Tag Archives: America

Equality, the goal not the signpost.

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The United States of America has a long history of inequality, from its treatment of Native Americans to women’s rights, it has tended to favor one group over others, but it has attempted to repair the damage it caused. However, even though America is the “land of opportunity,” its formerly oppressed peoples are not equal, but what does it mean to be equal? Is equality the government saying you must have the same number of employees from each arbitrarily defined “race?” Does equality mean that people should be forced to be equal? In examining this issue, one must define equality itself.

There are three forms of equality: equality of outcome, of opportunity, and of perception. Equality of perception is the most basic: it dictates that for people to be equal, each person should be perceived as being of equal worth. Equality of opportunity dictates that all people should have the same opportunities open to them if they put out the effort this is a central tenet of the “American Dream.” The final form of equality, equality of outcome, attempts to “level the playing field” by forcing people into certain roles and dictates that all individuals should tend towards the mean this form of equality is evident in socialist theory.

America has enacted laws that are based on equality of outcome to attempt to ensure that “minorities” and women have access to equal pay and to remove glass ceilings, but while these programs have repaired some of the damage, paraphrasing Milton Friedman, equality of outcome leaves most people without equality and without opportunity. This is because forced equality is not equality and only hides the real issue of inequality based on perceptions.

Equality is not saying that all people are physically and mentally equal, nobody would bet an average teenager could win a game of basketball against a professional player, nor can every six-year-old be a physicist because human beings are not inherently equal. However, “true equality” says that potentially everyone should have the same opportunities, that is to say, that potentially the toddler could play professional basketball and potentially the six-year-old could become a future Einstein regardless of superficial characteristics. While these two people may not actually be able to achieve their dreams, this does not mean they should be limited by what people perceive they are capable of. This is equality of perception.

Unlike equality of outcome, equality of perception creates equality of opportunity by dictating that all people should be allowed the same opportunities even if they aren’t capable of realizing them. This allows people to reach their own plateaus without unfair external pressures. However, when one attempts to use equality of outcome to create opportunity, one must take away opportunities from one person to give them to another, rather than allowing both individuals to reach their own, personal, peaks. This is not always a bad thing, during the civil rights era it was an important move to integrate America’s divided society; however, it was a first step, and only a first step. America must move beyond this first step to continue to answer its call as the “land of opportunity.”

Of course, many factors come into account throughout individual lives that change an individual’s capacity for different activities. Equality of perception requires that one realize the way we perceive people based on bias should not limit their opportunities because it does not reflect their abilities. This means that with equality of perception no human being is artificially kept from achieving their goals based on skin color, religion, national origin, or class. Equality of perception cannot be legislated, it can only be taught, but it will create freedom and lead the way to equality of opportunity, but focusing on equality of outcome just limits the freedoms upon which America was founded.

Hawthorn’s “The Birthmark” and “Rappaccinni’s Daughter” and the pursuit of perfection

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Failed attempts to attain perfection are a frequent subject in Hawthorne’s short stories; these attempts at perfection fail because Hawthorne’s protagonists are misguided and their own innate imperfections cloud their judgments. Hawthorne’s short stories “The Birthmark” and “Rappaccini’s Daughter” both feature a male protagonist who desires to recreate a woman into their own view of perfection. However, a person’s desires often tell more about themselves than others: the belief that something is imperfect reflects the believer not the thing. Judith Fetterly, in her essay “Women Beware Science: ‘The Birthmark,’” argues that Hawthorne’s portrayal of women’s imperfections in “The Birthmark” and other short stories says less about the women than the men who fixate on these imperfections and try to reshape them. A more Freudian approach by Frederick Crews focuses on the birthmark and the garden as icons of feminine sexuality. Yet another approach is the more conservative approach taken by Hyatt Waggoner and Richard Fogle who argue a more psychological and religious aspect to Hawthorne’s writing. It is necessary to examine each of these three sometimes-conflicting views to fully explore Hawthorne’s writing and his perception of perfection.

