A CLASS IN REMEDIAL HUMANITY

1.
All of us who have taught courses and have had to correct and grade student papers are well aware of the sorry state of writing these days.  It is no better if one has been an editor of a literary magazine, where bad poetry, bad prose and bad grammar often combine.  "Before expiring, a body had climbed over the seat and up toward the window..." For students who write sentences such as this one, there is help: a course in remedial English.
I think, however, that there is a problem prevalent today that is even worse, much worse, than writing badly. Stated simply, it is our self-righteous penchant of talking at each other rather than talking to each other.  Talking to each other implies not only listening to each other, but respecting each other's point of view and possibly modifying one's own view accordingly. Is it too much too hope for that persons on opposite sides of a spectrum could sit down, have a dialogue and learn from each other? I have assumed for many years  that honest dialogue would be more difficult  among government representatives where it's all--or nearly all--about power.   Our current Congress has proved this assertion to be correct to an unprecedented degree,  as anyone who follows American politics knows.  In this country, however, so fanatically divided between conservatives and liberals, honest dialogue is becoming increasingly rare even among ordinary citizens, from whom one would expect  more nuanced views.  (Ever wonder why it is a truism not to bring up politics or religion at parties?)
Things have gotten markedly worse.  I will use the Trayvon Martin case as an example of the current sorry state of not listening to each other.  Extreme conservatives, preaching to their couch-potato choir, have said some outrageous things regarding Trayvon Martin; similarly, extreme liberals have said outrageous things about George Zimmerman.  I think both groups need to take a course in remedial humanity. They need it!
Here's how, in this thought experiment, the class would work.  There is a test called the "The Implicit Association Test," the IAT, available online, which assesses the presence of a variety of prejudices, e.g. racial prejudice, prejudice regarding age, gender and against the obese.  These tests have produced surprising results: many African Americans harbor some degree of bias--against African Americans.  I took the age-bias test and discovered that I, a senior citizen, have some degree of prejudice against, well, senior citizens.  The degree of prejudice is what is important, of course.
The teacher of the remedial humanity class would devise a test to assess one's views of the Trayvon Martin case.  Out of, say, sixty results,  one would compose a class of fifteen of those with the most extreme conservative views along with fifteen of those with the most extreme liberal views.  The teacher would thus have a class of students who need intervention the most.
The teacher would begin the class as follows: "You are here today because your test results indicate that you are in need of a class in remedial humanity.  Your extreme views are evidence that you are unable to respect opinions other than your own.  I'm here to help you to listen to your opponents with respect"  The instructor would then write on the blackboard--yes, a course in remedial humanity is quite out-of-date--the following saying: Do not judge another unless you have walked a mile in that person's moccasins The goal of this class, the teacher would go on to explain, is to transfer this saying from your lips to your hearts and minds.
To the fifteen extreme conservatives, the instructor would then assign the following essay, using the following sentences as guidelines: How would you feel if you were the parent of Trayvon Martin? How would you feel if your son was coming back from a store, minding his own business, and wound up dead, killed by someone who assumed he was up to no good?  Are you really convinced that racial profiling had nothing to do with this case?  Are you sufficiently cognizant of the horrible legacy of racial prejudice in this county?  In a country where racism, albeit on the decline, is still very much alive; in a country where nearly every black person can give personal examples of being  the victim of racial animus--are you justified in telling fellow black citizens, outraged by this case, to simply "Get over it!?"  If you were black how would you like to have somebody say that to you?
The extreme liberals would have to write an essay from the opposite point of view: How would you feel if you were the parent of George Zimmerman?  Do you think that characterizing him as a racist thug does him justice?  Are you sure that Zimmerman hunted Trayvon down and killed him simply because he was a young black male wearing  a hoodie? Are there any ambiguities in this case that would militate against  a conviction of second degree murder?  Do you think it would have made sense to send Zimmerman to jail for perhaps thirty years? Is racism in this country getting better or worse?
The students would be assigned to wear the metaphorical moccasins of those with opposing  views
for a month, after which they would write their essays.  Grading would be easy.  They would take the IAT once more; those that evince a shift toward the center would pass.  The teacher wouldn't even have to read the essays--thank God--except to determine whether the student in question defended the Florida Stand Your Ground Law, which would result in a big, fat, walloping F. The instructor, ready for the next 30 students, would have the great satisfaction of knowing that he or she has provided much needed help in resolving the terrible problem of self-righteous posturing.


2.

