In the final years of his long life, which encompassed world wars and assassinations and numerous terrors, the great cellist and human rights advocate Pablo Casals urged humanity to “make this world worthy of its children.” Today, as we face a world that treats its children as worthless, we are challenged like we have never been challenged to consider the deepest existential calculus of bringing new life into a troubled world — what is the worth of children, what are our responsibilities to them (when we do choose to have them, for it is also an act of courage and responsibility to choose not to), and what does it mean to raise a child with the dignity of being an unrepeatable miracle of atoms that have never before constellated and will never again constellate in that exact way?
Art by Derek Dominic D’souza from Song of Two Worlds by physicist Alan Lightman.
When a young mother with a newborn baby at her breast asks for advice on children and parenting, Gibran’s poetic prophet responds:
Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday. You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth. The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far. Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness; For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.
One day, humans will explore space en masse and live scattered across the solar system on planets like Mars and beyond. Inspired by his time as artist-in-residence at the European Space Agency, TED Fellow Jorge Mañes Rubio wants to rethink what we need to bring on this grand journey — and more importantly, what we should leave behind. Mañes Rubio takes us on an Earthbound journey through cultural practices and his own designs that blend science, art and ritual, encouraging a bold reimagining of what a future free of prejudice and exploitation could look like.
This talk was presented at an official TED conference, and was featured by our editors on the home page.
ARIES (March 21-April 19): Poet Joshua Jennifer Espinoza writes, “i name my body girl of my dreams / i name my body proximity / i name my body full of hope despite everything.” I love her idea that we might give playful names and titles and descriptors to our bodies. In alignment with current astrological omens, I propose that you do just that. It’s time to take your relationship with your beautiful organism to a higher level. How about if you call it “Exciting Love River” or “Perfectly Imperfect Thrill” or “Amazing Maze”? Have fun dreaming up further possibilities!
TAURUS (April 20-May 20): The English language, my native tongue, doesn’t ascribe genders to its nouns. But many languages do. In Spanish, the word for “bridge” is puente, which is masculine. In German, “bridge” is Brücke, which is feminine. A blogger named Tickettome says this is why Spanish speakers may describe a bridge as strong or sturdy, while German speakers refer to it as elegant or beautiful. I encourage you to meditate on bridges that possess the entire range of qualities, including the Spanish and German notions. In the coming weeks, you’ll be wise to build new metaphorical bridges, fix bridges that are in disrepair, and extinguish fires on any bridges that are burning.
GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Académie Française is an organization devoted to preserving the purity and integrity of the French language. One of its ongoing missions is to resist the casual incorporation of English words, which the younger generation of French people is inclined to do. Among Anglicisms that don’t have the Académie’s approval: podcast, clickbait, chick-lit, deadline, hashtag, marketing, time lapse and showrunner. The ban doesn’t stop anyone from using the words, of course, but simply avoids giving them official recognition. I appreciate the noble intentions of the Académie, but regard its crusade as a losing battle that has minimal impact. In the coming weeks, I advise you to refrain from behavior that resembles the Académie’s. Resist the temptation of quixotic idealism. Be realistic and pragmatic. You Geminis often thrive in environments that welcome idiosyncrasies, improvisation, informality and experimentation—especially now.
CANCER (June 21-July 22): Cancerian author Vladimir Mayakovsky wrote a poem about how one morning he went half-mad and conversed with the sun. At first he called the supreme radiance a “lazy clown,” complaining that it just floated through the sky for hours while he, Mayakovsky, toiled diligently at his day job painting posters. Then he dared the sun to come down and have tea with him, which, to his shock, the sun did. The poet was agitated and worried—what if the close approach of the bright deity would prove dangerous? But the visitor turned out to be friendly. They had a pleasant dialog, and in the end the sun promised to provide extra inspiration for Mayakovsky’s future poetry. I invite you to try something equally lyrical and daring, dear Cancerian.
LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): A blogger named Bunny-Gal writes, “I almost completely forgot who I was there for a while. But then I dug a hole and smelled the fresh dirt and now I remember everything and am OK.” I recommend you follow her lead, Leo—even if you haven’t totally lost touch with your essence. Communing with Mother Earth in the most direct and graphic way to remind you of everything you need to remember: of the wisdom you’ve lost track of and the secrets you’ve hidden too well and the urgent intuitions that are simmering just below the surface of your awareness.
VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): I can’t understand the self-help gurus who advise us to relentlessly live in the present moment—to shed all awareness of past and future so as to focus on the eternal NOW. I mean, I appreciate the value of doing such an exercise on occasion for a few moments. I’ve tried it, and it’s often rejuvenating. But it can also be downright foolish to have no thoughts of yesterday and tomorrow. We need to evaluate how circumstances will evolve, based on our previous experience and future projections. It can be a deadening, depleting act to try to strip ourselves of the rich history we are always embedded in. In any case, Virgo, I advise you to be thoroughly aware of your past and future in the coming days. To do so will enhance your intelligence and soulfulness in just the right ways to make good decisions.
LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Psychotherapist and author Clarissa Pinkola Estés poetically refers to the source of our creativity as “the river under the river.” It’s the deep primal energy that “nourishes everything we make”—our “writing, painting, thinking, healing, doing, cooking, talking, smiling.” This river beneath the river doesn’t belong to any of us—it’s potentially available to all—but if harnessed correctly it works in very personal ways, fueling our unique talents. I bring this to your attention, Libra, because you’re close to gaining abundant new access to the power of the river beneath the river.
SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): In formulating personal goals, Scorpio author Brené Brown urges us to emphasize growth rather than perfection. Trying to improve is a healthier objective than seeking flawless mastery. Bonus perk: This practical approach makes us far less susceptible to shame. We’re not as likely to feel like a failure or give up prematurely on our projects. I heartily endorse this strategy for you right now, Scorpio.
SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): In a letter to Jean Paul Sartre, author Simone de Beauvoir described how she was dealing with a batch of challenging memories: “I’m reliving it street by street, hour by hour, with the mission of neutralizing it, and transforming it into an inoffensive past that I can keep in my heart without either disowning it or suffering from it.” I LOVE this approach! It’s replete with emotional intelligence. I recommend it to you now, since it’s high time to wrangle and finagle with parts of your life story that need to be alchemically transformed and redeemed by your love and wisdom.
CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): In one of his poems, Capricorn-born Kenneth Rexroth complains about having “a crooked guide on the twisted path of love.” But in my view, a crooked guide is the best kind. It’s unwise to engage the services of a love accomplice who’s always looking for the simplest, straightest route, or who imagines that intimate togetherness can be nourished with easy, obvious solutions. To cultivate the most interesting intimacy, we need influences that appreciate nuance and complexity—that thrive on navigating the tricky riddles and unpredictable answers. The next eight weeks will be an excellent time for you Capricorns to heed this advice.
AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Aquarian singer Etta James (1938–2012) won six Grammy Awards and is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Grammy Hall of Fame and Blues Hall of Fame. She testified, “Most of the songs I sing have that blues feeling in it. They have that sorry feeling. And I don’t know what I’m sorry about.” Wow! I’m surprised to hear this. Most singers draw on their personal life experience to infuse their singing with authentic emotion. In any case, I urge you to do the opposite of Etta James in the coming weeks. It’s important for the future of your healing that you identify exactly what you’re sorry about.
PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): “Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn,” writes Piscean self-help author John C. Maxwell. His statement is useful, but it harbors a problematic implication. It suggests that you can experience either winning or learning, but not both—that the only time you learn is when you lose. I disagree with this presumption. In fact, I think you’re now in a phase when it’s possible and even likely for you to both win and learn..
Homework: Send word of your most important lesson of the year so far. Newsletter@freewillastrology.com.
From the author of Utopia For Realists, a revolutionary argument that the innate goodness and cooperation of human beings has been the greatest factor in our success
If one basic principle has served as the bedrock of bestselling author Rutger Bregman’s thinking, it is that every progressive idea — whether it was the abolition of slavery, the advent of democracy, women’s suffrage, or the ratification of marriage equality — was once considered radical and dangerous by the mainstream opinion of its time. With Humankind, he brings that mentality to bear against one of our most entrenched ideas: namely, that human beings are by nature selfish and self-interested.
By providing a new historical perspective of the last 200,000 years of human history, Bregman sets out to prove that we are in fact evolutionarily wired for cooperation rather than competition, and that our instinct to trust each other has a firm evolutionary basis going back to the beginning of Homo sapiens. Bregman systematically debunks our understanding of the Milgram electrical-shock experiment, the Zimbardo prison experiment, and the Kitty Genovese “bystander effect.”
In place of these, he offers little-known true stories: the tale of twin brothers on opposing sides of apartheid in South Africa who came together with Nelson Mandela to create peace; a group of six shipwrecked children who survived for a year and a half on a deserted island by working together; a study done after World War II that found that as few as 15% of American soldiers were actually capable of firing at the enemy.
The ultimate goal of Humankind is to demonstrate that while neither capitalism nor communism has on its own been proven to be a workable social system, there is a third option: giving “citizens and professionals the means (left) to make their own choices (right).” Reorienting our thinking toward positive and high expectations of our fellow man, Bregman argues, will reap lasting success. Bregman presents this idea with his signature wit and frankness, once again making history, social science and economic theory accessible and enjoyable for lay readers.
Progress, the basic illusion of our age, is exhausted. Kids typically no longer expect their lives to be better than their parents’ were. Dystopian scenarios loom ever larger in public consciousness as fisheries collapse, CO2 levels rise, and clouds of radioactive steam billow from “fail-safe” nuclear plants that failed. Despite the technological marvels of our age—or perhaps because of them—these are dark days.
As comedian Louis C.K. put it, “Everything’s amazing, but nobody’s happy.” Even for the most fortunate among us, material abundance comes at a very high price. Facebook is a hollow replacement for face time. We produce more food than ever, but hunger and malnutrition are standard in most of the world while the rest of us stuff ourselves quite literally to death. Despair darkens ever more lives as rates of clinical depression and suicide continue their grim climb in the developed world. A third of all American children are obese or seriously overweight, and fifty four million of us are pre-diabetic. Pre-schoolers represent the fastest-growing market for anti-depressants, while the rate of increase of depression among children is over twenty percent, according to a recent Harvard study. Twenty four million American adults are thought to suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder—mostly attributable to the never-ending wars that have become part of modern life for the swelling underclass with few other employment opportunities.
It’s common to wonder how an anthropologist from Mars would view our world or what sage advice an emissary from the future would bring back. But how would a time-traveler from our prehistoric past assess the lives we lead and the future prospects for the path we’re on? Such a visitor from 200 centuries ago would no doubt be impressed by much of what she found here. But once her amazement at iPhones, air travel, and liver transplants subsided, what would she make of our daily lives? Would she ultimately be more impressed by our advances or dismayed by what we’ve lost in our always accelerating rush toward the future?
