The Metaphysical Confederacy

Southern sensibilities prior to the Civil War are often underlooked and misrepresented as a one-dimensional justification of slavery. James O. Farmer’s The Metaphysical Confederacy: James Henley Thornwell and the Synthesis of Southern Values sketches an intellectual history of the Old South while also exploring Thornwell’s theology and views on slavery. Characterizing him as both a product of his society and a key player in it, Farmer asserts that his subject is a perfect window into the leading debates and controversies of the antebellum South. Through Thornwell, the book also highlights the Old South’s often-understudied intellectual prowess and depth of belief. 

Farmer believes that Thornwell epitomized Calvinism, with its belief in humankind’s total moral depravity, and “can be seen as the prototype of Deep South religious thought.” He stresses that the prominent theologian’s beliefs, representative of the Southern mind, were formed in reaction to, and against, the modernizing forces that shaped the North. Northern society had become focused on economic progress and worldly success, whereas the South rejected what it viewed as the excesses of modern science, and saw a common bond among humans not in their abstract rights but the equalizing burden of universal sin. Farmer argues that this disjuncture between the North and the South developed into an irreconcilable civilizational struggle, and Thornwell’s beliefs were indicative of the predominant sense of Southern identity that preceded secession.

A key focus of Thornwell’s writings was the proper role of reason. Thornwell believed that the North’s unwavering commitment to reason, especially applying it to Scripture, was a folly because it denied man’s terribly flawed nature. “To prefer the deductions of philosophy to a Divine revelation,” he wrote, “is to relinquish the sun for the stars.” Reason, stemming from the mind of a morally fallen creature, was itself flawed. And Thornwell believed there were incomprehensible truths – divine truths – that the intelligentsia of the North wrongly believed they could prove or disprove with their minds alone. He further believed reason was in danger of going beyond its rightful place by intellectualizing all matters, infringing upon the supernatural realm by undermining the validity of divine revelations. But insistence on a firm split between the natural and the supernatural did not mean, in his case, a rejection of science and reason, as some scholars have asserted. According to Farmer, Thornwell thought “divine revelation was an ongoing process,” meaning that man would continue to learn new truths.

Thornwell believed that while many truths from Scripture should be self-evident, reason could observe things that are confirmed although not made explicit by God’s word: “The supernatural is that which alone is strictly and properly revelation; the natural is confirmed, but not made known, by divine testimony.” But reason was still an inherently flawed tool, and humans were “doomed to drudge in a humbler sphere [where] we are content to know of the external world just what our senses reveal, of the world within us [only] what reflection can bring to light, and of the world above us what the inspiration of the Almighty may vouchsafe to impart.” Here Thornwell espouses a blend of empiricism and skeptical scientism – not pure rationalism – that Farmer believes stemmed from the Scottish “Common Sense” philosophy and Baconianism that in his view were predominant in the South.

This epistemology was part of a larger body of Southern values disconnected from those of the North. By the 1850s, the divide between the regions was not only political but philosophical, with neither side able to understand the other’s ideals; people in the two societies inhabited different mental universes. Farmer maintains that Thornwell was instrumental in shaping a Southern orthodoxy, criticizing his society from within but also bringing what he believed were its principles together in a synthesis that was intended to spiritually strengthen the South. Thus he helped to create a “metaphysical Confederacy” – a Southern nation of the mind – that preceded secession and the Confederate States of America.

Farmer argues that in cultivating this Southern cosmology, Thornwell was quintessentially conservative. He applies the skepticism toward the North’s emphasis on  science and rationality to the political realm, asserting that it led Thornwell to conclude that the South needed to insulate itself from the larger world in order to protect its intellectual and cultural heritage against what he thought were radical modernizing forces. Viewing society as an organism, he espoused a unique sociology that sanctified the community over the individual (while acknowledging that individual morality was crucial to collective decency).

