Breaking the Spell II

Chapter 2 of Breaking the Spell by Daniel Dennett (see previous post, Sept. 2013), “Some Questions About Science,” basically continues the argument that science should study religion, something that most readers of the book probably don’t need to be persuaded of, including me.

I was struck, though, that, having defined the object of his study, religion, in chapter 1, Dennett never defines his methodology, science.  Considering that the act of definition necessarily restricts the meaning of a term and that Dennett’s definition of religion is so narrow (see Sept. 2013 post), his scientific methodology is given rather free range.  The underlying assumption is that, science is the only reliable means to truth and understanding.  It is not subjected to the critical questioning that Dennett applies to religion.

As stated in the previous post (Sept. 2013), I welcome a scientific study of religion as a natural phenomenon.  However, I would also welcome a critical study of science.  Does it have any limitations when it comes to the pursuit of truth?

Merriam-Webster defines “science” as “knowledge about or study of the natural world based on facts learned through observation and experimentation (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/science).  In human history this method has, indeed, proved to be very reliable, enabling us to make predictions about the natural world, the truth of which can then be tested.  It’s a fascinating field of study with many areas of specialization, and I am personally grateful to be living in a world in which science enjoys such broad acceptance and support.  Not only has it made our world more comfortable and convenient, not to mention extending our life spans, it has opened our eyes to ever more wondrous aspects of the natural world. 

One could argue that science has also given us a lot of headaches in, for example, the proliferation of powerful weapons of mass destruction and ever more environmentally destructive machinery, technology, and chemicals.  However, it also offers the means by which we can understand, anticipate, and mitigate the destructive effects of its own application.

I deplore the ignorance of and rejection of science popular among Creationists, global warming deniers, and Bible thumpers.  I do question, however, whether science is the only reliable source of human knowledge.  Is there a distinction between the “natural world” and the human world, that is, between the natural sciences and the human sciences?  Is one more “exact” and reliable than the other?  Is it just “facts” that constitute knowledge or do facts require interpretation in order to be meaningful?  What are the rules of interpretation?  What interpretive methods are used to make sense of the facts, and how reliable are they?  Are all scientific hypotheses testable?  If, by definition, science restricts itself to observable phenomena in the natural, material world, how much can it tell us about non-material phenomena, for example, love, virtue, courage, or, let’s say, consciousness? 

When it comes to non-material phenomena, science can only theorize about it as an epiphenomenon having a material basis and cause.  The origin and function of consciousness in the human brain, for example, may well be true, but science has no way to investigate other non-scientific theories on their own terms.  In other words, science, by definition, rests on the assumption that ultimate reality is material and has no way to evaluate theories that assume a non-material reality is possible.  Though it can answer many practical questions and solve many practical problems, it cannot answer the “big” questions of purpose and meaning in human existence or, for that matter, in the universe.  All it can do in that realm is either deny the existence of meaning and purpose (without being able to prove such non-existence) or say “We don’t know.”  We don’t know because we cannot observe it, measure it, quantify, or test it.  If independently existing non-material reality exists, science can tell us nothing about it.

If the human sciences are less exact and reliable than the so-called “hard” natural sciences, it would seem there is a huge dimension of human experience that is well beyond the scientific method, for example, the mysteries of identity and consciousness, meaning, purpose, values, how we should live, morals and ethics.

In addition, science itself has undermines its own certainty.  Quantum physics has shown how the observer alters the reality being observed, raising the question if we can know reality as it exists independent of our own observation.    Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle suggests that what we observe is the result of the conditions of the experiment we set up, again raising the question of whether we can know reality as it exists independent of our own method of study. 

One would think these demonstrable limitations of science would instill some measure of humility in the scientifically minded when it comes to making claims about non-material reality, but they are often as dogmatic and self-righteous as religious fundamentalists when it comes to insisting on the ultimate truth of their own world view.

