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How Transcendentalism Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Charles w. Chruck, Bryant, Jerry, Jerome Rowland is
0:17
Speaker 1: here with us somehow, some way, and this is stuff
0:20
Speaker 1: you should know. Yeah, transcended to listen men. Were you
0:26
Speaker 1: into Transcendentalism when you were a teenager? Seems about I was, Yeah,
0:31
Speaker 1: in college, mainly as an English major, is when I
0:35
Speaker 1: kind of got into it. Okay. I discovered these guys
0:37
Speaker 1: at age like fourteen and was super into him for
0:42
Speaker 1: a while. Could make headser tails of a lot of
0:44
Speaker 1: the stuff they were talking about, but I just something
0:47
Speaker 1: about it just hit me just right. So I think
0:49
Speaker 1: I caught like the the ethos of it, but not
0:51
Speaker 1: necessarily the intellectual aspect of it. But I was into
0:56
Speaker 1: him big time. They actually um led me away from church.
1:00
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's good. I met the train, I met
1:02
Speaker 1: the Chance and Donallysta. That was it for me in church.
1:05
Speaker 1: I started going to to the woods on Sunday mornings instead. Yeah,
1:09
Speaker 1: I mean, this is one that hits home for me because,
1:11
Speaker 1: as everyone knows, I love being in the woods and
1:13
Speaker 1: I love camping and I love my camp. Um. By
1:16
Speaker 1: the way, we got a bear. Did I see me
1:18
Speaker 1: the picture? No? You go like chained up at your
1:22
Speaker 1: campground or something. No. I have a trail cam set up,
1:27
Speaker 1: which is emotion activated camera that you just strapped to
1:30
Speaker 1: a tree and hunters use them a lot and stuff.
1:33
Speaker 1: But I got one and pointed it towards my like
1:36
Speaker 1: my camp area. Uh. And we've been calling it crow
1:40
Speaker 1: cam because we've gotten four pictures of crows since I
1:43
Speaker 1: set it up. Uh. And every once in a while,
1:46
Speaker 1: I'll get a picture come through at night the next
1:48
Speaker 1: morning and I'll be really excited because like maybe a
1:51
Speaker 1: box or a raccoon, never anything. And the other morning
1:55
Speaker 1: I woke up and it gives a little thumbnail, and
1:57
Speaker 1: I saw a little thumbnail. I saw a large creature,
2:00
Speaker 1: and I freaked out to like rush to the app
2:03
Speaker 1: to unto embig in it. And it's a bear, dude,
2:07
Speaker 1: pretty net a little blackie. I'm gonna texted to you
2:11
Speaker 1: right now, just wandering through the camp and there was
2:14
Speaker 1: something about it that just thrilled me to no end
2:18
Speaker 1: to know that I'm sharing the woods with this squeezy
2:22
Speaker 1: little bear. That's pretty cool. Chunk and He's not gonna
2:26
Speaker 1: attack me. Don't worry people, he is archie. Uh. There's
2:29
Speaker 1: never been a bear fatality in Georgia, and I think
2:32
Speaker 1: only two in the history of the Southeastern United States. Great,
2:35
Speaker 1: that's a cute looks like you could take that bear
2:37
Speaker 1: anyway if you wanted to. Do you see him? Yeah,
2:40
Speaker 1: it's cute bear. Isn't that crazy? I'll looking for a
2:42
Speaker 1: picnic basket, I guess so. Um, But a long way
2:46
Speaker 1: of saying that I love the woods and so Transcendentalum
2:49
Speaker 1: and transcend Dentalism in college is something that kind of
2:52
Speaker 1: hit home. And then for a little while I was
2:55
Speaker 1: kind of like, but wait a minute, is this just
2:59
Speaker 1: a bunch of who lazy people in a bunch of
3:03
Speaker 1: I hate to say, mental masturbation, but like, what do
3:06
Speaker 1: they actually do? But then this made me feel a
3:10
Speaker 1: lot better about it, because the Transcendentalists led to a
3:13
Speaker 1: lot of great progressive reforms. Yeah, totally, Yeah, that's definitely
3:18
Speaker 1: phase two of being into transcendentalism is hating the Transcendentalist
3:22
Speaker 1: and like, I think it's really resenting them for who
3:25
Speaker 1: they were and all that. But this brought me back
3:27
Speaker 1: to it for sure as well. I'm a big time
3:29
Speaker 1: friend of Thorows. Now again, I used to think he
3:33
Speaker 1: was just a complete useless waste who just dropped out
3:36
Speaker 1: and probably lived off his parents money or something like
3:39
Speaker 1: that and did what did his own thing. It was
3:41
Speaker 1: not like that at all. And I think we owe
3:43
Speaker 1: Thorow an episode. Frankly, I think he's a pretty cool dude. Yeah,
3:48
Speaker 1: a lot of myths and legends around Thorow um and
3:51
Speaker 1: real quick before we dive in, I did post that
3:53
Speaker 1: picture on my Instagram at Chuck the podcaster, very nice shout.
3:58
Speaker 1: That was some good social means promotions. All right, So
4:03
Speaker 1: we're talking about the mid eighteen thirties and this idea
4:07
Speaker 1: that these people came forward with very anti establishment ideas
4:13
Speaker 1: where they basically said, uh, everybody has the light of
4:17
Speaker 1: the divine truth, and we should all be self reliant.
