Trojan Horse: Whitman’s Barbaric Yawp at the Gates of Plato’s Republic by Brad Hachten
In the dialogue of Plato’s Republic, Socrates speaks of an “ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry”. That the Republic itself derives from a time and place regarded as ancient, that is, Ancient Greece, demonstrates how old this quarrel might be. In this essay, I hope to draw attention to a resolution to this ancient quarrel because I believe the ramifications can contribute both toward the unification of our democratic society and toward a common vision of a moral and just society. For the problem of our democratic society, it appears to me, is essentially the problem of the human condition.
Central to the argument throughout the Republic is Socrates’ contention that a moral life is best for the individual and best for society. In order to make his argument, however, Socrates finds he must project an ideal community. As the basis of this projection relies on truth and reason, he finds the role of the poets to be problematic. After drawing up charges against the poets, Socrates solution is to ban them from his ideal community.
Yet Socrates provides a chance of exoneration: if the poets can provide a rational argument for their inclusion, they can be brought back from exile. As one who comes to the Platonic dialogue of the Republic from the realm of the poet and the poetic vision, I accept the Socratic challenge. In order to meet this challenge, and in honor of the 150th anniversary of the publication of Leaves of Grass, I intend to cite Walt Whitman, poet of the modern democratic society.
Throughout the Republic, Socrates makes numerous acknowledgements to the poets, enough to leave an impression of ambiguity and inconsistency to his position. Plato’s real contention is not so much poetry but the untruths it perpetuates in undermining a just society. My contention is the opposite: we cannot attain a moral and just society without the truth that poetry emits.
But first let me address the charges, which I concede are not unfounded. Those who uphold freedom of expression would be well served to attend to Plato’s position. When Plato refers to the poets, it should be realized that he refers to them in a far broader sense than we might recognize today, encompassing musicians and dramatists, for example. Furthermore, the poets held a more prominent position of authority. Beyond their role as storytellers in the context of entertainment, they shared in the role as educators of the citizens with a didactic element to their work.
One of the main untruths that Socrates levels against the poets is their use of representation in promoting unreality. Poetry strives to make an impression, affecting emotions and desires, by creating an imitation world to represent the real world. Because the essential intent is to make this impression rather than conveying the real world, poetry is susceptible to misrepresentation.
It is no great leap in correlating the problematic relationship of poets to society in Plato’s day to the predominant storytellers of our modern democratic society: the movies and television. These misrepresentations range from technical aspects, such as firing gun without ever reloading, to greater moral aspects, such as the glorification of sex and violence without representing the true consequences that these acts can have on both individuals and society. As long as the objective is to drive the dramatic plot, the presentation will be more concerned with arousing emotions and desires than depicting reality, and such liberties with the truth are excused as artistic license. In our society, we leave it to the viewer to discriminate between the real and imitation world, and as a consequence, society often bears a cost for this freedom of expression.
When it comes to morality, often the emphasis is on personal responsibility, and for good reason: if we cannot accept personal responsibility, we are unworthy of personal freedom. However, to consent to a society without sympathy to our nature is to be complicit in setting ourselves up to fail.
Having grown up in southern California amidst a consumer society, I can expound on Plato’s charges. Though I could deconstruct media images on the level of reason, that is, think critically upon their purpose, nevertheless, I couldn’t help but be impressed by their socializing influence. Because the images play on emotions and desires, they capture one’s imagination. This can prove more powerful than one’s ability to reason, especially the young who are by nature impressionable and still developing their sense of morality. Thus the line between depicting reality and shaping reality has become increasingly blurred.
In the dialogue shortly after Socrates elects to ban the poets, he remarks to his friend Glaucon as follows:
After all, we know from our own experience all about their spell. I mean, haven’t you ever fallen under the spell of poetry, Glaucon, especially when the spectacle is provided by Homer?This ‘spell’ that Socrates refers to can be a legitimate impediment to rationality. I would grant that Plato understood the problematic relationship of poets in attaining a moral and just society, that is, if it is to be one constructed on the basis of reason.
Plato’s solution to the problem, however, is what strikes us as problematic, if not outrageous. The impulse is to level one’s own charges against Plato, namely that the Republic is a model for totalitarian restrictions of freedom (for this is a common refutation of the dialogue). But simply because we have the benefit of hindsight on the utopian nightmares spawned in the twentieth century, doesn’t free us from the indictment. Here again, poets and other upholders of freedom of expression would be well served by carefully considering the argument.