If you listen to extreme conservatives, race is no longer of concern in this country.  If you listen to extreme liberals, you get the impression that  things have gotten worse.  I am going to give you a very personal anecdote about why I, a white parent of a black son, disagree with both camps.
I have never discussed this incident with anyone other than with my wife and son, but I believe it's time to mention it now.
An Indian friend of my son, who is dark-skinned and could easily be mistaken for black, at least from a distance, was visiting my son at our house.  He left to go home around  2 a.m.  He discovered that his car, parked across the street from our house, wouldn't start and got my son to help him. (My son and his friend were very quiet, respecting the time of night.  The neighborhood in which we have lived for many years consists of families who are white except for the notable exception of ours--my wife is from India, my son is adopted.)  Looking out a window and seeing two dark-skinned individuals, a neighbor called the police. reporting a robbery in progress--I have no doubt that racial profiling was at work here. The police came. They, of course, had guns.  They asked him rather gruffly what he was doing?  He politely explained the situation and indicated that he lived in the house directly across the street..  The two white officers apologized profusely.  Sorry,Sir, sorry, sorry, we received a report and we had to investigate.
How do you think I felt?  I was extremely happy!  You are alive! I told my son, thank God!  Yes, there is still a lot of racial profiling going on in this country--Although my family can give examples not only of the hazards of Driving While Black but also of the hazards of Flying While Brown, we all agree that things have gotten a lot better. Thirty years ago, there would have been no Sorry; thirty years ago there certainly would have been no Sir. Thirty years ago,  they might have drawn their guns.  Thirty years ago they might have shouted FREEZE! and misinterpreting your closing the hood of your friend's car,  my son,  for reaching for a weapon, they might have shot you.  And, undoubtedly, they would have been cleared of charges of murder. Things like that have happened.  That no injuries occurred, however, provides no solace to the Martin family.  But it's important to state that tragedies like Martin's unnecessary death are becoming increasingly rare, as we will illustrate shortly.
There has been much nonsense written about the Trayvon Martin case.  I am done reading about it.  I am done listening to pundits pontificate about it.  If all this talk doesn't result in something positive, such as the repeal of the notorious Florida Stand Your Ground Law, it's just a lot of yada yada yada, largely directed at opponents rather than to them.  The Economist, a British magazine, got it right, though:

Happily, incidents such as Mr Martin's death are becoming rarer...Although blacks are more likely to be attacked by strangers (of any race) they are less than half as likely to be attacked as they were 20 years ago.  The odds of being attacked correlate more with age and income than with race...
That is little consolation to Mr Martin's family or the many frightened black parents in America.  Mr Watson, the pastor from Sanford, says he would not have thought twice about whether it was safe for his children to walk to the store alone before the shooting.  Now, he says with a sigh, he would never let them.

--The Economist, July 20-July 26, 2013, page 28.

3.

I still have great faith in the American people.  There are many problems, true, but with the right strategies things could get a lot better. I have no doubt that not only those with extremist views, but ordinary citizens, too, would benefit from a course in remedial humanity. (Life offers many courses in remedial humanity to those humble enough to learn.)  I doubt, though, that many extreme conservative and extreme liberal pundits, such as those seen on TV,  would be willing to learn much-needed lessons on how to treat and to listen to others..  "How dare you think that I need such a course? I have a PhD in..."  "I refuse to walk in someone else's filthy moccasins."  "Do you really expect me to take off my Gucci shoes?"   "Do you really expect me to remove my Pradas?"

Yes, I suppose I do.


.

