In 1843, Nathaniel Hawthorne portrayed the shortcut to salvation in his story. The heavenly railway– A pilgrimage exchanged for taking a train. Instead of a painstaking journey on foot in Bunyan, Hawthorn travelers are comfortable on locomotives. Through the vanity fair, grow a slough of disappointment on the hill difficulty level.
The moral struggle became a pleasure trip without the need for patience, discussion or choice. The shortcut promised to arrive, but the end was fantasy.
That longing passes through today’s democracy, where difficulties are exchanged for promises of security and simplicity. Citizens are looking for nationalists, anti-globalists and anti-immigration policies. Political correctness and mainstream leaders are rejected as remote, while former Baptists, tied to Nazi ideology, gain legitimacy.
Mood – “This is not my government, these are not my people” – is now called far-right populism. The pattern is obvious. When people want certainty or revenge, someone is ready to take responsibility.
We consider tyranny, from a tyrant perspective, not predispositions that make them possible. It is difficult to see our accomplice in what we mourn. Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, Hugo Chavez, Putin and Trump are in line with the mold. They exploited existing hatred, nostalgia and frustration.
Despotism does not arrive with just jackboots, but walks when people have the door. Hannah Arendt spoke of “evil bias.” Rather than excuse Eichmann, he shows how the act is carried out by a normal functional person who makes judgments on his obligations. Despotism grows not only from tyrants, but from the promise of security and the frailty of human freedom.
Dostoevsky pushed the point Karamazov Brothers. The Grand Inquisitor parable depicts freedom as a heavy gift for most people. During Spanish interrogation, Christ returns to Earth, performs miracles and is arrested. The inquisitor visits him in prison and claims: Mankind cannot handle the freedoms he offers. People, he craves and craves bread, sights, authority, not the burden of choice.
By refusing to seduce Christ asked about a man who was too vulnerable. The Inquisitor corrected his mistakes by giving people what they wanted: certainty and order, at the expense of truth and freedom.
Once the monologue is over, Christ says nothing. He quietly kisses the inquisitor. The kiss makes him uneasy, but he releases Christ on a condition that never returns.
To dismiss the inquisitor’s logic is naive, which denies moral and spiritual prosperity. However, it is naive to deny freedom (rightly understood and judged responsibly) that is essential to human and God’s love. History bears witnesses, if not certain.
Like faith, democracy only makes sense with doubt and denial. If the answer is resolved, who needs faith, or is it democracy if there is nothing to argue?
Democracy is not a Quaker Conference where consensus wins. This is a forum for conflict, where the other side is united, thinness is arbitrary, and a set-up is inevitable. Liberal democracy pushes tolerance into its division point.
Extremism is not limited to strict rights. in Authoritarian dynamicsKaren Stenner opposes liberal fundamentalism: “Progressives must stop trying to save their souls in politics, turn everyone into faith, and instead become effective in expressing the purpose of the enemy’s language and symbolism. Political discourse is a visionary conflict, and effective rhetoric must reach even what it makes them angry.
Democracy is always on the way. That protection is debate. Deadlock calls for a rethink of resistance. Anger is better than persuasion. Even Melville is worried that he might sound like a preacher. “Try to make a living by truth. Go to soup society.” Hawthorne uses satire to show that struggle-free salvation is hollow.
Judge Brandeis said: “Those who won our independence” knew that property was the price of freedom and courage was the “secret of freedom.” It is true that solutions ensure freedom and bring us closer to a troubled era –“The long-standing dream of a patriot.” [*]
Notes and reading
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Rene Girard, who praised cultural theorists, warned that politics like sensuality and science are prey to “deviant transcendence.” [cf. Hawthorne’s “The Celestial Railroad” explores the pursuit of salvation in worldly surrogates, such as nation, revolution, or identity. Liberal democracy, while never immune, arguably remains the best check on this temptation (Deceit, Desire, and the Novel).
Nathaniel Hawthorne – The Celestial Railroad (1843, 2017). A parody of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress: the pilgrim rides a train instead of walking, the same engine hauls the burden of sin, and Bunyan’s Evangelist becomes “Mr. Smooth-it-away.”
Herman Melville – To get interested all over again in Moby Dick, read Melville’s letters to Hawthorne. Melville would make a great conversation companion for a while. Hawthorne, initially a close friend, eventually distanced himself, finding Melville’s passionate intensity and intellectual demands overwhelming. – The Divine Magnet (2016).
Hannah Arendt – The Origins of Totalitarianism (Second Edition, 1958); Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (2006). Arendt was a German-born Jewish political theorist whose distinctive framing of totalitarianism set the terms for its political reckoning ever since.
Karen Stenner, political psychologist – The Authoritarian Dynamic (2005). A groundbreaking study of how intolerance of difference (“difference-ism”) shapes authoritarian attitudes.
Justice Brandeis – paraphrased in Philip B. Kurland and Ralph Lerner, eds., The Founders’ Constitution (1987).
[*] from American beautiful.
Leisure work
Richard, 74
Approx. 2 + 2 = 5
Source: 2 + 2 = 5 – williamgreen.substack.com
