“King makes me wonder whether there are comparable humanist doctrines of love.” You raise so many great points in this essay - I love thinking of King as an example of an applied humanities education! But I’ll speak to this passage about a humanist doctrine of love. There is ample precedent for theologians and especially contemplatives sidestepping language (“God”) altogether. In the Old Testament and Torah the name cannot be spoken. It’s understandable that a name like “God” feels like we want to replace it with a humanist alternative. But what if there is no name? Then is the humanist love the same as the religious love, when religion shows a proper humility with respect to the imprecision of any language? Just a thought. :-)
Great food for thought! I'm not certain that I agree...those who avoid the name Yahweh, for instance, still believe in that singular, monarchical power. This is the king of thing that triggers my inner Hitchens. If goodness lies in community, in humanitarian ethics, in reason -- then it has no truck with religious systems built on an arcane notion of a supreme ruler to which one must bow down, which one must "worship."
This is one of those paradoxes in MLK, for me. The truth about love that he discovered was bigger than Christianity -- might even have been true DESPITE his Christian associations. I'm more interested in that synthesis, where I feel there is a place for me, MLK, and Ghandi. But it's so hard to live there and not retreat back to our ideological corners: MLK to Christ, me to Christopher Hitchens. In fact, this is one of the tragedies of present-day social activism, that it requires card-carrying membership in a tribe, that it does not allow for the commingling of partial truths. But perhaps I've strayed from your original point.
Where I might agree is that the joining places -- the sites of synthesis -- show us that love is bigger than our systems for explaining it?
Finally! I'm back. You're last paragraph - love is bigger than our systems for explaining it - is just what I was getting at. Though I was thinking of "language" in place of "systems," either word will do. Language is a system. So is the metaphor for understanding this love-thing as a "king" (or a child or a mother or or or). It's a case of the blind persons poking the elephant and coming away with different explanations that they think will be most effective for particular audiences. The only thing sure to be wrong is absolute self-assurance. Does that make room for a humanist doctrine of love that is neither better nor worse than other explanations?
I think so -- although my pricklier humanist side wonders why we need the monarchy metaphors at all. I think there is also a tension between the rationalist tradition and that squishy territory where nothing is sure (we can perhaps rule some things out?). So I think my struggle is maintaining some humility about things like truth and love while also protecting some of the clarity that I've gleaned from my humanist education -- and that I bought at a steep price, given my upbringing.
I actually know the official photographer for the statue of Martin Luther King on the National Mall and may write about that photographer, perhaps next year on MLK day, as he has quite a story! Fab piece, as usual, Josh! Everyone online now should read this!
Whenever I start to feel itchy about plagiarism and become ensconced in various academic dogmas about plagiarism, I’m reminded of this Jim Jarmusch quote:
“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows.
Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: ‘It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to.’"
I haven't thought about Jarmusch in a long while. Thanks for the reminder!
I agree with all of this wholeheartedly as a credo for art. Scholarship is a different beast, and I think it's possible to show precisely this kind of appreciation through documentation. That is, there is a scholarly equivalent of the ravenous curiosity that Jarmusch describes. I'm not convinced that such ravenousness necessitates carelessness with source attribution. But there is a whole 'nother sidebar about turfbound mentalities in scholarship and how the obsession with production gets in the way of actual turf-seeking. So I do not mean to imply that scholarship is somehow "pure."
Perhaps it's crass to say so, but I really do think of MLK much more as an artist than as a scholar. I don't think that needs to be a pejorative statement.
Kudos for singing folk songs for your students. I bet they still remember that. I continue to find Seeger’s classic interesting, both for the simplicity of its words (almost no idiomatic language, meaning easy to translate — see Dietrich’s version in German) and its arresting “daisy chain” flow (flowers —> girls —> husbands —> soldiers —> graveyards —> flowers).
You mention the tradition of imitation in the ministry, which makes me think about how views of imitation differ across traditions. For example, in the folk music tradition, imitation and derivation were generally expected, if not encouraged. So Seeger adapted both the tune and lyrics for his song from earlier work, as did Dylan with the tunes for “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Girl from the North Country.” According to Wikipedia, when the Kingston Trio recorded Seeger’s song a few years later they initially claimed authorship, thinking it was a traditional song — how quickly things enter the Zeitgeist, as well as exit (which you lament).
King’s borrowings remind me a little of the folk music tradition of “floater verses” borrowed from other songs and inserted in a new song, probably because the musician just liked the verses, perhaps how they sounded or the reaction they got from listeners (sighing, laughing, something they’d remember and request again someday). Great phrases are hard to resist.
Thanks, Frank! I'm not sure that great phrases SHOULD be resisted. You're quite right about the folk tradition. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings do some of this borrowing and fusion in "Time (The Revelator)."
I think MLK's plagiarism is kind of moot now, but there's no doubt that it's perplexing. Someone with an undergraduate degree who had read so deeply in theology and philosophy surely should have known the conventions for good documentation (i.e., not to lift whole paragraphs). I think it just shows that Dr. King was not really a scholar, not in the traditional sense. He was more of an artist, a quester, a seeker. Consummate scholarship involves a fair bit of tedium. The MLK that I know from his writings was driven by ideas, not the painstaking construction of arguments. And the sermons that really come alive are more like songs.
I love the quote you included below, but, sadly, one can say that this has been true about most religions across millennia. The arc towards burial is a indeed a long one!
"Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial."
Yes, sadly true. There are so many examples. I'm thinking of "pastorpreneurs" like Joel Osteen and Rick Warren, but also of the confounding alliance between Christian fundamentalists (who often serve or represent low-income rural populations) and Donald Trump, who knows nothing of their day-to-day reality. Victim blaming is all too common, even in religious circles. When the asbestosis crisis hit in rural Montana (a little reported event nationally), even my devout grandmother had a tendency to blame workers who suffered from asbestosis -- because they were smokers, because they didn't wear the proper safety gear.
Genuine compassion is hard to find. Yet if there is a cornerstone of all the world's religions, that has to be it.
I was just thinking that of all the people lost to assassinations during the 1960s, the worst loss for the country was the loss of MLK. I think he would have continued to emphasize battling poverty and with his enormous gifts would have made a great difference in compassion for the poor put into action.
Now I'm trying to recall all of those assassinations. RFK, JFK, Malcolm X, MLK, Medgar Evers...? It does rather boggle the mind how normalized public assassination was then during that time of upheaval.
I agree with you that MLK would have made a lasting impact. It would have been wonderful to watch his vision mature. But I suppose I feel the same about most of the others in that list. Who would Malcolm X have become in later life? What lasting policy impacts might the two Kennedys have made?
Yes, forgive me for not remembering things in my subconscious
“King makes me wonder whether there are comparable humanist doctrines of love.” You raise so many great points in this essay - I love thinking of King as an example of an applied humanities education! But I’ll speak to this passage about a humanist doctrine of love. There is ample precedent for theologians and especially contemplatives sidestepping language (“God”) altogether. In the Old Testament and Torah the name cannot be spoken. It’s understandable that a name like “God” feels like we want to replace it with a humanist alternative. But what if there is no name? Then is the humanist love the same as the religious love, when religion shows a proper humility with respect to the imprecision of any language? Just a thought. :-)
Great food for thought! I'm not certain that I agree...those who avoid the name Yahweh, for instance, still believe in that singular, monarchical power. This is the king of thing that triggers my inner Hitchens. If goodness lies in community, in humanitarian ethics, in reason -- then it has no truck with religious systems built on an arcane notion of a supreme ruler to which one must bow down, which one must "worship."
This is one of those paradoxes in MLK, for me. The truth about love that he discovered was bigger than Christianity -- might even have been true DESPITE his Christian associations. I'm more interested in that synthesis, where I feel there is a place for me, MLK, and Ghandi. But it's so hard to live there and not retreat back to our ideological corners: MLK to Christ, me to Christopher Hitchens. In fact, this is one of the tragedies of present-day social activism, that it requires card-carrying membership in a tribe, that it does not allow for the commingling of partial truths. But perhaps I've strayed from your original point.
Where I might agree is that the joining places -- the sites of synthesis -- show us that love is bigger than our systems for explaining it?
Finally! I'm back. You're last paragraph - love is bigger than our systems for explaining it - is just what I was getting at. Though I was thinking of "language" in place of "systems," either word will do. Language is a system. So is the metaphor for understanding this love-thing as a "king" (or a child or a mother or or or). It's a case of the blind persons poking the elephant and coming away with different explanations that they think will be most effective for particular audiences. The only thing sure to be wrong is absolute self-assurance. Does that make room for a humanist doctrine of love that is neither better nor worse than other explanations?
I think so -- although my pricklier humanist side wonders why we need the monarchy metaphors at all. I think there is also a tension between the rationalist tradition and that squishy territory where nothing is sure (we can perhaps rule some things out?). So I think my struggle is maintaining some humility about things like truth and love while also protecting some of the clarity that I've gleaned from my humanist education -- and that I bought at a steep price, given my upbringing.
I am eager to come back to this after classes! :-) Campus awaits.
I actually know the official photographer for the statue of Martin Luther King on the National Mall and may write about that photographer, perhaps next year on MLK day, as he has quite a story! Fab piece, as usual, Josh! Everyone online now should read this!
Thank you, Mary. And how interesting that you know this photographer!
Whenever I start to feel itchy about plagiarism and become ensconced in various academic dogmas about plagiarism, I’m reminded of this Jim Jarmusch quote:
“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows.
Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: ‘It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to.’"
I haven't thought about Jarmusch in a long while. Thanks for the reminder!
I agree with all of this wholeheartedly as a credo for art. Scholarship is a different beast, and I think it's possible to show precisely this kind of appreciation through documentation. That is, there is a scholarly equivalent of the ravenous curiosity that Jarmusch describes. I'm not convinced that such ravenousness necessitates carelessness with source attribution. But there is a whole 'nother sidebar about turfbound mentalities in scholarship and how the obsession with production gets in the way of actual turf-seeking. So I do not mean to imply that scholarship is somehow "pure."
Perhaps it's crass to say so, but I really do think of MLK much more as an artist than as a scholar. I don't think that needs to be a pejorative statement.
Kudos for singing folk songs for your students. I bet they still remember that. I continue to find Seeger’s classic interesting, both for the simplicity of its words (almost no idiomatic language, meaning easy to translate — see Dietrich’s version in German) and its arresting “daisy chain” flow (flowers —> girls —> husbands —> soldiers —> graveyards —> flowers).
You mention the tradition of imitation in the ministry, which makes me think about how views of imitation differ across traditions. For example, in the folk music tradition, imitation and derivation were generally expected, if not encouraged. So Seeger adapted both the tune and lyrics for his song from earlier work, as did Dylan with the tunes for “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Girl from the North Country.” According to Wikipedia, when the Kingston Trio recorded Seeger’s song a few years later they initially claimed authorship, thinking it was a traditional song — how quickly things enter the Zeitgeist, as well as exit (which you lament).
King’s borrowings remind me a little of the folk music tradition of “floater verses” borrowed from other songs and inserted in a new song, probably because the musician just liked the verses, perhaps how they sounded or the reaction they got from listeners (sighing, laughing, something they’d remember and request again someday). Great phrases are hard to resist.
Thanks, Frank! I'm not sure that great phrases SHOULD be resisted. You're quite right about the folk tradition. Gillian Welch and David Rawlings do some of this borrowing and fusion in "Time (The Revelator)."
I think MLK's plagiarism is kind of moot now, but there's no doubt that it's perplexing. Someone with an undergraduate degree who had read so deeply in theology and philosophy surely should have known the conventions for good documentation (i.e., not to lift whole paragraphs). I think it just shows that Dr. King was not really a scholar, not in the traditional sense. He was more of an artist, a quester, a seeker. Consummate scholarship involves a fair bit of tedium. The MLK that I know from his writings was driven by ideas, not the painstaking construction of arguments. And the sermons that really come alive are more like songs.
I love the quote you included below, but, sadly, one can say that this has been true about most religions across millennia. The arc towards burial is a indeed a long one!
"Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial."
Yes, sadly true. There are so many examples. I'm thinking of "pastorpreneurs" like Joel Osteen and Rick Warren, but also of the confounding alliance between Christian fundamentalists (who often serve or represent low-income rural populations) and Donald Trump, who knows nothing of their day-to-day reality. Victim blaming is all too common, even in religious circles. When the asbestosis crisis hit in rural Montana (a little reported event nationally), even my devout grandmother had a tendency to blame workers who suffered from asbestosis -- because they were smokers, because they didn't wear the proper safety gear.
Genuine compassion is hard to find. Yet if there is a cornerstone of all the world's religions, that has to be it.
I was just thinking that of all the people lost to assassinations during the 1960s, the worst loss for the country was the loss of MLK. I think he would have continued to emphasize battling poverty and with his enormous gifts would have made a great difference in compassion for the poor put into action.
Now I'm trying to recall all of those assassinations. RFK, JFK, Malcolm X, MLK, Medgar Evers...? It does rather boggle the mind how normalized public assassination was then during that time of upheaval.
I agree with you that MLK would have made a lasting impact. It would have been wonderful to watch his vision mature. But I suppose I feel the same about most of the others in that list. Who would Malcolm X have become in later life? What lasting policy impacts might the two Kennedys have made?