Karma, New England style

The theme at Goat Rope these days is the life and work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was a huge influence in 19th century life and letters in America and beyond. I mean, even Nietzsche liked him.

At the moment, I'm taking a look at his 1838 Harvard Divinity School Address, which was so controversial at the time that he wasn't invited back to that institution for 30 years. In a day or so, posts here will take a look at some of the things he wrote that got him into hot water with even relatively laid back New England Unitarians.

Today, though, the first passage that hit my eye is one that echoes classical Buddhist teachings about karma. Contrary to popular belief, Buddhist views on the subject are pretty subtle. It's not like if you do a good deed you get a Lexis. It's more like if you act nastily, you'll get better and better and being nasty, with all that that entails. And vice versa.  (Emerson, by the way, was an admirer of Indian philosophy and was moved by the limited amount he could read about at the time of Hindu and Buddhist ideas).

Anyhow, here's the passage. I must admit that while Ralph drives me crazy sometimes, I like this one:

The intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul. The laws execute themselves. They are out of time, out of space, and not subject to circumstance. Thus; in the soul of man there is a justice whose retributions are instant and entire. He who does a good deed, is instantly ennobled. He who does a mean deed, is by the action itself contracted. He who puts off impurity, thereby puts on purity. If a man is at heart just, then in so far is he God; the safety of God, the immortality of God, the majesty of God, do enter into that man with justice. If a man dissemble, deceive, he deceives himself, and goes out of acquaintance with his own being. A man in the view of absolute goodness, adores, with total humility. Every step so downward, is a step upward. The man who renounces himself, comes to himself.

Everybody got that?

Note: this post was meant to come out early this morning but there have been internet problem on the farm.

THE DOWNSIDE OF PRIVATIZATION is discussed here.

THE LONG HAUL. Here's a profile of a friend of mine from the Gazette.

THE FUTURE OF UNIONS. Here's a look at the challenges the labor movement is facing and possible ways to deal with it. Suggestion: take a look at the I.W.W.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The ones that get away

Any time you try to work for social justice, you're bound to win some and lose some. And, given the forces you're up against, the odds, statistically speaking are not in your favor.

I usually tell myself not to take things personally, to focus on conditions and act in accordance with them, and if something doesn't work out, to flow into the next technique. And not to be encumbered by hope.

I'm usually pretty good about taking my advice but this week...not so much. I had been marginally hopeful that some things might make it through the WV legislature. One measure, that would have helped people who need unemployment insurance but can't get it now, made it farther than before but died due to "the rich man's frown," to quote an old labor song. I guess that's to be expected, given that the forces of organized wealth have something like an absolute veto power over anything they don't like, whether it makes sense or not.

But another one, which might have taken a step or two towards addressing the major racial disparities in the state, managed to die on the last night despite having made it through both chambers (in different forms that were not reconciled). That one was in the bag until things fell apart for reasons that had nothing to do with public policy. I won't go into the whys, although it had to do with politics in the sense of the saying that in West Virginia everything is political except politics and that's personal.

For a lot of this week, I've felt like the lyric of a John Hiatt song that refers to "throwing up ashes on the floor." Not an attractive image, but it seems to fit. And I kept thinking about those birds in the movie March of the Penguins who went through a winter of hell for an egg that didn't hatch.

Given the fact that the world is going to hell in a handbasket, it probably isn't such a big deal that one decent bill in a small state died, but this one got to me. It seemed like one little thing that could be done in a universe sliding toward entropy or Ragnarok.

I'm starting to get over it, using my preferred medicine of hard physical training. There will be plenty more struggles to come--and, no doubt, plenty of similar outcomes.

AN AGE OF ACTIVISM? Maybe.

FIDDLING AROUND with a fragile recovery could be dangerous.

WASHINGTON SEEMS TO HAVE FORGOTTEN the unemployed.

COAL KABUKI, CONTINUED. This ought to be good for another ruling class hissy fit.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

One that stuck

El Cabrero has a theologian in common with President Obama, his 2008 opponent John McCain and quite a few people across the political spectrum. That would be Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), a professor at Union Theological Seminary who was very influential in the US in secular as well as religious circles.

I guess I can claim to be a second generation student of Niebuhr. When I was in junior high, a new priest came to the Episcopal Church I was brought up in. At the time, I didn't have much use for religion in general, a periodically recurring condition with me.

I'd been involved in a civil war over this with the Maternal Unit until we agreed to a ceasefire on the following terms: I'd complete confirmation classes and go through the ceremony and after that I was on my own.

The priest taught the confirmation classes, during which I came to realize that the whole thing might not have been as stupid as I thought. The priest in question, Fr. William Kirkland, had studied at Edinburgh and later with Niebuhr himself at Union, although I didn't realize that at the time.

It was much much later, when I had begun working for the American Friends Service Committee that I really began to study his thought. I made it a habit to study social movements of the past to look at what worked and what didn't and became aware of Niebuhr's profound influence on Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement.

It stuck with me. Lately, I've revisited his writings, which will probably show up here for the next little stretch.

OIL SLICK. Paul Krugman opines on the Gulf oil disaster and the role of government in his latest column.

MEDIA AND MORE. Here's the latest edition of the Rev. Jim Lewis' Notes from Under the Fig Tree. Jim appears to be going through some static with the Episcopal bishop of WV.

EAT LOCAL. This item looks at the economics of organic gardening and local food production.

GETTING INVOLVED can make you happier.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED