taking place in the middle of a dangerous and bloody battlefield between two enemies who should have been friends because their fathers had been befriended. Glaukos, who is fighting on the Trojan side, and Diomedes, who is a great hero on the Greek side, meet on the battlefield, recognize each other, agree not to fight, and exchange the promise and gifts of friendship. And although Diomedes gets the better gifts from Glaukos, for which Homer ridicules this latter, Glaukos certainly gets the nobler lines in response to Diomedes’ question as to his father’s people: “…why ask of my generation? As is the generation of leaves, so is that of humanity. The wind scatters the leaves on the ground, but the live timber burgeons with leaves again in the season of spring returning. So one generation of men will grow while another dies.” (Iliad VI. 146-150).

            Where I have disagreement with my very-early-morning-lying-in-wait-to-ambush-me wife on the question of Achilles is that, like every Greek of antiquity, Achilles knew that we are dying things, that death attends us all sooner or later. What burdens Achilles, again like all Greeks, is not the fact of our day-to-day dying, but rather to determine what a thnetos, a dying one, an ephemeros, a creature that lives but for a day, can best accomplish between this moment right now and its last day in order to mark its passage in the world.

            For Achilles the warrior, the accomplishments were linked to the doing of great deeds of war that men would remember afterwards in poems and songs. For the religiously-minded Socrates, the accomplishment was to teach men philosophy—the life lived justly and honorably: “Men of Athens, I honor and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting anyone whom I meet after my manner, and convincing him, saying: O my friend, why do you who are a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens, care so much about laying up the greatest amount of money and honor and reputation, and so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all?” (Plato’s Apology 29d).

            Another Greek who is interesting to interrogate on the question, “What is man?”, is Epictetus, a former slave. According to this freed slave turned philosopher, we Dying Things must never forget, especially when we get caught up in the routines of living out our days, that we are and remain things that are dying surrounded by other things that only live for a day. So in Enchiridion 3 it is recorded that he taught: “With regard to whatever objects give you delight, are useful, or are deeply loved, remember to tell yourself of what general nature they are, beginning from the most insignificant things. If, for example, you are fond of a specific ceramic cup, remind yourself that it is only ceramic cups in general of which you are fond. Then, if it breaks, you will not be disturbed. If you kiss your child, or your wife, say that you only kiss things which are human, and thus you will not be disturbed when either of them dies” (aÓpoqano/ntoß).

            Even the New Testament, which is in some very important ways a text of Greek antiquity, consistently refers to the human body as a mortal, which is to say dying, thing. It is equally true however, by way of caveat, that the NT never speaks about singing the blues.

Nietzsche was a philosopher of the modern world, dying at the dawn of the 20^th century, and lover of ancient languages who helped this ancient Greek world-view to find again its nostalgic, if not to say romantic voice in and for this contemporary world. In Birth of Tragedy §3, Nietzsche recounts an ancient legend of the Greeks that should serve to remind us that human existence was never meant to be more than a blues tune, sung by each one of us, that would linger in the air for just a little while:

“There is an old legend that king Midas for a long time hunted the wise Silenus, the companion of Dionysus, in the forests, without catching him. When Silenus finally fell into the king’s hands, the king asked what was the best thing of all for men, the very finest. The daemon remained silent, motionless and inflexible, until, compelled by the king, he finally broke out into shrill laughter and said these words, “Suffering creature, born for a day, child of accident and toil, why are you forcing me to say what would give you the greatest pleasure not to hear? The very best thing for you is totally unreachable: not to have been born, not to exist, to be nothing. The second best thing for you, however, is this—to die soon.”’

For those of you who rejoice in the exotic beauty of other languages, Nietzsche’s poetical outcry is this: »Elendes Eintagsgeschlecht, des Zufalls Kinder und der Mühsal, was zwingst du mich dir zu sagen, was nicht zu hören für dich das Ersprießlichste ist? Das Allerbeste ist für dich gänzlich unerreichbar: nicht geboren zu sein, nicht zu sein, nichts zu sein. Das Zweitbeste aber ist für dich – bald zu sterben.«

The people of culture are driven to express the blues; the people of medicine seek to heal this sickness unto death that will know no healing until we have run our course. On the other hand, our philosophers and poets, our wise ones, remind us that we are Dying Things and that, in order for contentment to attend us, we must make peace with our dying during the days of our living. Perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he spoke these words for the simple people: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God.”