Chapter 3 of Breaking the Spell, "Why Good Things Happen," begins the study of religion as a natural phenomenon, as we might expect, by making the case that everything humans value can be explained by evolutionary theory and evidence.  Presumably our yearning for meaning, purpose, and validation as creatures of worth in ultimate terms is the result of our evolutionary history. 

Keep in mind that I believe in evolutionary theory.  It has a great deal more evidence to support it than does Creationism.  However, the step from biological evolution to cultural evolution is a step into greater uncertainty.  As Dennett goes on to “explain” religion in evolutionary terms, it remains to be seen whether he can do so without running up against the limits of his own methodology.  For example, even if he persuasively explains the evolutionary origins of our values, will he be able to explain how we determine the relative “worth” of those values?  Can science help us decide what we “ought” to do as well as help us understand “why” we act in certain ways.

"The Bishop and the Candlesticks" (and more on "Bartleby")

Whatever else it may be “Bartleby the Scrivener” (see previous post) raises the ethical question of our responsibility to our fellow human beings.  Are we our brother’s keeper?  And, if so, what does that mean? How far do we take it?

I suspect most contemporary readers would say that the lawyer goes way beyond the call of duty by allowing Bartleby to get away with refusing to work and taking up residence at his workplace.  At one point, the lawyer even offers to take him into his home, but Bartleby “prefers not to.”

Our culture puts a high value on self-reliance and individual responsibility.   If Bartleby refuses to work for a living and provide for himself, then he deserves the consequences.  Even a reader who believes in charity and humane treatment of the undeserving might lose all sympathy when Bartleby refuses the lawyer’s offer of taking him home.

At one point the lawyer recalls the scripture of John 13:34:  “A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another.”  If the story constitutes a test of how well the lawyer treats the “least of these” as if they were Christ himself, does it also suggest that such a high standard of brotherly love is completely unrealistic?  Are Christian ethics, taken literally, completely unrealistic in the human realm?  Just how far are we expected to take them?  Does that make the story a critique of Christianity as an impossibly ideal code that is doomed to failure?  Or is it a critique of society and its failure to organize itself in a way that is compatible with and supportive of such a high standard of behavior?  Or both?

Another story that raises these questions is “The Bishop and the Candlesticks,” found at the beginning of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables. 

Jean Valjean has been released from prison (actually as a rower, chained to his seat in a sailing ship).  He had initially been sentenced to five years for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family, but his repeated attempts to escape had added 14 more years.  Imprisonment has hardened him, and, upon his release, he is treated cruelly by the local townspeople until one of them finally sends him to the door of the bishop.

Unlike Bartleby’s lawyer, the bishop immediately takes the homeless stranger into his home, gives him a hot meal, and prepares him a bed to sleep in.  In the middle of the night Jean Valjean awakes and, after some indecision, steals the bishop’s silver plates and disappears into the night.  The next day he is captured with the “goods” and brought to the bishop, who tells the gendarmes that he had freely given the man the silver.  When the gendarmes leave, the bishop gives Jean Valjean his two silver candlesticks stating, “It is your soul I am buying for you. I withdraw it from dark thoughts and from the spirit of perdition and give it to God.”  As we know (Les Miserables having entered into popular culture), Jean Valjean goes on to use this gift to make a new start, live an honest life, care for a dying prostitute, raise her orphaned child as his own, save his adopted daughter's lover from death, and, having been redeemed by the kindly bishop, die a man of goodness and faith.

Is the bishop a type of Christ who saves Jean Valjean?  Is he a saint?  Or is he a foolish idealist who is fortunate Jean Valjean did not murder him in his sleep before stealing the silver?  (All this rather overlooks the bishop’s lie to the gendarmes.)

Read realistically, the bishop is a less than credible character who is almost laughably virtuous.  Is that to say that his ethics are too good for this world?  That in real life he would have been quickly exploited by evildoers and sent to his death?  That such goodness could not realistically survive?