Midway through the dialogue, Socrates provides a harrowing account of how dictatorship succeeds democracy that seems chillingly prophetic. The democratic citizenry, it is argued, inevitably becomes so consumed with selfish passions that dictators are courted to restore order and wind up enslaving. It is these same passions the poets must accept some complicity in their incitation. Because of the competition to make an impression on the populace, the poet (in the greater sense) is pressured to ever seek new ways to inflame human emotions and desires. Thus in our current society, it follows that movies and television must continually ratchet up scenes of sex and violence in order to make an impression and attract a greater market share.
The best countercharge a poet could make is accusing Plato of his own unreality. For the argument that propels the Republic, that the moral life is best for the individual, can be refuted much as Thrasymachus does early in the dialogue. For he contends, as any poet might, that in the real world, the good doesn’t always prevail, that a moral life is not always best for the individual, and that any reward would have to come in the afterlife.
As I stated in the opening paragraph, however, I’m not here to argue, I’m here to reach a resolution. Though I concede the negative impact the poets can have on a society, I disagree that they should be banned for the crux of my argument is that the solution also resides within the poets. Furthermore, the success or failure of our modern democratic society may hinge on the ability to appreciate perhaps its greatest poet, Walt Whitman.
One must keep in mind, that Socrates (through Plato) makes his argument by projecting an ideal society. Similarly, Whitman envisioned a democratic ideal, an optimal society that promotes the best of human nature. Thus both poet and philosopher are compelled to make a projection. In “To a Historian”, Whitman writes as follows:
Chanter of Personality, outlining what is yet to be,At this point, we must ask, what is an ideal society? Only, the word ideal suggests that it is something unattainable. Better to ask, what is an optimal society? An optimal society, I argue, is one that promotes the best of human nature and while minimizing the worst; and for Plato and Whitman, and throughout human history, an optimal society is a harmonic society where the individual good coincides with the common good.
I project the history of the future.
My argument, incidentally, is derived from innumerable influences though owes much to the poetry of Whitman, having written a novel that attempts to convey some the poetic spirit into the present. What follows is a construct from discerning the poet by deciphering the primal password as reflected from a line in “Song of Myself”:
I speak the password primeval.To better understand an optimal society, we must visit the primal past. Humans are imbued with a natural morality, I argue, due to having evolved as social beings in the hunting and gathering society. In this harmonic society, relatively egalitarian and cooperative, the individual good coincided with the collective good. The emotional and mental allegiance of the members of this society were so bound to the collective, they could be described as being socialized into a collective consciousness.
After the agricultural revolution, however, when society became increasingly competitive and complex, with increased social stratification and the storage of wealth, the individual good no longer coincided with the collective good. Thus, in Plato’s time as in our time, we come to what could be described as being socialized into individual consciousness.
Individual consciousness could be described simply as the individual being conscious of one’s own self. Collective consciousness, on the other hand, could be described as the individual being conscious of being part of a collective, or as a member of a greater body. Not only the agricultural revolution, but later the industrial revolution, the onset of the modern era, up to our own time here in the consumer society and the rise of the self-image has all contributed toward this shift in consciousness.
Though we may be socialized into individual consciousness, humans retain their collective nature, giving emotional and mental allegiance to variations of collectives: family, community, nation, for example. Humans being capable of individual and collective action, our emotions can flow toward one extreme or the other. Thus it is an emotional continuum I’ll describe as a continuum of consciousness: the individual on one extreme (the individual in isolation) while at the other extreme lies the collective (the individual completely absorbed into the collective.
Though our minds (reason) may be in the cultural present, our bodies (emotions) remain in the primal past. Poets, philosophers, prophets, and mystics have put forth variations of similar themes between the intelligible and the sensible. But essentially, the point is that the primal past is within us, thus I refer to it as the primal soul. The reason I take the time to describe the above terms is so that I can construct an argument that an optimal society is a harmonic society when the individual acts in accordance with the primal soul: the individual acting in concert with the collective good; the individual good coinciding with the collective good.
The moral life is best for the individual and society when a state of harmony exists, and thus can be described, in the optimal sense, as having spiritual unity (Note that I use the term ‘spirit’ as in any collective spirit such as community spirit). In Whitman’s poem, “I Hear America Singing”, we have a projection of a democratic society aligned with the primal soul:
I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear,
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe
and strong,
The carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam,
The mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves
off work,
The boat man singing what belongs to him in his boat, the
deckhand singing on the steamboat deck,
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter
singing as he stands,
The wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the
morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown,
The delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at
work, or of the girl sewing or washing,
Each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else,
The day what belongs to the day – at night the party of young
fellows, robust, friendly,
Singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.
During a state of disharmony, however, those most effective in self-interest, not morality, can wind up on top. Those on the bottom who’re pressed for individual survival will also have to abandon the moral life in favor of self-interest in order to survive. Those in the middle can’t help but be pressured to favor self-interest. A disharmonic society in the extreme case, where the survival instinct is incited, can be said to be suffering from a spiritual crisis.
Despite recent evidence from neuroscientists that suggest emotions are inseparable from our ability to reason, we still hear the plea to “set aside our emotions” in order to argue reasonably. Though clarity of reason is a worthy pursuit, and aspects such as deductive reasoning (If a friend of Plato is a friend of the truth and I am a friend of the truth, it follows that I am a friend of Plato.) can be effective, it remains a limited and sometimes unwieldy venture. Researchers of integrity are reluctant to go beyond the phrase “research suggests” because of the numerous variables that are potentially involved. The ability to isolate an argument from outside factors, beyond the sphere of mathematics (2+2=4), is constrained, if not next to impossible.
Intelligibly, we construct a worldview in order to survive and thrive. Through this imaginative construction we reason. To some extent, we’re socialized into this imaginative construction of the world as it is influenced by one’s personal experience. Since our vision of the world is inevitably limited, consequently, our ability to reason is limited by this imaginative construction. Rather than true reason, we often rationalize according to this construction. Furthermore, we tend to be protective of our imaginative constructions of the world because, besides providing the basis to survive and thrive, they also form the foundation in which we attach meaning to our lives (how we perceive ourselves).
The problem of upholding reason in a competitive society of spiritual disunity is that we can’t help but rely on our emotions and not without benefit for the individual. Instead of a just society on the basis of reason, however, we’re apt to attain an unjust society marked by the rationalization of self-promotion. Conversely, the more harmonious a society, the better and more effective reason -- or greater integrity of reason -- can be applied to address the societal challenges. To the extent that the moral life can be argued as best for the individual is best argued in a state of collective harmony.
Yet because of social emotions such as shame, the individual should think twice before embarking on a path of self-interest. For I contend that shame adversely affects the individual though the individual often fails to recognize it for what it is. This is because of the disconnect between the mind and the primal soul, the discord of the mind and body. The dynamics of shame are such we don’t realize it’s weighing us down until were free of it.
Plato’s analogy of the person emerging from the Cave reflects the situation. The mind is reluctant to confront a shameful position rooted in the body. Furthermore, one’s inflated sense of self is can be tied to this imaginative construction of the world. As the mind confronts the shame it becomes painful, perhaps humiliating. But if the person sees the pain through and stays with it, that person achieves a higher level of consciousness and sense of freedom. One’s sense of self goes through a reevaluation and reconstructed on a sounder foundation. This occurs as the mind addresses and subsequently relinquishes a shameful position of self-interest and pride, achieving a higher truth. The pursuit of the truth is inextricably tied to the collective good, a theme I’ll pick up at a later point.
Though the pursuit of happiness through self-interest is a limited venture due to the conflict with the primal soul, due to the disconnect between mind and body, it also becomes self-perpetuating. Selfish passion (described as that which has an evolutionary basis in the survival of the individual or his or her genetic makeup) must be continually renewed to maintain a certain level of pleasure for all that time that person is becoming leaden with shame that the mind fails to recognize. This becomes a driving force for the individual acting in conflict with the collective good and reflects, in the Republic, the description of the democracy before it gives way to dictatorship. For that hypothetical democracy is in a state of spiritual crisis.
Though much has been said about how self-interest drives the market economy, we should remind ourselves that it’s effective only as it promotes the collective good, that is, in so far as it raises all boats. Persistent poverty, environmental degradation, gross inequalities, all conspires to discredit the mantra of the free market in bringing about a just society.