            So, we Dying Things are invited to be peacemakers, to reconcile ourselves philosophically to what it means to be man. Every day we are invited to contribute our own gentle variations to the Blues of Life; to make peace with ourselves. In a funny, sad sort of way, a piece of the puzzle of living is also grieving about the end of living; we are grieving, in a bluesy kind of way, because Loss is an integral part of who we are and of who we are destined to become. The blues, though, are not simply about the end of living; they are also the expression of our own personal lamentation for what we wish might have or could have been.

            As I write the lament of my life into the Blues Song of the World, there will be musical phrases woven around Ideas that I wish I could have believed, because so many around me believe them, but I simply do not find them credible. I would very much have liked in my life to be able to wrap myself in the comforting cultural cloak of Christian faith; but my philosophical mind does not acknowledge that irrational stories should be accepted as “mysteries of faith”. I find, for example, that I am simply unable to comprehend in what way it is possible to construe Jesus as a teacher of ethics, because I do not find either the Sermon on the Mount narrative realistic or the Jesus-ethic real-world functional. We should actively “turn the other cheek” with each one who offends us—so Jesus becomes the only known teacher of ethics in the entire world to do away with the fundamentally human notion of justice (i.e., accountability)?! Likewise, I could never quite extrapolate from the Christian narrative in precisely what way I am defective (i.e., a sinner) in my person, and therefore offensive to The Great One—I find no persuasive narrative, argument, or other evidence that my existence, as such, is an offense of any sort, let alone an offense against the Supreme One who is supposed to have breathed life into these nostrils. Nor do I accept as reasonable the notion that I carry some sort of Debt of being offensive to The Divine, or to the Universe at large, simply because one of my idiot ancestors stole a crummy apple from the wrong Guy’s garden.

            As I write the lament of my life into the Blues Song of the World, there are phrases that speak of what I am becoming, of what I have created during and with the days of my life. Because along with my own aging and experiences of loss (of parents, family, friends, innocence, and of flexibility in my joints), comes the wondering whether, and the deep personal conviction that, I have become the type of human that would have made my parents proud, that would have made my grandmother proud.

            As I write the lament of my life into the Blues Song of the World, you will hear in my life-tune a repetitive blues phrase crying out the Realization that there will not be enough days in my life to discover answers for all the Big Questions that I have been studying, relentlessly, for as long as I can recall. This phrase expresses my dismay that all my education has not informed me concerning what is true about the world, but rather concerning what I have learned about the world as I have grown up that is not true.

            The blues singer of Psalm 8 reminds us to keep in our minds a question, which is both rhetorical and yet profoundly reflective of the bluesy nature of the Human Condition: What is man that we should be mindful of him?

Freedom in the Land of the E Pluribus Unum.

Sometimes it is difficult to know whether what you are thinking and writing is a thought-provoking philosophical accounting, or simply a crazed intuition transformed into rant-gone-wild. In this respect, sometimes philosophers are like crazed Dutch hairdressers (or at least the one that I know). This might be one of those equivocal times for all of us, for me the author as well as for you the reader.

            It also comes to mind that this reflection might be destined primarily for American readers; so if you are among those who find this ‘thought-provoking philosophical accounting’ cum ‘rant-gone-wild’ to be only of marginal interest, chances are good that you are a European who has government-organized and sponsored health care. Freedom, in the American sense of the term, does not concern such as you.

‘Freedom’ is the most abstract of concepts, even in moments of extreme philosophical lucidity. The Greek philosophers, for example, did not make the philosophical case for freedom… (Elevtheria!!!! I can still hear the cynical battle cry of one of my former racquetball partners ringing in my ears… he taught romantic literature, of course, in addition to beating me on the r-b court!); because Greeks of the ancient sort did not believe themselves to be free. Rather, they lived in a world tragically conceived, where powerful Gods dominate and control, as invisible and formidable causal forces. In such a tragic world the actions of Gods and men are inextricably intertwined, and although men like Achilles and Socrates understood themselves to be ethically autonomous, i.e., masters of their own choices within the confines of their restricted human knowledge, they did not conceive of themselves as ‘free’ players on the Divine Chessboard. In antiquity, Autonomy tempered by human ignorance as to what the Gods were up to, was not equivalent to this contemporary notion of Freedom.

