On "The Spirit of Disobedience" and Bias

Since we ran out of time and didn't get the chance to talk about this essay in class, I'm going to share a few of my thoughts on it here--mainly because there are some things I'd really like to get off my chest about it.

As most of you know, I could be considered relatively conservative on the political spectrum at McFarland High School, so if you think my opinions are formed out of some sort of bias, they might be, but I do try to assess things equally.

The main thing that I want to point out about Mr. White's essay is this: I smell bias Thoreau and Emerson's beliefs on liberty, but the way Mr. White attacked the ideological views of modern Republicans and fiscal conservatives sent me over the edge a little bit.

As both a Christian and economic conservative "child-of-the-Enlightement" thinker, Mr. White basically called me out as a hypocrite with his argument that the two can't go together. He feels that either Christian virtue or Capitalism had to win the heart of America and Capitalism won out. To this I call out Mr. White for narrow-mindedness. Does he really think that two doctrines that govern fairly separate areas of society are not able to be combined to work to some degree of harmony? There is a certain degree of conflict between the two ideologies, but that is what is so great about America.

The conflict causes us to considere who we really are inside and forwards other parts of society. Christian virtue suggests that we lend a hand to our fellow man. Enlightenment virtue suggests that we only do that privately, no through the government. As a result, we set up non-government, not-for-profit organizations.

Furthermore, I don't see how Mr. White can claim one doctrine won over the other more than the other. In general, I see both of them failing and falling rapidly over the past 20 years. Figures like President George W. Bush who don't get the liberty part of fiscal conservatism and the humanistic part of Evangelical Chrisitianity are those who give these two American virtues their bad name.

I hate to have to make President Bush a scapegoat once again, but he does deserve it. It is people that misinterpret the intention of American virtue who destroy it. The Libertarian and humanitarian ideals of the Transcendentalists are what America should be about. One would think we would listen to the thinkers who have become regarded as the most original in American thought. But instead, we pick one set of virtues or the other.

"To be Great is to be Misunderstood"

In that case, Mr. Emerson, you are certainly a great man. This line, as cliche as it is, happens to be quite ironic as well because it is viewed first as a great line and misunderstood, making it great: mind-blowing.



Being misunderstood is not really a sufficient condition for being great in my opinion. It can be argued that it is a necessary one, though. However, as a witty maxim, this does work. I can think of a lot of people who are misunderstood, but I would struggle to call these people great in any way.



Emerson's focus on genius of originality and greatness of misunderstanding is kind of awesome. For one thing, he makes himself a genius by his own definition. For another thing, he's probably pretty close to being right. Geniuses are well ahead of the thought of their time. Their though processes are either too radical or too unconventional for the rest of society to keep up with. As a result, they are often distrusted. For example: Jesus was martyred for his preachings, Newton wasn't understood widely until 200 years after his theories on calculus, Socrates was martyred, Galileo was martyred. Emerson mentions all these men and their greatness.



These are people who probably "got it" a lot more than anyone else. As a result, they become either feared, loved or both. Furthermore, the things geniuses say and theorize often go against the grain, causing their interpretation to be unclear, leading to misunderstanding, making them great by Emerson's definition.



The idea that genius must be achieved by orginality is admirable. I have no problems with defining a great thinker as someone who figured some profound thing out with out the help of many other sources. This does discredit many pre-approved geniuses though. Stephen Hawking loses a lot becuase he just improved on Einstein's and others' theories. Or what about Plato? He basically took many things Socrates said and made them better and easier to understand. That almost defies greatness.

It's easy to misunderstand a genius, I guess.