Similarly, how realistic is it that a convict mistreated as badly as Jean Valjean would truly reform as a result of the bishop’s one act of compassion and faith?

When we say the story is unrealistic, are we saying that the Christian ethic, when taken literally, is an impossible ideal?  Or are we saying that reality inevitably fails to live up to such a high standard of virtue?

But, of course, neither story is meant to be read realistically.  Both make more sense read as Christian allegory, challenging its (Christian) readers to a higher, more virtuous life, however far that may end up being from the ideal.

In the case of “Bartleby,” however, I do think a valid case could be made, based on other works by Melville (the novel Pierre for example) that the story critiques Christianity for its impractical, if not impossible, expectations for human virtue.  At the same time, its focus on Wall Street and American capitalism suggests that it may be the hypocrisy of a so-called Christian nation that is Melville’s other, equally important, target.

"Bartleby the Scrivener"

Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener” (1853) is one of those tantalizing stories that invite multiple fascinating interpretations:

Bartleby is an eccentric individualist who refuses to conform to social norms.  Society wins.

Bartleby is a mentally ill homeless man who becomes one of society’s disposables.

Bartleby is H D Thoreau, passively resisting authority and paying the price.

Bartleby represents all the victims of greedy capitalism.

Bartleby is a victim of the mindless, mechanical work of industrial society.

Bartleby represents natural human rights (to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?) in conflict with the property rights of capitalist, industrial society.

Bartleby is a Christ-figure or, at least, “one of the least of these” that Christians are commanded to treat as if they were Christ.  His fate illustrates the incompatibility of capitalist, industrial society and Christian values.

Bartleby is the trial sent by God to test the state of the lawyer’s soul as one of the Elect or one of the damned.

Bartleby represents the dehumanization of those caught in the capitalist machine.

Bartleby is a projection of the lawyer’s own dehumanization and his powerlessness to save himself.

Bartleby represents the extreme exercise of free will, allowing him complete freedom, though it leads to his death.

Bartleby represents the universal human condition of the individual in conflict with society.

 

Well, some are more fascinating than others.

 It’s important to note that the full title of the story is “Bartleby the Scrivener, A Story of Wall Street.”  It’s hard not to infer that Melville intends to comment on the financial center of capitalism.  Nor is it unreasonable to expect the reader to interpret it as such.  The first-person narrator, the lawyer, has found himself a safe, comfortable, and lucrative niche protecting the property rights of capitalists on Wall Street.  The lawyer’s office is tucked between two walls, one white, transparent and well lit and the other black, opaque, and dark.  Bartleby spends much of his time staring out the second blank wall.  Is Melville suggesting that the work of Wall Street walls us off from each other? That the capitalists enjoy the view of a bright wall while the workers’ outlook is dark? That the lawyer is comfortably located between the two, earning a good living in service of the capitalists supported by the labor of his office workers.  Do the walls represent the divisions between economic classes in a capitalist society? 

And what of the work that the office workers perform?  A scrivener is a human Xerox machine, literally copying documents by hand and then laboriously checking the copies for accuracy as the lawyer reads the original aloud.  This mechanical, mindless work is paralleled by the predictable behavior of the workers, who themselves seem somehow “programmed.”  The elderly Turkey is mild-mannered and productive in the morning but turns erratic, and error-prone in the afternoon.  The young Nippers, on the other hand, is restless and nervous in the morning but settles down in the afternoon.  Does their robotic behavior reflect the mind-numbing nature of industrial work under capitalism?

Into this Pavlovian world enters Bartleby, who starts out as a reliable copier but refuses to participate in the checking of the documents, simply replying “I prefer not to” when called to work by the lawyer.  He then begins to reply in the same manner when asked to run an errand.  Eventually, he refuses to work at all and simply stares at the window at the dark, blank wall.  Unlike the lawyer, who fits comfortably into the world of Wall Street, Bartleby asserts his free will in the extreme, using “passive resistance” to defy the lawyer and his world. 

The lawyer, to his credit, tries every means of persuasion to win Bartleby’s cooperation before finally firing him.  Bartleby, however, refuses to leave the premises.  It seems he has been living there all along.  Rather than resort to calling the police or forcibly removing Bartleby himself, the lawyer takes the extreme measure of moving his office to another site.  But, this action, similar perhaps to Pilate washing his hands of final judgment on Jesus Christ, merely enables the lawyer to avoid taking any responsibility for the man.  When the new occupant of the lawyer’s old office space shows up to insist “you are responsible for the man you left there,” the lawyer, like Peter denying Christ, responds, “the man you allude to is nothing to me…no relation or apprentice of mine that you should hold me responsible for him.”

If these comparisons to Christ seem to be a bit of a stretch, consider that, at one point when the lawyer is debating what to do about Bartleby, he overhears a conversation, which he believes at first is about his indecision but then realizes is actually about the mayoral election being held that day.  In Melville’s day, “election” would have a religious as well as a political meaning.  In the Calvinist theology in which Melville was steeped (http://philosopedia.org/index.php/Herman_Melville) one was predestined to be one of Elect (preordained by God for salvation) or one of the damned.  Is Bartleby a test of the state of the lawyer’s soul?  Is the lawyer one of the Elect or is he damned?  According to Matthew 25: 31-42 Christ will return on Judgment Day and determine who goes to heaven and who to hell based on whether one has treated those in need as if they were Christ himself. 

In the end the lawyer visits Bartleby in prison, where he is found facing a “high wall” among “murderers and thieves.”  Is it significant that Christ was crucified between two thieves?  Is it significant that when the lawyer returns to find Bartleby dead he makes a reference to him being at rest “With kings and counselors” (Job 3:14)? 

For all the compassion that the lawyer feels toward Bartleby, in the end he does not take responsibility for this “least of these” (Matthew 25: 40).  From a realistic perspective, we might say that the lawyer went far beyond what was reasonable to expect by not calling the police on Bartleby or throwing him out forcibly.  Yet, from a Christian perspective, we might say the lawyer utterly failed to meet the test that Christ set for salvation.  Is Melville questioning whether a capitalist society can also be a Christian society?  Or is he questioning whether Christian ethics is realistic and reasonable in the human realm?

If the lawyer, who seems to allow circumstances to determine his actions,  represents the Calvinist belief in predestination (absence of free will), does Bartleby represent the Transcendentalist belief in free will and individual responsibility?  If so, do the two characters represent the extremes to which the two positions can be taken?  Is it fair to condemn the lawyer for failing to meet Christ’s high standard for salvation?  Is it fair to glorify Bartleby for his (selfish?) insistence on individual “preference”?  Is Melville, like Hawthorne (see previous posts Oct. 2012 & May 2013), using Puritan Calvinism to critique romantic Transcendentalism and vice versa? 

For that matter, is Bartleby truly a victim of capitalism or society in general?  Or is he a victim of his own willfulness? 

I find myself intrigued, though, by the idea of Bartleby as a projection of the narrator’s own psyche.  To what extent has the narrator been dehumanized by his acquiescence to his social and economic circumstances? To what extent is it dehumanizing to deny the power of free will to individuals?  Does Bartleby represent the lawyer’s own dehumanization on one hand and his repressed desire to rebel and assert himself on the other?  If Bartleby is a fantastic version of the lawyer’s own psyche, does he take such an extreme form because the lawyer himself is so extremely passive, non-confrontational, and powerless? 

In any case, the story raises profound questions regarding social organization, material vs. spiritual well-being, religion, individualism, ethics, and our responsibility to each other as fellow human beings.

Breaking the Spell I

My Unitarian Universalist Adult Religious Education group is reading Daniel Dennett’s 2006 study of religion *Breaking the Spell.*  The plan is to discuss small chunks every two weeks or so through next May.  Therefore my plan is to post a series of commentaries, one chunk at a time, allowing for much more depth than most of my blog posts.  This post covers chapter 1, “Breaking Which Spell?” 

Dennett proposes to break the taboo against studying religion scientifically “as a natural phenomenon” even at the risk of breaking the spell, the “enchantment,” of religion itself.   I found it puzzling that he would spend so much time defending this proposal since I was under the impression that historians, social scientists, psychologists, etc., had been studying religion and religious experience long before 2006.  As a student at a Disciples of Christ sponsored college in the late 1960s, I was required to take two semesters of religion.  Both courses were scholarly studies of the Bible based on historical, textual, and linguistic evidence.  Jerry Falwell studied under the same professor as I did, and, according to the professor, he objected strongly and vocally to this approach to Biblical study.  The taboo was apparently real for Falwell (no surprise there), but the professor defended his approach on academic grounds and no students, faculty, or administrators that I knew ever objected.

Having been raised as a Southern Baptist I will confess that my college religion classes did break what little was left of the “spell” that my religious upbringing had cast over me.  That spell, however, had already been put in question by high school biology (we studied evolution) and my own rational thinking.  Ironically, it was my formal and informal study of literature, poetry, metaphor, symbolism, mythology, world religion, philosophy, astronomy, and physics that recast the spell in much more sophisticated, figurative, abstract, and, yes, scientific terms. 

My reading of *The Housewife and the Professor* (see previous post) reminded me of my early fascination with Platonism, which I studied in college philosophy classes and which could be considered a religious world view.

And like many of my friends, who consider themselves “religious” or “spiritual,” I welcome the study of religion and the opportunity to expand my understanding of this aspect of my experience and understanding of the world.  I wonder why Dennett has not been exposed to more of us for whom religion, responsible scholarship, rational thinking, and scientific study are not necessarily at odds.

Related to this question is the second bone I have to pick with Dennett’s first chapter.  Why does he define religion so narrowly?  Here’s his “tentative” definition:  religions are “social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought.”  I understand the value of distinguishing between organized religion (“social systems”) and private religious or “spiritual” experience or belief.  But why must religion be limited to belief in a “supernatural agent  or agents whose approval is to be sought”?  Dennett seems to restrict religion to belief in an anthropomorphic “god” or “gods” with the power to pass judgment on us.  He seems to take the anthropomorphic language of traditional religion literally, without allowing for the capacity of believers to use the language metaphorically.

In other words, he seems to propose to subject fundamentalist, literalistic religious belief (such as that of Jerry Falwell) to an exhaustive scientific study but not the kind of religion that itself takes into account science and rationality or the kind that resists claims of certainty but simply maintains a mindset that is open to exploring the possibility of a supernatural reality (not necessarily a being or “agent”) or dimension in the universe. 

Finally, by Dennett’s definition, my own religious denomination of Unitarian Universalism, though it qualifies as a social system, would not meet his definition, and would therefore be considered a form of religious fraud, illegitimately taking advantage of the 501c3 tax exemption for religious organizations. 

I wonder if his “tentative” definition will undergo any loosening or broadening as his study continues to unfold.

The Housekeeper and the Professor

I would love to see a mathematician find a complicated mathematical system in this 2003 novel by Japanese writer Yoko Agawa.  I am certain it must be there, but finding it is above my pay grade.

What I can attest to is how the novel demonstrates that, like mathematics, art can transcend the disorder of lived experience and bring order out of chaos.

The Housekeeper is the daughter of a single mother who was abandoned by the father, and the Housekeeper is in turn a single mother raising her son alone, having been abandoned by the father.  The Professor is suffering from memory loss since a traffic accident in 1975.  He can remember nothing after that date except in 80-minute segments.  The Professor’s sister-in-law, now widowed, allows him to live in a cottage near her house and hires the Housekeeper to make his meals and clean for him, but she seemingly wants to have nothing to do with either of them—no visits, no phone calls, no communication whatsoever.