Aylmer of “The Birthmark” is haunted by a tiny birthmark on the cheek of his wife that he “one day, very soon after their marriage” notices. Aylmer then mentions it to his wife stating that she “came so nearly perfect from nature that this [defect is] the visible mark of earthly imperfection.” As with most things, the meaning of this line changes and can be reinterpreted over time. Reacting to this remark from a feminist perspective, Fetterly argues that Aylmer’s “lofty talk [about wanting Georgina to be perfect] is but a cover of his central emotion of revulsion [at her feminine nature].” She adds that Georgiana’s innate flaw is not the birthmark but the female sexuality that the birthmark represents. Crews, remarking from a Freudian perspective, agrees with this assessment saying, “His medical curiosity and his willingness to risk Georgiana’s death…are thinly disguised substitutes for his urges to know and destroy her sexuality” (126). Waggoner is slower to condemn Aylmer’s behavior stating that Aylmer “does wrong things from a motive not in itself wrong” (108). Waggoner does not condemn Aylmer’s action as an attempt to control or even acknowledge Georgiana’s sexuality, but as just a man who is overrun by the desire to create perfection. This libido sciendi view of Aylmer is also reflected by Fogle who focuses on Aylmer’s Faustian desire to know and understand (120).

While it is obvious that Aylmer desires perfection and wishes to control nature, is the focus on Georgina’s sexuality by Crews and Fetterly just an effect of rampant Freudianism? It is possible to interpret the birthmark as a representation of Georgiana’s sexuality because Hawthorne’s stories tend to have a sexual undercurrent, but to reduce the entire story to an attack on the female persona as Fetterly does or the misplacement of lustful thoughts onto women as Crews does is an over simplification. Had Aylmer become obsessed with science after his marriage, these interpretations would have been correct, but Hawthorne states that Aylmer was “a man of science” who “left his laboratory… and pursued a beautiful woman to become his wife” and could only love his wife by “intertwining [his love with her] with his love of science.” From the beginning, the focus of Aylmer’s life is on science; his desire for perfection in his wife is just a manifestation of his need to know and create perfection. While he does focus on the birthmark as a representation of his wife’s female nature and sexuality, it is his love of science that pushes him to remove it.

The greatest argument for Waggoner and Fogle’s interpretation of “The Birthmark” is that, eventually, Aylmer achieves a flawed state of perfection, creates perfect beauty, and controls nature, but all are temporary and his perfections destroy each other because the greatest flaw in Aylmer’s attempts to gain perfection is his inability to understand real perfection in beauty and nature. His attempt to gain physical perfection is fettered by his belief that physical perfection is intrinsically part of beauty: beauty does not necessarily imply perfection because beauty can be defined by some thing’s imperfections as well as its perfections. Similarly, his attempt to gain a perfect understanding of nature was flawed because he believed that controlling nature was part of understanding nature; however, the control and the comprehension of nature are separate, so even though he was able to control nature by removing the birthmark he did not gain a comprehension of nature. Had he gained a perfect understanding of nature, he would have been able to remove the birthmark without subjecting his wife to failed trials and would have created perfection. The more modern and interpretive approaches taken by Fetterly and Crews take the same events and reinterprets them.

Fetterly argues that Aylmer does not approach the birthmark as a scientific mystery but evidence that his wife has an imperfect physical nature, so he is driven to make her perfect and “what perfection means is elimination.” She continues to argue that Aylmer desires to create new life but is unable to, so he fixates on Georgiana’s sexuality because it is her sexuality that allows her to create life. Aylmer attempts to manipulate life by breeding a plant that grows quickly and to recreate life by taking Georgiana’s portrait, but both attempts fail and he must destroy his own work. Aylmer is only successful at creating “imitations rather than copies,” so everything Aylmer achieves is “false and unnatural, like the gorgeous flowers of Rappaccini’s garden. The light is artificial, the figures are shadows, and the draught of immortality is the draught of death” (Fogle 121, Fogle 123). Thus, he is unable to control or even duplicate nature, and if Fetterly is correct, his failures cause him to focus on Georgiana’s sexuality both because it can both duplicate and create life and because it is beyond his ability to control.

Crews agrees that Aylmer’s actions are based on sexual desire: “[Aylmer does] desire the very thing that offends his squeamish mind, and his dream…reveals a fantasy and sadistic revenge and a scarcely less obvious fantasy of sexual consummation” (126). Aylmer desires to both “know and destroy her sexuality” and he “both kissed and shuddered at the suggestive birthmark” (Crews 126). However, while Fetterly uses Aylmer to portray the disgust many men feel towards women, Crews argue that Aylmer’s actions are not vindictive but that they are a part of an obsessive need (112). The latter explanation is far better supported by the actual text. As Crews notes, the first paragraph of “The Birthmark” begins by stating that that Aylmer could only love his wife if he could intertwine his love of her with his love of science, and Hawthorne also states that Aylmer “invariably and without intending it…reverted to this one disastrous topic” — this disastrous topic being the birthmark. While Aylmer’s desire for perfection in his wife is understandable and Fetterly is a little unfair to him, he does overstep his bounds as both a scientist and a husband.