Thornwell is not, however, remembered mainly for his expansive epistemology or his novel sociology; instead, much of the scholarship on him stresses his regrettable defense of slavery. Farmer explains Thornwell’s ambivalence about slavery as a theologian and his position that the churches should stay out of political and social issues, which he maintained until secession became inevitable. Thornwell’s view of slavery owed much to his conservative disposition and his focus on maintaining social order. “If Adam had never sinned and brought death into the world, with all our woe,” he claimed, “the bondage of man to man would never have been instituted,” and Earth was not meant to be a paradise free of suffering. Rather, Thornwell contended that due to man’s fallen nature – the same depravity that degraded reason – slavery was destined to exist, along with sickness, suffering, and death.

Thornwell also believed that slavery should be judged, on a case-by-case basis, by how masters individually treated their slaves. He sought to ameliorate slaves’ conditions while maintaining the institution, which he considered part of the social order. Often acknowledging that in a saved or redeemed world slavery would not exist, Thornwell posited a version of the Golden Rule which commanded masters to “give unto your servants that which is just and equal.”

Thornwell’s cerebral defense of slavery was, according to Farmer, part of a larger epistemological framework that was lodged deeply in the South’s mind before the Civil War. His book expertly analyzes Thornwell’s writings, adding nuance and context to the theological and ecclesiastical debates of his time. In doing so, it adds another dimension to the antebellum South. Through Thornwell, Farmer reveals how the South conceptualized much of its opposition to the North, how it approached various philosophical questions characteristic of the modern age, and how it questioned some aspects of slavery while also unfortunately justifying it. 

The Poison Apple

Ding.

You resist the urge to check your phone, but your train of thought is already broken.

Ding.

You hear it again, exactly two minutes later. Before you can stop yourself, the phone is suddenly in your hand, flooding your brain with new information and trivializing your previous activity.

On an iPhone, a notification is signaled when it comes in, and again two minutes later in case you managed to resist the compulsion to check the first time. Unfortunately, most people cannot fight the need to check. As soon as they hear the notification, their heart rates spike, anxiety levels peak, excitement increases, and their eyes dart automatically to their phones.

This modern phenomenon, the “push notification,” brought a number of advantages. You never have to worry about missing out; if someone sends a message, you’ll know right away. App developers and companies have also used push notifications to increase revenue by boosting user engagement. But every new technology comes with downsides, and notifications are no different. First and foremost, people's obsession with checking and clearing notifications hurts their productivity. If a notification sounds, many mindlessly abandon their previous activity to see what they’ve been sent. Unfortunately, when people succumb to the perpetual temptation to look at their phones, it takes roughly 23 minutes to refocus, according to a study from the University of California-Irvine.

Even when people can defy this urge, working with a phone in sight still hampers productivity. This is because part of the brain constantly, subconsciously, struggles to ignore the phone. Even if we’re not deliberately looking at something, our brains perceive all available visual information. They are constantly tempted by the phone at the edge of our desks. Thus, full brain power can never be completely devoted to the task at hand.

Furthermore, studies have shown that constantly receiving notifications rewires people’s minds, and bodies. Hearing your phone ring spurs physiological arousal, sweating, and an emotional response, which then releases stress hormones; these effects are synonymous with those of more serious anxiety-inducing situations. The long term ramifications of being in a near-constant state of anticipation remain unclear, but psychologists predict everything from mental health issues (duh) to physical ailments.

Neil Postman’s presentation “Five Things We Need To Know About Technological Change” discusses how the “advantages and disadvantages of new technologies are never distributed evenly among the population.” In our society it is adolescents and young adults, having grown up surrounded by high technology, who feel most heavily both its advantages and its disadvantages. But those effects, I’d say, are on balance profoundly negative.

Take reduced productivity, for example. That may not sound too bad at first, but consider this: the majority of the “breakthrough,” life-changing technological advancements were created before the invention of smartphones. In fact, most people in the workforce today did not face the same pervasive distractions while growing up. Today’s generation of young people has, sadly, become accustomed to living with constant interruptions.

What does this mean for society?

Reduced productivity translates into lost hours at school and work, leading to lower work quality and less creation of new ideas: fewer breakthrough inventions, fewer cures for diseases—less of all the advancements that modern society has come to expect.

This is not to say that our generation will invent nothing useful, solve no world problems, or do nothing good for society. The point is that many of us might not overcome the challenges such ubiquitous distractions present. Does this mean people will have to work harder in order to make up for that? Yes. Are there people who will? Of course. But the vast majority of adolescents fall short of the grit required to overcome their short attention spans and easily distractible natures. They’ve already bitten into the poison apple, and it may be too late to siphon out the toxins.