The characters represent broken lives, broken relationships, and broken memories.  Of course their identities are affected and perhaps that is why we never learn their real names.  But mathematics, the Professor’s field of study, becomes the unlikely means by which memory loss is transcended, new bonds and new identities are formed, and a new family is made.

The Professor has not forgotten his numbers, his equations, or his mathematical theories.  He spends his days working on (and winning) mathematics contests, and he uses math to relate to every character.  Every day when the Housekeeper arrives, he greets her as if they have never met before and asks her birthdate, which he then uses to espouse the meaning of the numbers and how they fit into a mathematical system.

He delights in teaching the Housekeeper and later her son, challenging them with mathematical problems and puzzles.  Though the Professor does not remember the Housekeeper or her son more than 80 minutes at a time, he relates to them, not only at the level of math, but at a human level, discontinuous though it may be.

When he learns the Housekeeper has a son who must wait at home every day for his mother to return from work, the Professor insists she allow her son to come to his house after school.  When Root, as the Professor nicknames the son, accidentally cuts his hand with a knife the Professor is overwrought with worry and fear for the boy’s well-being.  The two bond over a love of baseball, although the Professor thinks the players and teams are pre-1975.  While Root carefully and cheerfully indulges the Professor in his pre-1975 memories, they are able to combine baseball and mathematics in their study of statistics.

Eventually the three characters begin to act like a family, the Professor becoming like the father that Root never had, the Housekeeper looking after him as she might care for her own aging and unknown father.

Mathematics is the means by which they transcend not only their own personal brokenness, but also the social disconnections of class, age, and gender.  The Professor is a highly educated man of professional class, while the Housekeeper works at a menial job as a domestic.  The older Professor could be her father and her son’s grandfather, but neither class nor age differences prevent them from forming a meaningful relationship.  The Professor’s love of mathematics transcends any bias against a working-class woman and her son being able to understand sophisticated mathematical theory. 

It might be possible to read some kind of erotic attraction into the relationship of the Professor and his Housekeeper.  A certain domestic intimacy develops and even a degree of personal intimacy as the Housekeeper cares for the professor’s physical needs when he develops a fever.  Certainly the sister-in-law becomes suspicious when the Housekeeper and her son spend the night at the Professor’s cottage during his illness and goes so far to have the Housekeeper fired.  Later we learn of a past romantic relationship between the sister-in-law and the Professor.  Could she have been jealous of the closeness between him and the Housekeeper?

In any case, once again it is mathematics that transcends the enmity between the sister-in-law and the Housekeeper, restores the domestic arrangement, and eventually leads to the formation of a larger circle of all four characters when the Professor is moved to a care facility and receives regular visits from his sister-in-law, the Housekeeper, and her son.  It is a mysterious mathematical equation, with special meaning between the Professor and his sister-in-law, that leads to the final resolution and the expanded circle of relationship.

The Professor believes that numbers existed before humans and that a mathematical order exists independently of the natural universe and the human realm.  His faith in an invisible order comes to sustain the Housekeeper as well as himself.  “Eternal truths are ultimately invisible,” he says, “and you won’t find them in material things or natural phenomena, or even in human emotions.  Mathematics, however, can illuminate them, can give them expression—in fact nothing can prevent it from doing so.”

This Platonic conception of an abstract reality transcending that which we can know with our senses becomes a source of reassurance and peace to the Housekeeper as she contemplates the Professor’s explanation of a “true line” extending “infinitely in either direction”:

 

                …I realized how much I needed this eternal truth that the Professor had described. I needed the sense that this invisible world was somehow propping up the visible one, that this one, true line extended infinitely, without width or area, confidently piercing through the shadows.  Somehow this line would help me find peace.