Aylmer’s mistakes are all repeated by Rappaccini; however, unlike Aylmer whose “purposes are controlled by human morality” (Fogle 129), Hawthorne leaves no question as to Rappaccini’s inherently evil nature: he is described as a man who would “sacrifice human life…for the sake of adding so much as a grain of mustard seed to the great heap of his accumulated knowledge”. Rappaccini’s “weird marital plan for Beatrice and Giovanni, which envisions the coupling of two mutually immune monsters, points to the monstrosity of his own imagination” (Crews 127). However, Fogle argues, “[Rappaccini's] sin is primarily in striving to rival God” (99). Regardless, Hawthorne’s focus is not on the inner blackness that may or may not pervade this man’s soul (Rappaccini himself always appears in the background shadows), but the results of Rappaccini’s drive for perfection.

The focus of Rappaccini’s drive for perfection is his daughter Beatrice and a beautiful garden, both of which are lovely and deadly. Rappaccini desires not just perfection in his daughter Beatrice but also wants to recreate the world in his own view of perfection with himself as God and Beatrice and Giovanni as a new Adman and Eve (whom he bestows the gift of poison upon as their own perfection) created in his own image to prove his innate perfection. Rappaccini’s goals are set far higher than Aylmer, but it is to be assumed that one’s goals should match one’s reach, and Rappaccini has quite the reach. Unlike Aylmer, Rappaccini is described as a man “fearfully acquainted with the secrets of nature [who created a plant which] the offspring of his science, of his intellect.” This plant, as much a child of Rappaccini as his own daughter, is described as being magnificent with “purple gems clustering all over it [that] glowed in the air, and gleamed back again out of the depths of [a marble fountain].” Rappaccini’s daughter, like the plant, is a perfect specimen with an education and intellect that qualifies her to “fill a professor’s chair” and as “beautiful of the day, and with a bloom so deep and vivid that one shade more would have been too much.” The beauty of both Beatrice and the plant strikes Giovanni, and for some, there is a tendency to focus on this aspect of the story rather than the striving for perfection.

Crews, as a proponent of Freudianism, focuses on the sexual undertones that pervade the relationship between Giovanni, Beatrice and the garden, and while he may be correct that this relationship is the main focus of the story, he notes that “Rappaccini is always taken as an embodiment of the libido sciendi [who is opposite in nature to his daughter] and nothing more is said” (125). Crews continues by arguing that Rappaccini, like Aylmer, is uncomfortable with sexual relationships and has created the walled garden to seclude his daughter from the world, and allows Giovanni to enter it as a “clumsy remedy” for this revulsion (127). However, as Fogle notes, this story has at least two themes, so whether this interpretation is Hawthorne’s intention is unclear; it seems much more likely that, for at least the focus of the story and Rappaccini’s intentions, one should take a more conservative approach.

This conservative approach to Rappaccini’s intentions is offered by Waggoner who says that although the libido sciendi theme is present and “Rappaccini with his black magic and his ‘insane zeal for science’…must be ever present…it is the present evil, a woman poisoned, that is the chief subject of the story” (118). Intertwined irrecoverably within this theme of “present evil” is the evidence of Rappaccini’s ascension towards perfection: the garden which seemed to be “the monstrous offspring of man’s depraved fancy, glowing with only an evil mockery of beauty” evidences Rappaccini’s skill in reshaping nature, but his nature either by design or because of his own failures is imperfect because it is a harbinger of death. Baglioni claims that Rappaccini’s successes as a physician are only accidents of his twisted experiments meant to create death, but Baglioni is anything but an impartial witness and to a point we can ignore his accusations. Thus, is Rappaccini’s perfection truly evil and deadly or are these corruptions just the by-products of his attempts for real perfection and fatherly love? This question is answered quite simply by examining the text: although in the beginning of the story Hawthorne describes Rappaccini as being perceived as having the demeanor of “one walking among malignant influences, such as savage beasts, or deadly snakes, or evil spirits which…would wreak upon him some terrible fatality” and as the story climaxes with Beatrice’s suicidal actions we see that Rappaccini intended for his daughter to be poisonous to keep her from “the condition of a weak woman, exposed to all evil, and capable of none,” Hawthorne describes Beatrice as a victim of “man’s ingenuity [and] of the fatality that attends all such efforts of perverted wisdom.” So it is clear that Rappaccini intentionally created this evil, but although he did want to help his daughter in his own twisted way, he did it mostly for himself and without concern for anything outside of his own mind.