The German philosopher Hegel, echoed more recently by Francis Fukuyama, proffered that human history is driven by both the desire for individual freedom and the desire to be recognized. But according to the model I propose, human history is in a flux between individual freedom and the collective good. Cultural factors evolved in time, including art and religion, to channel human nature toward the collective good. Since the industrial revolution, however, individual freedom has thrived, in part because individual initiative works so well in capitalism. Furthermore, the moral culture of all societies, though especially the west, had been undermined by some extent by the enlightenment principles that promote individual reason.
In the modern era, the rise of totalitarianism in the 1930’s, be it communism or national socialism, were movements that set the collective over the individual (failing horrifically on both right and left of the political spectrum, however). Yet these movements were effective in drawing mass appeal, I argue, because they tapped into a collective consciousness, that is, collective emotions aligned with the primal soul. Both communism and fascism provided a collective sense of progress, though to tragic consequence. Though they tapped into these emotions, these movements were spawned by the promotion of reason, however perverted, in discord with the body. As with Plato, as one begins to promote societies based on reason, one begins on the path of the misanthropic: the ability to reason is inevitably impaired by human nature and, as the neuroscientists have demonstrated, inextricably tied to emotion. If individuals and societies travel too far down this misanthropic path of detached reason, genocidal practices become excusable to such a mind.
The genius of Whitman, and one I believe we’ve yet to fully come to terms with, is that he made sense of the world by following his emotions up through to his reason by a projection of the imagination. Whitman’s vision is one of bringing the mind in accord with the body, as with all prophets and mystics (though Whitman and other mystics still must be understood within the context of their time and place). This is in stark contrast to many philosophers and, frankly, most of us in this so-called Age of Reason, who’re apt to make sense of the world through the mind in some discord with the body; then applying our reason, we fail to appreciate its limitations in ourselves and how it’s conveyed toward others. From “One’s Self I Sing”, at the beginning of his tome of poems Leaves of Grass, Whitman writes as follows:
Of physiology from top to toe I sing,
Not physiognomy alone nor brain alone is worthy for the Muse,
I say the Form complete is worthier far,
A byproduct of the historic drive toward individual freedom, one that reflects Hegel’s desire for recognition, one that I argue undermines the collective good and thus threatens to undermine that freedom, closely related to individual consciousness, is individual pride. Individual freedom, ultimately, and I argue emphatically, can only be balanced and sustained by a collective spirit. In this we have a struggle much older than the cause for freedom, one that we’ve lost sight of in the modern era. What I mean by pride, at it’s primal core, is the moral orientation of how the individual perceives his or her own self in relationship to the greater collective. Furthermore, pride bruises easy that reflexively occludes sympathy and becomes a driving force for the individual acting in conflict with the collective good.
By casting the dialectic drive of human history as one of individual freedom versus the collective good, the struggle as “spirit versus pride” causes a shift in the model. Because spirit versus pride is as much an internal struggle as it is an outside, factional struggle, it changes the philosophical model from a movement of thesis versus antithesis and toward a movement of synthesis: bringing the individual under the fold of the collective.
Whitman, as I read him – and granted it’s an imaginative reading – was a poet that set a moral course for the modern democratic society by celebrating individual freedom in the context of the human spirit. Yet the country has gone the way of individual pride. We are socialized into individual consciousness but Whitman, through his imagination achieved a collective consciousness based on a shared human identity, feeling it on an emotional level, which he then tried to convey in his poetry (this is in contrast to nationalism, which can be described as a collective consciousness based on a shared national identity).
As the pendulum swung too far one way in the 1930’s and manifested itself in collective totalitarianism that threatened the sustainability of the individual, now we may be swinging back too far the other way toward a spiritual crisis, or a crisis of the spirit: self-serving individualism that acts to undermine the sustainability of the greater collective. Yet I don’t mean to sound alarmist: this is only a hypothetical position based on models of human nature. Given the numerous variables involved, such a level of crisis would be difficult to gauge.
Whitman’s vision may well have been premature in the nineteenth century: the course of freedom had yet to travel far and the value of protecting and respecting cultural diversity was negligible. Yet now, I believe, it’s time for such a vision to move into prominence, though not without taking into account of the historical developments since his time (some aspects of Whitman are best left in the nineteenth century). Because of majority/minority relationships within a society, or the powerful and disempowered, hierarchies of allegiance are to be expected which, nevertheless, should coincide under the greater umbrella of the human spirit.