4:21
Speaker 1: We should all look within ourselves define that light, and
4:25
Speaker 1: we should be self reliant in anyway, spiritually self reliant
4:28
Speaker 1: or maybe you want to go out into the woods
4:30
Speaker 1: and live and be self reliant on yourself. But basically
4:32
Speaker 1: everyone is entitled to freedom in this country or back
4:37
Speaker 1: then supposedly and still the case supposedly, but it led
4:42
Speaker 1: to a lot of great things later on with these
4:45
Speaker 1: progressive movements, but initially and throughout the sort of the
4:48
Speaker 1: heyday of Transcendentalism, it was just a lot of thought
4:52
Speaker 1: in talking about and writing about this, these thoughts. Yeah,
4:55
Speaker 1: it was a philosophical movement. It was a philosophical movement
4:59
Speaker 1: associated with action and doing things um as much as
5:04
Speaker 1: it was about sitting down and writing things out and
5:08
Speaker 1: figuring out arguments and theories to root these things too.
5:12
Speaker 1: And actually that's where the trans Andelists tripped themselves up
5:14
Speaker 1: is they took something that was very pure and didn't
5:19
Speaker 1: really need any rooting in in in um in theory.
5:23
Speaker 1: It could just be like walking through the woods is
5:26
Speaker 1: good in and of itself. It doesn't need a theory
5:29
Speaker 1: that explains why it's good in and of itself. And
5:32
Speaker 1: so when they did try to do that, they actually
5:34
Speaker 1: kind of shot themselves in the foot because they couldn't
5:36
Speaker 1: do it. And that's one reason why you know, you
5:39
Speaker 1: start to hate the Transcendentalists after you really start liking them,
5:43
Speaker 1: because a lot of it is just kind of WHOEI
5:48
Speaker 1: when they tried to explain it, because it didn't need explaining,
5:51
Speaker 1: I saw somebody describe it that they it didn't need
5:55
Speaker 1: theory anymore than an airplane needs wires to hold it up.
5:59
Speaker 1: And yet they they tried that because I think they
6:01
Speaker 1: wanted to explain it and they wanted to be taken seriously.
6:04
Speaker 1: Emerson definitely considered himself a philosopher. Whether he was or not,
6:08
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people would consider him a philosopher.
6:11
Speaker 1: But when they tried to ground it in philosophy, it
6:13
Speaker 1: kind of got screwed up, like trying to nail jello
6:17
Speaker 1: to the wall or something like that. Uh. It has
6:21
Speaker 1: been called the first sort of distinctive American philosophy, like
6:25
Speaker 1: truly American philosophy, and it was influenced by a lot
6:30
Speaker 1: of things though, um like kind of any movement, and
6:33
Speaker 1: this one starts out with the Puritans who came over,
6:37
Speaker 1: who said that, you know, they were very much individualists,
6:41
Speaker 1: and it's sort of that root of individualism that helped
6:44
Speaker 1: sort of inform the early Transcendentalists. Thoughts, Yeah, the Puritans
6:48
Speaker 1: took I guess they we actually kind of talked a
6:51
Speaker 1: little bit about it that Protestant work ethic. They also
6:53
Speaker 1: brought within the idea of self reliance of of like
6:57
Speaker 1: you know, Um being able to make your own way
6:59
Speaker 1: in the world, and it took it took shape for
7:03
Speaker 1: them in the form of religion, where there was this
7:05
Speaker 1: idea that you know, if you were a good Christian
7:09
Speaker 1: and studied your Bible, you know, religiously, um, you could
7:13
Speaker 1: be as close to God as as if you were
7:16
Speaker 1: you know, some Catholic in in Italy who you know,
7:19
Speaker 1: had to go through a priest and a cardinal and
7:21
Speaker 1: a bishop in the pope to get to God. That
7:24
Speaker 1: that's not how it worked. The individual was able to
7:27
Speaker 1: connect with God as well. And that was, you know,
7:30
Speaker 1: a big difference in puritan Um thought. And that was
7:34
Speaker 1: one of the big things that that grew out of
7:37
Speaker 1: it when they arrived here in America was the idea
7:40
Speaker 1: of self reliance in the individual and and that very
7:44
Speaker 1: much Um influenced the Transcendentalists. Yeah, European Romanticism certainly played
7:51
Speaker 1: a part two they were. That was sort of the
7:53
Speaker 1: first emo movement where feelings, uh, there were feelings mattered, basically,
7:59
Speaker 1: an emotion mattered. It wasn't all about reason and order
8:03
Speaker 1: like it was in the Enlightenment. And things really took
8:06
Speaker 1: a turn after the Paris Peace Treaty of eighteen fifteen,
8:11
Speaker 1: because previous to that, during the American Revolution and the
8:14
Speaker 1: War of eighteen twelve, the Napoleonic Wars, you couldn't really
8:18
Speaker 1: go to America, or I'm sorry, Americans really couldn't go
8:20
Speaker 1: to Europe, and didn't even have a lot of great
8:22
Speaker 1: access to the literature of Europe. But after that Paris
8:26
Speaker 1: Treaty in eighteen fifteen, the travel floodgates opened and a
8:31
Speaker 1: lot of um, sort of scholarly literary types went over
8:35
Speaker 1: to Europe and started studying Gerta and Byron and Shelley
8:40
Speaker 1: and Wordsworth, and it became, um, it was like lighting
8:43
Speaker 1: a fire basically, yeah, which I mean like they missed
8:46
Speaker 1: out on a you know, the beginning of Romanticism, which
8:49
Speaker 1: was a big response to like the French Revolution, which
8:53
Speaker 1: was in a larger way of response to the Enlightenment,
8:56
Speaker 1: because the Enlightenment changed everything. You know, we had a
9:00
Speaker 1: really good episode about that, if I do say so ourselves, um,
9:04
Speaker 1: but it placed an emphasis on reason and rationality and facts.
