Downton, Royce, etc.

LISTEN. Friday's Lyceum with Robert Talisse, on Overdoing Democracy, was timely, entertaining, instructive, and fundamentally right: democracy is supposed to enable us to pursue good lives in multiple dimensions, not just obsess all the time over politics and the shortcomings, imbecilities, and crimes of our foes; and, it's supposed to enable peaceable, mutually respectful coexistence with our fellow citizens whether we voted for the same candidates or not. Instead, we've allowed our civic life to be invaded by a branding mentality (Target vs. Walmart, Starbucks vs. Dunkin' etc.) that villifies the very humanity of partisans for the other party. (I actually defy the branding stereotypes myself, you'll find me in all the good coffee-and-donut emporia.)

There was a tense moment during the Q-&-A that threatened to subvert the larger message, but the moment passed. It did for me, anyway. Talisse is indeed, as our chair told him at the reception later, a star performer. Glad he could shine in front of his mom at our show.

Another weekend highlight: on the first rainy Sunday in a month of Sundays we went to see Downton Abbey. As an Anglophile and hereditary Anglo on my father's side (descended from Olivers who resided in Bristol U.K. before landing in Kentucky and eventually relocating to mid-Missouri, if the genealogy my dad passed along can be believed), I revel in representations of the Old Country and its upstairs-downstairs social strata... even while sympathizing with formerly-firebrand Irish Republican resisters like Tom Branson.

He would understand Talisse's message: people for whose politics he "wouldn't give a tuppence" are, nonetheless, sometimes, decent at their core. And in his case they're also family. They love his daughter, giving her (and him) a place to call home. Remembering such things puts politics in its place.

What a lovely film, sentimentally nodding to both the charm and the contradictions of a bygone era that seems much more distant in time than it really is. Carson and the Dowager were so sure that Crawleys would still inhabit Downton in our day. Some heirs of the ancient estates do in fact still haunt those old mansions, mostly for the tourist trade. The class rigidity of that world is well lost, not to mention its various, racist, homophobic, xenophobic (etc.) intolerances and snooty superiorities. But they did know how to entertain royalty.

I had a hard time buying Arthur Dent as King George V, though.



Also this weekend: Monty Python turned 50, Naomi Klein was on BookTV, the Cards lost twice to the Braves... and Augustine, Boethius, Anselm, and Aquinas remained long dead, though not forgotten.

Not quite so long dead, but largely forgotten until a recent small revival of interest got him a shout-out from David Brooks in the Times, is Josiah Royce. "Royce is the philosopher we need today. In an age of division, fragmentation and isolation, Royce is the philosopher we don’t know we have. He is the philosopher of binding and connection." Loyalty to a worthy cause makes life meaningful and satisfying, if not exactly happy in the conventional and superficial sense. "How does the individual fit into the community and how does each community fit into the whole? He offered a shift in perspective. When evaluating your life, don’t ask, 'How happy am I?' Ask, 'How loyal am I, and to what?'"

Contrarily, self-centered individualism in pursuit of “fleeting, capricious and insatiable” desires makes for hollow, unhappy, antagonized and antagonistic lives of lonely isolation. Royce showed us, and could show us again if we wanted to be shown, an alternative way to live good lives that's rooted as much in western philosophical traditions as individualism. You don't have to embrace Buddha, he said, to find nirvana. Or at least to find peace, love, and understanding. Was he right? That's what he and his friend James talked about on that wall.

Even if he is right, are we receptive to that news? A piece in yesterday's Times suggests many are not. They cling to a self-defeating "go-it-alone" self-reliance that's not working for them, but they're stubbornly "determined to get rid of the last institutions trying to help them, to keep people with educations out, and to retreat from community life and concentrate on taking care of themselves and their own families. It’s an attitude that is against taxes, immigrants and government, but also against helping your neighbor." They don't read, or support the local library. They won't read Royce... (continues)