At this point, let me suggest that if we’re going to achieve a moral and just society, it may require an evolution of consciousness, from individual to collective. This is to say, we must tap into the emotions of our collective nature, often referred to as ‘spirit’, in order to counteract and moderate our selfish nature. This is the moral truth that poetry emits, that is, the ability to break the bounds of our isolation and assert that we are social beings with the ability to feel as one. I believe this is at the essence of art much as D.H. Lawrence asserts in his essay on Whitman from Studies of Classic American Literature:
The essential function of art is moral. Not aesthetic, not decorative, not pastime and recreation. But Moral. The essential function of art is moral.The genius of Lawrence understood the disconnect between the mind and body, and the limits of reason. Consequently, as reflected in the quote above, he saw the potential for art to enable change. Yet Lawrence’s promotion of the instinctual is as problematic as reason: in a state of disharmony, the impulse will be toward self-preservation that can act to undermine a moral and just society.
But a passionate, implicit morality, not didactic. A morality which changes the blood, rather than the mind. Changes the blood first. The mind follows later, in the wake.
As I read the Gospels, Jesus of Nazareth not only understood the nuance between pride and spirit, he was emphatic on the subject. Though I, myself, follow the Christian faith, this is a very old, cross-cultural conflict found throughout the history of human societies. Religion, or spirituality, and art can act to channel human nature, as it has in the past, in way that is not only best for society but best for the individual. The preservation of cultural diversity should be regarded just as high as the preservation of biological diversity in order to draw from a rich source of human experience to enable human societies to better meet its challenges.
Yet the rate of historical progress has outpaced our moral culture and religion out of the context of its time and place can become so entangled by its didacticisms that it chokes off the spirit. As religion remains a fertile breeding ground for false prophets, demagogues, and the abuses of nationalism, it can often be as much a part of the problem as a solution. Enlightenment principles that uphold pluralism and reason, however limited, remain important pillars toward human progress. Furthermore, emotion can be dangerous. Like fire, it needs to be contained in a controlled burn, or the wind could take it in the opposite direction one intends it to go, causing widespread destruction. Thus a rational argument must be made, intoning Plato, in order to contain and channel the emotion: the poet must defer to the philosopher.
Hegel’s struggle for recognition, echoed by Fukuyama, may well drive human history yet it only drives us so far. Better to recognize one’s self in another in the emotion of spirit. In Plato’s Theaetetus, the dialogue centers on the determination of what is knowledge and is book ended by death. Though Socrates is about to die, he sees his own reflection in Theaetetus in as far as they share a fidelity to the truth above one’s individual pride.
As neuroscientists have demonstrated that human emotion is inseparable to human reason, so poets and philosophers may also learn that they themselves are inseparable to one another. There’s much of the poet in Plato as there’s much of the philosopher in Whitman, yet Plato is distinctly a philosopher as Whitman is distinctly a poet. The quest for truth, I argue, is ultimately bound to love for the collective good and the human spirit.
Where one will confront death and find love, however, another will confront death and find existential angst. It’s reasonable to confront death and see the end of one’s existence. But humans are more than reasonable beings, and that is our beauty. We are born into a collective infrastructure and are unable to live as autonomous individuals. Because we’re emotional and spiritual beings, we have the capacity feel and imagine as part of a collective. Humans need to love and be loved, not just on a personal and intimate level, but on a societal level. They need to love not just to abide by the commandments, not just to be moral and go to heaven, but to have their lives take on a meaning greater than their individual selves. Hence, one of Whitman’s lines from “Song of Myself”:
And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral drest in his shroud
Ironically, the modern poet has found a niche in a kind of self-imposed exile, alienated from the common man -- T.S. Eliot’s The Wasteland, for example. Whereas Socrates would die rather than go into exile, modern poets would thrive out there, writing self-contained, art for art’s sake pieces that they share and trump between each other in an exclusive game for those skilled and practiced in the craft.
