Delbert Grady: Your son has a very great talent. I don't think you are
aware how great it is. But he is attempting to use that very talent
… against your will.
Jack Torrance: [Gritting his teeth.] Well, he is a very willful boy.
Delbert Grady: lndeed he is, Mr. Torrance – a very willful boy. A rather
… naughty boy, if l may be so bold, sir.
Jack Torrance: [Conspiratorally] lt's his mother. She, uh … interferes.
Delbert Grady: [Smirking] Perhaps they need a good talking-to, if you
don't mind my saying so. Perhaps … a bit more. [Proudly] My girls,
sir, they didn't care for the Overlook at first. One of them
actually stole a pack of matches, and tried to burn it down. But l …
corrected them, Sir. And when my wife tried to prevent me from
doing my duty, l … corrected her.
- Ghost of the Overlook Hotel instructing former schoolteacher Jack of
his “duties” in The Shining
In 1890, Oil mogul John D. Rockefeller founded the University of Chicago (home of the Libertarian stronghold Chicago School of Economics,) and the next year, Harvard’s William James forsook his career as a psychologist to become a philosopher, publishing his essay, “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life.” Although I have already analyzed the essay for this blog, I thought a re-reading in view of what we’ve learned so far would provide further insight. The first paragraph gives the impression of a thoughtful man discussing the great conversation:
…We all help to determine the content of ethical philosophy so far as we contribute to the race's moral life. In other words, there can be no final truth in ethics any more than in physics, until the last man has had his experience and said his say. In the one case as in the other, however, the hypotheses which we now make while waiting, and the acts to which they prompt us, are among the indispensable conditions which determine what that 'say' shall be.
The only warning sign is the appeal to a “last man” who is to have this say. His supporters could protest that this “last man” is meant ironically – James could be implying that there will be no last man, so the conversation will continue indefinitely. Unfortunately, as my last analysis showed, James uses war metaphors throughout the essay, making the conversation into a mortal struggle, in which propositions are “demands,” and voices have to win or lose (i.e., be “hushed up.”)
This essay, by comparing ethical progress with scientific advancement, may be seen as starting the period known as the “Progressive Era,” although the Wikipedia entry dates it from 1896 (Incidentally, however, this was the year James published a collection of essays that included this one.) According to the Wikipedia entry:
The Progressives were avid modernizers, with a belief in science and technology as the grand solution to society's flaws. They looked to education as the key to bridging the gap between their present wasteful society and technologically enlightened future society. Characteristics of Progressivism included a favorable attitude toward urban–industrial society, belief in mankind's ability to improve the environment and conditions of life, belief in an obligation to intervene in economic and social affairs, a belief in the ability of experts and in the efficiency of government intervention.
Progressives did tend to the left of James’ stance, though, judging by the flaws that they believed needed fixing.
Progressives sought to address the problems caused by rapid industrialization, urbanization, immigration, and political corruption; by the enormous concentration of industrial activity in monopolies and of wealth among the elites of the Gilded Age; by the spread of slums and poverty and the exploitation of labor.
- ibid (Scholarly citations omitted.)
An interesting example of the “progressive” hybrid between the prosperity gospel and leftist ideas was Woodrow Wilson, 28th President of the United States. Scotch-“Irish” like James and Rockefeller, Wilson performed the Anglo-Saxon colonizing function for which the group had been used since the 16th century*. For instance, as president of Princeton University, he worked to keep African Americans out of his school as other Ivy League schools were allowing them in. As president of the United States, he segregated the federal bureaucracy and arranged a showing of the now infamous film, Birth of a Nation at the White House.
As president of Princeton University from 1902 – 1910, Wilson made such progressive reforms as…
...[emphasizing the development of expertise, by instituting] academic departments and a system of core requirements. Students were to meet in groups of six under the guidance of teaching assistants known as preceptors. … [He also] appointed the first Jew and the first Roman Catholic to the faculty, and helped liberate the board from domination by conservative Presbyterians.
- Wikipedia
However, he solicited money from Steel Magnate Andrew Carnegie, author of “The Gospel of Wealth” (1889), an article which expressed social Darwinist views such as:
No substitutions for [the law of competition] have been found; and while the law may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it insures the survival of the fittest in every department. …The Socialist or Anarchist who seeks to overturn present conditions is to be regarded as attacking the foundation upon which civilization itself rests, for civilization took its start from the day that the capable, industrious workman said to his incompetent and lazy fellow, " If thou dost not sow, thou shalt not reap," and thus ended primitive Communism by separating the drones from the bees.
We will discuss Wilson’s U.S. presidency in a later entry. For now, I want to make some preliminary conclusions about US culture from this point on:
“Liberal” education for US upper classes had thus been contrived to twist exposés of power into progressive reformism that changes things just enough to keep power structures in place. The rest of US society was pressured in various ways into accepting one or another form of authoritarianism that doesn’t threaten the prosperity gospel.
John D. Rockefeller and other capitalists funded both sides of a “debate” that convinces people that we are allowed real alternatives, making the US look like it respects its own first amendment. The most obvious manifestation of this pseudo-dialogue is the “opposition” between the Democratic and Republican parties. After the “Progressive Party’s” interference in the 1912 election brought Wilson to power, no other party ever got more votes than either of these sides.
1892 Proto-muckraker cartoon of Andrew Carnegie regarding his lockout of
the Homestead strikers
* The link goes to my earlier history of “astroturfing,” which describes this function:
…Anglo-Saxons (on whatever continent) were destined to conquer the “inferior” peoples of the rest of the world. … In furtherance of this destiny, their more pugnacious lower classes could be manipulated to do the more dangerous work of colonizing, allowed to believe they were champions of the common man.
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