Rappaccini achieves his perfection, but it is so vile and destructive that those who are the emblem of his achievements reject it: “my science…have so wrought within his system, that he now stands apart from common men, as thou dost, daughter of my pride and triumph.” Aylmer also achieves a destructive perfection but he destroyed “the bond by which an angelic spirit kept itself in union with a mortal frame.” These men’s failures to gain perfection are more emphatically destructive than the spiritual failures because they try to not just correct themselves but nature; nature, Hawthorne warns, is far too powerful to be manipulated by any imperfect human being.

Aylmer and Rappaccini are unable to see that the perfection they are trying to attain is destructive of what they desire. They believe that they will attain scientific perfection, but their actual goal will be the destruction of the natural. Through this, Hawthorne warns the reader that scientific perfection will be achieved through understanding nature rather than manipulating it. Hawthorne also warns that although Aylmer and Rappaccini see themselves as men of science, they also do not completely understand what they are attempting. Similar to Frankenstein, they do not realize that the use of science to control nature can destroy the balance of nature itself, so they continue to pursue their idea of perfection, but instead destroy the beauty and balance of nature. Aylmer brings death and Rappaccini creates death.

In the end, putting aside the more extreme interpretations of these works of literature that detract from the original intention, we see that Aylmer and Rappaccini are both given the chance to change their ways and reform, but both fail to do so. “Aylmer is given a remarkably good run for his money [and] Hawthorne gives him a very long rope,” and “Hawthorne treats [Rappaccini] with sympathy and at the end leaves us feeling a certain pity” (Fogle 119; 100). However, both fail to recognize the salvation they are offered and they forge ahead blind to the world and the consequences of their actions.

To help Aylmer and Rappaccini gain perfection, Hawthorne presents Beatrice and Georgiana as possible guides in the men’s quests, and they represent the human aspect that the men abandon to achieve perfection. Hawthorne warns that by abandoning and destroying the human aspects of themselves, Aylmer and Rappaccini fail to achieve perfection and destroy all those around them. Crews argues, “the real enemy [Rappaccini fights] is ‘the condition of a weak woman’” (128). However, corrupting Beatrice is not the end goal of Rappaccini, but it is part of the solution to his own desires, and evidences his total abandonment of all that should be dear to him for his quest. There is perhaps no better way to illustrate the effects the men’s one-sided quests for perfection had on their women than through the words of Rappaccini’s daughter. When she realizes that everything she wants has the possibility of being hers but is summarily ripped away, she finally admits to herself what she had always known and confronts her father saying, “[your] fatal love of science…estranged me from all society of my kind…thou inflict[ed] this miserable doom upon thy child…I am going, father, where the evil, which thou hast striven to mingle with my being, will pass away like a dream.” It is this abandonment of all human concerns and concerns for humanity that illustrate that “[Hawthorn] is more engaged in his Faustian quest for knowledge…than most critics have seen” (Crews 119).

It is no surprise that both Georgiana and Beatrice die drinking the antidote to their ills because the only antidote to the restrictions and expectations placed on them was their own death. Fetterly would agree that these women died to escape the pressure of their own existence and welcomed death. Georgiana bade Aylmer that should he “either remove [the birthmark] or take her life.” One cannot assume that Aylmer set out to kill her, but it is obvious that Georgiana would rather have died than cause revulsion in the man she loved. This power that Aylmer had was not enough: he needed this power and perfection itself to be truly happy with his wife. Similarly, Georgiana went to her death willingly; revealing in her final moments that the evil in Giovanni and Rappaccini was far greater than the evil foisted on her by them both. These features in the story have a very strong feminist undercurrent, but Fetterly notes that while “the implicit feminism in ‘The Birthmark’ is considerable … ‘The Birthmark’ is by no means explicitly feminist, since Hawthorne seems as eager to be misread and to conceal as he is to be read and to reveal, still it is impossible to read his story without being aware that Georgiana is completely in Aylmer’s power.”

Hawthorne warns against the extremity of these attempts to gain perfection because while these men pursue perfection of body, mind and soul, they forget that they are human. Had they restrained themselves and worked to improve themselves in small pieces and not been as egotistical as to think they could immediately recreate themselves and their worlds, they would have been able to correct their flaws that caused their failures. Furthermore, Hawthorne warns that, “The Unpardonable Sin which consists of a want of love and reverence for the Human Soul; in consequence of which, the investigator pried into its dark depths, not with a hope or purpose of making it better, but from a cold philosophical curiosity,–content that it should be wicked in whatever kind or degree, and only desiring to study it out. Would not this, in other words, be the separation of the intellect from the heart.” (Steward, The American Notebook, 106). The failure to gain perfection devastates the lives of these men and those who live within their shadows. Hawthorne warns that the blind quest for perfection reaches deep into one’s life and obliterates it entirely.