Later, Postman poses a crucial question: “What type of person will be favored” by the new technology? The answer points to the goals of the software developers: the ideal person is someone whose mind can be shifted effortlessly from one trivial notification to the next, which maximizes device usage and capitalizes on the highly addictive nature of most apps. The favored people are today’s adolescents, our lives inundated by technology, yet at the mercy of the excessively wealthy in Silicon Valley.

Our generation did not ask to be blindly thrust, like lab rats, into a potentially life-altering situation. It’s not our fault that we were born during such a revolutionary experiment. Even though the long-term effects of extended cell phone usage remain unclear, they still occupy almost every part of our unduly digital lives. The future of society itself is at stake. Our brains, our bodies, and our achievements must overcome the challenges of the relentless smartph—

Ding.

On Labor and Leisure in America

America’s obsession with dull, post-industrial labor remains a mystery to my sensibilities. I spent ages five through fifteen in the tiny town of San Marcos, Nicaragua, where most residents make a living through agriculture or small-scale, local businesses. I later moved to Miami, the city where I was born, and experienced great culture shock due to its fast pace and adherence to the American work ethic. My classmates at the small parochial school I had attended in Nicaragua perceived careers as a means to an end: work is the pillar that secures the stability of the family and thus of the community. By contrast, my new classmates in suburban Miami thought of careers as an end in themselves: labor itself generates fulfillment and inner harmony. After a few years of observing such a theory in practice, I came to the opinion that the service economy’s atomization of work creates a negative environment for children and badly weakens their sense of social responsibility as adults. Such an environment pressures children to over-specialize early in order to maximize capital in the future, often neglecting important concepts like the good life or the good of the community. When new generations are deprived of an ideal environment in which to pursue human excellence, young people, whether successful or unsuccessful as adults, have a poor understanding of personal fulfillment that goes beyond an empty cycle of production and consumption.

Unquestionably, both standards of living and capital generation in my Nicaraguan home town are much lower than almost anywhere in the United States. And varying degrees of poverty and hard ceilings for progress exist throughout the region. Although they live in a state of poverty, the people of San Marcos, or sanmarqueños, do not lament it, but relish the simple pleasure of socializing, talking, and sharing views with friends and neighbors. Work is secondary in their lives, understood to be unfortunately necessary, an attitude perhaps more common in Catholic societies. Leisure is ultimately considered more important than labor: it is the sacred time when people socialize in ways that promote the excellence of the body, mind, and soul.

Among the many memories I have that exemplify the importance of leisure are ones of children playing soccer on the streets, adults bringing out rocking chairs and talking about politics and genealogy, and families participating in almost-daily processions of the Catholic Church. In contrast, I find that Americans have a disordered sense of what leisure truly entails. Rather than being a matter of simple daily life and communitarian, American leisure is a brief luxury to be enjoyed in private. Given the nature of careers in the age of the service economy, it is unsurprising that American leisure, although manifested in diverse ways, is so consumerist. The individual who watches television or plays video games consumes entertainment that rarely nourishes the mind or soul, never mind the body. There is also a type of leisure in which potentially rich experiences are consumed in a shallow way: the vacation. I believe the vacation to be the greatest perversion of leisure. In modern commodified travel, there is little meaningful experience to be had. Instead, travelers tend to separate themselves from the places they visit, failing to do more than follow a sightseeing script. In addition, the concept of a vacation restricts leisure to a specified number of days and occasions, rather than letting it happen spontaneously and frequently.

Work is important too, partly because it satiates humanity’s innate desire to create. In disavowing work, I would be disavowing its own ability (not just leisure’s) to express beauty and the wonder of life. Nevertheless, I am unsure as to how employment in the increasingly fragmented service and “gig” economy reflects a passion for creation. For this reason, I believe we shouldn’t view careers as the ultimate end, but as necessary building blocks for healthy societies. These societies themselves must be fostered through the inseparable bonds between leisure, the communal pursuit of virtue, and a shared appreciation of beauty.

