The Saunterer

Albert Einstein’s ideals that gave him courage

    Albert Einstein’s ideals were the three highest ones:

I have never looked upon ease and happiness as ends in themselves - such an ethical basis I call the ideal of a pigsty. . . . The ideals which have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 226.)

    For a brief biography of Albert Einstein, click here.

Douglas R. Hofstadter on the human race

    Are we the greatest of all the species? We are, if we choose the measure of greatness to be self-awareness, the recognition of “I.” About this measure, Douglas R. Hofstadter has written a book, I Am a Strange Loop. Uriah Kriegel reviews it in the April 27, 2007, Times Literary Supplement. Here is a portion of his review:

Different systems may exhibit different degrees of self-referential sophistication, and for Hofstadter, the more sophisticated a system’s self-referential capabilities, the more soulful it is - the more robust its selfhood, its existence as an “I”. A snail probably has no conception of itself whatever, and to that extent is soulless. A dog has some conception: it knows that its paw is its own. But the dog’s self-conception is very limited. For example, studies show that dogs do not recognize themselves in the mirror. In these studies, a mark is painted on the animal’s forehead, and when a mirror is brought in, it is observed whether the animal makes any attempt to wipe the mark off. The number of animals who pass the “mark test”, as psychologists call it, is surprisingly small: the chimpanzee, the orang-utan, the bottlenose dolphin, and the Asian elephant are the only ones on record. Even gorillas, baboons and African elephants fail, as do humans younger than eighteen months.

    So, the greatest of all the species is the one that is vain, that has bred a glut of its kind, that is destroying wild nature with development and with global warming, that is so full of itself that it wants a place for its soul in heaven, and that has many members that enjoy killing the species that are not self-aware.
    If you have a pet, an interesting thought experiment is to give it the self-awareness trait of humans. How far do you have to go until you could not stand your pet? What would it have to do to wear out its welcome? What if it lived to go shopping? What if it primmed before a mirror? What if it had to have a new car every three years? What if it wanted to start a church to save its soul?
    In my ranking of species greatness, I have humans down from the top, below many of the species that are not aware of themselves - certainly dogs, cats, sheep, cows, pigs, rabbits, bees, sparrows, ducks, dragonflies, and the like.
    Why do we like our pets? Possibly because they, so self-unaware, are the nice opposites to people.
    For the home page of Uriah Kriegel, click here. For the home page of Douglas R. Hofstadter, click here.

John Muir knew the difference between the human race and people

    John Muir naturalists are those with John Muir’s beliefs, as extracted from his collected writings and applied to today. I have spoken for them in The Life of the Creative Spirit, p.154:

John Muir naturalists place the human race above people. It is a club; we are its temporary members. One short-sighted lot of us, leaving fate to market forces and sales pressure, chances eroding nature’s biological and spiritual integrity, past repair. If the word responsibility has any meaning, each generation must be on vigilant guard duty, fighting to keep the remaining wild places safe on its watch.

    For a brief biography of John Muir, click here.

Henry David Thoreau on how to improve one’s morale

    Alcohol and drugs cannot improve one’s morale. Wilderness can! Hear Henry David Thoreau:

My spirits infallibly rise in proportion to the outward dreariness. Give me the ocean, the desert, or the wilderness! In the desert, pure air and solitude compensate for want of moisture and fertility. The traveler Burton says of it: “Your morale improves; you become frank and cordial, hospitable and single-minded. . . . In the desert, spirituous liquors excite only disgust. There is a keen enjoyment in a mere animal existence.” They who have been traveling long on the steppes of Tartary say, “On re-entering cultivated lands, the agitation, perplexity, and turmoil of civilization oppressed and suffocated us; the air seemed to fail us, and we felt every moment as if about to die of asphyxia." (Quoted from Henry David Thoreau’s essay, “Walking.”)

    To read “Walking,” click here. For a brief biography of Henry David Thoreau, click here.

Thomas Merton’s way of judging one’s job

    A job should test your abilities, for only that will grow you. Thomas Merton says it better:

Who is willing to be satisfied with a job that expresses all his limitations? (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 298.)

    For a brief biography of Thomas Merton, click here.

Albert Schweitzer on reverence for life

    Why treat animals kindly? It is necessary for creating an ethical civilization. Albert Schweitzer explains:

A complete ethics . . . requires kindness and mercy toward all life, for any living creature can suffer. Kindness knows no limits. It is boundless. Only a profound and complete ethics is able to create an ethical civilization. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 324.)

    For a brief biography of Albert Schweitzer, click here.

Frank Lloyd Wright on what freedom is

    Of the freedom Frank Lloyd Wright had foremost in mind, he wrote:

Escape is not freedom. The only freedom we have a right to ask is the freedom to seek - to be - to believe - and to love the beautiful as our souls conceive it, perceive it or as we can feel it. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 224.)
    For a brief biography of Frank Lloyd Wright, click here.

Jacques Maritain on nature’s role in artistic creation

    Jacques Maritain views the artist as nature’s pupil:

Artistic creation does not copy God’s creation, but continues it. And even as the trace and image of God appear in His creatures, so the human character is impressed upon the work of art, the full, sensitive and spiritual character not of the hands only but of the whole soul. Before the work of art passes by a transitive action from art into matter, the conception of art must itself have taken place within the soul by an immanent and vital action. . . .
    If the artist studies and cherishes nature as much as and much more than the works of the masters, it is not to copy nature, but to base himself upon nature, and because it is not enough for him to be a pupil of the masters: he must be God’s pupil, for God knows the rules governing the making of works of beauty. Nature concerns the artist essentially, simply because it is a derivation from the divine art in things, ratio artis divinae indita rebus. The artist, whether he knows it or not, is consulting God when he looks at things. . . . (From Art and Scholasticism, Jacques Maritain, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930, p. 49)

    For a brief biography of Jacques Maritain, click here.

Brenda Ueland on how strong criticism can murder talent

    The message of The Saunterer’s last post (quoting Luis Leal): be frank in criticizing government. The message of this post: be mild in criticizing individuals, especially writers, artists, and students. Hear Brenda Ueland:

[Strong criticism] is a murderer of talent. And because the most modest and sensitive people are the most talented, having the most imagination and sympathy, these are the very first ones to get killed off. It is the brutal egotists that survive. (Quoted from If You Want to Write, by Brenda Ueland, 1938.)

        For a brief biography of Brenda Ueland, click here.

Luis Leal on how critics are necessary to maintain freedom

    Without the freedom to criticize government, democracy would be impossible. Listen to Luis Leal:

Without general criticism, democracy could not survive; or rather, without the liberty to criticize, democracy would be impossible. In a dictatorship, of the Right or the Left, the absence of criticism is essential for the dictator to remain in power. Without criticism, progress could not be made in any intellectual fields such as scientific endeavors, higher education, and even the arts and literature. To maintain a democracy, critics must remain free to express their opinions. Censorship is anti-democratic. (Quoted from Conversations with Ilan Stavans, by Ilan Stavans, The University of Arizona Press, 2005)

        For a brief biography of Luis Leal, click here. For a brief biography of Ilan Stavans, click here.