9:10
Speaker 1: And then the French Revolution came along and the people
9:13
Speaker 1: took control and they weren't able to uphold the ideas
9:16
Speaker 1: or the ideals of the of the um, the enlightenment
9:20
Speaker 1: of things like free speech and you know, freedom of thought,
9:24
Speaker 1: and instead turned into like bloody fascists who killed forty
9:27
Speaker 1: people in a year or two um. And so that
9:31
Speaker 1: that led to this recoiling being repulsed by the idea
9:34
Speaker 1: of just cold rationalism and an adherence to facts, and
9:38
Speaker 1: instead it turned into that romanticism that basically said, you know, imagination, beauty, goodness,
9:47
Speaker 1: these are the important things. These are the true things
9:49
Speaker 1: that are there. Are there the eternal truths of the
9:54
Speaker 1: universe that bring you to godliness. Forget facts. Facts are stupid. Basically, Yeah,
10:00
Speaker 1: I find myself the more we've done the show, become
10:02
Speaker 1: really interested in, like what causes movements to happen, whether
10:09
Speaker 1: it's uh, a philosophical movement or or you know, knows
10:14
Speaker 1: to the grindstone, you know, get out and do something movement.
10:18
Speaker 1: I just think it's really interesting because it's it's about
10:21
Speaker 1: a bunch of like minded people coming together in a
10:23
Speaker 1: very specific time and place, or or it could fall
10:26
Speaker 1: apart very easily. And in the mid eighteen thirties in Boston, Massachusetts,
10:32
Speaker 1: a minister named George Ripley got some people together who
10:36
Speaker 1: were thinking along the same lines as him, who are
10:39
Speaker 1: inspired by these same literary grates of Europe and the Romantics,
10:43
Speaker 1: and UH formed the Transcendental Club and they eventually started
10:48
Speaker 1: publishing a three time annually literary paper called The Dial.
10:55
Speaker 1: I think they had about three hundred subscribers at its peak.
10:58
Speaker 1: It costs three dollars and they published it in four
11:00
Speaker 1: volumes for about four years, and they said poetry and
11:04
Speaker 1: prose and literary and music criticism, and it was, you know,
11:08
Speaker 1: it was a literary magazine like we think about today,
11:10
Speaker 1: but it was happening way back then in Boston. Yeah,
11:13
Speaker 1: and it kind of UM was focused on beauty and
11:16
Speaker 1: imagination UM and transcendental ideals, which was basically that that
11:21
Speaker 1: that if you had imagination, that that was the thing
11:25
Speaker 1: that kind of brought you to UM, to like a
11:28
Speaker 1: communion with the universe or God, the divine, whatever, whatever
11:33
Speaker 1: higher experience you were looking for, it was going to
11:36
Speaker 1: be through imagination. And one of the ways I saw
11:38
Speaker 1: it Puit Chuck was not that they didn't like facts.
11:42
Speaker 1: They were kind of slaves to facts, because the fact was,
11:45
Speaker 1: there's there's badness in the in the world, there's badness
11:48
Speaker 1: in the universe, and they just couldn't account for that that, like,
11:51
Speaker 1: they just couldn't make heads or tails of it um
11:54
Speaker 1: because they were so focused on good. But they they
11:58
Speaker 1: preferred imagination over effects because they considered imagination, the imagination
12:02
Speaker 1: of the individual, to be more powerful than facts. Like
12:07
Speaker 1: facts were that Plato died a couple of thousand years
12:12
Speaker 1: ago and you will never get to meet him because
12:14
Speaker 1: you're separated by time and space. Imagination is that you
12:18
Speaker 1: can go wrestle, have a tickle fight in a meadow
12:21
Speaker 1: with Plato if you want, and that can make you happy.
12:25
Speaker 1: You can go experience that if your imagination is is
12:28
Speaker 1: fine tuned enough. And then doing that that kind of
12:31
Speaker 1: starts to make you question reality, like just how real
12:34
Speaker 1: or unreal was that tickle fight you just had with Plato?
12:37
Speaker 1: And your imagination is what took you to overcome those facts.
12:40
Speaker 1: So to them, society was becoming increasingly industrialized and preoccupied
12:45
Speaker 1: with money and economy and stuff like that, and it
12:48
Speaker 1: was losing its way, it was losing its imagination, and
12:51
Speaker 1: this was a big response to that, and that was
12:53
Speaker 1: a huge ideal of the transcendentalist that it was the
12:57
Speaker 1: imagination of the individual that could make you a happier person,
13:02
Speaker 1: more tuned to beauty and goodness, and that if you
13:04
Speaker 1: were off doing that, you're going to connect more fully
13:07
Speaker 1: with other people. And if enough people did that, then
13:10
Speaker 1: you would have a much better society. That was ultimately
13:13
Speaker 1: the first goal of Transcendentalism, the earliest, um kind of
13:18
Speaker 1: goal of the movement was that. That's right and little
13:21
Speaker 1: known fact, Plato's tickle spot was his thigh inner thigh,
13:27
Speaker 1: upper inner thigh. It was a thigh like a like
13:30
Speaker 1: a horse eating corn. Yep, exactly, there's a birthmark there
13:33
Speaker 1: to guide the way. Even. All right, let's take a break.
