Chimeras

The 19th Century is unique for the solidity of its competing empires and its ability to create stereotypical prototypes who keep the Empires’ fires burning, its flags waving.  These European cultures were blind, self-sustaining, self-promoting and brooked no challenges to their basic assumptions:  exploration equals expansion, plunder and enslavement – with a dash of civilization for those who were encouraged to take part.


William James, the American philosopher (1842-1910) is an example of an intelligent man who had no idea why he would have fierce bouts of depression and migraines.  Neither did he really care to find out.  The fault he thought lay with himself.  He never questioned the milieu he was born into which was a rich, cosmopolitan family situated on the East Coast of the U.S.  For a time he was educated in France and England.  His younger brother, Henry, became one of the great Anglophiles.


William James embraces the cult of the military man (as a necessary type – an exemplar).  He also believed that faith even without proof was a good unto itself.  T.H. Huxley (and so many of the leaders of the scientific and philosophical community) put the matter of faith thus:  “my only consolation lies in the reflection that, however bad our posterity may become, so far as they hold by the plain rule of not pretending what they have no reason to believe, because it may be their advantage so to pretend, they will not have reached the lowest depth of immorality.”


Clark Clifford chimed in, “it is wrong always everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”  Among other things these gentlemen were talking about God.


William James countered by saying if faith has a personal benefit (makes one feel good) it must be seen as beneficial not foolish.


In our time faith is a form of self-aggrandizement or entertainment.  What James knew was the good feelings one has by embracing the faith is one of the psychological pillars that keeps the Empire bumbling along.  This fear of losing God or purpose is a very strange attachment.  The ancient people (pre 1700 B.C.) wouldn’t know what this conversation was about.


Loss of faith or purposelessness didn’t exist in their time.


On Charles Darwin’s first journey aboard the Beagle he saw all manner of stunningly beautiful marine life and he mused “so exquisite and yet seemingly without meaning or direction.”  His was a typical Victorian response.  For these people who struggle with their faith, beauty and consciousness are never enough.  Their anthropomorphism hides a profound disrespect for other living beings.  Their so-called faith cloaks the true animal inside themselves.