            In that ancient world, which is explicit in the epic poetry of Homer and elevated to a metaphysical principle in the great tragic poets, Aeschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles, the actions of men could never be free of that external and all-determining causal environment created by the very presence of the unseen, active, and very powerful external causal Forces who/which necessarily controlled every aspect of the world of men.

            Freedom was a value created rationally by philosophers of the world become Christian (post-B.C.E.). In the Christian argument, Freedom is the keystone concept wedged in-between the idea of a God who, unlike any of the other Gods of Antiquity, is good, i.e., moral, and the idea of human moral accountability vis-à-vis this God. For this philosophical conceptualization and argumentation to work, the God can only make morally weighted demands on men if men are meaningfully free—i.e., uninfluenced by the God in their judgments and choices. This (new world) obviously isn’t Kansas anymore, Socrates!

So the philosophically minded in contemporary America might ask, what does it actually mean to be free? In the Land of the Free and Home of the Brave we believe in this Big Idea; we strive for it (because we tend to equate ‘it’ with happiness); we fight for it; we suffer for it; we die for it; and even more cynically, we encourage others to die for it. Yet what does Freedom mean in the good old (unofficial) E Pluribus Unum?

            I suppose it is best to start conversations such as this by asking the question, what can be known clearly about the idea of Freedom?, a question that is, in turn, perhaps best pondered by asking precisely the opposite question: in what ways are Americans not free? (For a justification concerning this convoluted approach to understanding the Universe at large, please see the above reference to sometime philosophers and crazed Dutch hairdressers…).

            In this American ‘Home, Home on the Plains’, which declared its Independence from British despotism in terms of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we know for example that, while we may be free with respect to our own life, we are not personally ‘free’ to own our own death, yet. However, the ‘freedom to own our death’ discussion in America, which has the formal and somewhat pejorative tag, Assisted Suicide, is now fairly consistently on the national radar thanks to a variety of initiatives.

            There was Dr. Jack (a.k.a. Doctor Death) Kevorkian’s willingness to risk doing jail-time in the battle for Americans’ right to die. After multiple corpses began showing up at the entrances of Detroit area hospitals, in 1999 Dr. Kevorkian was sentenced to 10 to 25 years in prison for 2^nd degree murder for physician assisted suicide, and he did 8 years of that sentence before being eligible for parole. Beginning right around the same time there was the national saturation coverage of the Terry Schaivo, case (1998-2005), which highlighted the Nation’s philosophical free-for-all in a desperate search to define what types of principles should be given priority in cases of prolonged life-support, where a third party, e.g., the husband in this case, but it could equally have been a doctor, or the State, or the insurance company, or…, makes a life/death decision on behalf of (read: in the place of) a person, who is no longer capable of making decisions for herself (e.g., who is in a persistent vegetative state). The husband won on the principle of legal next of kin; the parents lost, and the State lost.

            There have also been a variety of right-to-die organizations, such as the Hemlock Society (although its name has since been changed), whose stated mission is to inform about the rights of the dying, as well as to back any type of legislation that will advance the right to die of Americans.

            Finally, it might come as some relief to some to know that straightforward, self-determined suicide in the United States no longer carries the Common Law penalty of ‘Forfeiture of all the goods and chattels of the offender.’ This piece of information, however, would not have relieved the narrative tension in the reasoning of Arthur Miller’s disheartened Death of a Salesman protagonist, Willy Lomen. For purposes of theatrical tension, Lomen decides not to commit suicide because this would not help his family, but would instead simply invalidate his life-insurance policy—no breadwinner and no life-insurance money would not be an improvement for the family finances. For purposes of real-life tension, this also happens to be generally true about life-insurance.

In the Land of Independently-minded Americans we also know without a shadow of a doubt that we are not ‘free’ to act outside the structures provided by the Constitution and the Laws of the Land. So, for example, it would come as no surprise to normally reasoning Americans that the Bush Administration should come under scrutiny by legal minds for issues regarding torture, which has been illegal for a very long time now, both by US law and by a variety of UN conventions, from 1948, 1975, et al, to each of which America affixed her signature. If we recall that the individual who assumes the mantel of the office of the President of the United States swears to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”, the conflict of ethico-legal interest becomes obvious.