13:37
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk a little bit about Walden Pond and
13:40
Speaker 1: Thoraux and whether or not he was who we think
13:42
Speaker 1: he was. Right after this, all right, Henry David Thurreau
14:17
Speaker 1: one of the one of the all stars of the
14:19
Speaker 1: Transcendentalist movement. Enthusiast. He's uh, he was a chin beard.
14:26
Speaker 1: He was one of these guys. He went to Waldon,
14:28
Speaker 1: to Walden to live deliberately, went to the woods to
14:30
Speaker 1: live deliberately, as he said, and built a cottage on
14:34
Speaker 1: Walden Pond near Conquered Mass for a couple of years.
14:39
Speaker 1: And this is one of those where if you have
14:41
Speaker 1: someone who doesn't like Thorow, they will be very quick
14:45
Speaker 1: to point out a lot of things, like, you know,
14:49
Speaker 1: he was only a half a mile from the main road,
14:51
Speaker 1: and he went into town all the time, and he
14:53
Speaker 1: was less than two miles from his main house, and
14:56
Speaker 1: he ate dinner Emerson's all the time, and his mother
14:59
Speaker 1: and his ster would bring him baked goods and donuts
15:01
Speaker 1: every weekend. And those are all true things. So I
15:06
Speaker 1: think it bears saying that over the years, the idea
15:10
Speaker 1: that Thorow was this luddite who just went to live
15:15
Speaker 1: completely by his own resources, all alone in the woods
15:18
Speaker 1: like the Great History Channel uh survival competition show. Uh.
15:25
Speaker 1: And that is not true. And I don't think he
15:27
Speaker 1: ever purported that to be true. He wrote about the
15:30
Speaker 1: interesting aspects of being out there alone and his thoughts
15:32
Speaker 1: and his books, and I think people got that confused
15:35
Speaker 1: and just said, oh, well, that's all he did out there,
15:38
Speaker 1: and he never saw people. He had parties, and there
15:40
Speaker 1: were people everywhere. He walked into town just about every day.
15:44
Speaker 1: That wasn't the whole point of it all was that
15:48
Speaker 1: he was going to go be self reliant and as
15:50
Speaker 1: a survivalist or anti social. He wasn't like turning his
15:53
Speaker 1: back on society now and he liked some technologies too.
15:57
Speaker 1: So throw is misunderstood. And think not because of his
16:01
Speaker 1: own hand and writings. I think because people have romanticized
16:05
Speaker 1: this idea of this like hermit basically, and this is
16:08
Speaker 1: not the case. Yeah, no, I mean the facts are this.
16:10
Speaker 1: He did build himself a one room house on some
16:14
Speaker 1: of Emerson's property right alongside on the shores of Walden
16:17
Speaker 1: pond Um. He spent his time writing UM, reading everything
16:24
Speaker 1: from the Greek philosophers to um religious texts, whatever he
16:30
Speaker 1: could get his hands on UM. And then more than anything,
16:34
Speaker 1: walking in the woods, like spending his time out in
16:36
Speaker 1: nature UM and just enjoying it on its face, like
16:42
Speaker 1: finding the beauty in nature and seeing absolutely everywhere and
16:46
Speaker 1: letting it like increase the his spirit and and lift
16:52
Speaker 1: his spirits. And that that's all he wanted to do
16:55
Speaker 1: in life. And then when he needed money, he would
16:57
Speaker 1: go work as a surveyor or maybe make some pencils
17:01
Speaker 1: in his family's pencil factory. Apparently they made the finest
17:04
Speaker 1: in the country at the time UM. And then he
17:07
Speaker 1: would make that money and then go back and go
17:10
Speaker 1: go live by doing what he wanted to do. It
17:13
Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily to tell people how to live. That's how
17:17
Speaker 1: he wanted to live. And he went and did it.
17:19
Speaker 1: And however you feel about thorow Man, I mean, like
17:24
Speaker 1: just the fact that he did that, how many people
17:27
Speaker 1: do that, you know, and do it not because the
17:30
Speaker 1: CIA's after them or the government's listening in on their
17:33
Speaker 1: affairs or trying to keep them off of the pastor land.
17:36
Speaker 1: If this guy did it for his own purposes. He
17:39
Speaker 1: wanted to like go live a life that he found
17:42
Speaker 1: fulfilling like that, and he went and did it. And
17:44
Speaker 1: it's hats off to anybody who does that. Yeah, And
17:48
Speaker 1: if you're I don't know, if you're maybe a little
17:50
Speaker 1: bit younger as a listener, and you think, well, that
17:54
Speaker 1: didn't sound that radical and there are plenty people who
17:56
Speaker 1: do that kind of thing today, it's true, but that's
17:59
Speaker 1: not how worked in eighteen forty five. Like, if you
18:03
Speaker 1: were a grown, n able bodied man, you like you
18:05
Speaker 1: were expected to have a job and contribute to society
18:09
Speaker 1: and work. You didn't spend time reading and writing and
18:11
Speaker 1: taking walks in the woods for pleasure. It just that's
18:14
Speaker 1: just not how things were back then. So it was
18:16
Speaker 1: a very radical thing back then to do. Um. It
18:19
Speaker 1: was also very radical to say, you know what, I
18:22
Speaker 1: don't want to pay my taxes because you enslave people
18:26
Speaker 1: here in the United States and we're in a very
18:29
Speaker 1: uh awful war against Mexico, and so you know what,
18:32
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna fund this stuff anymore with my what
18:35
Speaker 1: little money I make. So you can stick that in
18:39
Speaker 1: your pipe and smoke at u S government. They came
18:42
Speaker 1: after him, they arrested him, He spent a night in jail.
