Whim: A Manifesto

The name of this blog comes from a line in the essay, “Self-Reliance,” Emerson’s compelling assertion of individual value and judgment.  He wanted to write “Whim” over the doorway, inviting a wide, various and generous stream of insights and impulses, musings and music.  His door would be open to the world, to the truths of the world and to their contradictions; to any and all germs of thought that might move or inspire him.  But it was, importantly, his door they would come through; he would make himself that open door; he would be true to himself and his own vision, no one else’s.  He would master himself by utterly freeing his mind.

And he would not judge or evaluate or analyze his musings, at least not too deeply.  Modern management theory warns that you must never judge during brainstorming: it hampers creativity.  And you can’t be true to your self if you worry about authority, tradition or social approval.  One can be great only if one is true to one’s unique vision:

Shakespeare will never be made by the study of Shakespeare. Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from all these.

It is authority and fear of disapproval that sap our moral and social courage, that make us conform and constrict ourselves.  Judgment is a trap:

On my saying, “What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within?” my friend suggested, “But these impulses may be from below, not from above.” I replied, “They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil.” No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature.

But this should make us wary: Does the world really need more living from the Devil? Emerson is so over-eager to discard what he sees as the appalling conformity, hypocrisy and sterility of authority that he thoughtlessly discards the notion of judgment itself.  This is classic overreaction.  It is the thinking that says, “If cold offends us, then the solution must lie exclusively in hot.”  Emerson represents the culmination and philosophical extremity of the modern movement of individual emancipation from all forms of external coercion.  In the old world everyone respected tradition; the new world was born when individuals began to judge tradition against independent standards: universal reason, natural law, humanitarian concern, human nature, individual desire.  But with Emerson we see objective standards giving way to purely subjective ones.  But, as the Critical Theorists, such as Horkheimer and Adorno, have written, basing values purely upon subjective desires leads directly to relativism and nihilism.  That is, if there are no moral claims upon my impulses then I become either part of the machine – a soulless collaborator – or a manipulator of the machine for my own selfish ends – a rentier, a commissar, a dictator.  Why not cash in?

So Emerson’s friend was right that one’s instincts must themselves be independently judged, but he was wrong that tradition or authority must be the judge.  We need not fall back upon false, simple-minded or black-and-white value judgments just because we can’t avoid value judgments themselves. We must be free of pieties and sureties but not of responsibility.  Can anyone claim that none of their impulses come from the Devil (figuratively speaking)?  But, equally, can anyone be happy without heeding their impulses?  To be fully human we must hear our whims without blindly trusting them.  We must know our own shadow and our own light, and we must be able to tell the difference.

So, in the spirit of Emerson’s welcome and even of his rebellion, though not his self-absorption, I desist and allow the stream of whim to flow, in the hope that things worth reading, things interesting and coherent and relevant may in their turn be divulged, that, at last, at the end, idle whim will offer some small measure of comfort, fun, insight and truth.