Thus does this seemingly simple but remarkable story of a domestic arrangement that evolves into a family circle suggest a much larger significance, with philosophical, even theological, implications.

As for a mathematical order in the story, it is perhaps notable that there are 11 chapters in the novel and that the central chapter, number six, contains the crucial crisis point when the Professor develops a fever, when the Housekeeper with her son spends the night to watch over and care for him, and when the sister-in-law, having observed this breach of what she considers the Housekeeper’s appropriate role, has her fired.  The first five chapters lead up to this crisis, and the last five unravel the resulting tangle of confusion and disruption to arrive at a final resolution.  This kind of symmetry is commonly found in art, and, like the mathematical system it is based on, brings order out of the chaos of lived human experience.

"I Have a Dream" and the Gettysburg Address

The August 24 March on Washington this past weekend commemorated the 1963 March, which culminated in the first Civil Rights Act, passed in 1964, but the actual 50^th anniversary is today, August 28, 2013.  Fifty years ago today Martin Luther King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech (http://www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/dream-speech.pdf), which, along with Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address (http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm), is perhaps the best known piece of political oratory in American history.

King directly ties his speech to the American Dream and reminds us how that dream has been denied to most African Americans since they first set foot on American soil. 

When we think of the American Dream, most of us think first of economic prosperity, or, or at least the opportunity to achieve it.  We think of “the land of opportunity,” as countless immigrants have seen us, and the “rags to riches” myth of upward social mobility.  I say “myth” because, while it captures a universal aspiration and is a widespread belief, its reality has been denied to as many, probably more, than have achieved it, however hard-working and virtuous they may have been.

Yet the American Dream represents more than economic success; it also stands for political freedom, social equality, and personal fulfillment.  And King’s speech references those values as much, even more, than it does the dream of material prosperity.

If it is as famous as the Gettysburg Address, what characteristics does it share with Lincoln’s best known speech?  They both rest on what might be better called the American Promise than the American Dream.  They both expressly quote from the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal,” and King cites the “unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

While Lincoln does not name the blight of slavery, he ties the principle of equality to “the unfinished work which those who fought here have so nobly advanced,” “the great task remaining before us,” and “our increased devotion to that great cause” for which so many have died.  Lincoln calls for “a new birth of freedom.”  Without saying so directly, he frames the Civil War as a struggle to fulfill that original promise of full political and social equality.

King, on the other hand, directly names the failures of that promise a century after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863—“segregation,” “discrimination,” “poverty,” and “police brutality.”  But, like Lincoln, he calls for a new resolve to fulfill the original promise of the American Dream—the promise of “liberty and justice for all.”

Both speakers are addressing but half the nation, Lincoln, the Union, still in the midst of war with the Confederacy; and King, African Americans and their white allies in the grip of struggle with segregationists and white supremacists.

 Lincoln’s rhetorical task is somewhat easier.  As he dedicates a burial ground for the Union dead, he is able to freely use “our” and “we” without excluding any of his Union audience, establishing an unqualified identification with his listeners that serves to unify them in their shared experience, values, and grand national cause.

King’s audience consists of both African Americans and white supporters.  He can use “our” and “we” when referring to their shared values and civil rights struggle, but often refers to African Americans in third person when referring to their experiences of racial injustice.  He sets aside a part of his speech to acknowledge “our white brothers,” who have come to realize that “their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.”  And the dream is expressed in terms of full inclusion for all, not only in the segregationist South, but also in “our Northern cities,” “the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire,” “the mighty mountains of New York,” and “the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.” “Our” and “we” shift back and forth from civil rights supporters to African Americans to all Americans.

Lincoln makes no reference to the enemies of freedom and equality in the slave-holding South.  The lines of war are clearly drawn and well understood.  His focus throughout his speech is the noble ideal of the Union cause.  The ignoble cause of the Confederacy is merely implied by unspoken comparison.