A REVIEW OF 'THE NEW LIFE' BY ORHAN PAMUK

Pamuk's The New Life is a wonderful novel.  The book has a lot to say about the cultural issues affecting the Muslim world, specifically Turkey. The subject of the novel, however, the attempt to discover the meaning of life in a world that provides no easy answers, is universal.  It provides an excellent read whether the reader is Muslim, Christian, Jew, etc.--he or she just needs to be human.
The plot begins with an engineering student, "a dreamy kid with nothing special to recommend him," who comes across a book which fascinates him so much he resolves to change his life.  He reads it over and over, determined to begin a new life with the book as his guide.
Many others, we soon learn, have read the same words and have become similarly inspired--that is, obsessed.  Just about all of them are young men.  By this time the reader realizes that the book, the exact contents of which are never disclosed, is a latter-day Koran, transforming those who are susceptible to its message into devoted believers.
One of Pamuk's main themes, most prominent in his novel, Snow, is that modernism isn't working in the Muslim world, and its failure is causing a rise of fundamentalist religious views.  The author's view--and I agree with him--is that secular Turkey has failed to make the necessary reforms to make life less burdensome for the masses.  They try to compensate broken promises of this world with imaginary promises of the next, with predictable results.
The protagonist is, however, somewhat different.  The angel in his case who "reveals," that is, provides him with the book, is not Gabriel but a beautiful young woman named Janan, a name which translates as "the Beloved."  His journey is more erotic rather than religious. There is a love triangle here: Janan is in love with Mehmet, a fellow student who has disappeared.  The jealous protagonist eventually decides to track him down and kill him, and eventually succeeds. (Sexual desire plays a central role in Pamuk's work; this is perhaps why the protagonist has the same initials as the author, and refers to himself at one point as "Orphan Panic.")
Pamuk is as ironic as he is subtle.  The author of the New Life book is O.P's Uncle Rifki, the creator of popular children's books.  The modern Koran, his final work--and presumably the original one, too--is actually a children's book for adults. (Pamuk, for obvious reasons, cannot say this directly.) It is a beautiful book, true; but believing in it literally and thus rejecting rationality can, in the modern world, only lead to disaster.  And the young men do indeed believe in it literally.  Yes, big Mehmet, flying carpets are real.
The protagonist along with his lovely angel, Janan, set out to find the new world.  The metaphor for this impossible task is taking long bus rides.  During a bus journey, the world whizzes by.  The passengers, as it were, are no longer part of that world but mere observers, as if all sights were of unsubstantial images rapidly passing by on a movie screen.  They hope that the next stop will be heaven, but this never occurs.  They do encounter, however, a series of serious accidents, resulting in many fatalities.  Leaving this world behind and following chimera is dangerous, no doubt about it.  (By the way, those who have traveled by bus in the developing world are more likely to accept as probable the many accidents depicted in the novel!)
Another irony: the father of Mehmet, one of the first to be taken in by the book, is a violent nationalist.  He believes in what he calls "the Great Conspiracy," the deliberate corruption of Turkish culture by the West.  He doesn't want a return to religion, but a return to (largely imagined) glories of the past.  He has Uncle Rifki killed; he sets out to track down all the followers of the book and have them murdered.
In the world of the novel, secularists and fundamentalists have become as bitter rivals as Sunni and Shia. No matter what one's goal is, violence is viewed as the proper way of achieving it.
One of the most beautiful sections of the book concerns Mehmet, who has a long discussion with the protagonist, just before the latter kills him.
He has become an ascetic.  He no longer literally believes in the book's contents. He copies the book with great mindfulness, creating works of art, as in Medieval Europe.  He has become aware of "the internal music of the text" which for him is now more significant than its prose meaning.  By all accounts, the Koran is a literary masterpiece.  Like the original, this modern Koran has became for him "a good book," a delight in itself that needs no external references.
Here is what Mehmet says about the book, and presumably about all great religious classics: "Perhaps it is something that has been distilled from the stillness or the noise of the world, but it's not the stillness or the noise itself...It is futile to look outside the book for a realm that is located beyond the words." The realm does indeed exist, but only in the text and in us.
God, Pamuk implies, exists inside and not outside us.  (And physics implies that inside and outside are one, the former (consciousness) causing the former, "reality," thus making the above statement moot.  A belief such as this, however, makes fundamentalism and its resulting violence impossible.
He has become very wise indeed, this Mehmet.  But he is murdered, indicating that wisdom is not going to resolve the current political mess--but, of course, there is still hope for Turkey and for all of us.  There always exists the possibility that a future Mehmet will arise in the form of a competent statesman.
Pamuk's book brings up very important issues; as a consummate story teller, however, he never allows these issues to detract from delight in the story itself.
Too bad that it is unlikely that this book will result in readers who resolve to begin a new life, not based upon the latter-day Koran depicted in the novel, but upon Mehmet's wisdom.



Thomas Dorsett

August 1, 2013

Our online book club met this evening to discuss The New Life.  This book was not popular among the other members.  It received a range from one to three stars out of a possible five.  One member thought the translation was bad; all of us agreed on that.  The translator, Gumeli Gun, is obviously not a native speaker of English.  Example: "Before expiring, a body had climbed over the seat.." Most thought that the characters were not well delineated.  One thought that the novel was just too philosophical and political; it would have been better, this member of our club thought, to write an essay.  A novel needs to tell a good story, and it was felt that this one was quite deficient in this regard.  The reviewer, however,thought that the novel gave deeper insights into contemporary life--especially in Turkey--than most essays could provide--and in a much more entertaining fashion.   This might not be his best novel, the reviewer conceded, but it is still quite a good one.

PLEASE GIVE US YOUR OPINION IN THE COMMENT SECTION

Our next meeting is on September 26, 2013 when will will discuss Tolstoy's Anna Karenena.
Hope you will join us!

Until then, Happy Reading!

Thomas Dorsett

IF DEVILS DON'T EXIST, WHY ARE THEY STILL QUOTING SCRIPTURE?

I am not naive; I realize that anyone who in truth says "I don't have a selfish bone in my body" must be an angel, and angels, as far as I can tell, do not exist. I have come to believe that the good life must balance innate selfishness with altruism, with increasing emphasis on the latter. (If we began by really practicing "turn the other cheek" we would end--perhaps forever--in less than a week.)
Adam Smith, the father of free market capitalism, stated in his 1776 classic, the Wealth of Nations, that the market's invisible hand transforms private self-interest into public prosperity.  There is some truth to this, but only when capitalism is balanced by laws that guarantee at least a minimum of  fairness.  ( I define fairness as heath care, safe neighborhoods, adequate nutrition, adequate housing, employment opportunities and good education for all--goals able to be approximated by wealthy countries that set these priorities.) Yes, there is truth to the benefits of capitalism--The leading industrial countries of the world have amassed much wealth, which has helped, in varying degrees, all their citizens.  True, in the United States the gap between the have-nots and haves is so great that it is morally obscene--but still, would you rather live in a place like Bolivia where everyone is poor, since the principles of wealth creation are thwarted by the state?
Capitalism will always tend to push in a direction that favors the wealthy, while regulation tends to attempt -at least partially--to restore balance.  The result will never be ideal--far from it-- but at least one that is less unjust.
I am sorry to say that many of our legislators have lost all sense of fairness.  The House has an abundance of representatives who are so extreme, so unbalanced, so morally reprehensible as to make any decent American hang his or her head in shame.  I will give but one example here, that of Stephen Fincher, a Republican congressman from Tennessee.  He was a prime backer of a recently passed farm bill in the House, which splits off the provisions for food assistance to the poor while increasing the subsidies for agribusiness corporations.
The original farm bill legislation was passed during the Great Depression of the 1930s.  At that time there were many small farmers who needed assistance to survive.  Small farms today, however, are  becoming as rare as carrier pigeons.  They've all been taken over by large corporations; the current law provides huge benefits to the rich.  For instance, the House Bill restores eligibility for those earning more than $750,000 dollars.  The top 20% of recipients receive lavish payments.  (Over the years, Fincher himself has received over 3.5 million dollars in "assistance.")
The current farm law is laden with fraud, but the big fat dark cloud does have a thin silver lining: it also provides food assistance for the poor.  True, the number of those receiving food assistance has increased--due to a recession caused by unregulated capitalism, I might add.  But no one receives millions in benefits; the average benefit is $134 per month.  One must recall that over 80% of the wealth gain since the recession began has gone to the rich, while the status of the working class and poor has declined.  Even a little help to offset low wages is denied by those like Fincher.
Fincher is acting out of spite--the program pays for itself.  The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that for every dollar spent on the food-stamp program, the economy grows by $1.60. (The benefits are immediately spent and stimulate the economy.)
Capitalism and greed go together, but if capitalism is to succeed in the long run there must be some sense of balance.  Fincher, and so many Republicans like him, is an incarnation of untrammeled greed and spite, a truly toxic combination.  The Republicans split the assistance to the poor from the assistance to the rich, hoping, of course, to decimate the food assistance program in separate legislation.
Here's how Fincher assesses the situation: "The role of citizens, of Christians, of humanity, is to take care of each other.  But not for Washington to steal money from those in the country and give to others in the country."  If those, like himself, however, are rich and don't need assistance, then it's apparently a very good thing for government to make them even richer.  This Anti-Robin Hood in Gucci shoes wants to insure that all his King John buddies are able to sail off to a tax haven on board a publicly financed yacht. How  more Christian can you get?
A Democrat reminded him, a Bible-thumping Christian, about Jesus, who taught that what you do for the poor you do for God.  Fincher didn't miss a beat and replied with a quote from Thessalonians: "The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat."  (Forty-one percent of food-stamp beneficiaries occur in families with earned income.  Facts apparently don't bother Fincher.)
Can you think of a better example of the Devil quoting Scripture?  I can think of a few.  Those devilish extreme-right Republicans!  Every day they are taking us closer to hell.

TRAYVON'S LAW

Last night, after sixteen hours of deliberation, a jury composed of six women acquitted George Zimmerman of second-degree murder.  The jury also declined to convict him of manslaughter. I had thought he might be acquitted, not because I thought him innocent, but because of the high standard "beyond reasonable doubt" required to convict anyone of anything.  But I have become sure of this: no matter what the verdict, justice would lose.
I first heard details about the case on the Lawrence O'Donnell show, a program which, like me, I'm not ashamed to say, espouses progressive viewpoints.  O'Donnell portrayed Zimmerman--in no uncertain terms--as a white, racist thug who gunned down Martin simply because Martin was black.  Martin, 17 years old at the time of his tragic death, was shown, many times during the program and elsewhere, in a photo taken several years earlier when he was a boy.  He was smiling in the photo and looked completely harmless.  According to this view,  Zimmerman was a vicious, adult racist thug who murdered   a boy in cold blood largely because he was black and wearing a hoodie.
At this point, I feel I must reveal that I am a white man married to an Indian with an adopted black son.  Needless to say, I was enraged.  Especially at those in Florida, where this awful event occurred, who decided that it was indeed self-defense.  No charges would be brought.  Here we go again, I thought; this has got to stop.
I soon learned, however, that the case was more ambiguous than I had thought.  (I recalled a murder that took place in Texas where a racist white man shot a black man, who, attached to the bumper of the racist's car, was dragged down a road while still alive.  Now that is an unambiguous case.)  I learned that Zimmerman was not white but Hispanic; I learned that it was possible that Martin was beating Zimmerman at the time the former was shot; I learned that Zimmerman had no history--at least no overt history--of being a racist.  I found it very unlikely that Zimmerman would have shot Martin simply because he was black,  (I think it quite possible, however, that racial profiling had a role in the way Zimmerman behaved.)  I do think Zimmerman had many opportunities to prevent what happened; for instance, he could have decided to report his suspicions to the police and let officers handle it.  Zimmerman, in the court of conscience, is far from being innocent.
Yes, there is much, much more racism in this country than most whites imagine, and no, the Zimmerman affair is not a test-case illustration of this fact.
The trial has become another sad Rorshach text exposing the political and racial divides in this country.  Die-hard conservatives see it one way; die-hard liberals see it another.  Like horses wearing blinders, neither gets enough perspective to analyze the case objectively.
This article is not an analysis of this tragic event, other than presenting it as an occurrence that eludes a knee-jerk reaction.  I wish to briefly discuss why, no matter the verdict, we all lose.
Our judicial system emphasizes individual responsibility while neglecting factors that may have enabled the individual to act the way he did.  This is my point: what should have been on trial was the Florida Stand Your Ground law, without which Trayvon Martin would most likely be alive today.  The law states that a person can use deadly force, that is, shoot someone, when he fears he is in danger,--even if safely retreating from the confrontation is a possibility!  That law is much more responsible for the death of Trayvon Martin than Zimmerman was.  If you aren't convinced, ask yourself this: if Zimmerman and Martin had both been Canadians living in Canada, how likely would it be that a death would have occurred?
The death of poor Trayvon--my sympathies are with his family--reminds me of the recent recession from which we are recovering painfully slowly.  Unregulated banks came up with ways to snooker the market and caused a horrible recession.  They profited from it, while the rest of us continue to pay dearly.  They remain unregulated; it will happen again.  Similarly, our politicians are unable to pass much needed laws regarding firearms,  resulting in many, many deaths every day.  It is a "crime" that our entertainment-based culture focuses on the things such as the Zimmerman trial, while ignoring the epidemic of violence in this country. 30,000 deaths from guns every year!  30,00 deaths from guns every year!
Zimmerman should not have had a gun.  Even if he panicked, I do not believe he was in mortal danger.  (That his injuries were minor is not significant.  One could panic when one discovers that, while bathing in the ocean, one can no longer touch bottom.  This could induce a panic even though, after paddling a few inches toward shore, one realizes that there was really no danger.)  I repeat: Zimmerman should not have had a gun.
The only way I see progress here is if a law is passed, Trayvon's Law.  The law would forbid neighborhood watchmen from having a concealed weapon.  This would be ideal, but I doubt that such a law would be passed under current conditions.  Second best would be a law requiring extensive training for citizens patrolling neighborhoods.  They should be instructed to inform the police and not to confront "suspects."  The training should be all the more intense in those States that allow, even promote, carrying a concealed weapon.
I think our justice system should be turned upside down; it should emphasize prevention and rehabilitation , not punishment.  Rather than Zimmerman, I would much rather see some of those irresponsible bankers be put in jail--this would help prevent recurrences--rather than Zimmerman.  What good would that do?  Most of all, I'd like to see the establishment of some form of Trayvon's Law.  What good would that do?  Plenty.
It is not productive to assert that  if Trayvon had behaved differently, he too could have prevented what happened.  Let's posit that he lost his temper and attacked Zimmerman.  One must not forget that Trayvon was a kid.  If Trayvon lost his temper because he assumed he was being pursued by a white man for no other reason than he was black, I can certainly sympathize with him.  Trayvon was a kid and kids are impulsive.  If he struck Zimmermn first--and I am not at all sure this is what happened--this does not mean that he was heading toward a life of crime.  It would be far more likely, even in this worst case scenario, that Trayvon would have matured into a responsible adult, following the examples of his mother and father.  The horror of it all is that Trayvon will never get this opportunity.
There are many Zimmermans out there.  There are many Trayvon Martins out there.  The murderous lack of reasonable gun-control is bringing them together in a dance of death.  This is the real crime.

WALT WHITMAN'S VISION

Recently I came across a psychological assessment test on the Web--I don't remember what it was for, but before you could take the  test, you had to provide some background information.  One of the questions had to do with how religious one is.  Possible answers, as one might imagine, ranged from Not At All to Very.  If one clicked on Not At All, one then proceeded to the next background question.  If one clicked on Very, however, more information on religion was requested.  Were you 1) Christian; 2) Jewish; 3) Muslim; 4) Buddhist or 5) Hindu?  I was amazed to find that not only was there no Other Religion category, but there was no Unaffiliated category either.  Those who devised the questionnaire obviously did not imagine the possibility of being religious without belonging to an organized religion.

I immediately thought of Walt Whitman. He would, no doubt, have clicked on Very and would have left the next question unanswered.

There is no doubt that he was a deeply religious man; his poetry is suffused with a sense of transcendence. A close friend of his, in fact,  wrote that she was convinced that a religious sensibility was behind everything he wrote.  Whitman would certainly not have denied this.

This little essay will present Whitman's vision, the religious views of a deeply spiritual man.  I think they provide a good role model for those who are estranged from creeds, yet have religious yearnings nevertheless.

1.

To those who read poetry collections it is well known that a poet will tend to put one of his best poems at the beginning and  another one at the end.  Although a brilliant innovator, Whitman was very much concerned with the content of this poems.  He had something to write about and refused to obscure that content with verbal fireworks.  If Whitman's friend was correct, we would expect to find a specific reference to religion at the beginning of his greatest poem and at the end of it.  (The poem, Song of Myself, is actually a collection of 57 poems.)  This is indeed the case, as we shall now see.

At the beginning of Song of Myself, Whitman establishes that this work will be about him--and, at the same time, about everyone else.  The poem is a celebration of human consciousness, a source of eternal wonder and the highest good of which Whitman is aware--as is made evident from the following lines from section 48 of the poem:

I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least,
Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.

The emphasis is obviously on an inner religion without any need of external revelation.

Whitman makes perfectly clear that he is unaffiliated with any particular religion with the ending of the first poem::

Creeds and schools in abeyance,
Retiring back a while sufficed at what they are, but never forgotten,
I harbor for good or bad, I permit to speak at every hazard,
Nature without check with original energy.

It is important to note here that Whitman's mother, to whom he was very close, was much influenced by Quakerism.  This "religion" emphasizes the search for, celebration of, and acting upon, the "inner light." Conscience suffused in this light, rather than an external deity, is the Quakers' highest good.   One day, when Whitman was ten, living in Brooklyn, his father took the family to listen to a famous Quaker, Elijah Hicks.  Hicks had been a friend of Whitman's grandfather and, at the time, was over eighty.  The young Whitman was quite impressed.  His speech has not been preserved, but one can get the gist of it from a famous sentence of his: "The blood of Christ is no different from the blood of a goat."  He said this not as a flippant secularist, but as a deeply innately religious man who eschewed all dogma.

To the poet Whitman religions are more like poetry than prose; taking them literally is just as ridiculous as believing the line "My luv is like a red red rose" means that the woman being referred to is full of thorns and infested with aphids.  They are "never forgotten" because  as poetry they have great spiritual significance.

Now let's proceed to the religious reference, specifically the notion of immortality, at the end of the poem:

I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love,
If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles.

You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fiber your blood.

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.

One of the chief beauties of poetry is its subtlety. its inability to be pinned down, its accessibility to multiple interpretations.  I will give two interpretations of this passage.  The first deals with consolation from the cycle of nature; the second deals with the consolation from some sort of individual immortality.  (That the passage deals with consolation, of this there can be no doubt.)

Whitman found much solace in the cycle of nature.  In section 6 of Song of Myself he famously writes:

Tenderly will I use you curling grass,
It may be you transpire from the breasts of young men,
It may be if I had known them I would have loved them,
It may be you are from old people, or from offspring taken soon out of their mothers' laps,
And here you are the mothers' laps.

Beautiful lines that basically state that life goes on, and as modern physics teaches us regarding the event horizon around a black hole, information is somehow conserved.  Whitman was a great admirer of the Swedish scientist Justus Liebig, who had a very optimistic view of nature and emphasized the natural process of the incorporation of dead matter into a new generation of living matter.  He asserted that decomposition was also a way of purification; he believed that diseases and impurities were broken down after burial into a purer substance from which new life arises.  (Semmelweiss and the discovery of microbes was not far away in time, but still eons away in concept.)  Whitman obviously took much consolation in this view.  It cheered him when he felt there was no form of individual immortality at all.  He once wrote, for instance, that "life is a suck and a sell, and nothing remains at the end but threadbare crepe and tears."

There is. however,  a second interpretation of the last lines of Song of Myself.  Whitman also wrote these lines: "I am not prepared to admit fraud in the scheme of the universe--yet without immortality all would be sham and sport of the most tragic nature."  In the last poem of Song of Myself Whitman seems to be writing about more then the wheel of natural processes.  Let us examine more closely the final eight lines of the poem.  It uses the first person pronoun, either as "I" or as "me" referring to no one else but the narrator, an astonishing nine times. To me this is a good indication that the "I" not only becomes the grass at death but somehow also transcends it. The addressed member of a future generation might find him by "looking under his boot-soles" but what he might find seems to be a lot more personal than grass.  In "fact" the narrator has been waiting for him both as grass and as something completely transcendent..  This gives credence to the assertion that Whitman believed that consciousness somehow survives death.

If these two interpretations seem to contradict each other, I refer the reader to Whitman's famous lines: "Do I contradict myself?/ Very well then I contradict myself? (I am large; I contain multitudes.)

Remember that these two views which I believe Whitman held simultaneously do not indicate fuzzy thinking; in contrast they indicate a profound and poetic view that reflects the subtleties and apparent contradictions of life.


2.
A rabbi recently told me that she and many Jews do not waste their time talking about God.  The more religious ones do not doubt that something wonderfully unfathomable lies behind everything; it's just better to act upon it rather than talk about it. Trying to put God into a catechism is extremely unproductive according to this view.  God is thus a poetic hint rather than a prosy fact.  I do believe Whtiman shared a similar view, as evinced by the following lines from Song of Myself:

And I say to mankind, Be not curious about God,
For I who am curious about each am not curious about God,
(No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God about death.)

A line that follows, quoted before, I re-quote here:

Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.

For Whitman human consciousness is the supreme wonder and mystery, not God.  I think that he would have agreed that the "image of God" refers more to consciousness itself, rather than to a deity beyond it.  Some modern physicists--as well as many Hindus-- believe consciousness underlies, that is, creates everything, thus adopting the mantle of an external creator-God.  Like the traditional deity, consciousness is both very close, since it is ourselves, and very distant, since it remains the ultimate mystery.  Thus Whitman may have been referring to this mystery in the line that immediately anteceded the last quote: "I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least/"  Whitman in this respect, as in many other respects, was way ahead of his time.


3.

Walt Whitman was an optimist, no doubt about that.  He certainly had empathy for the unfortunate, yet even his exposure to immense suffering while tending to victims of the Civil War could not, in the long run, affect his upbeat view of life.  The following lines from section 44 of Song of Myself demonstrate both his optimism and empathy for others:

Were mankind murderous or jealous upon you, my brother, my sister?
I am sorry for you, they are not murderous or jealous upon me,
All has been gentle with me, I keep no account with lamentation?
(What have I to do with lamentation?)

This does not mean at all that Whitman did not have his share of sorrow.  He left school at age 11 and was on his own for the rest of his life.  He had to commit his elder brother to an insane asylum; his youngest brother was severely cognitively impaired; there was alcoholism in his family; his sister married an unstable artist and wrote many desperate letters to her brother, etc.

How did Whitman manage so well to overcome the stress of living?  This is an important question if we are to hold Whitman's vision as an example to follow, since it is often the case that optimism, if challenged enough, often wanes and even turns into its opposite.  We will illustrate Whitman's ability to remain largely unfazed by adversity with two examples.    The first poem, "All Poverties, Wincings, And Sulky Retreats," written long after Song of Myself, appeared in the 1881 collection, From Noon to Starry Night.

All poverties, wincings, and sulky retreats,
Ah you foes that in conflict have overcome me,
(For what is my life or any man's life but a conflict with foes, the old, the incessant war?)
You degradations, you tussle with passions and appetites,
You smarts from dissatisfied friendships, (ah, wounds the deepest of all!
You toil of painful and chocked articulations, you meannesses,
You shallow tongue-talks at tables, (my tongue the shallowest of any;)
You broken resolutions, you racking angers, you smother'd ennuis!
Ah think not you finally triumph, my real self has yet to come forth,
It shall yet march forth o'erwhelming, till all lies beneath me,
It shall yet stand up the soldier of ultimate victory.