18:44
Speaker 1: Someone paid off his debt. Even who that was, No,
18:47
Speaker 1: he still didn't he never knew it was a real
18:49
Speaker 1: and anonymous relative, and he was not very happy about
18:52
Speaker 1: that at all, right, because he didn't want to like
18:55
Speaker 1: just have someone pay it. That was the whole point, right, Yeah,
18:57
Speaker 1: he and they forced him out of jail the next
18:59
Speaker 1: day and he was like, no, like, I'm trying, I'm
19:01
Speaker 1: I'm trying to do something here and it didn't work, right.
19:05
Speaker 1: But his very famous essay Civil Disobedience kind of grew
19:08
Speaker 1: from this experience, and he has a really great quote
19:11
Speaker 1: here that kind of hits home to me. Uh in
19:14
Speaker 1: anyone who thinks they might can change things or can't.
19:19
Speaker 1: Let every man make known what kind of government would
19:22
Speaker 1: command his respect, and that will be one step towards
19:25
Speaker 1: obtaining it. Again, just not necessarily a blueprint for uh
19:32
Speaker 1: An action, although there was plenty of action later, but
19:36
Speaker 1: just sort of a thought like something to ponder. Yeah,
19:38
Speaker 1: and on on that poll tax um, I think it
19:41
Speaker 1: was a head tax um, which yeah, and he did.
19:45
Speaker 1: He hadn't paid it for years. Um he was inspired
19:49
Speaker 1: by another transcendentalist, Amos Alcott, Louis and May's father, who
19:53
Speaker 1: was a big Transcendentalist thinker. Um, and he hadn't paid
19:57
Speaker 1: poll taxes for several years because the slave as well.
20:00
Speaker 1: But then with the Mexican American War of I think
20:04
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty six, when um Thureau started organizing protests against
20:09
Speaker 1: it and calling for other people to not pay their text,
20:11
Speaker 1: that's when he was finally arrested, sought out and arrested.
20:15
Speaker 1: Um and I was reading a little bit about that
20:16
Speaker 1: war and why he and others protested against it. It
20:19
Speaker 1: was apparently an extraordinarily unjust and unprovoked war where a
20:25
Speaker 1: lot of American volunteers went down and committed war crimes
20:29
Speaker 1: and atrocities against Mexican civilians for basically basically unprovoked um
20:35
Speaker 1: And there was a lot of reason for people to
20:37
Speaker 1: oppose it, But that didn't mean that there was a
20:40
Speaker 1: lot of people opposing it. It's just that you can
20:43
Speaker 1: really kind of look back historically and and find yourself
20:48
Speaker 1: siding with the people who protested against that war. But
20:51
Speaker 1: at the time it was pretty radical too to protest
20:55
Speaker 1: against It was a fairly popular war until the press
20:57
Speaker 1: started reporting from the front lines and people started finding
21:01
Speaker 1: out what was going on down there. Like the people
21:04
Speaker 1: in America were whipped up into like this anti Mexican
21:07
Speaker 1: fervor at the time, and we invaded Mexico, you know,
21:11
Speaker 1: at the behest of the public. So to stand in
21:13
Speaker 1: the way of that was a it was a very
21:15
Speaker 1: brave thing to do. And that's pretty typical of what
21:17
Speaker 1: Thorow and the Transcendentalists were into. They would look at
21:21
Speaker 1: something and say, this is morally wrong, this is not okay.
21:26
Speaker 1: I'm going to stand up against it. Maybe it'll inspire
21:29
Speaker 1: other people are not to do that, but at the
21:32
Speaker 1: very least I will have done what I think is moral.
21:35
Speaker 1: And I found another quote Chuck from civil disobedience. I
21:39
Speaker 1: thought kind of got that point across really well too.
21:41
Speaker 1: It said that um uh Thorreau believed it is not
21:45
Speaker 1: a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote
21:48
Speaker 1: himself to the eradication of any even the most enormous wrong.
21:52
Speaker 1: He may still properly have other concerns to engage him,
21:55
Speaker 1: but it is his duty at least to wash his
21:57
Speaker 1: hands of it and not give it practically his support.
22:00
Speaker 1: So in that sense, he was like, I'm at the
22:02
Speaker 1: very least not gonna pay taxes to support this. If
22:05
Speaker 1: I I might not be able to keep the U
22:07
Speaker 1: S out of the war, but I'm not going to
22:08
Speaker 1: give you money to go fight that war. I don't
22:12
Speaker 1: want to pay Texas anymore either, you know. I mean,
22:15
Speaker 1: it goes to a lot of fun, savory stuff. So
22:17
Speaker 1: there you go. If only were that easy, maybe some
22:21
Speaker 1: benefactor would pay my fine, right right, But then that's
22:24
Speaker 1: supposed to take you off because that means that they
22:26
Speaker 1: didn't get your point. Now, they'd be fun with me,
22:30
Speaker 1: all right. So I guess we should talk a little
22:32
Speaker 1: bit about some of the activism that sprung from this movement,
22:35
Speaker 1: because all these cool hippie dippie philosophical thoughts and usings
22:39
Speaker 1: are great, but action is what is really interesting to me.