With faith in the future melting like an overheated glacier even as contentment with the present evaporates, it’s high time for a sober reassessment of the past. Ten thousand years since turning from the ancient path our ancestors trod forever, it’s time for a scientifically-informed, multidisciplinary look at the effects of this fateful divergence. It’s time to ask what may be the most subversive question of all: Are modern humans, even the most fortunate among us, living significantly better lives than our pre-civilized ancestors? Taken as a whole, is civilization a net gain for individual human beings?
Tocqueville was active in French politics, first under the July Monarchy (1830–1848) and then during the Second Republic (1849–1851) which succeeded the February 1848 Revolution. He retired from political life after Louis Napoléon Bonaparte‘s 2 December 1851 coup and thereafter began work on The Old Regime and the Revolution.[8] Tocqueville argued the importance of the French Revolution was to continue the process of modernizing and centralizing the French state which had begun under King Louis XIV. The failure of the Revolution came from the inexperience of the deputies who were too wedded to abstract Enlightenment ideals.
Tocqueville was a classical liberal who advocated parliamentary government and was skeptical of the extremes of democracy.[8] During his time in parliament, he sat on the centre-left,[9] but the complex and restless nature of his liberalism has led to contrasting interpretations and admirers across the political spectrum.[3][4][5][10] Regarding his political position, Tocqueville wrote “the word ‘left‘ is […] the word I wanted to attach to my name so that it would remain attached to it forever”.[11]
Life
Tocqueville came from an old Norman aristocratic family. He was the great-grandson of the statesman Malesherbes, who had been guillotined in 1794. His parents, Hervé Louis François Jean Bonaventure Clérel, Count of Tocqueville, an officer of the Constitutional Guard of King Louis XVI; and Louise Madeleine Le Peletier de Rosanbo narrowly escaped the guillotine due to the fall of Maximilien Robespierre in 1794.[12]
In 1847, he sought to found a Young Left (Jeune Gauche) party which would advocate wage increases, a progressive tax,[17] and other labor concerns in order to undermine the appeal of the socialists.[18] Tocqueville was also elected general counsellor of Manche in 1842 and became the president of the department’s general council between 1849 and 1852; he resigned as he refused to pledge allegiance to the Second Empire. According to one account, Tocqueville’s political position became untenable during this time in the sense that he was mistrusted by both the left and right and was looking for an excuse to leave France.[19]
Travels
In 1831, Tocqueville obtained from the July Monarchy a mission to examine prisons and penitentiaries in the United States and proceeded there with his lifelong friend Gustave de Beaumont. While he did visit some prisons, Tocqueville traveled widely in the United States and took extensive notes about his observations and reflections.[19] He returned within nine months and published a report, but the real result of his tour was De la démocratie en Amérique, which appeared in 1835.[6] Beaumont also wrote an account of their travels in Jacksonian America: Marie or Slavery in the United States (1835).[20] During this trip, he made a side trip to Montreal and Quebec City in Lower Canada from mid-August to early September 1831.[21]
Apart from North America, Tocqueville also made an observational tour of England, producing Memoir on Pauperism. In 1841 and 1846, he traveled to the French colony of Algeria. His first travel inspired his Travail sur l’Algérie, in which he criticized the French model of colonisation which emphasized assimilation to Western culture, advocating that the French government instead adopt a form of indirect rule, which avoided mixing different populations together. He went as far as openly advocating racial segregation between European colonists and Arabs through the implementation of two different legislative systems for each ethnic group (a half century before implementation of the 1881 Indigenous code based on religion).[citation needed]
In 1835, Tocqueville made a journey through Ireland. His observations provide one of the best pictures of how Ireland stood before the Great Famine (1845–1849). The observations chronicle the growing Catholic middle class and the appalling conditions in which most Catholic tenant farmers lived. Tocqueville made clear both his opposition to aristocratic power and his affinity for his Irish co-religionists.[22]
During the Second Republic, Tocqueville sided with the Party of Order against the socialists. A few days after the February insurrection, he believed that a violent clash between the Parisian workers’ population led by socialists agitating in favour of a “Democratic and Social Republic” and the conservatives, which included the aristocracy and the rural population, was inescapable. As Tocqueville had foreseen, these social tensions eventually exploded during the June Days Uprising of 1848.[23]
Led by General Cavaignac, the suppression was supported by Tocqueville, who advocated the “regularization” of the state of siege declared by Cavaignac and other measures promoting suspension of the constitutional order.[23] Between May and September, Tocqueville participated in the Constitutional Commission which wrote the new Constitution. His proposals underlined the importance of his North American experience as his amendment about the President and his reelection.[24]
Minister of Foreign Affairs
Tocqueville at the 1851 “Commission de la révision de la Constitution à l’Assemblée nationale”
A supporter of Cavaignac and of the Party of Order, Tocqueville accepted an invitation to enter Odilon Barrot‘s government as Minister of Foreign Affairs from 3 June to 31 October 1849. During the troubled days of June 1849, he pleaded with Interior Minister Jules Armand Dufaure for the reestablishment of the state of siege in the capital and approved the arrest of demonstrators. Tocqueville, who since February 1848 had supported laws restricting political freedoms, approved the two laws voted immediately after the June 1849 days which restricted the liberty of clubs and freedom of the press.[25]
This active support in favor of laws restricting political freedoms stands in contrast of his defense of freedoms in Democracy in America. According to Tocqueville, he favored order as “the sine qua non for the conduct of serious politics. He [hoped] to bring the kind of stability to French political life that would permit the steady growth of liberty unimpeded by the regular rumblings of the earthquakes of revolutionary change″.[25]
Tocqueville had supported Cavaignac against Louis Napoléon Bonaparte for the presidential election of 1848. Opposed to Louis Napoléon Bonaparte’s 2 December 1851 coup which followed his election, Tocqueville was among the deputies who gathered at the 10th arrondissement of Paris in an attempt to resist the coup and have Napoleon III judged for “high treason” as he had violated the constitutional limit on terms of office. Detained at Vincennes and then released, Tocqueville, who supported the Restoration of the Bourbons against Napoleon III’s Second Empire (1851–1871), quit political life and retreated to his castle (Château de Tocqueville).[26]
Against this image of Tocqueville, biographer Joseph Epstein has concluded: “Tocqueville could never bring himself to serve a man he considered a usurper and despot. He fought as best he could for the political liberty in which he so ardently believed—had given it, in all, thirteen years of his life [….]. He would spend the days remaining to him fighting the same fight, but conducting it now from libraries, archives, and his own desk”.[26] There, he began the draft of L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution, publishing the first tome in 1856, but leaving the second one unfinished.
Death
A longtime sufferer from bouts of tuberculosis, Tocqueville would eventually succumb to the disease on 16 April 1859 and was buried in the Tocqueville cemetery in Normandy.[citation needed]
Tocqueville’s professed religion was Roman Catholicism.[27] He saw religion as being compatible with both equality and individualism, but felt that religion would be strongest when separated from politics.[19]
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 the United States in the early 19th century when the Market Revolution, Western expansion and Jacksonian democracy were radically transforming the fabric of American life.[19]
As emphasized in Introduction to Book I, the purpose of the work is somewhat beyond the American democracy itself, which was rather an illustration to the philosophical claim that democracy is an effect of industrialization. In a sense, Tocqueville anticipated Marx’s viewpoint that history is determined by development and changes of socio-economic conditions — the so-called formations that are described by specific productive forces and relations of production. This focus on the philosophy of history justifies a certain ambiguity in using the word ‘democracy’ and explains why Tocqueville even ignores the intents of the Founding Fathers of the United States regarding the American political system:
To pursue the central idea of his study — a democratic revolution caused by industrialization, as exemplified by America — Tocqueville persistently refers to democracy. This is in fact very different from what the Founding Fathers of the United States meant. Moreover, Tocqueville himself is not quite consistent in using the word ‘democracy’, applying it alternately to representative government, universal suffrage or majority-based governance.— Andranik Tangian (2020) Analytical Theory of Democracy, pp. 193-194[28]
According to political scientist Joshua Kaplan, one purpose of writing Democracy in America was to help the people of France get a better understanding of their position between a fading aristocratic order and an emerging democratic order and to help them sort out the confusion.[19] Tocqueville saw democracy as an equation that balanced liberty and equality, concern for the individual as well as for the community.[citation needed]
Tocqueville was an ardent supporter of liberty. “I have a passionate love for liberty, law, and respect for rights”, he wrote. “I am neither of the revolutionary party nor of the conservative. […] Liberty is my foremost passion”. He wrote of “Political Consequences of the Social State of the Anglo-Americans” by saying: “But one also finds in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level, and which reduces men to preferring equality in servitude to inequality in freedom”.[29]
The above is often misquoted as a slavery quote because of previous translations of the French text. The most recent translation by Arthur Goldhammer in 2004 translates the meaning to be as stated above. Examples of misquoted sources are numerous on the internet,[30] but the text does not contain the words “Americans were so enamored by equality” anywhere.[citation needed]
His view on government reflects his belief in liberty and the need for individuals to be able to act freely while respecting others’ rights. Of centralized government, he wrote that it “excels in preventing, not doing”.[31]
Tocqueville continues to comment on equality by saying: “Furthermore, when citizens are all almost equal, it becomes difficult for them to defend their independence against the aggressions of power. As none of them is strong enough to fight alone with advantage, the only guarantee of liberty is for everyone to combine forces. But such a combination is not always in evidence”.[32]
Tocqueville explicitly cites inequality as being incentive for the poor to become rich and notes that it is not often that two generations within a family maintain success and that it is inheritance laws that split and eventually break apart someone’s estate that cause a constant cycle of churn between the poor and the rich, thereby over generations making the poor rich and the rich poor. He cites protective laws in France at the time that protected an estate from being split apart among heirs, thereby preserving wealth and preventing a churn of wealth such as was perceived by him in 1835 within the United States.[citation needed]
Tocqueville’s main purpose was to analyze the 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 Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and Karl Marx, civil society was a sphere of private entrepreneurship and civilian affairs regulated by civil code.[33] As a critic of individualism, Tocqueville thought that through associating 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 according to political and civil laws of the state.[19][33]
According to political scientist Joshua Kaplan, Tocqueville did not originate the concept of individualism, instead he changed its meaning and saw it as a “calm and considered feeling which deposes each citizen to isolate himself from the mass of his fellows and to withdraw into the circle of family and friends […]. [W]ith this little society formed to his taste, he gladly leaves the greater society to look for itself”.[19] While Tocqueville saw egotism and selfishness as vices, he saw individualism as not a failure of feeling, but as a way of thinking about things which could have either positive consequences such as a willingness to work together, or negative consequences such as isolation and that individualism could be remedied by improved understanding.[19]
When individualism was a positive force and prompted people to work together for common purposes and seen as “self-interest properly understood”, then it helped to counterbalance the danger of the tyranny of the majority since people could “take control over their own lives” without government aid.[19] According to Kaplan, Americans have a difficult time accepting Tocqueville’s criticism of the stifling intellectual effect of the “omnipotence of the majority” and that Americans tend to deny that there is a problem in this regard.[19]
Others such as the Catholic writer Daniel Schwindt disagree with Kaplan’s interpretation, arguing instead that Tocqueville saw individualism as just another form of egotism and not an improvement over it.[34] To make his case, Schwindt provides citations such as the following:
Egoism springs from a blind instinct; individualism from wrong-headed thinking rather than from depraved feelings. It originates as much from defects of intelligence as from the mistakes of the heart. Egoism blights the seeds of every virtue; individualism at first dries up only the source of public virtue. In the longer term it attacks and destroys all the others and will finally merge with egoism.[34]
Tocqueville warned that modern democracy may be adept at inventing new forms of tyranny because radical equality could lead to the materialism of an expanding bourgeoisie and to the selfishness of individualism. “In such conditions, we might become so enamored with ‘a relaxed love of present enjoyments’ that we lose interest in the future of our descendants…and meekly allow ourselves to be led in ignorance by a despotic force all the more powerful because it does not resemble one”, wrote The New Yorker’s James Wood.[35] Tocqueville worried that if despotism were to take root in a modern democracy, it would be a much more dangerous version than the oppression under the Roman emperors or tyrants of the past who could only exert a pernicious influence on a small group of people at a time.[19]
In contrast, a despotism under a democracy could see “a multitude of men”, uniformly alike, equal, “constantly circling for petty pleasures”, unaware of fellow citizens and subject to the will of a powerful state which exerted an “immense protective power”.[19] Tocqueville compared a potentially despotic democratic government to a protective parent who wants to keep its citizens (children) as “perpetual children” and which does not break men’s wills, but rather guides it and presides over people in the same way as a shepherd looking after a “flock of timid animals”.[19]
On American social contract
Tocqueville’s penetrating analysis sought to understand the peculiar nature of American political life. In describing the American, he agreed with thinkers such as Aristotle and Montesquieu that the balance of property determined the balance of political power, but his conclusions after that differed radically from those of his predecessors. Tocqueville tried to understand why the United States was so different from Europe in the last throes of aristocracy. In contrast to the aristocratic ethic, the United States was a society where hard work and money-making was the dominant ethic, where the common man enjoyed a level of dignity which was unprecedented, where commoners never deferred to elites and where what he described as crass individualism and market capitalism had taken root to an extraordinary degree.[citation needed]
Tocqueville writes: “Among a democratic people, where there is no hereditary wealth, every man works to earn a living. […] Labor is held in honor; the prejudice is not against but in its favor”.[36] Tocqueville asserted that the values that had triumphed in the North and were present in the South had begun to suffocate old-world ethics and social arrangements. Legislatures abolished primogeniture and entails, resulting in more widely distributed land holdings. This was a contrast to the general aristocratic pattern in which only the eldest child, usually a man, inherited the estate, which had the effect of keeping large estates intact from generation to generation.[19]
In contrast, landed elites in the United States were less likely to pass on fortunes to a single child by the action of primogeniture, which meant that as time went by large estates became broken up within a few generations which in turn made the children more equal overall.[19] According to Joshua Kaplan’s Tocqueville, it was not always a negative development since bonds of affection and shared experience between children often replaced the more formal relation between the eldest child and the siblings, characteristic of the previous aristocratic pattern.[19] Overall, hereditary fortunes in the new democracies became exceedingly difficult to secure and more people were forced to struggle for their own living.[citation needed]A sketch of Tocqueville
As Tocqueville understood it, this rapidly democratizing society had a population devoted to “middling” values which wanted to amass through hard work vast fortunes. In Tocqueville’s mind, this explained why the United States was so different from Europe. In Europe, he claimed, nobody cared about making money. The lower classes had no hope of gaining more than minimal wealth while the upper classes found it crass, vulgar and unbecoming of their sort to care about something as unseemly as money and many were virtually guaranteed wealth and took it for granted. At the same time in the United States, workers would see people fashioned in exquisite attire and merely proclaim that through hard work they too would soon possess the fortune necessary to enjoy such luxuries.[citation needed]
Despite maintaining that the balance of property determined the balance of power, Tocqueville argued that as the United States showed, equitable property holdings did not ensure the rule of the best men. In fact, it did quite the opposite as the widespread, relatively equitable property ownership which distinguished the United States and determined its mores and values also explained why the United States masses held elites in such contempt.[37]
On majority rule and mediocrity
Beyond the eradication of old-world aristocracy, ordinary Americans also refused to defer to those possessing, as Tocqueville put it, superior talent and intelligence and these natural elites could not enjoy much share in political power as a result. Ordinary Americans enjoyed too much power and claimed too great a voice in the public sphere to defer to intellectual superiors. This culture promoted a relatively pronounced equality, Tocqueville argued, but the same mores and opinions that ensured such equality also promoted mediocrity. Those who possessed true virtue and talent were left with limited choices.[19]
Tocqueville said that those with the most education and intelligence were left with two choices. They could join limited intellectual circles to explore the weighty and complex problems facing society, or they could use their superior talents to amass vast fortunes in the private sector. He wrote that he did not know of any country where there was “less independence of mind, and true freedom of discussion, than in America”.[19]
Tocqueville blamed the omnipotence of majority rule as a chief factor in stifling thinking: “The majority has enclosed thought within a formidable fence. A writer is free inside that area, but woe to the man who goes beyond it, not that he stands in fear of an inquisition, but he must face all kinds of unpleasantness in every day persecution. A career in politics is closed to him for he has offended the only power that holds the keys”.[19] According to Kaplan’s interpretation of Tocqueville, he argued in contrast to previous political thinkers that a serious problem in political life was not that people were too strong, but that people were “too weak” and felt powerless as the danger is that people felt “swept up in something that they could not control”.[19]
On slavery, blacks and Indians
Uniquely positioned at a crossroads in American history, Tocqueville’s Democracy in America attempted to capture the essence of American culture and values. Though a supporter of colonialism, Tocqueville could clearly perceive the evils that black people and natives had been subjected to in the United States. Tocqueville devoted the last chapter of the first volume of Democracy in America to the question while his travel companion Gustave de Beaumont wholly focused on slavery and its fallouts for the American nation in Marie or Slavery in America. Tocqueville notes among the American races:
The first who attracts the eye, the first in enlightenment, in power and in happiness, is the white man, the European, man par excellence; below him appear the Negro and the Indian. These two unfortunate races have neither birth, nor face, nor language, nor mores in common; only their misfortunes look alike. Both occupy an equally inferior position in the country that they inhabit; both experience the effects of tyranny; and if their miseries are different, they can accuse the same author for them.[38]
Tocqueville contrasted the settlers of Virginia with the middle class, religious Puritans who founded New England and analyzed the debasing influence of slavery:
The men sent to Virginia were seekers of gold, adventurers without resources and without character, whose turbulent and restless spirit endangered the infant colony. […] Artisans and agriculturalists arrived afterwards[,] […] hardly in any respect above the level of the inferior classes in England. No lofty views, no spiritual conception presided over the foundation of these new settlements. The colony was scarcely established when slavery was introduced; this was the capital fact which was to exercise an immense influence on the character, the laws and the whole future of the South. Slavery […] dishonors labor; it introduces idleness into society, and with idleness, ignorance and pride, luxury and distress. It enervates the powers of the mind and benumbs the activity of man. On this same English foundation there developed in the North very different characteristics.[39]
Tocqueville concluded that return of the Negro population to Africa could not resolve the problem as he writes at the end of Democracy in America:
If the colony of Liberia were able to receive thousands of new inhabitants every year, and if the Negroes were in a state to be sent thither with advantage; if the Union were to supply the society with annual subsidies, and to transport the Negroes to Africa in government vessels, it would still be unable to counterpoise the natural increase of population among the blacks; and as it could not remove as many men in a year as are born upon its territory within that time, it could not prevent the growth of the evil which is daily increasing in the states. The Negro race will never leave those shores of the American continent to which it was brought by the passions and the vices of Europeans; and it will not disappear from the New World as long as it continues to exist. The inhabitants of the United States may retard the calamities which they apprehend, but they cannot now destroy their efficient cause.
In 1855, Tocqueville wrote the following text published by Maria Weston Chapman in the Liberty Bell: Testimony against Slavery:
I do not think it is for me, a foreigner, to indicate to the United States the time, the measures, or the men by whom Slavery shall be abolished. Still, as the persevering enemy of despotism everywhere, and under all its forms, I am pained and astonished by the fact that the freest people in the world is, at the present time, almost the only one among civilized and Christian nations which yet maintains personal servitude; and this while serfdom itself is about disappearing, where it has not already disappeared, from the most degraded nations of Europe.
An old and sincere friend of America, I am uneasy at seeing Slavery retard her progress, tarnish her glory, furnish arms to her detractors, compromise the future career of the Union which is the guaranty of her safety and greatness, and point out beforehand to her, to all her enemies, the spot where they are to strike. As a man, too, I am moved at the spectacle of man’s degradation by man, and I hope to see the day when the law will grant equal civil liberty to all the inhabitants of the same empire, as God accords the freedom of the will, without distinction, to the dwellers upon earth.[40]
On policies of assimilation
According to Tocqueville, assimilation of black people would be almost impossible and this was already being demonstrated in the Northern states. As Tocqueville predicted, formal freedom and equality and segregation would become this population’s reality after the Civil War and during Reconstruction as would the bumpy road to true integration of black people.[citation needed]
However, assimilation was the best solution for Native Americans, and since they were too proud to assimilate, they would inevitably become extinct. Displacement was another part of America’s Indian policy. Both populations were “undemocratic”, or without the qualities, intellectual and otherwise needed to live in a democracy. Tocqueville shared many views on assimilation and segregation of his and the coming epochs, but he opposed Arthur de Gobineau‘s theories as found in The Inequality of Human Races (1853–1855).[41]
On the United States and Russia as future global powers
In his Democracy in America, Tocqueville also forecast the preeminence of the United States and Russia as the two main global powers. In his book, he stated: “There are now two great nations in the world, which starting from different points, seem to be advancing toward the same goal: the Russians and the Anglo-Americans. […] Each seems called by some secret design of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world”.[42]
On civil jury service
Tocqueville believed that the American jury system was particularly important in educating citizens in self-government and rule of law.[43] He often expressed how the civil jury system was one of the most effective showcases of democracy because it connected citizens with the true spirit of the justice system. In his 1835 treatise Democracy in America, he explained: “The jury, and more especially the civil jury, serves to communicate the spirit of the judges to the minds of all the citizens; and this spirit, with the habits which attend it, is the soundest preparation for free institutions. […] It invests each citizen with a kind of magistracy; it makes them all feel the duties which they are bound to discharge toward society; and the part which they take in the Government”.[44]
Tocqueville believed that jury service not only benefited the society as a whole, but enhanced jurors’ qualities as citizens. Because of the jury system, “they were better informed about the rule of law, and they were more closely connected to the state. Thus, quite independently of what the jury contributed to dispute resolution, participation on the jury had salutary effects on the jurors themselves”.[43]
Do you think that I know what I’m doing. That for one breath or half-breath I belong to myself? As much as a pen knows what it’s writing, or the ball can guess where it’s going next.
Progressives think Sam and Frodo were more than good friends
Deep, intimate friendships between male characters in LotR had little to do with sexual relationships.
The Tolkien Society. The very words conjure up certain images. Earnest, tweedy Englishmen with old-fashioned glasses and luxuriant beards, reading each other densely argued papers about Elvish grammar and little-known battles from the First Age. Long and complex arguments over pints of real ale in Oxford pubs, about the real significance of Tom Bombadil or the true causes of the Fall of Gondolin.
It would seem, however, that my stereotype is out of date. This weekend saw the Society’s annual conference, the agenda for which provoked anger and derision when it was made public last month. The call for papers had stressed that this year’s theme was to be identity and diversity, and attendees got it good and hard. Speaker after speaker discoursed on queerness and transgenderism, racism and sexism. Some of the paper titles were close to self-parody, with their talk of Othering and Problematics; my personal favourite was “Destabilizing Cishetero Amatonormativity in the Works of Tolkien”.
Maybe next year we’ll get back to hearing the thoughts of the Reverend Peregrine Cocklecarrot, MA on the correct dating of the abandonment of Fornost, but I’m not especially optimistic, given the monomania that tends to mark progressive activists. Once they get their claws into an organisation, it is very difficult to get them out again. As Robert Conquest famously noted in his Second Law of Politics, “any organisation not explicitly and constitutionally right-wing will sooner or later become left-wing”.
Naturally, the kerfuffle over the Tolkien Society’s “surrender to woke” created its own backlash. An essay argued that Tolkien had intended Sam Gamgee and Frodo Baggins to be read as gay lovers. The Guardiancarried a piece suggesting that it would be no big deal if the forthcoming Lord Of The Rings TV series featured gay characters because, well, it’s all made up anyway, innit.
We face the age-old question of who gets to say what a work of fiction is really about. Conservative readers of Tolkien often note that the great man himself was a traditionalist, who stated that the saga had been written with a deliberately Catholic lens.
This assertion, while true, is not the whole story. You don’t sell 150 million copies without a certain breadth of appeal. Hippies famously loved Lord Of The Rings. Peter Jackson, who is not a Christian conservative, did an excellent job of bringing the book to the big screen. I am modern enough to accept that authorial intention can’t always be the last word in the interpretation of art — and I’ll even admit some of the papers at the Tolkien Society conference sounded quite interesting, notably the ones about disability and Soviet illustrations.
All the same, to use the Tolkien legendarium as a Trojan horse for a particular political agenda, which is alien to the text and which he would certainly have strongly disliked, is fundamentally disrespectful to, and contemptuous of, the book. Authorial intention isn’t always the last word, but it cannot be disregarded entirely. We know, for example, the experiences and archetypes that fed into Tolkien’s portrayal of deep, intimate friendships between male characters — notably the officer-batman bonds formed on the Western Front — and they had little to do with sexual relationships.
The temptation is to write this off as yet another meaningless culture war skirmish: small earthquake in Chile, no-one killed. On the contrary: the attempt by activists to colonise every area of cultural life with their faddish neuroses must be resisted by all those who enjoy books and films for their own sake.
RELEASING THE HIDDEN SPLENDOUR CLASSSaturday – Sunday, July 17 & 18 Anne Bollman, H.W., M.
“Once upon a time. . . “, is the way some of the most thrilling stories begin. Indeed, the most captivating story of all is the on-going, unfolding story of Self-discovery, Self-revelation and Self-understanding. RE-MEMBER RATHER THAN DIS-MEMBERWe have grown accustomed to fragments of self-hood, familiar with dis-membered, split personalities, unable to make use of genuine wholeness that is our birthright. It is time NOW to begin the journey to truly let go of old beliefs that have you experiencing life as other than whole, complete and perfect.
You are invited to learn how to use the enormous hidden potential of your memories, “how to make the unconscious conscious” and release yourself to your true identity as One Whole Ontological self through the practical process of Releasing the Hidden SplendourTM.
This will be a monitor class with Anne employing Thane’s audio lessons and some live instruction.
Saturday, July 17 – Day 1 – class begins at 9:00 am PT and runs until about 6 pm PT. Sunday, July 18 – Day 2 – class begins at 9:00 am PT and runs until about 5 pm PT.
There will be breaks of 15 min. between lessons and a 30 min. meal break each day.
June 22, 2021 • Updated June 28, 2021 (theconversation.com)
Author
Terry ShoemakerLecturer, School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies, Arizona State University
Disclosure statement
Terry Shoemaker does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Younger evangelicals are openly questioning the religious and political traditions of their parents and grandparents. Julie Bennett/AP
Since the 1970s, white American evangelicals – a large subsection of Protestants who hold to a literal reading of the Bible – have often managed to get specific privileges through their political engagement primarily through supporting the Republican Party.
Trump went so far as to appoint a faith consultant board composed of influential evangelical leaders. They included Paula White, a well-known pastor and televangelist; and James Dobson, founder of Focus on the Family, a leading organization in evangelical efforts to embed “family values” into politics. These panel members heralded gestures by Trump, such as signing the “Presidential Executive Order Promoting Free Speech and Religious Liberty,” which targeted enforcement of the Johnson Amendment, a 1954 tax law requiring houses of worship to stay out of politics in order to remain tax-exempt.
Although it’s debated what specifically constitutes an evangelical, many agree that they are conservatives who are highly motivated by culture war issues like abortion, same-sex marriage and sexuality.
Over the past six years, I have been working with an interdisciplinary team of scholars at the American Academy of Religion to analyze generational shifts in evangelicalism and religion more broadly in the United States. We are finding that some of the younger evangelicals are openly questioning their religious and political traditions. In short, the majority of white evangelicals are aging and a portion of younger evangelicals are engaging in both religion and politics differently.
Leaving the faith versus reforming from within
My research consists of hours of participant observation within younger evangelical faith communities, along with 50 in-depth, qualitative interviews with individuals who were raised in the politically charged evangelicalism in the southeastern United States, a region dominated by evangelicals.
Taken together, this research indicates increasing disaffection among white millennial and Gen X evangelicals with the cultural and political preoccupations that have strongly motivated their parents and grandparents. There is a growing number of “Exvangelicals” who disavow their previous stances on same-sex marriage, race and sexuality.
My research reveals communities of younger evangelicals who are expanding their religious boundaries and rethinking their stances on culture war issues, as well as questioning the merits of the culture war.
These younger evangelicals are trying to reform their communities from within the tradition as loyal but highly critical members. Sometimes these groups are called “emerging evangelicals” or “progressive Christians,” with some debating whether “evangelical” as a label is redeemable.
I observed several younger evangelicals working within their religious communities to encourage acceptance of those outside of the Christian tradition as co-religionists on similar faith paths. They herald interfaith interactions as positive. One interviewee proudly detailed to me how her church partnered with the local imam and Muslim community to educate each other on their religious practices and volunteered together at a local food bank. This kind of attitude typically is resisted by their older evangelical counterparts, as I learned in previous research. Many traditional evangelicals believe that their faith is the sole path to religious redemption, and interfaith cooperation might harm their followers.
Additionally, some younger evangelicals tend toward adopting spiritual resources outside of the Christian tradition. Whether incorporating meditation techniques or yoga, my interviewees highlighted the ways in which they are exploring their religious and spiritual beliefs.
This contrasts with older evangelicals who perceive their tradition as providing all necessary resources for spiritual growth and reject any outside or Eastern influences. One interviewee noted that she had to change evangelical churches after her evangelical church prohibited her from being both a church member and a local yoga instructor.
Losing interest in the culture war
Many of the younger evangelicals in my study stated that their stances on culture war issues were significantly different from the evangelical majority of the past 50 years, which aligns with the findings of a 2017 Pew Research Center poll. This survey found that younger generations of millennials are more liberal than older evangelicals on numerous political issues.
My interviewees cited an acceptance and welcoming of those who identify as LGBTQ into their communities as both members and leaders. They support and ally with the objectives of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. In sum, they are actively dismantling many of the insider/outsider distinctions established by older white evangelicals and transforming what it means to be a politically engaged evangelical in America.
Furthermore, many of the people that I spoke with cited a culture war fatigue. Some believe that evangelicalism’s multi-decade investment in campaigning for these conservative stances and alliance with the Republican Party actually harmed the evangelical tradition instead of empowering it, while others are simply trying to opt out of the culture war and focus on their faith instead.
Influential figures like Paula White, left, helped rally evangelical support for Donald Trump, who in turn rewarded them with advisory and other roles in his administration. Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP
Interviewees also told me that often their views are creating familial conflict, since their parents and grandparents cannot understand why any evangelical would not be committed to the older generations’ conservative political causes.
Political conversion
Research to date, including my own, has yet to measure how widespread these shifts of attitude and belief among young white evangelicals may be. But there is other evidence of internal unraveling.
Take a recent announcement by Beth Moore, an influential evangelical speaker and author, that she has decided to leave the Southern Baptist Convention – the largest evangelical group in the U.S. – and end her relationship with a prominent evangelical publisher.
Or consider the recent departure of pastor Russell Moore, the former president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, who resigned from his position over the denomination’s handling of racial issues. These developments indicate a growing internal struggle over who can legitimately claim authority for the evangelical tradition.
The last several decades of American politics have been dominated by culture war issues, with white evangelicals in positions of national power. But as my research is documenting, a political transformation seems to be underway. With younger, white evangelicals rethinking their alliances and continued participation in the culture wars, it is possible that conservative politicians may not be able to count on white evangelical support for much longer.
This could have broader implications for the American political landscape. Without evangelical support and influence, the issues that are often at center stage could drastically change.
Editor’s note: This article has been updated to clarify Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s faith as a conservative Christian and pastor Russell Moore’s title.
Beth Daley
Editor and General Manager
(Contributed by Janet Cornwell, H.W., m.)
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