            Constitutional constraint (non-freedom) in America also takes the form of Selective Service, or the draft, the legality of which has repeatedly weathered a variety of legal challenges (1918, 1919, 1920, 1968, 1971, and 1981). Idem the persistently sustained legality of the American government’s right to impose an income tax upon its free citizens, a fact in which all Americans undoubtedly rejoice.

More abstractly, in this Land-of-the-Free we Americans can also know clearly, if we just think about it for a little while, that we are not ‘free’ not to conform to social demands (ok… a double negative, but at least the infinitive is not split!). This type of non-freedom is a bit more philosophically lofty, so we can turn to Friedrich Nietzsche for clarity on the question – Kultur is like a prison, he might say, or a cookie-cutter. Following through on this second simile, when we are born we are dropped like so many pieces of dough into a (cultural) baking bowl (called America); and from the very first day we enter into the bowl we are all pressed together and kneaded into a homogenous ‘plop’ of American dough. From this sameness, the various cultural cookie-cutters, i.e., family, language, friends, school, etc., transforms individual bodies into an enculturated entity called An American human. Within a demonstrable range, we Americans all dress similarly (because we all have access primarily to the same clothing stores); we all speak similarly, having the same range of vocabulary (12-20 thousand words, depending on the source), which is actually pretty limited (read: restricting, constraining, non-freeing) when one considers that by most counts English has about three-quarters of a million words at its disposal; we all read roughly the same books, use the same money, think within the same value parameters.

            In other words, we are not ‘free’ to ‘be’ without culture (a-cultural), because Kultur defines the very thing each individual is beyond its human-ness—this is an American human, this a Dutch human, this a French human, etc. And although former President Bill Clinton reminded us in a 2000 White House speech that 99.9% of Human Genome is the same, which is to say that there is statistically speaking no significant racial or material difference among the peoples of the world, there are nonetheless very real cultural differences between them.

           

In another example of non-freedom, we can also know clearly that we are not ‘free’ to choose to live without an economic framework of some sort, whether money or barter or trade. We may be free to own cars, if we can afford to buy them, but we are not free not to pay the local Secretary of State for the license plates, or not to have insurance, or, perhaps, depending on the state, not to have regular inspections that the individual must pay for. Idem for our homes, guns, education, and any other of our possessions that we may ‘freely’ own, albeit in a regulated sort of way, if we can freely afford such things.

We can also know clearly that we are not ‘free’ to function outside the confines of our biology – remember in the film Birdy the protagonist was so distressed by the world of men with their insane wars that he wanted to join the world of his beloved, and peaceful, birds; but his own biology did not allow him that freedom, and in the face of his insistence, his society locked him away in a lunatic asylum. Our only freedom from our biology, and this has little to do with being culturally American, would be for us to understand the use of technology, perhaps in an Avatar kind of way, and the (new and different) constraints to our freedom that they carry with them. P.S.- Scuba divers tend not to forget to take underwater breathing apparatuses on their dives!

            It is clear that Americans, and perhaps one or two others as well, struggle culturally and philosophically with the question, what does it mean to be free? That this is a generalized question in culture, American and other, is clear from such film phenomena as The Truman Show, or The Matrix (1999), this latter of which, according to the Internet-God, received a number of awards and achieved a number of record-breaking financial objectives, thereby demonstrating its importance culturally and philosophically. The premise of the film, of course, is that the entire framework of our perception of reality (and not simply our enculturation) is an artificial environment—that we are everything (someone Else wants), except Free.

So, we have been reflecting on some of the ways in which we Americans are not free; and yet all who are America-minded continue to be deeply stirred by Reverend King’s famous words reminding us of our historical calling to American Freedom:

“This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"”

These are moving American words about the promissory note of Freedom in the Land of E Pluribus Unum, and they continue to speak to our guts when we hear them anew. But the ‘job’ of the citizens in contemporary American does not end in inspired feelings of Freedom—the task has now become ours to discover how these words of Freedom might speak to the minds of this generation of American people, so they might be translated into real-world actions.