Ken Burns at Brandeis

Last weekend, @KenLBurns gave the commencement address at @brandeisuniversity.

Reflecting on his nearly fifty-year career making films about the U.S., Ken examined the intimacy and complexity of our shared history. He reminds us that there is no "them," only "us".

https://www.threads.net/@kenburnspbs/post/C7UyWc-qo7H/?xmt=AQGzSWRgHSMTLuXZ7DHkp5esGhUCAfJldfwh03jHAN9QfQ

"thought experiments may not translate well to the real world"

"...Rawls devised one of the most powerful of all thought experiments: the idea of the "veil of ignorance," behind which we must imagine the society we would want to live in without knowing which role in that society's hierarchy we would occupy. Simple as it is, it has ever-arresting force, making it clear that, behind this veil, rational and self-interested people would never design a society like that of, say, the slave states of the American South, given that, dropped into it at random, they could very well be enslaved. It also suggests that Norway might be a fairly just place, because a person would almost certainly land in a comfortable and secure middle-class life, however boringly Norwegian.

Still, thought experiments may not translate well to the real world. Einstein's similarly epoch-altering account of what it would be like to travel on a beam of light, and how it would affect the hands on one's watch, is profound for what it reveals about the nature of time. Yet it isn't much of a guide to setting the timer on the coffeemaker in the kitchen so that the pot will fill in time for breakfast. Actual politics is much more like setting the timer on the coffeemaker than like riding on a beam of light. Breakfast is part of the cosmos, but studying the cosmos won't cook breakfast..."

Adam Gopnik

Why Liberals Struggle to Defend Liberalism | The New Yorker
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/27/why-liberals-struggle-to-defend-liberalism

Judy Whipps

 When I discovered American philosophy, it felt like I had found an intellectual home, a place to stand. It was the only philosophy that made sense in the context of living. The fields I work in, pragmatism and feminism, embrace an experimental and experiential approach to addressing social problems. This approach gave me a pathway to think with others about social issues. I look for people who have wisdom about life and who care about our shared communities. I find that in some American philosophers, both past and present. I loved teaching American philosophy... 

(continues)

the “most American” poet

"I never get to the bottom of a Robert Frost poem," explains poet and biographer Jay Parini (middleburycollege) in a new interview on our website about the seemingly limitless depths of the beloved New England poet's oeuvre. "Frost is one of the three great modern American poets: Eliot, Stevens, and Frost. Frost is the most American of them all."

Read the full piece here: https://www.loa.org/news-and-views/you-want-to-possess-the-words-jay-parini-on-why-we-cant-stop-reading-robert-frost/

Elbert Hubbard

 “Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.” —Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

BUT, Marc evidently did NOT say…

Epictetus, the Roman slave, and Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Emperor, taught a similar gospel: “When you arise in the morning think on what a precious privilege it is to live – to breathe – to think – to enjoy – to love! God’s spirit is close to us when we love. Therefore it is better not to resent, not to hate, not to fear. Equanimity and moderation are the secrets of power and peace.” Elbert Hubbard, “The New Thought”

Hubbard (no relation to L. Ron) allegedly also said:

• “The greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.”

• “Every man is a damn fool for at least five minutes every day; wisdom consists in not exceeding the limit.”

• “Happiness is a habit—cultivate it.”

• “Know what you want to do, hold the thought firmly, and do every day what should be done, and every sunset will see you that much nearer the goal.”

Britannica bio...

An American original

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fERNixxZXqM

Possibilism & hope

"…I share the view that a Trump election would pose immense damage to American political and legal systems. But in the scientific world we would continue to move forward with new vaccines for breast cancer, new drugs to combat obesity and new CRISPR gene-editing techniques to treat sickle cell and other diseases.

How can we weigh democratic decline against lives saved through medical progress? Of course we can't. As my intellectual hero, Isaiah Berlin, might say, they are incommensurate yardsticks — but that does not mean that they are irrelevant to our well-being.

And no one can accuse me of ignoring the problems that beset us at home and abroad, for they have been my career. They've left me a bit too scarred to be a classic optimist. Hans Rosling, a Swedish development expert, used to say that he wasn't an optimist but a possibilist. In other words, he saw better outcomes as possible if we worked to achieve them. That makes sense to me, and it means replacing despair with guarded hope.

This isn't hope as a naïve faith that things will somehow end up OK. No, it is a somewhat battered hope that improvements are possible if we push hard enough.

In 2004 I introduced Times readers to the story of an illiterate woman named Mukhtar Mai, whom I met in the remote village of Meerwala in Pakistan. She had been gang-raped on order of a village council, as punishment for a supposed offense by her brother, and she was then expected to disappear in shame or kill herself. Instead, she prosecuted her attackers, sent them to prison and then used her compensation money to start a school in her village.

Instead of giving in to despair, Mukhtar nursed a hope that education would chip away at the misogyny and abuse of women that had victimized her and so many others. Then she enrolled the children of her rapists in her school.

Mukhtar taught me that we humans are endowed with strength — and hope — that, if we recognize it and flex it, can achieve the impossible."

Nicholas Kristof 

Chasing Hope

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/09/opinion/journalism-reporting-progress.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare

AMERICAN BLOODS: THE UNTAMED DYNASTY THAT SHAPED A NATION by John Kaag

"American Bloods is an unflinching history of our nation . . . This is a breakout book for John Kaag—the natural extension of his genre-defining writing." —Doris Kearns Goodwin, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Leadership: In Turbulent Times

A history of a family spanning centuries and continents—one that unfolds into a new portrait of America.

The Bloods were one of America's first and most expansive pioneer families. They explored and laid claim to the frontiers—geographic, political, intellectual, and spiritual—that would become the very core of the United States. John Kaag's American Bloods is the account of a remarkable American family, of its participation in the making of a nation, and of how its members embodied the elusive ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. Inspired by the discovery of a mysterious manuscript in an old Massachusetts farmhouse, Kaag follows eight members of this family from the British Civil Wars in the seventeenth century through the founding of the colonies, the American Revolution, transcendentalism, the Industrial Revolution, the Civil War, and the rise of first-wave feminism, all the way to the beginning of the twentieth century.

The Bloods were active participants in virtually every pivotal moment in American history, coming into contact with everyone from Emerson and Thoreau to John Brown, Frederick Douglass, Victoria Woodhull, and William James. The genealogy of the family tracks the ebb and flow of what Thoreau called "wildness," an original untamed spirit that would recede in the making of America but would never be extinguished entirely. American Bloods is an enduring reminder of the risks and rewards that were taken in laying claim to the lands that would become the United States, and a composite portrait of America like no other.

Twain the Epicurean Humanist

https://www.threads.net/@corylaran/post/C6rXEuPv1k6/?xmt=AQGzPUR7LLezPZrYXldKPjfJ_JktMA1KgrZtgmfzvDa-SQ

Phil.Oliver@mtsu.edu

👣Solvitur ambulando

💭Sapere aude

Scopes

High school teacher John Scopes was arrested for teaching evolution in Dayton, Tennessee on May 5, 1925.

The arrest came exactly according to plan: Scopes and a group of local businessmen had decided to provoke the indictment in order to challenge a new Tennessee law banning the teaching of evolution.

https://to.pbs.org/45nhlsy

Freedom Riders

On May 4, 1961, thirteen Freedom Riders left Washington, D.C. on two buses headed for New Orleans. Their goal: challenge segregated travel facilities throughout the South.

The violence they met along their route, including firebombings of the buses in Alabama, captured the nation's attention, including that of the Kennedy administration.

https://to.pbs.org/4bnu5li