Whitman was a modern poet yet by virtue of his imagination, one that transcends the modern era. In many ways Whitman is more akin to the poets of ancient Greece in achieving a human spirit – art for human’s sake. Throughout human history, there are precious few moments since the rise of civilization when poets glimpsed both freedom and a collective sense of progress and the future appeared with such promise: one being in Ancient Athens, another being in nineteenth-century America. In both instances neither promise would go fulfilled, the collective sense of progress would become displaced by the pursuit of individual fulfillment. But however high we might be able to promote our individual selves, we’ll never attain the heights that can only be found as a member of a harmonic society aligned with the primal soul, the individual acting freely in concert with the collective good.
These words that I use -- harmonic, concert – are associated with music as music is associated with Whitman: “Song of Myself”, “One’s Self I Sing”, “I Sing the Body Electric”, “I Hear America Singing”. Whitman’s music is derived from within. We may hear music from an outside source, but the effect is within. The derivative word for music is the Muse: the poet feels the music within and conveys it outward. Thus the poet provides grace and rhythm to action, much as the prodigy poet Arthur Rimbaud explained in his seer letter, and as it’s reflected in the above poem, “I Hear America Singing.”
If the poet can enable an immoral society, conversely it follows that the poet has also the power to restore a moral society. The poet can do this by breaking down the sense of individual isolation. Through the cultivation of a collective consciousness, we can effectively allay emotional fulfillment through selfish passions by affecting the music of the collective. The reality is that we are a collective; but it’s so large, the individual fails to see it and doesn’t feel it. Consequently, our actions resonate in ways we fail to see. But the poet can illuminate this greater collective, to help the individual see his or her own self as part of a greater whole: when one’s personal struggle is felt to be part of a greater struggle. The human imagination enables us to see beyond our immediate circumstances into a truer reality and the poet, by use of representation, can help convey this.
If the individual feels that the collective does not act on behalf of his or her self, that individual is less likely to act on behalf of the collective. Yet only the collective lives; ultimately, the individual must make peace with the collective. Inevitably, the individual dies. Only the collective lives.
But if the poets of ancient Greece achieved and conveyed the human spirit, giving rhythm to harmonious life, in Plato’s own time and place in ancient Athens, why would he propose banning them? The answer, I believe, and good prerequisite to reading the Republic, is to turn to neither poet nor philosopher, but to the historian Thucydides’ account of the Peloponnesian War. As Thucydides writes the intention of his history, he clearly distances himself from the romanticism of the poet:
And it may well be that my history will seem less easy to read because of the absence in it of a romantic element. It will be enough for me, however,if these words of mine are judged useful by those who want to understand clearly the events which happened in the past and which (human nature being what it is) will, at some time or other and in much the same ways, be repeated in the future. My work is not a piece of writing designed to meet the taste of an immediate public, but was done to last for ever.Note that Thucydides is stating not so much that history repeats itself so much as the patterns of human nature repeat themselves.
Reading The Peloponnesian War by Thucydides provides a greater understanding of the tragedy that befell the democratic society of Athens. Instigated in large part by Athenian greed and hubris, the degenerative effects of a prolonged war played itself out on its citizenry as it fell prey to hysteria, fear, demagoguery, political intrigue, all conspiring to bring down that special time in human history. From the failure of Athenian democracy, its role in the death of Socrates, and Plato’s own personal experience in political life, I suspect, inspired the philosophy of the Republic. In this context, the dialogue strikes me as a dream -- a vision -- to restore that harmonic society, but one restored on the basis of reason. This notion of detached reason and the disdaining of emotion would find its way into Enlightenment principles and take hold in political philosophies of the modern era. The exaltation of reason would works its way to those with far less integrity than Plato, however, to officials in communism and fascism/national socialism that followed a didacticism that overrode human sympathy.
Whenever I think of a society based on reason, I can’t help but think of the spectacle provided by Dostoyevsky from the nineteenth-century Notes from Underground and its main character vividly demonstrating that he is not applicable to reason. Yet in twentieth-century Russia, the Bolsheviks would eventually seize power -- later consolidated by Stalin -- and apply their ‘reason’, nonetheless, with its inherent antipathy toward human nature. Tragically, Russia failed to heed its Dostoyevsky. Let us not fail to heed our Whitman.
