I embrace the common

The theme here lately is the work of American Transcendentalis Ralph Waldo Emerson. Today I'm finishing up a look at his 1837 essay/lecture The American Scholar. Part of its appeal lay in its embrace of everyday life and its call for intellectuals to escape from what would come to be called the ivory tower, a sentiment one can often hear expressed nearly 200 years later.

Here he is sounding like a prose version of Walt Whitman:

...I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give me insight into to-day, and you may have the antique and future worlds.

Some of the last lines of this essay are particularly memorable, as Emerson calls for a new American educational system to break with European models:

We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe. The spirit of the American feeman is alreaded suspected to be timid, imitative, tame.

Instead, he calls for a break with the traditions of the past:

We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; we will speak our own minds. The study of letters shall no longer be a name for pit, for doubt, for sensual indulgence....A nation of men will for the first time exist, because each believes himself inspired by the Divine Soul which also inspires all men.

Pretty rousing stuff, but I'm not sure the American higher educational system has quite  lived up to Emerson's dreams. That's one aircraft carrier that's not ready for the "Mission Accomplished" banner.

SPEAKING OF "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED," we're coming up on the 10th anniversary of the Iraq War.

STILL POPULAR AFTER ALL THESE YEARS. That would be raising the minimum wage.

PASS THE MEAT? Or pass on it?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

PERCHANCE TO DREAM

Dreams are a perennially fascinating topic. It's pretty amazing that each night as we sleep our minds produce such wild images, stories, and ideas--or at least it seems that way when we wake up. Some animals even seem to do it.

El Cabrero is not an expert on sleep or dream science, but it seems like the latest research indicates that dreams play an important mental function connected with memory and the processing of the information and stimuli of waking life.

Freud shook the scientific community with the publication of his The Interpretation of Dreams at the turn of the last century. His ideas that such phenomena were meaningful seemed ludicrous to materialistically oriented scientists, but in fact it concurred with the opinions of pretty much all humanity throughout pretty much all history. Dreams probably influenced the development of a lot of human myths and religious beliefs and practices--including the belief in life after death as people dreamed of encounters with the departed.

Some dreams seem to be just residual static from the previous day's events, but others appear to have a clear or disguised meaning. Occasionally, some are downright deep.

I've always been interested in this subject, but dreams really got my attention when I discovered the ideas of Freud and Jung in my youth. I'm not an orthodox Freudian or Jungian now (though I lean towards the former most days), but I agree with their main idea that these creations of the unconscious have a lot to tell us.

I take dreams pretty seriously, especially strong ones, and they have even influenced some of the most important decisions of my life. It's not that I think they are messengers from beyond--although some sure seem that way--but rather that they express a lot of the mental activity, thinking and feeling that go one beneath the surface of our ordinary awareness. They have triggered insights and creativity from scientists as well as artists.

Dreams will be the guiding thread through this week's posts.

Speaking of which, here's a funny dream I had when I first read Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, which argues that they are basically wish fulfillments. I wished I was able to interpret dreams--so I dreamed I could. Pretty cute.

DEALING WITH RECESSION. Here's an op-ed by yours truly on what it would take to provide a strong stimulus to a slowing economy.

TIME FOR DISASTER POPULISM. Here's Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine, on how the right is great at cashing in on bad news and how the rest of us need to dial in.

MINE SAFETY. Ken Ward had a good one in the Sunday Gazette-Mail about how many coal companies ignore fines for unsafe conditions.


COMBAT TRAUMA is increasingly a factor in courtrooms around the country in the wake of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

MEAT. More and more people are rethinking carnivorous habits, or at least the ways we satisfy them.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED