Individualism, Academia, and anti-Americanism

            What is meant by the term "individualism"?  Does everyone using that term mean the same thing?  Is "individualism," however you mean it, a good or a bad thing?  A passage in note http://www.lawrencehelm.com/2010/05/re-french-individualism-prior-to-world.html might help us a bit here:   ". . . Tocqueville accurately predicted that at the level of sociopolitical phenomena [individualism] constituted a dangerous, but not irresistible, tendency in modernity. The best definition no doubt follows from Benjamin Constant's deceptively simple formula of the 'freedom of the moderns.' Constant placed less stress on the valorization of autonomy than on independence: among the ancients, he explained in a famous speech delivered at the Athenee royal in Paris in 1819, freedom was defined in terms of participation in public affairs and the direct exercise of sovereignty, by this 'collective freedom' was held to be 'compatible with . . . the complete subjection of the individual to the authority of the community,' to the point that '[n]o importance was given to the individual independence, neither in relation to opinions, nor to labor, nor, above all, to religion''; in contrast, among the moderns, for whom the sovereignty of the individual was profoundly restricted, being publicly exercised only 'at fixed and rare intervals,' the individual nonetheless thinks of himself as free because he is 'independent in his private independence,' Constant added; and in an age where, '[l]ost in the multitude, the individual can almost never perceive the influence he exercises, . . . we must be far more attached than the ancients to our individual independence.'"

            Does Constant mean that because there are more of us, and since we cannot easily measure our role in national sovereignty, that we should seek "individual independence" in some other way?  And if so, what way?  One way that is extremely popular is to ignore our role in the sovereignty of our Liberal-Democracy and rebel against it.  That way was popularized in France as was discussed.  But is that a good way?  What does it accomplish?  We saw that in the case of France it contributed to German victory against them in World War II.  Surely that isn't a "good way."

            Consider the essay entitled "Liberalism and Higher Education" posted by yesterday at http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2010/05/1286 by Christopher O. Tollefsen.  Tollefsen quotes a passage from an Amy Gutmann essay on education:  "Higher education is a gateway to the professions in modern democracies and it is also an institution that serves as a bulwark against ideological repression by the state and other powerful political forces who are all too often motivated to repress ideas that are unpopular or offensive (or both)." 

            Tollefsen then writes, "Having just covered nearly the entire range of disputed ideas over which there could conceivably be an effort at 'ideological repression,' I was somewhat amused.  Gutmann's claims, particularly the second, struck me as rather self-congratulatory: look what a brave group we academics are, protecting out students from the powerful political forces seeking to illicitly mold their minds."

            Tollefsen argues that it isn't the government that is "motivated to repress ideas that are unpopular or offensive," but academia.  A moment's reflection ought to be enough to remind the reader that Academia is not, by and large, an open field of exploration.  It, with some exceptions, has an agenda that can be described as politically Liberal and anti-Nationalistic.  Amy Gutmann was very much in keeping with that agenda.  The individual's role in the sovereignty of the American Liberal Democracy can be ignored because he is too numerous for his particular role to be seen.  Therefore, the State is the enemy and needs to be resisted.  It is a good thing that Academia, that brave group of academics, is close at hand to steer students away from cooperating with that State.

            "Individualism" in America, as it was in France prior to World War II, is largely anti-Government -- opposed to the Government numerous individuals elected.  And if we were educated by Academia we were taught that we need to oppose our nation on every important issue, and not trust it on any.  By doing this we demonstrate our "Individualism."  In my opinion, we deceive ourselves when we follow that line of thought.  We are far from demonstrating "individualism" when we, sheep-like, follow a politically Liberal academic agenda.

            I would like to say that I believe in "individualism" if it can be defined as being free from Liberal Academic influence, but "individualism" as a term, has been corrupted in the same way that the term "Liberal" has been.  "Liberals" at the time of the formation of our nation were the ones who constructed our Constitution with its Bill of Rights.  "Liberals" today are opposed to that government that our "Liberal" founding fathers created.  If, today, you like what those Liberal founding fathers did, you've got to be a "Conservative to show it.

            By the same token, if you want to be "an individual" then you've got to conform to the agenda presented by our Politically Liberal academics.

            I wrote in a note the other day how various forces were turning us from "the subject," that is, free agents in control of our own wills, into "objects," that is, worked upon by various forces including: our unconscious, historical necessity, prisons and mental institutions, and our understanding of the world outside of our own existence.   We see that latter force, if we look for it, in Derrida as he "Deconstructed" almost everything.  I recall reading an article (unfortunately I can't bring its author to mind) who commented that Derrida had to un-Deconstruct, or exempt from deconstruction, some important element in order to express his political view.  I mention that only to show that even our language isn't available to us as "subjects."  We are "objects" even there and such politically Liberal wise-men as Derrida will have to be consulted so that we shall know how to use individual words and concepts -- if they can be used at all.

           

US "individuals" who assisted the USSR -- I. F. Stone

            In previous notes I berated the French, especially French intellectuals who created an anti-French disposition -- a climate of opinion in which one was "realistic" or "with the latest fashion" only if one opposed the French establishment, the French status quo.  But peculiarity wasn't the sole property of France.  The same sort of thing occurred in the United States, albeit with not quite the same cataclysmic result.  Consider a new book just published Spies, The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassilief:

            After the fall of the USSR, the KGB archives became more and more accessible.  The American Left who claimed to be individuals much like their French predecessors succumbed through a slightly different process to the same destructive anti-national sentiments.  Whereas the French developed their own process, moving from Anarchy up through anti-French pacifism, the Americans, while perhaps to some extent influenced by the French, seem also to have been powerfully assisted by a Communist "party line" which played to their "anti-establishment" predisposition. 

            Much of the information provided by Ronald Radosh, who reviewed the book in the current issue of The Weekly Standard, was already familiar to me from having read previous Haynes and Klehr books.  I gather though that this book provides much more evidence about what actually occurred.  I already knew that McCarthy was being used by J. Edgar Hoover to go after certain individuals as Communists, and that McCarthy was prohibited from saying where he got his information for fear of exposing the Venona project; so Radosh doesn't exactly surprise me when he quotes the authors to say that McCarthy was "wildly off the mark.  Very few of the people he accused appeared in KGB documents (or the Venona decryptions), and by the time he made his charges, almost all Soviet agents had been forced out of the government and Soviet intelligence networks were largely defunct."   I wonder though how many of the names of the "people he accused" were provided him by Hoover, and whether any of them could be numbered among the individuals that were referred to but not named in the KGB archives.  I don't have the impression that McCarthy made anything up; so who were his sources?  That sort of information wouldn't be in the KGB files. 

            And I hadn't heard that the Soviet networks were "largely defunct" by the time McCarthy and HUAC got rolling.  The KGB's efforts were ended, not by investigative efforts but by the defection of certain spies, especially Elizabeth Bentley.  Radosh writes "It was the 1945 defection of Elizabeth Bentley that led Soviet intelligence to close down almost all of its American operations, and to dissolve and deactivate its agents.  Bentley had run party-based KGB networks in the government, and when she went to the FBI, her defection 'was by any measure a catastrophe.'  Everything that the KGB and GRU had put together during the war years had to be abandoned: 'By the time the FBI began to watch them or came to interrogate them, Bentley's American agents had their excuses and cover stories thought out and their cries about political persecution of progressives well rehearsed.'"

            Radosh writes "The most striking fact to emerge from Spies 'is that a remarkable number of Americans' -- more than 500 -- 'assisted Soviet intelligence agencies.'  We still do not know the identities of all of them.  Despite HUAC, the FBI, and Senator McCarthy and his associates, many were questioned, but few were prosecuted and fewer convicted.  Some have argued that, although the Soviets may have spied against America, they did little harm.  The KGB files reveal, however, that stolen scientific and technical data helped the Soviets wage the Cold War, build an atomic bomb, and deploy 'jet planes, radar, sonar, artillery proximity fuses' and other armaments long before they could have done so on their own.  Soviet espionage in America gave Stalin the confidence to give Kim Il Sung the go-ahead to invade South Korea in 1950."

            Radosh concludes, "Joseph McCarthy was wrong in many of his accusations, but those American anti-Communists who saw the Communist party as a genuine threat to our national security, and who worked to keep their members out of government, were right.  They were not witch-hunters, and the search for Communists in government was 'a rational response to the extent to which the Communist party had become an appendage of Soviet intelligence.'"

            As indicated, I am more interested in Americans who were anti-nationalists like the French "individuals" described in earlier notes, and this book does shed some light on them.  Radosh writes, "the third major revelation is the solid identification of leftwing journalist I. F. Stone as a Soviet agent.  For decades, Stone's admirers have depicted him as an independent, free spirited journalist, unafraid to go after sacred cows, beholden to no one but his own conscience.  His opposition to Cold war foreign policy, and his influential writings in opposition to the Vietnam war, made him a hero in the 1960s to the emerging New Left, and to a future generation of journalists and writers.  The KGB files now firmly establish that, during 1936-38, Stone signed on as a full-fledged KGB agent.  There is simply no more room for doubt.  As the New York KGB station agent reported in May 1936, 'Relations with "Pancake" [Stone's KGB name] have entered "the channel of normal operational work."'  For the next few years, HKV [Radosh's abbreviation of the authors' names] write, 'Stone worked closely with the KGB' as a talent spotter and recruiter.  He also worked with the American Communist Victor Perlo who, while an economist at the War Production Group, also led a Soviet espionage apparatus and compiled material for Stone.  'That Stone chose never to reveal this part of his life,' write the authors, 'strongly suggests that he knew just how incompatible it would be with his public image as a courageous and independent journalist.'"

            While French intellectuals may have been the authors of the sort of "individual" that became the idol of the anti-Establishment-Left, their views resonated in the intellectual Left of the rest of Europe and the West.  Wherever you go in the West you will find "individuals" opposing the well-being of their own nations.  That their philosophy was disastrous to the nation in which it originated is well-documented.  As to its effect elsewhere, I will only comment about the U.S.  Nietzsche wrote that whatever doesn't kill us makes us stronger, and that seems to have been the case with the U.S.  Despite the "individuals" who opposed America's national interests, America survived, and its enemy didn't.  Klehr, Haynes and Vassiliev describe to us, for example, how the KGB orchestrated a "party line" attack against America's interests in such places as Korea and Vietnam.    We should not fail to return to the Leftist arguments that blamed the US with accusations originated, ultimately, by the KGB and its cohorts.  The KGB was wildly successful.  The American Left took the Communist Party Line and ran with it.  Granted, the Left is rather quiet nowadays about what they advocated during the Cold War, but some of us need to remember what they did and said, not to rub their noses in it, but to recognize the danger anti-national sentiment and activities can represent.

Individualism and Collaboration in France

            In earlier notes I traced the history of France from political anarchy to artistic anarchy to rebellion against "the establishment," which Roger Shattuck called "Individualism", followed by a less than half-hearted willingness to defend France against Germany.  Let's now consider the result:

            On page 12 of Beevor and Cooper's Paris, After the Liberation, 1944-1949, we read, ". . . the 'path of collaboration' on which he [Petain] had embarked with the occupying power offered up exactly what Hitler wanted: a country promising to police itself in the Nazi interest.

            "All of the self-deception of Petainism was revealed in a New Year message addressed to 'Messieurs et tres chers collaborateurs' from the Bishop of Arras, Mgr Henri-Edouard Dutoit.  This cleric's pseudo-Cartesian formulation only drew further attention to the false basis of his reasoning.  'I collaborate: therefore I am no longer the slave who is forbidden to speak and act, and only good to obey orders.  I collaborate: therefore I have the right to contribute my own thought and individual effort to the common cause.'

            "This imaginary autonomy described by the Bishop of Arras was so important to the Vichy regime that until 1942 the Germans needed little more than 30,000 men -- less than twice the size of the Paris police force -- to keep the whole of France in order.  Vichy bent over backwards to help the occupier -- a policy that was taken to appalling lengths when assisting with the deportation of Jews to Germany."

            COMMENT:  Shattuck admired the artistic "development" that emanated from the political anarchy that preceded it.  Words like "responsibility" and "irresponsibility" do not occur to Shattuck.  Yet the era he called "the Banquet Years" were the height of irresponsibility.  The intellectuals of that time engaged in what was very like adolescent misbehavior.  They didn't torch cars like France's modern adolescents but they smashed France's compass.  France which has a deep-seated inclination to defy authority, born, perhaps from its rebellion against the Monarchy, was easily led in the aftermath of these Banquet Years to "rebel against the establishment."  The "individuals" that Shattuck praised could hardly have selected a worse time in French history to set their new rebellion in motion.  In the "last banquet" described by Shattuck, in 1925, the "individuals" were shouting "death to France."  They seem to have gotten their wish, for France died -- as much as any modern European nation can die.              Someone reading my notes might object: isn't what you prescribe when you call for "cooperation" very like collaboration?  Yes, I will admit, it is.  By cooperating with the important aspects of one's nation, one could, if one's heart isn't in it refer to it as "collaboration," but that isn't a normal thing to do.  Throughout our history as a species we have engaged in cooperation as a means of self-preservation.  We cooperated on hunts during our hunter-gatherer years.  Later we cooperated in the building of villages and towns.  Still later we cooperated in the building of cities.  And we have always (until recently) cooperated in defending our unit whether it be tribe, village, city or nation.  We have never been a suicidal species like the lemming (until recently).  A non-intellectual inclined more toward "common sense" than  "reasoning" will readily understand that by cooperating with one's nation early on, one may be eliminating the need to collaborate with one's conqueror later. 

            Beevor and Cooper refer to the Bishop of Arras' "pseudo-Cartesian formulation."  Did he really believe what he was saying?  A footnote suggests that he did: "When the Bishop of Arras was arrested after the Liberation, the British Embassy in Paris reported that 'much surprise was expressed [by the Vatican] at the accusations against the Bishop of Arras since he has had the reputation at the Vatican of holding extreme democratic views."

            And on page 331 of Verdict on Vichy, Power and prejudice in the Vichy France regime by Michael Curtis wrote, "Mgr Dutoit was one of those in the Church who regarded resisters as bandits, and Allied bombing raids as acts of terrorism.  In the new atmosphere of Europe he called for rapprochement with Germany and reconciliation of the peoples of the two countries."   

            Could Dutoit have been a lover of France with such a philosophy?  A critic might point out that had Hitler not been defeated, Dutoit might today be considered a great hero, someone who facilitated the transition from Vichy collaboration to whatever France was to become as time went on.  But Hitler and Fascism were defeated and Dutoit was sent to prison.  Victor's justice?  Of course, but of far more interest to me is the development in France that moved popular opinion from Anarchy to Collaboration.  We in Britain and America imagine that France must be grateful that we liberated them in 1944.  Some Frenchmen were, to be sure, but I wonder if that was the majority opinion.  We can read, if we are interested, about many French people who resented British-American "liberation," referring to it as a "new occupation" indistinguishable from the German one that preceded it.

           

Individualism, Anti-Humanism, and Free Will

            Someone questioned me in regard to my opposing Roger Shattuck on the matter of Individualism.  He suggested, if I understood him, that I might be contradicting myself by opposing Individualism on the one hand and Socialism on the other. 

            This sort of thing has been debated for centuries.  Calvinism versus Arminianism was in a sense a debate over Free Will versus Determinism, and if we bring the debate forward in time, the complaint voiced by Luc Ferry and Alain Renaut in their French Philosophy of the Sixties, an Essay on Antihumanism can be readily compared to the debate between Calvinists and Arminians. 

            But  we have become so sophisticated that the relatively bald terms of Calvin and Arminius will no longer do.  It is no longer acceptable to pit "God's Will" against "Man's Will."  In keeping with the modern argument we see Man's Will at the time of the Renaissance eroded, over the years, by one philosophy after the other.  Assume for the sake of discussion that Renaissance men considered their wills to be 100% under their control.  Now consider the work of Freud who taught that man's unconscious will supersedes his conscious will.  How much will then is left to such a Renaissance man? 

            Also, Marx taught that there were historical forces at work that would guide man toward Socialism whether he willed it or not. 

            Also, Foucault taught that there were social structures that targeted free choice.  The wrong choice could send one to prison or a mental institution. 

            Also, the Existentialists (perhaps Heidegger but at least Sartre and Camus) taught that we can know nothing other than our own existence which places the rest of the universe beyond our knowledge and control.

            Roger Shattuck, while dealing with these same issues was concerned about the movement away from the rules of Renaissance art.  The orderly music of Bach, Telemann, and Mozart was, beginning with his Banquet-Years period replaced by discordant music.  The perfectly constructed figures painted by Rembrandt and Titian were replaced by the bizarre representations of Henri Rousseau and Pablo Picasso.  The highly organized poetry of Dante and Shakespeare was replaced by the disorganized ee cummings and Alfred Jarry.  And the writings of Montaigne, Coleridge, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky were replaced by those of Guillaume Apollinaire, Gertrude Stein and James Joyce.  Some of us might think that this swing toward the discordant and disorderly could not be maintained and that the pendulum must return toward orderliness.  But Shattuck seemed to think the transition was linear.  It might not remain as it was at the time of Apollinaire but it would never return to the time of Leonardo da Vinci.  And if we were able to ask Freud, Marx, Sartre and Foucault, they would surely agree with Shattuck.

            I already moved away from Shattuck's artistic concerns when I suggested that the Anarchistic influences that pervaded French society as well as French art played a significant role in the deterioration of France's ability to defend itself against Germany.  If being an individual involves rebelling against the norms of one's society, then how well will such an "individual" defend his nation in time of war?  Not well at all, we learn from a study of French history.   But in saying it was wrong of the French intellectuals to weaken France's will to defend itself, I am assuming that all the "anti-humanists" Ferry and Renaut denigrate were wrong.  We do have free choice.  We are not controlled by other forces unless we choose to be.  France, in a sense, invoked the Twinkie Defense as it too swiftly succumbed to German aggressiveness, but should we value such a defense?  Is our ability to defend ourselves, or make our own choices, beyond our control?

            I criticized in an earlier note the "common man," perhaps Nietzsche's "Last Man" who won't think, won't study, and prefers to be told what to do -- albeit by someone he admires.  The "common man" is certainly doing that today; so in a sense he is behaving as though all the anti-humanists were right.  But he doesn't need to behave that way. There are people in this modern world who do study, who do think, and who make up their minds about the things they feel are important.  In believing that, as I do, I don't subscribe to the Shattuck implication that in order to practice "individualism" one needs to rebel against the norms of one's society.  Shattuck and those rebels he praises haven't thought about the ramifications -- such as France of the Vichy years.  How readily did the French descendants of the Shattuck's Banquet Years rebel against the norms of their society when the pro-fascist Vichy police were watching them? 

            In my view we should study, read, think and come to our own conclusions about matters we think are important.  No, we can't study and read everything.  We must accept "authorities" of some sort on some subjects.  As to those authorities, they should be selected with great care.  We see that the "common man" of today likes to pay attention to sports and movie stars; surely we can do better than that.  Jesus once said that such people like our "common man" are like the blind following the blind.  He said they both shall fall into the ditch.  Insofar are we must accept authority, let us strive to follow individuals who can see.  If we are in doubt, today better than any earlier time in history, we have the means to research these "authorities" available to us.  What are their qualifications?  Have they been educated in the subject we are interested in?  Have they written articles and books we can study?  Have they expressed opinions we can subscribe to? 

            And as to the society that we live in, I disagree that our rebelling against it is a worthwhile sign of our "individualism."  Cooperation is necessary for our society to function.  Let us pay our taxes, follow the laws of the land and if the people we have elected deem it necessary to go to war, then let us fight that war as well as we are able.  Later on, after the war is over we can debate whether it was a good war or not -- if we like -- and if it wasn't then let our opinions influence the next set of politicians we elect, but let us not like the French intellectuals of the Banquet Years and their successors rebel as a sign of individualism.  As to why not one might read Paxton's Vichy France, Old Guard and New Order, 1940-1944, or France, The Dark Years, 1940-1944 by Julian Jackson.

           

           

Re: French individualism prior to the World Wars

Billy Blogblather has left a  comment on my post "Was French individualism a virtue prior to World W...":

I cannot believe that you, of all people, would be arguing against individualism. It can only be because there's no room for individualism in the military and you are heart and soul, a military man. Why you are such, I have no idea. I can't imagine being in the military so I just have to accept that there are those who thrive on it. Rorty is my hero. We are fiercely individual persons and who are tightly bound inside a society. Allegiance to each is a life long battle. There are no rules from God, we each work it out for outselves. I prefer the anarchist artists to the CEO's of the world. Thank you, kindly.


Lawrence's response:

            "Individualism" is a word defined in different ways.  Some might recall a note I posted back on March 18, 2009:  http://www.lawrencehelm.com/2009/03/social-constructivism-as-anti-humanism.html .  I'll quote the definitions in context:

            On page 17 of a book by Alain Renaut, The Era of the Individual, A Contribution to a History of Subjectivity, he provides definitions of two terms that are critical to the critique of Marxism-Leninism, "Humanism" and "Individualism":

            "Humanism is basically the valorization of humanity in its capacity for autonomy. What I mean by this – without, of course, claiming any originality in the matter – is that what constitutes modernity is the fact that man thinks of himself as the source of his acts and representations, as their foundation (read: subject) or author. (This is why, by the way, the antihumanistic passion common to various genealogical practices of the 1960s so often involved criticizing the idea of the author.) The humanistic man is one who does not receive his norms and laws either from the nature of things (as per Aristotle) or from God, but who establishes them himself, on the basis of his own reason and will. Thus modern natural right is a subjective right, posited and defined by human reason (as per juridical rationalism) or by the human will (as per juridical voluntarism). Thus modern societies conceive of themselves politically as self-established political systems based on a contractualist scheme, in contrast to societies where authority is established through tradition by means of the deeply antimodern notion of 'privilege.'

            "Individualism, on the other hand, carries a different emphasis. Tocqueville accurately predicted that at the level of sociopolitical phenomena it constituted a dangerous, but not irresistible, tendency in modernity. The best definition no doubt follows from Benjamin Constant's deceptively simple formula of the 'freedom of the moderns.' Constant placed less stress on the valorization of autonomy than on independence: among the ancients, he explained in a famous speech delivered at the Athenee royal in Paris in 1819, freedom was defined in terms of participation in public affairs and the direct exercise of sovereignty, by this 'collective freedom' was held to be 'compatible with . . . the complete subjection of the individual to the authority of the community,' to the point that '[n]o importance was given to the individual independence, neither in relation to opinions, nor to labor, nor, above all, to religion''; in contrast, among the moderns, for whom the sovereignty of the individual was profoundly restricted, being publicly exercised only 'at fixed and rare intervals,' the individual nonetheless thinks of himself as free because he is 'independent in his private independence,' Constant added; and in an age where, '[l]ost in the multitude, the individual can almost never perceive the influence he exercises, . . . we must be far more attached than the ancients to our individual independence.'"

            Renaut and Ferry pitted "Humanism" or "Autonomy" against "the individual" or "Individualism," which I found awkward as an American brought up to value "individualism," meaning "rugged individualism" also known as "self-sufficiency," but in these regards, especially in Humanism as Renaut defines it, we are coming athwart the Marxist-Leninist approach . . . the latter term requires fleshing out. Renaut would say, for example, that Heidegger's fascination with Fascism was not accidental. He was philosophically in tune with Fascism. And Nietzsche was a precursor, in this sense, who believed that the "Great Leader" was necessary to lead his sheep-like followers, and Freud described man as an utter response to environmental influences.

            We can see that all the above influences are opposed to "Humanism." There is no "natural right" posited in the individual man's "human reason." Other elements are at work, and we must turn to Heidegger, Nietzsche, Freud, and such followers as Foucault, Derrida, Bourdieu and Lacan to find out what they are.  

            Shattuck's definition is different from Renaut's  His sense of individualism, as applied to the four individuals of The Banquet Years is more consistent with the anti-establishment American movements such as the "Hippies."  Anything goes as long as it's different and doesn't support "the man" or "the system," but people were lining up to be different in the same way.  These "individuals" were known for opposing "the establishment."  They are now known for opposing anything America is for.  With Noam Chomsky they make a full circle all the way back to French Anarchism. 

Was French individualism a virtue prior to World Wars I & II?

            Shattuck (The Banquet Years, the Origins of the Avant-Garde in France, 1885 to World War I, Alfred Jarry, Henri Rousseau, Erik Satie, Guillaume Apollinaire) has throughout his book regularly appalled me, and though I am very near the end he has done it once again.  He is in his last chapter which he has entitled "The Last Banquet," in which he sums up his period.  I'll quote a particularly objectionable (at least to me) passage and then comment::

            (from Page 357) ". . . Like the impressionists before them, symbolists, fauves, and cubists were all first ridiculed from outside under those names which in defiance, they finally accepted as designating some form of common purpose.  Jarry was a symbolist, Braque a fauve, and Delaunay a cubist only by chronological accident, not by self-proclamation or lasting affinity.  The artists of these years remained individuals, whom only critics and enemies lumped together, in order to have a bigger target.  And it was as individuals that they achieved the greatest of all essentials to creative endeavor: courage.  One does not live; one dares to live.  Forty years after the Banquet Years, in an era of social adjustment, mass communication, and normal response, the resolve to be oneself and live one's life in the face of misunderstanding and disapproval has come increasingly to be branded nonconformity -- and even schizophrenia.  But conformity, in life and in art, in love and in work, must be to one's inner being and not to the world.  The most notable artistic figures of the Banquet Years practiced external nonconformity in order to attain a conformity within the individual.  Outstanding among them, Rousseau, Satie, Jarry, and Apollinaire did not seek courage in numbers; they found it in themselves.  We see them variously as children and determined humorists, as dreamers and mystifiers, and they played all these roles.  But their ultimate virtue lies deeper, lodged beneath all their vices.  They had the wisdom, already rare, to know themselves, and the courage, which is far rarer, to be themselves."

            COMMENT: I suspect Shattuck of having drawn too deep a draught from this period he admires.  If I were a detective examining his crime, I would accuse him of attempting to find something good at the end and using "lawyerese" to defend it -- else, if he drew conclusions similar to mine, why would anyone bother to read it. 

            My eyebrows went way up when I read that "their ultimate virtue lies deeper, lodged beneath their vices. They had the wisdom, already rare, to know themselves, and the courage, which is far rarer, to be themselves."  Good grief!  One could say something like that about any evil person:  Hitler's ultimate virtue, was lodged beneath his vices.  He had the wisdom to know himself, and the courage to be himself."  If one considers it a virtue to know and be oneself however heinous society and history might consider that self, then Hitler, like Shattuck's four individuals, was virtuous.  Lest one think I have chosen an inappropriate example, there has been a resurgence in the appreciation of Hitler in Germany.  "After all," some German's will tell us.  "Hitler did a lot of good.  He improved the economy and gave German's their pride back."   There is also a resurgence of interest in Stalin.  Modern admirers of Stalin will tell us that he saved Russia from defeat in World War II, that he was a great "war leader," and such "crimes" as sending individuals to gulags because they "might" disagree with him in the future were necessary in order to hold his fragile nation together.

            But Shattuck offers us no such virtues.  He lets their mere individuality stand as virtuous.  Shattuck had someone like me in mind when on page 358 he wrote, "A reader who has progressed this far may feel that he has been offered a goodly sum of picturesque counterfeit currency without value outside the closed game of the arts and the Banquet Years.  But perseverance may bring him to the point where he suddenly finds the currency declared valid and legal tender.  The old coin of the realm has become worthless; the reversal of values, the conversion has taken place.  By an evolution that only today begins to become clear, the Banquet Years yielded the arts of the twentieth century."

            Does Shattuck follow this with evidence that the "currency" ought to be "valid and legal tender"?  Not that I can see.  On page 359 he writes, "The celebrations of the avant-guerre bear witness that the era had found itself.  Essentially it embraced the attitude of 'morbid-mindedness,' which William James defined as ranging over 'a wider scale of experience' than the healthy-mindedness.  In other words, the era acknowledged the vitality of certain areas conventionally called evil and lunatic.  But the presence within us of these forces does not oblige us to be forever dispirited, condemning man's iniquity and depravity.  On the contrary, these forces can be transformed into the source of new strength.  Thus Apollinaire pursued eroticism into mysticism, and Satie boredom into inspiration.  These morbid artists, from Rousseau to Picasso, from Jarry to Proust, found reason to take courage in aspects of human consciousness that would dismay weaker minds.  They celebrated the discovery not that man is superficially good and happy, but that his richest potentialities are lodged deepest within him.  To this truth they lifted their glasses."

            As I read this passage, I couldn't help recalling Shattuck's reference from a story by Apollinaire to the hero, very much an "individual" in Shattuck's terms, who rapes, gouges out the eyes, and then murders a twelve-years old girl."  If this was Apollinaire "being himself," then that "self" was not a good thing to be, despite Shattuck's praise. 

            Furthermore, it is difficult to avoid the effect of the anarchists and subsequent artists, that Shattuck discusses, on World Wars I and II.  Perhaps morbidity of spirit offers opportunities to the novelists, but it wrecks havoc with a nation's willingness and ability to defend itself against an aggressive neighbor.  On the very last page of his book, Shattuck describes a banquet that occurred in 1925, the last of the banquet years, in which artists of the sort Shattuck has been praising objected to a lady who was critical of the Germans.  They, these sales artistes, became violent, shouting out the window, "down with France."  The authorities intervened against them, something Shattuck regrets, but their work, undermining French healthy-mindedness, went on.  On paper, France had a more potent army than Germany prior to World War II, but it had lost its spirit, thanks in no small part to these sales artistes who became "individuals" in the Shattuck-sense; which included being "anti-establishment, anti-the French nation, and French self-interest."  Pardon me Shattuck if I don't find that a virtue.

Ridgebacks, Sandpaper and Snakes

            Sometime ago my Ridgeback Ginger, who will be seven this month, had her teeth cleaned.  The vet's assistants made an erroneous report to me about what had been done.  I was alarmed when one told me Ginger had a diseased tooth extracted.  This vet's assistant called in a more knowledgeable assistant who told me the same thing.  But when I got home I discovered that none of Ginger's teeth were missing.  I made a fuss with the Vet's general manager who assured me that reprimands would be in the offing.   Part of the reporting -- by the same people who told me Ginger had a tooth extracted -- suggested that I return Ginger every year to have her teeth cleaned.  I am not looking forward to that.

            Some months later when I was sanding some pieces of deadwood I got from the river in order to hiking sticks, I noticed that Ginger had chewed up part of a sheet of 50-grit sandpaper.  And then two days ago she chewed up a sheet of 150-grit sandpaper.  I made a joke about her taking her teeth-cleaning into her own hands (paws).  But someone took my comment about her chewing the sandpaper to mean that she was actually eating it.  I could see no evidence that she had.  She shredded perhaps 1/3 of the sheet of the 150-grit sandpaper, but the pieces seemed to all be there.  I didn't actually put it back together like a puzzle; so she might have eaten a tiny piece, but my impression was that she hadn't. 

            After she chewed up part of the 50-grit sheet a few months ago, I purposely dropped used sheets of sandpaper on the ground near where I was working and when Ginger passed by pointed to the sandpaper and told her "don't touch."  After leaving the 50-grit pieces about for awhile, without any further evidence that she had chewed any of them, I assumed the problem was solved.  When she did it the other day to the sheet of 150-grit sandpaper I was more amused than alarmed.  She wasn't eating it, just tearing it up.  I made a fuss about it and chewed her out, but her activity struck me as being similar to her digging in the back yard.  She will do it about once every six months.  I'll find her working on a little hole back there and bawl her out.  If I see evidence that she has been at it subsequent to the bawling out, I will put some poop in it.  That ends the problem.  Interestingly, she will sometimes dig furiously in the sand down at the river -- often it is after we have been down there on a hot day.  She will do it in a shady area and I wondered if she weren't seeking cooler sand below the surface.  I might pause for a minute or so while she lies in the little hole she dug, but then it's off on the continuation of our hike and while she might give us a head start, she soon catches up.

            I know that some people, perhaps most, like to keep their dogs out of harm's way -- and keep anything harmful away from their dogs.  I can't take that approach.  I purposely retired near a large area where I could let my Ridgebacks run.  It is technically a river but it is usually dry.  Still there is a variety of vegetation down there -- bushes, oak trees, cottonwood trees, trees I can't identify, tall grass, vines, flowers and cactus.  As to wild life, there are rabbits, raccoons, lizards, squirrels, mice, coyotes, feral dogs and snakes. 

            I have been especially concerned about snakes because a rattle-snake could kill a dog -- or a person.  While I haven't taken to using a hiking stick because of snakes, it is comforting to know I can put my stick down into the tall grass ahead of my foot and give any rattle snake a chance to object. 

            My lifestyle, hiking with my dogs off-leash at the river, doesn't permit me to keep them out of "harm's way."  I resolved in advance that they were going to have to deal with the harm, whatever it might be.  I got into a number of interesting discussions when I started considering getting a smaller breed next time.  If I got a smaller breed, it was going to have to be able to deal with the same "harm" that my Ridgeback girls deal with.  I recall one very-alarmed lady on a Vizsla site who was appalled that I might one day subject a Vizsla to feral dogs and coyotes.  Furthermore, she didn't think I should subject my Ridgebacks to that threat either.  My exposure to the Vizsla people pretty-much caused me to rule that breed out; although a few nice breeders contacted me off-line and assured me a Vizsla would probably do just fine at the river.  I think they were probably right but I ruled the Vizsla out anyway.

            Now as to snakes, I have been taking Ridgebacks to this particular river since 1998 and until two days ago had never encountered a snake.  I have no way of knowing whether any of my Ridgebacks encountered them, but if they did they didn't suffer from the confrontation.  Then two days ago I encountered a snake curled up near some tall grass.  It's head was partially down a ground-squirrel hole.  I called the girls over so I could tell them "don't touch."  They readily came over, but they took turns mauling the snake -- a few seconds each and then they were off to check more interesting things.  This made me think that perhaps they had already encountered snakes in the brush and knew perfectly well how to deal with them.  It also made me wonder if they hadn't mauled this particular snake before I saw it -- it was either extremely lethargic or injured.  My previous snake-dog experience occurred when Heidi, my German Shorthaired Pointer was young.  We were on a hike some place and encountered a snake.  I told her "don't touch," but she wouldn't have even if she were on her own.  She showed a good deal of fear of it.  I somewhat expected the same reaction from my Ridgeback girls, but after what I saw I concluded they probably knew a whole lot more about snakes than I do. 

            If one of my Ridgebacks is ever injured at the river, I'm sure that people like the Vizsla lady will have a reproach in store for me, but I have to risk that.  I keep in shape and keep my girls in shape.  We are very familiar with the river and have dealt with whatever is down there for their entire lives.  As to my life, I was trained as a Marine in terrain not so very different from the river; and I find it enjoyable rather than alarming -- even though I try to prepare for all possible dangers: that too was part of my Marine Corps' training.  And my preparation included dogs that could (probably) handle themselves at the river.  Surely this Ridgeback breed, bred to confront the most dangerous animals on our planet, can handle the relatively minor dangers of our river.  And if I opt for a smaller breed after I lose one of my girls, it might very well be an Airedale which has a reputation comparable to that of the Ridgeback insofar as being able to deal with dangerous animals, and, in regard to snakes, a rattler would have a hard time getting its fangs through that coarse fur. 

            Which illustrates my trying to anticipate possible dangers.  I fully understand that in this modern world, the best way to avoid danger is to stay inside with the doors locked, but I had a different sort of training, and while I wouldn't try to talk anyone into doing what I do, I at the same time will object to anyone trying to talk me out of doing what I do -- not that anyone has tried that recently -- perhaps not since I left the Vizsla discussion group.