King, on the other hand, is concerned, not only with the legal segregation of the South but with the “slums and ghettoes” of the North.  And while he invokes the history of slavery and the “vicious racists” in the South, his dream is large enough to include all Americans sitting together “at the table of brotherhood,” joining hands “as sisters and brothers.”  He includes segregationists and racists in his dream of “all God’s children,” including blacks and whites, “Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics” singing together as equals “the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last, Free at last, Great God Almighty, We are free at last.”

Thus as Lincoln transcends the divisions of the Civil War by focusing on the ideal of a nation united in freedom and equality, so King transcends the divisions of race by focusing on a dream that is all inclusive, even to the point of including white people in the words of a Negro spiritual.

The language of the two speeches is very different.  Lincoln’s is more solemn and stately, as befitting the dedication of a national cemetery, and more abstract, as befitting, perhaps, the more ceremonial occasion.  King’s language is more concrete, metaphorical, poetic, emotive, and rousing as he seeks to mobilize a movement in pursuit of legal redresses for a long history of suffering.  Lincoln is not making an abolitionist speech, but rather seeking to strengthen Union resolve to see the war through to its end.  King does not have the standing of national office from which to speak and must use his language to establish himself as a credible leader and to inspire his followers by putting memorable words to the dream in all their hearts.

Lincoln uses the language of a civic leader while King uses that of a preacher and an activist.  Yet their argument is the same:  the American Promise remains unfulfilled and its realization is worthy of sacrifice.  Our nation’s greatness, our nation’s future, and our nation’s endurance depend upon it.

Both also see themselves as renewing the original American Promise, both invoking the Declaration of Independence, King invoking the Emancipation Proclamation.  Taken together the two speeches mark historical milestones in the ongoing effort to realize the Dream.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness

Frederick Douglass (see previous post) is cited in Michelle Alexander’s 2010 study of structural racism in our contemporary American criminal justice system, as are W. E. B. Dubois and James Baldwin. 

These authors (and others) help to underscore the historical perspective Alexander brings to her analysis.  Douglass worked for and witnessed the abolition of slavery, only to see the rise of a new era of Jim Crow.  Dubois, the first African American sociologist, studied the “problem of the color line” at the turn of the next century in his well known The Souls of Black Folk.  James Baldwin witnessed the dismantling of Jim Crow and contributed to the rise of an era of Civil Rights.  Alexander documents this history to show that just as the abolition of slavery was followed by Jim Crow, the era of Civil Rights has been succeeded by a new form of Jim Crow, an ostensibly colorblind but actually racist system of mass incarceration.

Alexander meticulously substantiates how the seemingly race neutral War on Drugs and the criminal justice system function to imprison vast numbers of black and brown men far out of proportion to their percentage of the population compared to that of white offenders.  She then shows how discrimination continues after release from prison in employment, housing, voting, etc., and outlines the parallels between the current form of legalized discrimination and the historical Jim Crow laws.

As I read her book for the second time in the wake of the Trayvon Martin case (see previous post), I was struck with how the current drive for voting restrictions offers yet another example of a contemporary effort to disenfranchise people of color under the guise of supposedly race neutral policies.

Alexander calls for a new social movement to dismantle, not only this new form of what constitutes a racial caste system, but also the whole social structure that serves to support and sustain it.  Her book is not written in a style that is likely to spark such a movement.  Though it is strong on advocacy, it presents a largely academic case with a carefully constructed argument that is thoroughly documented.  While this approach establishes the credibility of her thesis, it may not have the popular appeal and broad accessibility to inspire the kind of activism she says is necessary to transform the deeply embedded system of colorblind racism that undergirds our contemporary form of racial caste.

A different kind of style and rhetoric, perhaps based in more visual and technological mass media, will be necessary to motivate people to activism.

What Alexander has done, however, is to provide the substantive academic basis for more popular forms of advocacy and agitation.