America is a poem in our eyes....
Hello everybody…
I was talking with some very wise customers about the anger and division in America. One opined that there is so much junk online that it's hard to determine what is true.
Well, perhaps a return to print is in order.
Internet news--whether on Facebook, Youtube, or any website--has a way of hitting the brain in an overly direct, forceful way. It's as if what we see online gets imprinted directly on our brain. The headlines and images are so emotive and realistic that it seems we're forced through some biological mechanism to believe what we see.
And it appears that the randomness of clicks and the anti-literate reading habits of never finishing a news story and having a million tabs open have a corrosive effect on one's mind.
If you would like, let's try something.... Pick up a magazine, book, newspaper... read it, skim it... it doesn't really matter... but choose print to plant in your brain, and decide to take a break from the cacophony of aural and visual stimuli that is the internet. Stop in any time to discuss what you read and to discuss your evolving digital detox.
If you would like a shared basis for discussion, there is always somebody at the shop who has read the latest Economist, New Yorker, or Times Literary Supplement. Connect with us and with other customers over a shared goal to read more, to be in person more, and to be online less.
But what about "reputable" news websites? Well, take a look at the homepages of CNN and FOX. They look clean, they're easy to navigate, but they're essentially gibberish.
Imagine the endless links as conversations, as random thoughts popping into your consciousness. How can one have any cohesive thoughts and emotions with such an onslaught? Youtube videos are the same.... That sidebar is very good at getting one to click, click, click.
As a comparison, the first two pages of the Sep 4th edition of the TLS are allotted to one essay, which starts: "America is a poem in our eyes...." That's a thought worth continuing, an emotion worth feeling, and a sentiment that unites instead of divides.
America is a poem in our eyes, and it is a poem that we have to write. A lot of energy is being spent to convince us to see each other as enemies. Some of the rhetoric sounds convincing, yet harsh division among citizens is not natural. It has happened in the past, and will happen in the future, but it is always forced upon us externally. It is worth noting that virtue can be used as a weapon just as much as hate can.
The line America is a poem in our eyes is from a speech by Ralph Waldo Emerson. That line inspired Whitman--American's greatest poet--to write the Leaves of Grass. In the preface to his dictionary length poem, Whitman writes:
"The Americans of all nations at any time upon the earth have probably the fullest poetical nature. The United States themselves are essentially the greatest poem. In the history of the earth hitherto the largest and most stirring appear tame and orderly to their ampler largeness and stir. Here at last is something in the doings of man that corresponds with the broadcast doings of the day and night. Here is not merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations.... Here is the hospitality which forever indicates heroes. . . . Here the performance disdaining the trivial unapproached in the tremendous audacity of its crowds and groupings and the push of its perspective spreads with crampless and flowing breadth and showers its prolific and splendid extravagance....
....but the genius of the United States is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors . . . but always most in the common people. Their manners speech dress friendships—the freshness and candor of their physiognomy—the picturesque looseness of their carriage . . . their deathless attachment to freedom—their aversion to anything indecorous or soft or mean...."
The essence of what he's saying is that once somebody decides to be American--despite any legal definitions--their DNA changes, their spirit changes, they become people who desire to work, to grow, to build, to explore, to nourish.
Americans do not desire fame. Americans give hospitality fit for heroes and dislike anything purposely rude or mean. It is not the president or our CEOs who create the spirit of our country. It is the everyday individual. Our generosity lifts up entire nations and our spirit spreads and helps the world grow. To Whitman, being American is about action and love.
To the best that I can tell, the majority of the internet is the opposite of that.
Very best wishes from your friend, William