These strikingly beautiful lines illustrate that Whitman's abilities did not decline with age.  Their intensity is virtual proof of their sincerity.  Here he is not trying to reform America by administering the medicine she needs.  (He once wrote that  his poetry was designed "to lead America, to quell America with a great tongue.")  Here his great tongue is dealing with inner demons. We should not doubt that these demons sometimes presented a formidable challenge.
Mozart loved dissonances but always resolved them.  Whitman was no different; he was as incapable of ending a poem in despair as Mozart was able to end a composition with a twelve tone row.  His nature did not allow it.  The determination to triumph over negativity is expressed in the last three lines of the poem.  Note that it is "his real self" that will provide the victory.  Thus it is not only his nature but his vision that will prove victorious. Whitman's poems provide ample attestation to Whitman's vision that there is a "real self" that transcends the individual self, remaining unaffected by personal vicissitudes.  Thus at the beginning of Song of Myself he can write, "I celebrate myself and sing myself" without being at all egotistic, since he is writing about the "real self."  (A further illustration of this lack of egotism is that Song of Myself contains few personal references, and when it does, they are always part of a much larger context.  Whitman is anything but a confessional poet.)
Notice in the last two lines the impersonal pronoun, it.  He does not write "I shall yet march forth," or "I shall yet stand up," but "It shall yet march forth" and "It shall yet stand up..."  This is further proof that Whitman saw his real self as something objective, something eternal.  Here he sounds much like a Hindu guru.  Gurus are acquainted with sorrow, but their vision prevents despair.

The second poem illustrates Whitman's best defense against negative thinking, a basic attitude and behavior without which wisdom might well run dry.  It is part of his collection entitled "Calamus."

OF the terrible doubt of appearances,
Of the uncertainty after all—that we may be deluded,
That may-be reliance and hope are but speculations after all,
That may-be identity beyond the grave is a beautiful fable only,
May-be the things I perceive—the animals, plants, men, hills, shining and flowing waters,	5
The skies of day and night—colors, densities, forms—May-be these are, (as doubtless they are,) only apparitions, and the real something has yet to be known;
(How often they dart out of themselves, as if to confound me and mock me!
How often I think neither I know, nor any man knows, aught of them;)
May-be seeming to me what they are, (as doubtless they indeed but seem,) as from my present point of view—And might prove, (as of course they would,) naught of what they appear, or naught any how, from entirely changed points of view;
—To me, these, and the like of these, are curiously answer’d by my lovers, my dear friends;	10
When he whom I love travels with me, or sits a long while holding me by the hand,
When the subtle air, the impalpable, the sense that words and reason hold not, surround us and pervade us,
Then I am charged with untold and untellable wisdom—I am silent—I require nothing further,
I cannot answer the question of appearances, or that of identity beyond the grave;
But I walk or sit indifferent—I am satisfied,	15
He ahold of my hand has completely satisfied me. True, Whitman might be emphasizing his doubt in order to better resolve it at the end of the poem, but I am quite sure the feelings of uncertainty in this poem are genuine.  The poem is a striking example of the importance of connectedness with fellow human beings as one of the best ways to quell life's anxieties.  Research bears this out; those who are isolated tend to die sooner, not to mention the difficulties they face during life.  As Whitman biographies and his poems indicate, the poet had a keen ability to make and maintain friendships with people from all walks of life.  The first poem in this section deals with wisdom, this one deals with love.  Each feeds the other, but Whitman--like St. Paul--would agree that love is the most important of all.  These two poems taken together provide the essence of Whitman's worldview. 4. Poems with a didactic message are usually bad.  As Frost said, if a young person wants to become a poet because he has something to say, it would be better to write essays.  Whitman is the greatest exception to this rule that I know of.  He was strikingly able to subsume what he had to say into great poetry.  His take on love and wisdom, while immediately understandable, is quite unique.  How many other poets can one use as a guide to life?  No "mania of owning things," but an aesthetic illustration of the importance of friendship and wisdom.  In the best of his writing, expression and content are one, and are of the highest order.  Love and wisdom, Whitman's main themes, have always been in too short supply.  Isn't his poetry just what we need? The Walt Whitman Series (Thomasdorsett.blogspot.com) 1. Walt Whitman and Equality 2. Walt Whitman and Music 3. My Walt Whitman Moment 4. Five Poems About Death 5. Walt Whitman's Vision