Thucydides wrote his history of the Peloponnesian War in the vein of the human spirit. Edith Hamilton, in her classic work The Greek Way, assesses Thucydides perspective on the causes of war by writing as follows:
It was something far beneath the surface, deep down in human nature,and the cause of all the wars ever fought. The motive power was greed, that strange passion for power and possession which no power and no possession satisfy. Power, Thucydides wrote, or its equivalent wealth,created the desire for more power, more wealth.If we fail to read the lessons of human history in that same human spirit, the lessons will be lost. Our failures, our tragedies, our misdirections, let us incorporate them into ourselves and move forward. To stand apart from others in time and space and wag a moralizing finger is itself an evil. The dead cry out for love.
During another time of division in our country, in the wake of the dead at Gettysburg, Lincoln’s words ring as true now as they did in 1863, reminding us that it is we, the living, who must act so this country, “of the people, for the people, and by the people,” shall not perish from the earth.
The same sinister forces that befell the ancient democratic society of Athens threaten to undermine the modern democratic society of the United States of America: self-serving interests in politics and commerce ever bent on the accumulation of ever more power and ever more wealth. This is the hoarding Dragon of myth, the symbolic representation of the human passions of greed in both wealth and power, that strengthens its position by playing on the vulnerabilities of our nature, inciting fear and complicit with selfish passions.
We’ve been deceived into believing, or deceived ourselves into believing, that progress in reason can enable us to lead self-centered lives but in fact, we are discovering it is unsustainable. In time, the complacency in the self induces the passions of the self until a Dragon forms, imposing a slow constriction of freedom and increased coercion of method. Indeed, the devil is the great deceiver and the current situation is apt to find both in exile: the philosopher’s truth displaced by the appearance of truth, the poet’s love displaced by the appearance of love.
Yet much has happened since Thucydides’ and Plato’s time affecting both poetry and philosophy that we can draw on. The arrival of Jesus of Nazareth would send waves of change throughout western society, if not the world. In the Biblical Gospel according to Mark (8:34), Jesus speaks as follows:
If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.The poet can take up that cross and incorporate it in the various forms of art, not for promoting a Christian theology of personal salvation, but as the symbolic representation of love, compassion, sacrifice and faith, the best of our human nature that can lead us toward human salvation. Poetry counteracts this complacency of the self by enabling the individual to see his or her life as part of something greater than their individual existence. Behind the romantic element there can be a deeper truth about human nature, if not prophecy of human nature. Through the spiritual gifts possessed by the poet, in romantic and prophetic symbolism, the Cross can be taken up and used to slay this Dragon.
The individual-collective dynamics can provide a discernible pattern to human history, moral clarity on the present, and vision toward a greater future. In this way, poets can act to restore a collective sense of progress. Neither Plato nor Whitman nor anyone has the answer. Only collectively do we find an answer when every individual sees his or her own self as part of the solution.
In the epic poem of the Divine Comedy, Virgil, representing reason, could only lead Dante so far; Beatrice, representing love, had to lead him the entire distance. Likewise, the faith in reason that led us through the nineteenth-century, we’d come to learn tragically of its limitations in the twentieth-century; here in the twenty-first century, we must learn to follow our hearts.
Be it promoting the human spirit, cultivating a collective consciousness based on our shared humanity, or recognizing one’s self in another, these are all variations of the cross-cultural divine law to love another as you love yourself. Through poetry, prayer, the power of imagination, and above all, deeds that inspire each other, we can keep ourselves on track toward a moral and just society composed of members living as Christ had lived on earth: the individual acting freely with love for the collective good.
By acting on the level of emotion and the imagination, we can clarify our reason and deepen our perception. The only way to address a spiritual crisis is to have a spiritual movement and there is never any time like the present to promote the human spirit. A greater state of equality will come through a greater state of love. Let us seize the republic in a peaceful, nonviolent revolution from within. A higher realm of spirit lies above the cave of the modern era and we have nothing to lose but the chains of our own pride. In this way, we can answer Whitman’s call for a “new brood of poet”:
Poets to Come
Poets to come! Orators, singers, musicians to come!
Not to-day is to justify me and answer what I am for,
But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater
Than before known,
Arouse! For you must justify me.
I myself but write one or two indicative words for the
future,
I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in the
Darkness.
I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping, turns
A casual look upon you and then averts his face,
Leaving it to you to prove and define it,
Expecting the main things from you.
-- Walt Whitman
