Solidarity with a Moral Past
The underlying meaning of historic preservation
Lewis Munford argued in “The Brown Decade” that a false sense of the uniqueness of everything can fill the spirit with heedless pride and the mind with reckless energy for its next conquest. He believes that we always risk letting our opportunities override our judgment.
When faced with such temptation, many feel like Ford that history is “bunk,” and that the teaching of history is an afterthought, a luxury expense, until the real work of “skilling” the human machine has been achieved.
No doubt activity itself may seem our destiny as our tools enhance our personal power, as the lines are crossed, the red lights ignored, and guardrails overrun. When we see the world as forever young and any burst of energy a fresh beginning, we believe that freedom itself is a reason for life and the end of all searches for meaning.
I suggest this is one of, perhaps one of the greatest dangers, we face in these times. And I agree with Mumford that it is our awareness of a “continuous tradition” of excellence that can soberly guide our present lives and ensure that we actually have a livable future.
By passing on such traditions of art, science, and thought, we sustain purpose and we remain aware of the destructiveness of power.
A tradition is a continuing feedback loop of consequence, intended and unintended. It is the raft of judgment in sea of illusions.
Mumford calls it a sense of “solidity.” Solidity with the past. I interpret that to mean a continuity of purpose, i.e. the awareness that human ingenuity must serve human needs and the enrichment of human life.
As Emerson suggested “things” can be in the saddle and “ride mankind.” Whether bright and shiny, new minted or commonly admired novelties, “things” will be our masters, unless we shape them to a greater use. What I think people like Mumford meant by preserving a “useable past,” is retaining and embeddimg the excellence which over long periods of time has sustained our common humanity.
The humanist tradition, in the arts, philosophy and social thought, if allowed to flourish in the present, can guide us through these times, show us how we are part of the long building of a richer, more sustainable world, can place us solidly in step with the best of those to whom we owe so much of what we have and cherish.
Do I need to come down from this rather high flown rhetoric and spell out what I mean? It is simply a way, perhaps too flowery or philosophical in rhetoric, to plead for what educators have called the humanities and the arts.
Make the arts and the humanities the center of education in America. Recruit the best of each generation to teach the next. Give them generously all that they need to commit themselves to this, and we will sustain our long journey toward the realization of our ideals.