22:44
Speaker 1: And um, that's something like again, that's something that I
22:48
Speaker 1: don't think we talked a lot about in college. It
22:50
Speaker 1: was more just sort of an English class, right, yes,
22:53
Speaker 1: type of thing. They should not just be taught in
22:55
Speaker 1: English class or even just philosophy class, like they should
22:58
Speaker 1: be taught in cystrics in history. Yeah, it's I felt
23:02
Speaker 1: like that that really does them in disservice. And I
23:04
Speaker 1: never put my finger on until you just said that.
23:06
Speaker 1: So thank you, thank you. I'm gonna change the educational system.
23:11
Speaker 1: And that's where they started to The Transcendentalists knew that
23:13
Speaker 1: education was the key. They thought it should be free.
23:17
Speaker 1: They thought anyone should be able to go any race,
23:20
Speaker 1: any creed, that women. It was very radical. A lot
23:24
Speaker 1: of them were teachers, and quite a few of them
23:27
Speaker 1: even founded their own, um like really forward thinking progressive schools,
23:32
Speaker 1: I think, including uh Peabody and Thorough and Bronson Alcott. Yeah, um,
23:41
Speaker 1: I think that was Amos, good old Amos Alcott was
23:45
Speaker 1: that his first name or something. I think Bronson that
23:48
Speaker 1: was his nickname because he was so tough. Hey give
23:51
Speaker 1: me a Bunsen. So, um, yeah, they went after like
23:54
Speaker 1: they identified education as most social movements do, is like
23:58
Speaker 1: a key and and they definitely went after that. But
24:00
Speaker 1: I think also, like you said, it was in part
24:02
Speaker 1: because that was their background. They saw, you know, they
24:05
Speaker 1: had seen firsthand what needed, how how much improving it needed.
24:10
Speaker 1: And one of the things, Chuck, is like what you
24:11
Speaker 1: just described that what they thought the education system would be,
24:16
Speaker 1: you know, pretty closely resembles what we have today. And
24:20
Speaker 1: when you see this stuff and you just take for
24:22
Speaker 1: granted with the trans and dentists for four, it really
24:24
Speaker 1: gets across like how successful they were over the course
24:27
Speaker 1: of a couple of centuries because these were the first
24:30
Speaker 1: people who were agitating for this stuff in America. You know,
24:34
Speaker 1: they were the first ones just to kind of wake
24:36
Speaker 1: up and say, wait, wait, wait, a lot of this
24:39
Speaker 1: stuff is going wrong. This could be better this way,
24:41
Speaker 1: this could be better that way. And they ultimately, far
24:43
Speaker 1: past the times when they died, were successful in that.
24:48
Speaker 1: I think that's a great time for a break. You
24:49
Speaker 1: set us up nicely, Thank you, Thank you. All right,
24:52
Speaker 1: we'll talk about more activism right after this. M So
25:24
Speaker 1: one of the one of the big ones that the
25:26
Speaker 1: Transcendentalists were involved in from the outset was abolition of slavery.
25:32
Speaker 1: They was fervent uh anti slave activists and not just
25:37
Speaker 1: like writing lectures and sermons and letters and um, you know,
25:43
Speaker 1: speaking out against slavery and against is the eighteen thirties,
25:47
Speaker 1: maybe the eighteen forties. This is not like there were
25:50
Speaker 1: a lot of people who are still totally cool with
25:52
Speaker 1: slavery in the United States at the time, and these
25:55
Speaker 1: were some of the first people speaking out about it.
25:57
Speaker 1: But these people also put their money where their mouths
25:59
Speaker 1: were in A lot of including Threaux, who was if
26:02
Speaker 1: if you were a whole home about throw before um
26:05
Speaker 1: was a personally a conductor on the underground railroad. That's right.
26:10
Speaker 1: He got in there, got his hands dirty. A lot
26:13
Speaker 1: of the anti enslavement movement were women of the Transcendentalist movement. Um.
26:19
Speaker 1: One of the rock stars of the Transcendentalist movement was
26:22
Speaker 1: a woman named Margaret Fuller who um she was never
26:26
Speaker 1: apparently super comfortable being sort of tagged as a Transcendentalist.
26:31
Speaker 1: She hung out in that crowd, but she was not religious.
26:35
Speaker 1: She was by all accounts probably agnostic, maybe even atheists,
26:41
Speaker 1: sort of danced on the fringes of the Unitarian Church.
26:43
Speaker 1: But um, religion, it was not a part of her
26:47
Speaker 1: sort of mindset. So that's where she kind of differed
26:49
Speaker 1: some in transcend from the standard transcendentalist. But she was
26:55
Speaker 1: for a little while, I think for two of the
26:57
Speaker 1: three years she was the editor two of the four
26:59
Speaker 1: years the Dial, big friend of Emerson. Um. She wrote
27:05
Speaker 1: a book in eighteen forty five called Woman in the
27:07
Speaker 1: Nineteenth Century, and it was really one of the first
27:10
Speaker 1: sort of proto feminists Tombs and Um. She was way
27:16
Speaker 1: ahead of her time. She went to women's prisons to
27:19
Speaker 1: interview them. She was a literary critic and an editor
27:22
Speaker 1: and a writer, and advocated for women to have not
27:26
Speaker 1: just jobs, but like any job. She's like, go out
27:28
Speaker 1: and be a ship captain if you want to. Um.
27:30
Speaker 1: Really really forward thinking woman was Margaret Fuller. Yeah. She
27:34
Speaker 1: started i think at age twenty nine the these things
27:37
Speaker 1: called the Conversations, which was a series of discussions and
27:40
Speaker 1: talks that were super feminist, which was again really radical
27:45
Speaker 1: at the time because we're talking the eighteen thirties. And Um.
27:48
Speaker 1: She she like the Row. She actually died young. She
27:50
Speaker 1: died at age forty, and so we remember Margaret. Yes,
27:55
Speaker 1: it was astounding. So Margaret Fuller went to Italy to
27:59
Speaker 1: become part of the Italian revolution. Right, this is how
28:02
Speaker 1: she spent her last couple of years. The revolution fell.
28:05
Speaker 1: It wasn't successful, um, but she fell in love with
28:08
Speaker 1: a younger revolutionary, had a child, and they sailed back
28:11
Speaker 1: to America. Right. And then, yes, almost almost all the
28:17
Speaker 1: way back to America, they had a shipwreck I think
28:20
Speaker 1: about fifty yards from shore and died. Um. Some people
28:26
Speaker 1: weren't even like. Apparently the rescue attempt, even though they
28:29
Speaker 1: were so close to shore, was just um, not strong.
28:33
Speaker 1: I don't know why. I'd like to look a little
28:35
Speaker 1: bit more into it, but apparently Thureau grabbed Emmerson and
28:37
Speaker 1: they were like, let's you know, I don't know how
28:40
Speaker 1: much longer it was after the shipwreck, but let's go
28:42
Speaker 1: try and find her at least body. And I'm not
28:46
Speaker 1: sure if they ever recovered her, but very tragic de Yeah, she,
28:49
Speaker 1: her her son, and her husband all drowned. Um, I know.
28:53
Speaker 1: And and again she was aged forty. So it's pretty
28:56
Speaker 1: astounding and remarkable that we remember her because her productive
29:00
Speaker 1: years were just an eleven year period from age twenty
29:03
Speaker 1: nine to age forty. But it just goes to show
29:06
Speaker 1: you what a powerhouse she was. I mean she went
29:08
Speaker 1: and fought in the Italian Revolution. That's it. That's just
29:11
Speaker 1: super b. A yeah, And it seemed like any job
29:17
Speaker 1: that she had, like, she just did great. Like Emerson,
29:21
Speaker 1: when The Dial was founded, he that was the first
29:25
Speaker 1: person he thought of. He was like, well, I need
29:26
Speaker 1: to go get Fuller on this because she's a crack
29:29
Speaker 1: writer and editor. And uh, I think she was supposed
29:32
Speaker 1: to make like two dollars a year doing that, but
29:34
Speaker 1: never got paid a dime. Um. The Dial, like you know,
29:38
Speaker 1: was not a big money maker. I don't think they
29:39
Speaker 1: even paid the contributor. So it didn't last that long,
29:42
Speaker 1: but very forward thinking literary magazine and Margaret Fuller was
29:46
Speaker 1: a big reason why it happened to begin with. UM.
29:50
Speaker 1: So so obviously feminism and women suffrage and equal rights
29:54
Speaker 1: for women UM were huge parts of the Transcendental movement,
29:59
Speaker 1: as was abolition UM. And I looked to see like
30:04
Speaker 1: how Transcendentalism ended UM, and apparently it was. It was
30:09
Speaker 1: like a um No, it was like a sparkler, like
30:14
Speaker 1: it burned really bright for a very short amount of time.
30:18
Speaker 1: So like the whole transcendel movement lasted maybe to the
30:21
Speaker 1: eighteen fifties. One of the big things that that that
30:24
Speaker 1: took it down was, you know, Margaret Fuller and Henry
30:27
Speaker 1: David Threau too, of the really big central figures of
30:30
Speaker 1: the whole thing died fairly young. Th Road died of
30:33
Speaker 1: tuberculosis in his early forties. Um uh. Emerson remained, but
30:39
Speaker 1: um again, there was a there was a big problem
30:42
Speaker 1: in like getting across what the Transcendentalists were all about,
30:46
Speaker 1: because they would get tripped up in theory and all
30:48
Speaker 1: that stuff. And then also I saw that the the
30:52
Speaker 1: scientific method started to gain ground around the eighteen fifties
30:56
Speaker 1: eighteen sixties, and people turned their attention back to logic
31:01
Speaker 1: and reason and the Enlightenment ideals, um, which kind of
31:05
Speaker 1: took them away from that romanticism of the transidentalysts. Yeah,
31:10
Speaker 1: and you know, I think my take away from this
31:13
Speaker 1: now re studying it all these years later, is like
31:16
Speaker 1: it it's a philosophy that doesn't have to go away completely.
31:21
Speaker 1: And I think a lot of people would argue that
31:23
Speaker 1: it's still very robust and in a lot of ways
31:26
Speaker 1: is just sort of morphed and taken on different forms.
31:28
Speaker 1: But you can have transcendentalist feelings and philosophies and also
31:32
Speaker 1: believe in science, and I don't think those things have
31:36
Speaker 1: to be separated out. So while it did burn bright
31:39
Speaker 1: and die out, I think clearly the kids of the nineties,
31:44
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies were inspired by these people. Uh, and
31:48
Speaker 1: people like you and I and college kids still today
31:51
Speaker 1: that read this stuff for the first time. I think
31:54
Speaker 1: everyone can take a little bit of that with them
31:56
Speaker 1: if they want or not. But it's certainly not like outdated.
31:59
Speaker 1: I don't think, oh it's not, no, for sure. I
32:01
Speaker 1: think that spirit still continues on today for sure. And
32:05
Speaker 1: people anybody who cares about social justice, environmental justice, um,
32:09
Speaker 1: those are all very much transcendental ideals. And anybody who
32:12
Speaker 1: like stops and you know, appreciates, you know, the way
32:18
Speaker 1: sunlight is filtering on a flower or something like that.
32:20
Speaker 1: You're being a transcendentalist right there. It's really easy to
32:24
Speaker 1: over over explain. It's really easy to to um also
32:28
Speaker 1: just kind of be whatever that transcendentalist ideal was, but
32:31
Speaker 1: that that was it in nutshell, just appreciating the beauty
32:35
Speaker 1: in the world so much that you basically dedicate your
32:37
Speaker 1: life too to appreciating it and not taking it for grained,
32:41
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, And every time I go to the
32:44
Speaker 1: family camp and I have that cooler full of beer
32:47
Speaker 1: and my mini bike and my solar power lighting up
32:51
Speaker 1: those beautiful string lights through the woods, and I got
32:56
Speaker 1: my bluetooth speaker, playing some fleet Foxes and burning that
33:00
Speaker 1: fire from that firewood that was cut by the nice
33:02
Speaker 1: gentleman who delivers it down there and stacks it for me.
33:05
Speaker 1: I really find myself at one with nature. Very nice.
33:09
Speaker 1: You're a transfer dentalist, cut and dried like camping. Let's
33:14
Speaker 1: just leave it at that. I like glamping. Yeah, it's
33:19
Speaker 1: it's almost glamping. Yeah, it sounds like it. You have
33:22
Speaker 1: me a bluetooth. You're still sleeping in a tent on
33:25
Speaker 1: the ground though. That's fine, that's fine. Um, you got
33:29
Speaker 1: anything else? I got nothing else. So look for a
33:32
Speaker 1: thorough episode someday, and in the meantime, go out and
33:35
Speaker 1: appreciate the beauty in the world. And since I said
33:37
Speaker 1: appreciate the beauty in the world, it's time for listener mail.
33:43
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this chickens an ancient rome. Remember we
33:47
Speaker 1: talked about that, which one was that that there weren't
33:51
Speaker 1: chickens anycient superstition, ancient superstitions, right, So this is and
33:55
Speaker 1: we heard from a few people about this, people that
33:57
Speaker 1: know a lot more about ancient room than we do.
33:59
Speaker 1: Romans from Mike h Yeah, exactly, Mike Traina. Hey, guys,
34:04
Speaker 1: my wife Ketura is a big fan of your podcast,
34:08
Speaker 1: and she was listening earlier today and asked me about this.
34:10
Speaker 1: My degrees are both in Greek and Latin language and culture.
34:13
Speaker 1: Chickens were relatively rare in ancient Rome, although they did exist.
34:18
Speaker 1: Chicken was a delicacy that only aristocrats would eat, and
34:21
Speaker 1: even then only on rare occasions. The peasantry would rarely
34:24
Speaker 1: eat meat at all, except on festival days. Chickens were, however,
34:27
Speaker 1: prize for their use in divination, like we talked about
34:31
Speaker 1: with the wishbones, and we're often carried with armies into
34:35
Speaker 1: battle so that the augurs could attempt to determine the
34:39
Speaker 1: auspices of a coming conflict. I recommend the book Handbook
34:43
Speaker 1: to Life in Ancient Rome Atkins and Atkins. The edition
34:47
Speaker 1: I have is Oxford University Press has all sorts of
34:51
Speaker 1: great info about daily life as an average Roman citizen.
34:54
Speaker 1: That sounds like a cool book. It does. I can't read,
34:57
Speaker 1: wait to read the chapter on chickens. Yeah, that's from Mike.
35:01
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Mike. That's exactly what I was hoping
35:04
Speaker 1: to hear, or the kind of thing I was hoping
35:06
Speaker 1: to hear when I asked for your help, So thank
35:09
Speaker 1: you for hearing me. Um. I also blasted you with
35:12
Speaker 1: the E S P plea for requests, so maybe that's
35:15
Speaker 1: where you really were prompted to respond. Who knows. I
35:18
Speaker 1: wonder if that's an audiobook. I'd like to listen to
35:20
Speaker 1: that one. What's it called Chickens in Rome? Yeah, Mike, No,
35:25
Speaker 1: it's Handbook to Life in Ancient Room. Very nice. Uh well,
35:30
Speaker 1: and it was Mike Wup wrote in right, that was Mike. Yeah. Well,
35:33
Speaker 1: thanks a lot to Mike, and thank you to your
35:35
Speaker 1: s O for telling you that we needed your help.
35:38
Speaker 1: And thank you to everybody out there listening in podcast land.
35:41
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with this, you
35:43
Speaker 1: can send us an email, wrap it up spending on
35:45
Speaker 1: the bottom Roman style and send it off to stuff
35:49
Speaker 1: Podcast at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know
35:55
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