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

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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

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