WISDOM OF THE WILDERNESS

WISDOM OF THE WILDERNESS:la sagesse de la savane  by  J. A. STRICKLAND, b. 1943   Wednesday, 2 January 2008 

     The term “wilderness” usually conjures up images of places far removed from ordinary human habitation, great rocky crags in mountainous terrain or desert landscapes or deep swampy lagoons or thick jungle growth barely allowing passage.  Places where “wild things” are found. It is a romantic image of places “far from the madding crowd.” For me the term refers to the more swampy terrain of southeast Georgia, the Ogeechee River area near which I grew up. We lived about ten miles southwest of Savannah after moving out of the city when I was about four years old.  People who only know my scholarly habits, hanging out in libraries and bookstores or cafes with my nose in a book have no idea how much my life is connected to these ‘wild’ places—even now in the middle of my sixth decade.  In fact, the deep woods of Georgia was my favorite place to read.  Nobody could find me there and I never had to worry about being interrupted.

     Even now, more than four decades later, I can see and feel the texture of Loblolly pine bark, remember exactly how it felt to brush stinging nettle with a bare ankle, or notice the distressing sound of snapping tendrils as a huge jungle vine decided to dump me into a swampy pool of brackish water as I was imitating Tarzan swinging across a forest clearing.  I carried a machete or a long WWI bayonette with me most of the time, along with a Bowie hunting knife and a .22 rifle for the possible dangers of meeting unpleasant two-legged characters.  Fortunately, I moved with too much stealth for anyone to hear me.  With a poor sense of direction, I somehow rarely got lost, “feeling” my way instinctively through the labyrinthine byways.  I was tuned to a different frequency when I was in the woods.  Only when I tried to reason my way around the woods, using sun directions or moss on trees, did I ever get lost. Then I had to walk till I came out to a railroad track or highway to find my way home.  Sometimes that required passing through quite a few miles of thorny, insect-plagued territory.

     For my father the rivers and tidal creeks were his places to get away, to commune with the universe, to keep in touch with the God who was as evident in Nature as in the Bible of his preacher father. Not long after taking out cosmic insurance at a local Baptist church during a Revival meeting, I was baptized behind the pulpit in a pool for that purpose. But reading Spinoza somewhat later, I took my father’s path and sought out the God of Nature—“Nature’s God”—in my swamp wandering and reading and notebook scribbling.  I reasoned that if God could not be found outside the walls of churches, then “God” was only an empty term of little interest. I was reading Sir James Jeans and Einstein’s essays and Fred Hoyle and books with titles like The Oscillating Universe. I struggled with Alfred North Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, even Alfred Tarski’s forays into logical conundrums.  It was “overreaching,” to be sure, but it was utterly intoxicating.  It was my version of what I later encountered in the works of Emerson and Thoreau.  I muddled centuries and authors, lost in time and space then as now.  (I am never quite sure to what century I belong or even whether it matters very much.  How little “the deep down unteachable part” of me has changed!) “Wilderness,” for me, was always a place which included the stars above as well as the microcosmos in the ponds and soil.  “Nature,” for me, included and transcended human beings.  Even as I write I realize how close my thinking still is to the text of Spinoza I first encountered in an old bookshop in downtown Savannah, especially his description of “God.”  It was far more attractive to me than what I discerned in the arrogant speculations of Descartes.  In that way, I suppose, I escaped the point of Toqueville’s famous jest about Americans being naïve Cartesians.  If Spinoza was really an atheist, as some geniuses have suggested, it certainly escaped my notice. I’m sure God escapes confinement to Spinoza’s geometrical speculations but I like the ‘poetry’ of Spinoza’s philosophical statements on “divinity.”  God cannot be confined to churches or temples of any sort.  In that way, the “wisdom” that seeks guidance from thoughts of “the highest things” is found in this larger framework of Nature or Wilderness.

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Politeia, Democratia and Sophia: Thinking About Democratic Thought

One of my many Walter Mitty productions is a work entitled “Demos and Aristos: Reflections On Rousseau and Nietzsche.”  The title for this, my first entry in this weblog, is more a beginning for my extemporaneous thoughts on politics, democracy, and wisdom–though “politeia” is, of course, also translated as “constitution” or “regime.”  Democracy, especially the American variety, was succinctly and famously defined by Lincoln as “government … of the people, by the people, and for the people.”  Yet Henry Adams in his autobiography criticized Lincoln for exactly his willingness “to stoop to argue with any dray driver” about politics or law.  I would say that Lincoln was willing to reason with anyone in an attempt to come to some mutual understanding.  Adams, who did not seem to like Lincoln or recognize his greatness, was almost revolted by Lincoln’s willingness to display good democratic manners.  I like Adams’ writings but simply ignore his snobbery and impatience with Lincoln’s attitude toward a member of the “demos.” 

 I love Lincoln’s attitude, however deep the ironies swirling around such a performance.  In like manner I love the story about his visit to General McClelland’s tent to talk to him about the progress of the Civil War (or lack thereof).  A reporter upon noticing the President waiting patiently outside the General’s tent asked him how he felt about being kept waiting.  He replied something like: “It doesn’t matter…. I’ll walk his damned horse if he’ll only win me this war.”  The current holder of the Office of President has to have audiences vetted for agreement before he will even consent to speak in public.  Should George W. Bush ever walk over from the White House to the Lincoln Memorial he will find himself dwarfed by this giant in more ways than one can politely suggest.  Lincoln’s willingness to reason with anyone makes him not merely a great democrat, despite his being a Republican, but also a great man–in the words of the Great Stagyrite, a “great-souled man.”  As Plutarch suggested in the “Moralia,” a contribution to a liberal and democratic republic is a good winding sheet for one’s funeral; a contribution to tyranical government is not such an honor at one’s death.  George would do well to contemplate Plutarch’s words and to pray at the tomb of Lincoln if he wants to improve his performance as a President in a liberal democracy.  With his naive belief in his “being called by God” to his position, he often sounds like a weak monarch trying to bolster himself up with an assertion of “Divine Right.”  It makes him sound a lot more like the King George who inspired the American Revolution than the George W. who modestly returned to his farm after being the first President of a fledgling democracy.