A mute gospel?

The theme at Goat Rope these days is the  work of Ralph Waldo Emerson, a preeminent 19th century figure in American life and letters. The focus at the moment is his essay Nature (see last week's posts).

One thing that struck me the first time I read Nature (and every other time) is how totally pre-Darwinian are many of the ideas discussed. This is only to be expected, since Nature came out around 1836 and The Origin of Species more than 20 years later. Still, the gap between Emerson's universe and the modern scientific view of the same is vast.

Emerson believed that there was a deep correspondence between nature and the soul and that natural facts corresponded to moral facts, a far cry from the amoral universe of relentless natural selection.

Consider this passage:

...every natural process is a version of a moral sentence. The moral law lies at the centre of nature and radiates to the circumference. It is the pith and marrow of every substance, every relation, and every process. All things with which we deal preach to us.

Nature is beautiful and all but it is pretty red in tooth and claw. In a living world of prey, predators and parasites, I'm not sure how edifying the sermon would be. It is beyond good and evil.

Then he really steps in it:

What is a far but a mute gospel? The chaff and the wheat, weeds and plants, blight, rain, insects, sun,--it is a sacred emblem from the first furrow of spring to the last stack which the snow of winter overtakes the fields.

Let me just say that if Goat Rope Farm is a mute gospel, it is one that didn't make the New Testament cut. Also, if you think about it farming is kind of the opposite of nature--that's why it's so hard. Creatures want to do their own thing, not the thing of the farmer. They also want to do it where they want, which often isn't where the farmer wants. All cultivated species, whether plant or animal, are a far cry from their original natural state, having been bred over many generations through artificial selection. If that were not the case, there would be no need to farm them.

There's something touching about such a cozy view of our relationship with the natural world but it seems to me to be clearly a relic of another time.

SPEAKING OF DARWIN, here's E.O. Wilson on human nature.

SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT. Here's a look at the facts about the minimum wage.

REASON 238128 TO EXPAND MEDICAID. It would help a lot of veterans.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

In the spirit of fair play

I've spent a good bit of time here taking swipes at right wing Whackadoodleism. In an effort to transcend the bitter polarization of our time, the spirit of fair play prompts me to state for the record that Whackadoodleism is not the monopoly of any political tendency (although these days it seems to tilt more in one direction).

Here's one example of Whackadoodlery on the left that is pertinent to the sporadic series of posts here about human evolution and social life. The great biologist E. O. Wilson is widely admired today for his scientific work on topics ranging from ants to ecology to biophilia as well as his advocacy for dealing with climate change.

It wasn't always that way. In the mid 1970s, Wilson wrote a book titled Sociobiology: the New Synthesis which discussed genetically inherited behavior patterns of various animals. None of that was particularly controversial for people who were paying attention. But Wilson had the temerity to extend his analysis to humans and to suggest that we had some evolutionary baggage of our own.

Left wing ideologues somehow took this to mean that Wilson was suggesting that war, racism, imperialism, etc. were biologically inevitable. (He wasn't, by the way.) At a meeting of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, activists chanted "Racist Wilson you can't hide, we charge you with genocide" and poured ice water on his head as he prepared to give a speech.

(Genocide for writing a book? Really? And Sociobiology didn't discuss the issues of race.)

He gave the speech anyway.

For the record, I'm not endorsing all of his ideas on human evolution and our genetic legacy. Wilson himself has long accepted as valid some critiques of that formulation. But it there is a growing sense in the biological and social sciences that we are animals after all. Biology isn't destiny, but it is...well, biology.

(Plus, living around roosters has taught me a lot about human males.)

That doesn't spell the end of efforts to work for greater social justice, but it might be time to retire a cherished radical myth that human nature is a blank slate or some kind of silly putty that can be moulded into any shape we want.

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON? Labor Day has come and gone, but labor woes are still with us.

WHAT HE SAID. This op-ed by a friend of mine suggests ways West Virginia can strengthen its unemployment insurance program.

THE BEGINNING OF SORROWS. Here is a review of several recent books on the politically pivotal decade of the 1970s.

LOOSE WITH THE TRUTH. Here's another look at misinformation on health care reform. We're probably going to see a lot more of that.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED