Transcendentalism and Baseball 6

For Hawthorne, evil was a dominate reality in life and the fall of man from grace to sin was for him observable in the daily actions of humans. He got to know  Emerson when he lived in Concord but he made a pointed effort not to proceed along the same  paths that Emerson was following. Transcendentalists like Emerson believed there was no fall of man. They often express a spiritual optimism by their belief in a possible expansive human freedom and independence that Christian thinkers would have judged to have been possible only before the fall of Adam and Eve and the arrival of original sin. A kind of Emersonian optimism about the fall, or rather the lack of a fall, also inhabits the orthodox baseball fan. There must be a parallel with the fall of man in the baseball drama or else the cycle of events that follow batting do not parallel in a true aesthetic pattern the regular development of Christian experience. This means that  every successful hit in a game (except a home run) is parallel to a fall from grace. Clearly for most baseball players and most baseball fans this is heresy. They follow the orthodox view that a hit is a positive success  whereas in reality it is a fall to a lesser state that happens over and over again before our eyes in every ball game. A batter who reaches base loses power. He transforms whatever form of being he has as a batter to a form of being as a base runner that diminishes his being. He transforms himself from one level of being to a lower level of being.  A batter has the potential to run and when he hits the ball into fair territory he transforms himself to a runner but loses his previous state of being because he can no longer hit. He is no longer a hitter who can also run but a runner who can no longer hit. He condemns himself by striking the ball to being only a runner and his sudden loss of a primal wholeness is a fall to a new reduced state of being. He can not regain the state he has just lost so the only redemption possible is to try to negate what he has become. Yet for the optimistic orthodox baseball fan there is no parallel to some fall from grace in baseball. Even though a batter fails 70 percent of the time, everything is positive. Every batter will get a new chance to bat. Every batter eventually gets on base and even though many more base runners fail to score than succeed, for the optimistic fan everything is nonetheless positive. Arriving at a base does not in any way diminish a player. Like most Transcendentalists, for most Americans and most baseball fans there is no fall and no original sin either in life or in baseball.

Daniel McNeill

Read the complete essay, Transcendentalism and Baseball, at the website of The United States of the World at: www.usoftheworld.com/culture

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Transcendentalism and Baseball 5

William Ellery Channing, a unitarian minister whose thoughts influenced Emerson, taught that God should be imitated by humans to raise themselves to new heights of human and spiritual experience. In the past, religion forced men to worship God and to humble themselves. Channing argued that God’s entrance into human history had created divinity in man and man should strive through elevated behavior to act divinely as God, his divine father, acts. Emerson taught that the imitation of any man was a form of suicide and that acting as God acts meant that a man must be completely free spiritually. He believed that you find your true life only by relying on yourself alone. He gave up his life as a consecrated minister. He left his base. He had the courage to face the perils of existence on his own. Saint Augustine believed the opposite. For him, self-reliance was not Christian. He put the whole meaning of Christianity in one sentence: Et hoc erat totum: nolle quod volebam et velle quod volebas. “And this was all: to not will what I wanted and to will what you (meaning God) wanted.” Emerson would have put the nolle where the velle was and put the velle where the nolle had been so it read: Et hoc erat totum: velle quod volebam et nolle quod volebas. “And this was all: to will what I wanted and not to will what you (God) wanted.” Emerson believed that holiness was natural and that it could be reached  by experience that was genuinely individualistic. Self-reliance. It was the motto of Transcendentalists and baseball players.

Daniel McNeill

Read the complete essay, Transcendentalism and Baseball, at the website of The United States of the World at: www.usoftheworld.com/culture

Read a complete novel by Daniel McNeill at: www.usoftheworld.com/fiction

Transcendentalism and Baseball 4

Baseball players also test experience to try to find something genuine. Hitting the ball turns out to be a deception that leads only to passivity at one of the bases. Touching a base for safety is a kind of death. A lead off  base is life but it is life with danger because nine enemy players try to force a runner back to his base and block his advancement. The enemy players all want to eliminate a base runner, to put him out. For a player to swing his arms furiously and feel his legs pumping up and down as he runs at top speed towards a new base or towards the plate is real life. The only genuine being of a base runner is base running. The bases threaten to make the base runner accept the falsity of attaching himself to a base rather than running along the course of the bases and existing truly. Evil is borrowed being. It is non-being posing as being. The base runner must not borrow his being by touching a base. Rather than posing as being by holding a foot against a base, he must create his being by leading off base. He has faith that his true being is not identical with his present existence on the bases. He must not let himself become the same as this new existence. Transcendentalists also wanted nothing to do with an existence rooted in the traditional Christian experiences offered them by their Protestant background. They were certain another superior and more genuine existence was possible. If it meant adopting a spiritual way of life that was not Christian, then so be it. Get rid of everything that is not real life. Don’t remain in contact with anything that  prevents you from feeling what is genuine. Leave your base. Try to find your true home.

Daniel McNeill

Read the complete essay, Transcendentalism and Baseball, at the website of The United States of the World at: www.usoftheworld.com/culture

Transcendentalism and Baseball 3

Is it not natural for a people who have rid themselves of rule by a European nation to also rid themselves of a European religion? Some writers of the transcendentalist period in the early 19th century like Nathaniel Hawthorne remained Christians but even they sought a genuine new spirituality that the old Catholic and Protestant practices could no longer provide. They all sensed that Christianity fit the past but not their time. However none of them escaped to new spiritual experiences without the key elements of Christian experience remaining in their minds since they all knew the main themes in the bible. Emerson was a consecrated minister before he renounced his ministry. Hawthorne observed in Rome at Saint Peter's Catholics going to confession and confessed that he would have practiced it if he could have believed it would allow him a genuine experience. In his last novel, The Marble Fawn. his American hero and heroine search the artistic and religious remains in Italy for genuine uplifting spiritual experiences. They find little in the Italian Christianity of their time, the 1850s, that is genuine and in their two European friends, Miriam and Donatello, they brush up against genuine evil.

Daniel McNeill

Read the complete essay, Transcendentalism and Baseball, at the website of The United States of the World at: www,usoftheworld.com/culture

Transcendentalism and Baseball 2

Baseball is a game invented by nineteenth-century Protestants and the drama relates to Transcendentalism because Transcendentalists struggled to free themselves from traditional Protestant Christianity. Baseball players struggle to free themselves from the predicaments they face in a game that parallel the basic drama of Christian experience.They face on the base paths a representation of life prescribed for them in a form that they struggle to escape. Transcendentalists also tried to escape from an unwanted form of life. In the case of baseball players, the life they oppose is expressed in a cycle of events parallel to Christianity that they pass through against their will and transcend by scoring a run. For transcendentalists, it is Christianity itself that they transcend.

Daniel McNeill

Read the complete essay, Transcendentalism and Baseball, at the website of The United States of the World at: www.usoftheworld.com/culture

Transcendentalism and Baseball 1

By the time of the Civil War, baseball arrived on the scene in America with events in its drama that parallel all the major themes of the Christian religion: a primary state of innocence, the batter setting himself at the plate; a temptation, the offering of the ball by the pitcher; a fall, the self-condemnation by hitting the ball to the diminished role of a base runner; sin, the passive touching of a base; faith, running the bases or taking a daring lead off base; grace, a sudden unmerited aid that  leads to advancement on the bases or scoring a run; and the final redemption of reaching the place at home plate where the player was at the beginning. The game even expresses also a parallel to the idea of predestination in Calvinism. The batter who hits a home run is ipso facto predestined to be saved. He is the exception. He hits the ball so well that his salvation is assured prior to his birth on the bases.

Daniel McNeill

Read the complete essay, Transcendentalism and Baseball, at the website of The United States of the World at: www.usoftheworld.com/culture

Americans Must Stay Americans

One quick thing about immigrants and immigration. We Americans are protesting forcibly against President Trump and for immigrants. People all over the world support our protests. Trump should not discriminate against the race or religion of anyone who wants to enter America. But what about American immigration to Mexico or Canada? Mexicans march through their streets opposing Trump’s anti-Mexican policies and the Prime Minister of Canada has said that Canada is open to new immigrants. Does that mean that Mexico or Canada is willing to accept American immigrants? How many thousands of American immigrants would France and Germany allow? Asians are coming in vast numbers to America but are we Americans welcome in Asia? How about all the poor young African-Americans living on the dangerous streets of Chicago? Would they be welcome in Saudi Arabia, New Zealand or the United Kingdom? I don’t think so. We are talking about the free passage of foreigners into the United States but not the reverse. No one wants Americans to live anywhere but in America. America is great but it should stay in America. It is a terrible injustice to exclude foreigners who want to become Americans but Americans must stay Americans. Period.

Daniel McNeill

Visit the website of The United States of the World at: www.usoftheworld.com

We Can Come Back Like Brady Came Back

We Americans can come back like Tom Brady because we have also like he had a well organized team behind us superior to any other team in the world.  An army can not be defeated if it holds together and remains well organized even after losing battles. Brady had a well disciplined and well prepared team behind him still confident in its abilities and still willing to fight with all its strength. No political organization anywhere in the world is as subtle and as intelligently structured as our American political system. You would think we Americans would be forever jumping up and shouting to the world that we are not a state but an organization of states and that we are not one sovereign state as most of humanity imagines. We are instead to our immense glory 51 governments, state and federal, who all have enough sovereignty to act democratically according to their interests and in proportion to the amount of power assigned to them by our Constitution, but no one government is completely sovereign. Let’s start really fighting to save the world! We are down now and well behind our best efforts because we elected Donald Trump. But we can come back! We have a well organized political system that is holding together, fighting Trump’s dictates with our political powers guaranteed by the Constitution, and ready to fight and win against the odds. Let’s have an unbelievable comeback in America as in our Super Bowl! No one in Washington except our representatives in Congress have the power to admit new states to our union. If Congress passes a bill admitting a new state, President Trump can veto it. But why would he? Why would he or any American not wish to live in a union of 55 states, 65 states, 100 states? Why would President Trump vero bills from Congress admitting new states that would make him not just President of the United States but President of the United States of the World? Donald Trump is for the power of Americans. By Congress admitting new states, he can gain more power for himself, more power for Americans, and more power for all the citizens of states anywhere who see the advantages and the glory of uniting with our American states. President Trump is a friend of Tom Brady. Tom showed him that with the right team behind a leader, he can come back no matter how far he is behind. We Americans have such a team. Let’s start shouting to our politicians in the Congress in Washington to use it as heroically as Brady used his.

Daniel McNeill

Read more of Daniel McNeill’s writings at the website of The United States of the World at: www.usoftheworld.com

History Punches Washington in the Face

Hegel’s dialectic at work in history never lies: any great movement in history organized for some long-term end will call up from history an opposite movement designed to destroy it. This antithesis will fail but then combine with the first movement to form a third movement, a synthesis, that will continue the march of history towards some new end unforeseen by either of the first two movements. Washington’s power that has been growing since the Second World War and has been exerting itself all over the world for 70 years is now getting an hegelian punch in the face. Trump is now seizing the enormous political power that history granted Washington and is trying to use it for a totally new historical end, American nationalism. Trump and his ego and America and its ego have now an end that can only be for the immediate future destructive, themselves. The first movement, the thesis, was not nationalistic so the second movement of the dialectic, the antithesis, can only oppose it with nationalism. Making America great again by trying to become like all the many other ego-driven national political bodies screaming to the heavens that  there exists some divine political law somewhere demanding that they must exist isolated and only for themselves -- this crazy non-existing law will fail to make America what it can never be and also be itself, a nation. So where is the synthesis of the conflict that will result from the thesis and the antithesis? If it is genuine it must contain something from the thesis and therefore still be for some kind of world unification. It must also contain some element that will provide Americans with the certain identity that they live in a great union of states that is not a nation. For Washington to unify the world after Trump it must find a way to do it legitimately without all the back-room secret manipulations of the last 70 years that were never free despite good motives from economic greed and brute force. Trump will  use crude methods until he is opposed when his nationalism goes too far. Then history will give Washington, still extremely powerful, a new chance. It will be able to preserve its power and use it  worldwide only if it pulls Article IV, Section 3 out of its Constitution and starts using it. Section 3 says that the Congress has the power to admit new states to its union. Washington will open its eyes and see finally with something near divine clarity that it can unify the world peacefully and legitimately by continuing to add new states to its union. Just 5 or 10 new states admitted to the American union will abort forever the birth of a Trump-like America-first nationalism and make the Washington government finally the central government of the United States of the World. That is why history and its dialectic are now punching Washington in the face. It wants it to get up from the floor after a beating by Trump and be what history wants it to be, a light to the world, a legitimate champion of peace and economic development and democracy for every state everywhere. Only God knows where history is going but men as intelligent as Hegel can at least see the paths it must follow to get there.

Daniel McNeill

Read "The United States of the World" a complete book of 12 essays on the movement within American history towards changing the central government in Washington to the central government of a worldwide union of states at: usoftheworld.com/history

Read other writings about worldwide unity at the United States of the World website: usoftheworld.com

Universal Human Rights For Americans Only

The debacle American political life is now passing through has a momentum to it that must lead to serious changes worldwide that no one can control. However, even as we watch its confused spreading, we should try to fit it rationally into its place in American history. Lincoln was the first Trump. He manipulated American history by a war among the union’s states that turned him into a godlike figure because even at this late date historians have not been allowed by public pressure to state in truth what he did. Wilson was the first president to understand that the Washington government had to operate for the worldwide good of humanity. He tried to unify the world’s states after the First World War but Americans then as now cared nothing for the security of the world and refused to follow their president on his noble path. President Roosevelt did nothing less by fighting a war worldwide against fascism than destroy the European colonial empires and people the world instead with free independent states. Next, because the old and new states worldwide were ripe for capitalist profits, the American government, military and big corporations finally decided that, yes, America should operate worldwide. For 70 years the government in Washington hid its designs for worldwide capitalistic domination from Americans explaining its actions by a fight against communism and then against terrorism. American foreign policy after Lincoln and up to Obama has been a magnificent success erected over failure after failure, political and military blunder after blunder, that did produce the financial and military unity worldwide that is now crumbling. Enter Donald Trump. He has decided that it is in the interest of Americans to destroy the imperfect worldwide unity that Washington has worked at now for two generations and that the world depends on even while perhaps a majority of people in the world hate America. There are dictatorial states in the world ready to help Trump take apart the American empire. Americans are finally, after years of indifference to their own history, confused and angry and protesting everywhere against Trump but the tragic flaw in their discontent is the continued blindness of Americans to what is happening in the world beyond their American bubble. It is coming apart and they are the only ones who can save it because only their government in Washington has ever seriously tried to save the world, a government which exists tragically for young and old enthusiastic protesters not as a world power giving the world unity but only as the place that guarantees them a whole list of personal rights. Down with Trump and Washington if it does not exist to guarantee individual American rights! Trump’s madness meets only the response of a passionate goodness that has become almost maniacal because it is so naive. Everyone want rights for everyone, for immigrants and Americans alike, but only in America! Since Lincoln’s madness shifted political power from our union of states to Washington, America has been working slowly and often crudely towards a unity of states worldwide. It should go on with that work! It should not only help states worldwide to develop peacefully but it should even invite them now finally to join if they wish our American union of states as new states. But that would require a new consciousness among Americans. They would have to start suddenly demanding from Washington not only universal rights for themselves but also for everyone else in the world.  Americans would have to become global thinkers like presidents Wilson and Roosevelt. Americans would have to understand that there are no universal human rights if they are not universal.

Daniel McNeill
Read "The United States of the World" a complete book of 12 essays on the movement within American history towards changing the central government in Washington to the central government of a worldwide union of states at: usoftheworld.com/history

Read other writings about worldwide unity at the United States of the World website: www.usoftheworld.com