Bibliography

Crews, Frederick. The Sins of the Father. New York: Oxford UP 1966

Fetterly, Judith. “Women beware Science: ‘The Birthmark.’” 1978.

Fogle, Richard. Hawthorne’s Fiction: The Light and The Darkness. University of Oklahoma Press 1964

Stewart, ed. The American Notebooks. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press 1932

Waggoner, Hyatt H. Hawthorne, a Critical Study. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press-Harvard University Press 1955

My politicians are crazier than yours.

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It started with a post on Aardvarchaeology which was then linked by Pharyngula and responded to with a post on Uncertain Principles. Martin Rundkvist, of Aardvarchaeology, declares that US Politics Have No Left Wing which was quickly responded to by Chad Orzel, of Uncertain Prinicples, who retorted that it could just as easily said that European Politics Have No Right Wing. I agree with their base statements: Europe is left of America which is right of Europe, Europeans and Americans both got where they are through trial and error, and that many American politicians are very right-wing, but…To argue that higher taxes are fundamentally better than lower ones, and that certain political positions are better than others, and that religious politicians — regardless of how they publicly use their religion — are inherently inferior to their counterparts is a little too broad for my tastes.

Martin says that mentioning ones religious beliefs in public are part of the evidence for American politician’s extremist views, but I disagree. The way a politician follows their religion is extremely important, and before making any decisions, it is better to know for sure that a politician is going to follow all 10 commandments and most of Leviticus than have them ignore the issue whilst they campaign, and eventually force their secret beliefs on their constituents who didn’t have the chance to hear them. European politicians are more private in their beliefs, but all of one’s beliefs — either in the open or in private — affect their decisions. He mentions the Christian Democrat party in Sweden as evidence of private beliefs, but their beliefs are literally the banner under which they run; they may not mention them, but they are there, and they do affect the decision-making process.

Beyond this point, the issue devolves into Socialism vs. Liberalism vs. Conservatism — for simplicity I’ll define liberalism as the half-way mark between socialism and conservatism even though, as Martin notes, it isn’t. The American and European countries have always had one humongous difference: the European countries have a lineage and a population who is often part of the same country for generations, America doesn’t. America is quote unquote a “melting pot” where diverse groups come together to work and play, but often keep to themselves. There is an overreaching American culture through which people are united, but on a deeper more social level, many Americans couldn’t care less about the rest of America: more people vote for American Idol than the next president, and relatively few people vote in local elections. It can often seem that the way America is run only matters for a few short weeks and it is back to focusing on one’s own life with a few “bursts” of charity and caring, so one feels good about themselves. It seems that Americans tend to not have a good reason to care about all the other Americans, so in the American mindset there is no reason to take from oneself to ensure everyone is happy.

However, the issue is deeper than perceptions of a people. American politics are heavily based on Equality of Opportunity while European politics are based on Equality of Outcome. In America, the individual overrules the group, but in Europe, the group overrules the individual. America favours the hard-luck cases where someone drags themselves out from a lowly start into positions of wealth and influence — before tearing them down for daring to overreach the rest — because this is the ideal on which America was founded. So, yes, America has lower taxes, and Europeans have free health care or all, but it is the philosophical foundations of a society that dictates how it is run, not any egotistical desire or innate “betterness.” It is only time that can say which one is preferable.

The power of the individual: The American Enlightenment and Romanticism

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During the 18th century, scientific and social changes reshaped the concept of the self. The individual slowly separated from the collective and began to develop as an antithesis of the collective agrarian society of prior centuries; thus, giving rise to a wave of new philosophical thought that evolved into the popular movement of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment developed around the belief that scientific thought and expression should be free from religious interference and that the foundations of society should be human reason and logic. Over time, these ideals gave rise to Romanticism which introduced the contrast of nature and the self, the internal desires, feelings and beliefs, and juxtaposed Nature with science. Franklin, Poe and Thoreau each represent one of the three popular faces of Enlightenment and Romanticism: Franklin, a well-respected Enlightenment writer, focused his writings on the improvement of the social order through improvement of the self and the realization of a deistic world; Thoreau, an Emersonian or “bright” Romantic, merged Nature with science and allowed for both to work simultaneously while emphasizing the individual’s ability to remove themselves from the flow of society; Poe, a “dark” romantic, wrote mainly on the way the individual views his world and the way the nature of the mind can recreate the world. While they tended to disagree on the specifics, they each agreed that the inner self was more powerful than the external self, and through self inspection a person could change their world and become the purveyor of order in the universe replacing religion, monarchy “” and to some extent “” God.

