A DEAD POET

11/19/2009

A DEAD POET


You may think that I am slow, that I do not write often enough, but if you are new, I invite you to browse through the archives, there is plenty here that is as valid today as it was when I wrote it.

This is not a novel that I write or the mere meanderings through my daily life, what I note here is the past and the future how they are intertwined, our past is leading us into this abyss.

Tombstones note the demise of one, sometimes they tell us what the person was, how he lived, and sometimes even how he died.

In Democracy in America, published in 1835, Tocqueville wrote of the New World and its burgeoning democratic order. Observing from the perspective of a detached social scientist, Tocqueville wrote of his travels through America in the early 19th Century when the market revolution, Western expansion, and Jacksonian democracy were radically transforming the fabric of American life. He saw democracy as an equation that balanced liberty and equality, concern for the individual as well as the community.

Tocqueville wrote of the Americans, "Americans are so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom." ^[2]

As critic of individualism, Tocqueville thought that through associating, the coming together of people for mutual purpose, both in public and private, Americans are able to overcome selfish desires, thus making both a self-conscious and active political society and a vibrant civil society functioning independently from the state. The main purpose of Tocqueville was analysis of functioning of political society and various forms of political associations, although he brought some reflections on civil society too (and relations between political and civil society). For Tocqueville as for Hegel and Marx, civil society was a sphere of private entrepreneurship and civilian affairs regulated by civil code ^[3].

Many today quote Tocqueville. or like to misquote the gentleman, he was so right about America, looking with the eyes of "detached social scientist". He was right about the United States as he saw it and as it existed way back then. Yes, as it existed way back then, today the United States as Tocqueville saw it does not exist, actually if he were to return he will see how wrong he had been. Or disappointed that his dream America had ceased to exist. We will come back to this discussion in a minute.

In the 1989 movie, " Dead Poet Society " John Keating (Robin Williams) tells his students to climb up on their desks and look at their world from different angle, to forgo the conventional wisdom. In my discussion below, "American Enigma" I discussed how the Average American has become just the average and the same in search of individuality.

I do have a screwed up point of view, if you will allow me, but it is different, as different as that of a Dead Poet of Mr. Keating' Dead Poets, as different as that of an outsider such as Mr. Tocqueville. I AM not a Mr. Tocqueville, I am just a Dead Poet who views the world differently.

LIFE IS A GAME OF CONNECT THE DOTS, IF YOU DON'T CONNECT ALL THE DOTS OR DON'T CONNECT THEM IN THE RIGHT ORDER YOU NEVER GET THE PICTURE