Meet Mr. Emerson #4 - "The Dialogue"
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I have been writing and speaking. What were once called novelties for
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25 or 30 years and have not now one
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disciple. Why not that what I said was not true.
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Not that it has not found intelligent receivers but because it did not go
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from any wish in me to bring men to me but to themselves.
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I delight in driving them from me. What could I do if they came to me.
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They would interrupt and encumber me. This is my boast that I have
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no school follower. I should have counted a measure of the impurity of insight
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if it did not create independence.
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Ralph Waldo Emerson adding a note to his Journal April
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1859 he was restating the message he had been delivering
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to Americans by voice and pen for as he said 25 or
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30 years each individual is great and should think
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for himself. For more than a hundred years what Emerson said and
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wrote has attracted some and driven others away for more than a
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hundred years he has been attacked and defended by literary critics
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historians social scientists. In our day is
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Emerson and antiquarian subject for academic specialists only.
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What about the casual reader. Emerson has been called one of the most
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quoted authors in the English language who turns to Emerson
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today.
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And why me to Mr. Emerson. A series of
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radio programs presenting in survey fashion excerpts from his journals lectures
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and essays. These programs were produced by station
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WAGA at the University of Wisconsin for national educational
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radio under a grant from the National Home Library Foundation.
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Today thumbing through.
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Emerson once said that the key to every man is his thought and that a person can
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only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.
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Did people need to be reformed. What were their problems. Can we find
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parallels in our own civilization more than a hundred years ago.
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Emerson traveled the land stopping in large cities and in small towns
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talking to people. What did he talk about. Better ask what didn't
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he talk about. According to some twentieth century critics
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historians and social scientists.
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In so far as he had a message it was the ultimate meaning of life
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and nature. He proclaimed the divine spirit of man and all living
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things. His subject matter embraced the totality of sensed and observed
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experience.
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It starts from a conviction about man's central importance in the world which he
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never really elaborates but which he accepts as
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necessary and evident and profoundly human.
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It almost is said the only human account of the world in modern scientific
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times.
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Emerson saw the expanding commercialism the rampant materialism of
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America already given over to things. This is words ring with the celebration of the
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living person the unquenchable free spirit.
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Reality eluded him. He was far from being like a Plato or an
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Aristotle past master in the art and the science of life. But his
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mind was and God with unusual plasticity with unusual
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spontaneity and liberty of movement. It was a fairyland of thoughts and
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fancies. He was like a young god making experiments in creation.
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He blotched the work and always began on a new and better play.
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Every day he said Let there be light and every day the
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light was New his sun like that of Hara Cletus
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was different every morning.
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He believed that the sun would be taken out of the skies before the love of freedom would be
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taken out of the breast of man.
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Emerson was the cow from which came the milk of the American idealist
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philanthropist boosters reformers Yes the statesman preachers
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editors who have been on the side of the angels in this country ever since
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the very moment when science was speaking in terms of struggle when it became certain that
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nature was utterly indifferent to the ambitions and morals of men.
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Emerson held out the great promise that man could live with the over so.
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Emerson came to life when the Constitution was fourteen years old and lived several
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years after the Republic had passed the crisis of civil war. During his
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most productive years he addressed a society that has been compared in many
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respects with modern America. Andrew Jackson had said Let
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the people rule. Though it was smaller and less complex the
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society historian George probes knows that it was a society possessing in many important
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features the distinguishing traits that we regard today as central to the
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American image. Life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
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Optimism worship of work the seeking of pleasure acquisitive spirit
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materialism religion and generosity in the words of George probes.
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It was a time of great praise of the merits of democracy and the
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forces of democracy and equality changed American life in all its aspects.
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It was a lively exciting competitive reforming
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confident age however not all Americans exulted in the
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restless buoyant self-assertive democratic quality of that era.
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It was also a period of literary and philosophical ferment.
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Historian Henry Steele commenter adds to the picture.
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It was a day when almost every man you met might draw a plan for a new society or a
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new government. From his pocket a day of infinite hope and
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infinite discontent. Every institution was called upon to show its
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credentials and to justify its course of conduct. The great and the trivial alike.
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The institution of the state or the practice of shaping the institution of the church
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or the eating of meat. The institution of marriage or the wearing of
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beards. Nothing was immune nothing was sacred nothing was taken for granted.
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Nothing but the right of inquiry.
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Emerson capsulize the ferment of his aids the reason
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why the world lacks unity and lies broken and in heaps.
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It is because man. Is disunited with himself.
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One might ask what does that mean. Putting aside that question though let's
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ask another. Might Emerson look in our world and repeat that
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pronouncement. And if so what do you have an audience. We went
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to public libraries to seek an answer. We noted the frequency of borrowings at
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Emerson volumes thumbing through an assorted collection of 20th century
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additions. We found sentences and paragraphs jumping from
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pages passages underlined or marked in some way by some
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readers. It's the business of critics historians and social
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scientists to dissect analyze and explain. But what does the more
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casual readers of our age find in Emerson and are they
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casual readers. The book borrowers who Mark and underline
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there is abundant evidence in Emerson's volumes of that best book about habit of
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writing in books.
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Here are some of Emerson's thoughts and ideas that some readers have found
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worthwhile to single out the sinew and heart of man
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seemed to be drawn out and where become tumorous desponding
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whimpers. We are afraid of truth afraid of Fortune
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afraid of death and afraid of each other.
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Our age eels know great and perfect persons. We want men and women who
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shall renovate a life and our social state. But we see that most
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natures are insolvent cannot satisfy their own wants
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have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical force and do
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lean in big day and night continuously.
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Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful we must carry it with us.
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We find it not a political victory a rise of
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rents.
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The recovery of your sick or the return of your absent friend or some other
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favorable event raises your spirits and you think good days
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are preparing for your own. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring
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you peace but yourself nothing can bring you peace but the
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triumph of principles.
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The world exists for the education of each man. There is
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no age or state of society or mode of action in history
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to which there is not somewhat corresponding. In his life
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everything tends in a wonderful manner to abbreviate itself and yield
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its own virtue to him. He should see that he can live.
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All history in his own person.
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Let a man then know his worth and keep things under his feet. Let
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him not peep or steal or skulk up and down with the air of a charity
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boy a bastard or an interloper in the world which exists for him.
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Trust myself every heart vibrates to that
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iron string except the place the Divine Providence has
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found for you. The Society of your contemporaries the
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connection of events.
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These are passages from Emerson's essays which have been underlined by Twentieth
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Century borrowers as library books. Who are these readers.
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Students working on papers. Teachers preachers after dinner speakers
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casual readers reacting personally to the voyages of discovery. The
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eyes and hands are anonymous but for some reason some people
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have felt compelled to single out these thoughts and ideas from the pages of
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Ralph Waldo Emerson.
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Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
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How it comes to us in silent hours that truth is our
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only armor in all passages of life and death
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which is cheap and anger is cheap.
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But if you cannot argue or explain yourself to the other party
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cleave to the truth against me against the and you
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gain a station from which you cannot be dislodged. The other
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party will forget the words that you spoke but the part
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you took continues to plead for you.
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The escape from false ties. Courage to be what we are.
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Love what is simple and beautiful. Independence and
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cheerful relation. These are the essentials.
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These and the wish to serve to add somewhat to the well-being of
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man.
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For something you have missed you have gained something else and for
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everything you gain you lose something. If the gather gathers too
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much nature takes out of the man what she puts into his chest
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swells the estate but kills the owner. Nature hates
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monopolies and exceptions.
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Who saw it would be a man must be a nonconformist.
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He who would gather immortal palms must not be entered by the
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name of goodness but must explore if it be goodness
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nothing at last is sacred but the integrity
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of your own mind.
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Modern day readers have mocked these passages in library copies of Emerson's
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volumes Who are these readers. Why have they been impressed
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by these particular thoughts and ideas. What were they looking for.
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Critics.
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Alfred Kazin and Daniel Aaron offer collaborative views
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all over this country today there are people for whom Emerson star has never gone out
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who read him with intensely personal reactions of gratitude and delight.
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For them Emerson is not an antiquarian subject for academic
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specialists not a ready source of quotations were after dinner speakers
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not an assignment in school books to be read with adolescent indifference. But a
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writer who helps them to live who encourages and
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rejoices them because he starts as a matter of course from a point of view
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about the world which they instinctively share but which they
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feel they no longer have a right to believe in.
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Expanding on that theme historian Arthur M. says in their junior
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our contemporary American society as little use for the individual ist individual ism
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implies dissent from the group. Dissent implies conflict and conflict suddenly
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seems divisive un-American and generally unbearable. Our greatest new industry
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is evidently the production of techniques to eliminate conflict from positive thoughts
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This program has been transcribed using automated software tools, made possible through a collaboration between the American Archive of Public Broadcasting and Pop Up Archive. Please note that no automated transcription is perfect nor is it intended to replace human transcription labor. If you would like to contribute corrections to this transcript, please contact MITH at mith@umd.edu.