Arguably the most important “power” that these writers attributed to the individual was the individual’s right to power over their own beings. The ability to self-determine one’s destiny was not only necessary to the underpinnings of enlightenment, but it was also necessary to advance society as a whole. By allowing individuals to have power over their individual being, they became their own masters: no longer subjected by the whims of a larger society. As an illustration of these principles, once released from the tenets of religion, Benjamin Franklin “conceiv’d the bold and arduous Project of arriving at moral Perfection” (364). By believing in the power of the self and the equality of men he accomplished this without requiring a higher moral authority , Franklin defined his own moral perfection and strove to achieve it. The power the individual has over the self is absolute, but as Poe warns, this can be used for ill: in Poe’s tale of “The Tell-Tale Heart,” his protagonist envisions the world around him through the filter of his own demented mind. The conflicts in the character’s internal self become so profuse that he projects them externally and creates an old man whose eye haunts him, and he is eventually undone when he fails to recognize the beatings of his own heart. This absolute power is both the greatest curse and privilege of the Enlightenment and Romantic views of the self, so rather than leaving this power unchecked, they emphasized the power of Nature as both the antithesis to the self and the guide of the self.

Even though the release from mortal authority and the servitude of religion was central to the Enlightenment, they did not banish the Deities. Instead they either personified deities as part of the natural world which allowed the individual the opportunity to be “part or particle of God” (Emerson, 657) or defined the deities as separate from the world and as a creator but not a participatory member of the universe. Franklin was one of the original Deisitic writers in American Literature, and believed in the separation of religion from God because of the oppressive and meddlesome nature of churches which mixed their theology “with other Articles which without any tendency to inspire, promote or confirm Morality, serv’d principally to divide us & make us unfriendly to one another” (Franklin, 363). As Romantic writing developed it moved the Enlightened Deity from the role of creator into the natural world by blending the deity into Nature and science. This natural view of God continued the deistic way of thinking, and removed much of the remaining power of the organized churches allowing people to find and define their own personal church, and while some created cathedrals out of mountains and trees, others made theirs out of numbers, facts and figures creating the first conflicts between the mystical nature and the exacting sciences.

While the individual had the power to determine their own personal beliefs, some found that they were still oppressed by things they could not control: science became increasingly important, and to some, this was as oppressive as the monarchs and gods of the past. Their objection was that in becoming the absolute authority, science created a monochromatic image of the world which stifled the individual’s ability to perceive the world around him for what he believed it was; however, others quickly realized that science allowed them to open their eyes and see the world both as it was and how it could be. Poe and Thoreau, in a clash between bright and dark romanticism, viewed science differently with the more middle-of-the-road approach being attributed to to the bright romantics. In Poe’s “Sonnet “” to Science” he attacks the mundane aspects of science and refers to it as a “Vulture! whose wings are dull realities” (1223), but Thoreau, in his journals, embraces science, but believes that one can only truly appreciate something when one “forget[s] all [their] learning and get[s] rid of what is called knowledge”. Poe believes that the science accosts his creativity and stifles his ability to be an individual and exercise his hard-won individualism, but Thoreau is capable of independently appreciating nature even if his opinions are invalidated by science because he believes that his power over his own perceptions is absolute, so balancing the science with the mystery of Nature and the joy of poetic expression is not difficult him or other “bright” romantics. These two different views of science are brought about by the way the writers treat science: Poe personified science and held it blamable rather than as a tool, but Thoreau treats science as a tool and because of this, he is able to cast it aside when it is unnecessary while Poe’s creations and imaginings are constantly surrounded, attacked and restrained by a personified science which replaces the monarchs and gods. For writers of similar beliefs to Poe, this restriction by science was contrary to the ideals of Romanticism, and created a stumbling block that hemmed in the powers of the individual.

The only restrictions on the individual, other than the perception of a restrictive science and or those self-imposed, were the restrictions of society itself. These societal restrictions are not the same as the restrictions of a Monarch, but are the attempts of society to control the individual and harness their powers for the good of society itself. To the Romantics, this acceptance of societal pressures was a sort of voluntary defeat which according to some, like Thoreau, was necessary because not all were capable of fully controlling their own lives (820). Thoreau believed that most people spent their lives “sleeping” only using their minds for menial pursuits and living lives “of quiet desperation” (813). However, while Thoreau allowed for control of these sleepers, he believed that should a man wish to remove themselves from the societal order, they should be allowed to: regardless of its effects on the society itself. Thus, the individual is simultaneously an integral component of society, but also transcends such mean concerns when it is necessary for the individual to exercise their powers of reason, imagination, logic and creation.

The writers of the the Enlightenment and Romantic period defined the individual as the reasoning and logical self which interacts with the larger external world, and the powers they attributed to their creation were immense, but they tempered the powers of the individual with the power and mystery of nature. This individualistic view of the self replaced the mean collectivism of European society and formed the foundation of modern perceptions of the individual.

How to get along with Iraqis: Circa 1943

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The following text comes from an American Army guidebook that was distributed during the second World War to soldiers stationed in Iraq.

(Emphasis added to some lines.)

SOME IMPORTANT DO’S AND DON’TS

Keep away from mosques.

Smoke or spit somewhere else””never in front of a mosque.

If you come near a mosque, keep moving (away) and don’t loiter.

Keep silent when the Moslems are praying (which they do five times a day) and don’t stare.

Discuss something else””NEVER religion or politics or women””with Moslems.

Remember the fear of the “evil eye.” Don’t stare at anyone. Don’t point your camera in anyone’s face.

Avoid offering opinions on internal politics.

Shake hands with the Iraqi; otherwise don’t touch them or slap them on the back.

Remember that the Iraqi are a very modest people and avoid any exposure of the body in their presence.

Keep out of the sun whenever you can. When you can’t, keep your head and neck covered.

Start eating only after your host has begun.

Eat with your right hand””never with your left, even if you are a southpaw.

Always tear bread with your fingers””never cut it.

Bread to the Moslems is holy. Don’t throw scraps of it about or let it fall on the ground.

In the city eat only part of the first course. There may be more coming.

In the country leave some food in the bowl””what you leave goes to the women and children.

Don’t offer Moslems food containing pork, bacon, or lard, or cooked in pork products. All such food is religiously “unclean” to them.

Don’t eat pork or pork products in front of Moslems.

Be pleasant if Moslems refuse to eat meat you offer.

Don’t offer Moslems alcoholic drinks. Drink liquor somewhere else””never in the presence of Moslems.

Knock before entering a private house. If a woman answers, wait until she has had time to retire.

Always respect the Moslem women. Don’t stare at them. Don’t smile at them. Don’t talk to them or follow them. If you do any of these things, it means trouble for you and your unit.

In a house or tent, follow the rule of your host. If he takes off his shoes on entering, do the same.

If you are required to sit on the floor in an Iraqi house or tent, cross your legs while doing so.

When visiting, don’t overstay your welcome. The third glass of tea or coffee is the signal to leave unless you are quartered there.

If you should see grown men walking hand in hand, ignore it. They are not “queer.”

Be kind and considerate to servants. The Iraqis consider all people equals.

Avoid any expression of race prejudice. The people draw very little color line.

Talk Arabic if you can to the people. No matter how badly you do it, they will like it.

Shake hands on meeting and leaving.

On meeting an Iraqi, be sure to inquire after his health.

If you wish to give someone a present, make it sweets or cigarettes.

If you are stationed in the country, it is a good idea to take sweets and cigarettes with you when you visit an Iraqi’s home.

Show respect toward all older persons. If serving food, the eldest person should be served first.

Be polite. Good manners are important to the Iraqis. Be hospitable.

Bargain on prices. Don’t let shopkeepers or merchants overcharge you; but be polite.

Be generous with your cigarettes.

Above all, use common sense on all occasions. And remember that every American soldier is an unofficial ambassador of good will.

Hat tip

If the American government had remembered its past policies, there would a few less problems in Iraq today.

Equiano’s “Narrative” and Jacobs’ “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl”

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Jacobs lead a very easy life for a slave. Being born into a kind family and having a grandmother to watch out for her allowed her to have a childhood that was almost enviable, although she was mistreated after her original mistress died she never had to experience the brutal torture many slaves faced at the hands of their masters. Many would wonder why she ran away from her home and family when her life was not all that bad and could get a lot worse, however even though her life was not in constant danger of physical abuse she was still a slave and subject to her master’s every whim. This situation alone is enough to make a person risk life and limb to be able to reach freedom.

Unlike Jacobs, Equiano was not born a slave and instead was captured at the age of 11 by slave traders, however he did not immediately get shipped to the Americas as slaves but instead his first master was from another tribe. The slave trade was already well founded in Africa for many many years before the Americas started to import slaves, while this does not absolve the fact that the America in modern history was one of the worst countries for slave trading it does show that America were not the originators of the African slave trade.

Equiano passed through many masters before coming to the Americas and still even more after his arrival in America and throughout all this time none of his masters treated him badly. This in of itself does not evidence anything but compared to the slavery of Jacobs day it shows a general shift in the treatment of personal slaves. Equiano was treated not just as a slave but many times as a companion and a trusted friend, but in general slaves were in Jacobs day treated badly as property and nothing more by the majority of owners. This could have evolved because the great increase in required slave labor and the resulting need of the masters to “deaden” themselves to the fact that the slaves were also humans not just slaves.
Slavery took many forms for many different people, while some had relatively easy lives like Equiano that ended with legal freedom, some had harder lives like Jacobs who felt it was necessary to run away to be free and still others faced every day in terror for their lives and only found freedom after death. It is not the slave who decides what kind of life they lived but the slave’s owners if Equiano had been sold to a Caribbean plantation originally before he was able to impress his kinder masters his life would have ended very differently.

Not many people in this day and age would say that slavery is okay, but can you really say it is completely wrong? Slavery has existed in one form or another for thousands of years, in the Roman Empire a slave could become very wealthy and powerful with years of work and slaves in many households were considered priceless. Although many people would like to say that slavery is 100% wrong it is hard to do so after looking at the historical basis of slavery and what slaves have allowed societies to accomplish. Another way to look at is in the northern states during the slave era immigrants were used to work in the factories as labor. These immigrants lived in conditions similar to that of the slaves and even though they had no papers to say they were owned by the factory they were slaves to it because they needed to eat. This leads us to the question each person must decide for themselves: “What is a slave?”

These two stories show two different types of slavery, one in which the slave is trusted as a companion not just property, and the second where the slaves are treated as property. However slavery has many forms from the Roman Empire when a trusted slave could become richer and more powerful than most freemen to people who are held in bondage for “debts” they can never fully repay. All of these are slavery yet not all are owned as property and not all live miserable lives. So the question remains what is a slave?

A slave by definition is someone owned by another as property but there are many situations where people find themselves in slave-like situations without being owned. One can decide that slavery is any situation where decisions are made for them is slavery, yet most children have decisions made by their parents and they are not slaves, the military decides what it is going to do and tells the average soldier what to do, even the average boss tells his employees what to do. None of the preceding situations are slavery. Another much more likely real-world definition of slavery is any situations where a persons choices are not made by oneself and the decisions made are specifically without regard to the person’s well-being.

Even a well treated slave is a slave, and the decision to sell a person to another, no matter who the buyer is, is a decision that is never to the slaves benefit. For although the seller may mean well and sell the slave to a “kind” master there is no guarantees that the slave will stay with the new master. Even if a Roman slave could accumulate power and wealth it could just as easily be taken from him if his master had a need. Similarly immediately after the end of the Civil War and the freedom of the slaves many times the land and equipment would be rented back to the former slaves at prices they could never fully repay, they were still slaves although instead of being slaves to a man they were slaves to a balance sheet.

A second question that is raised asks is it wrong to own slaves? In the case of Olaudah Equiano his family owned slaves and had he stayed with his family he too would eventually have owned slaves. But does this fact make him a bad person? Some people may say that it was his karma coming back to get him, others may say that just by owning slaves it does not make a person bad the only thing that matters is how they treat their slaves. But really the question is left up to the individual culture that the owner and slave came from. Few would argue that it was acceptable for Americans to import Africans to work in servitude on plantations, yet for Africans to make slaves out of their enemies was culturally sound. Equiano spoke of how captured enemies would become slaves and either they would be sold to slave traders or kept in the capturing village, this was expected by both sides in a conflict. The captured slaves would integrate themselves into their new villages almost as full members and most would not attempt to flee. Therefore it is not possible for a person from a different culture to declare that what the Ibo and similar tribes did was wrong because unlike ourselves who consider the idea of slavery to be forbidden to us the members of the tribes knew and expected to become slaves should certain events take place. No single culture can say something is wrong for another culture because the judging of other cultures lead to the Spanish Inquisition and opened the way for people to legitimize the slave trade in “barbaric” Africa.