The Revolution of Emmanuel Macron and the Polarization of America

Emmanuel Macron, the 25th president of France, is as much a controversial figure as he is a revolutionary one. Last June, his approval rating was only 40 percent (still better than his all-time low, 23 percent at the end of 2018). Even Donald Trump’s approval ratings haven’t fallen quite that low. So then, what’s different about Macron?

First of all, upon entering the presidential race in 2016, he formed his own political party, “La Republique En Marche” (which loosely translates to “The Republic Forward” or “Onward”). This relatively centrist movement has grown to be France’s single most popular party, an impressive feat in its own right. 

It’s important to note that in France, political parties are much more loosely defined and free-form than the typical Democrats and Republicans in America. It’s therefore relatively common for an individual politician to form their own political party and actually have a chance of winning the presidency with it. This has been the case only relatively recently, because the French left/right divide has historically been even more polarized than America’s. But fortunately for Macron, that divide has gradually been fading since the 1990s, and this is one factor that made France ripe for his victory in 2017. Despite those developments, Macron is controversial because his party holds a more centrist ideology than any party that has previously won the French presidency. 

In addition, Macron has no formal training in politics or government. He started off as an investment banker, and began his career as a public servant when he became Minister of the Economy. Coming from a non-traditional background that isn’t rooted in politics does have its advantages—Macron carried with him a bit of intrigue and freshness that most of his more bureaucratic competitors lacked, which made him more interesting to voters. In France, as in America where some people were enthralled by Trump’s outsider status, there was likely the hope that a politician from a non-political background would end up being less corrupt than the normal, factory-made ones (although this is rarely the case). And while the French and American governments are quite different, both countries have recently chosen a president with a uniquely non-political background. However, both of these presidents have proven to be highly controversial. 

Interestingly, both Macron and Trump scraped by with a slim victory over their opponents (some don’t even count Trump’s, since he lost the popular vote in 2016). In France, there are two rounds of voting for president. The first is similar to our primaries, although it’s more common for candidates to be affiliated with new, little-known political parties. The second round is between the two (in some cases, three) candidates who did best in the first round. And since France does not have a strict two-party system, it’s also possible that the final two or three candidates could be from the same side of the political spectrum. 

Macron survived the first round with 24 percent, along with Marine Le Pen (21 percent), a far-right candidate of the National Front party. The second round ended, obviously, with a victory for Macron (66 percent to 34 percent), but many French political pundits claim that he did not truly win. One of his competitors from the first round, François Fillon, put it best: “there was no other choice but to vote against the far-right” (Le Pen), citing this as the real reason for Macron’s victory. In the first round of voting, his margin was small: he beat Le Pen by just 3 percent and Fillon by 4 percent. Of course, not everyone who voted for Macron would agree with all of his policies, but it’s hard to sink to an approval rating of 23 percent, as he did two years ago. 

Interestingly, 23 percent is about equal to his support in the first round, which suggests that the additional 42 percent who chose Macron in the second round did not truly support him (or no longer did by late 2018): only those who were Macron loyalists from the start remained unwavering supporters. Therefore, his controversial position as the most centrist French president is caused mainly by the fact that he lacks much authentic support from either side. Although his administration experiences an ebb-and-flow of support, his achievement of dissolving traditional left/right boundaries still stands, contributing greatly to the ongoing decline in French political polarization. 

So, does this tell us anything about the polarization in America? Would a centrist candidate akin to Macron be the key to begin bridging the gap between Democrats and Republicans? As the American political process exists today, a centrist candidate not affiliated with either side wouldn’t stand a fighting chance. A center-leaning Democrat or Republican may be able to sway some voters from the other side, but not enough to inspire the type of revolution that we need. Even if the American political process made it easy for a centrist candidate to be elected, unifying previous supporters of the extremes behind a candidate of compromises would be impossible, given the extreme polarization of discourse in this country. But this raises a question on its own: is French society really unified behind Macron, or is his supposed “base” just a facade of centrists and mostly right-hating leftists? If this is true, then America doesn’t need a centrist candidate: America needs to lead itself towards a revolution of understanding, acceptance, and discourse. Only then will the majority of our country unite behind a single president.

Thoughts Moving Forward: Rethinking the Pandemic and Our Nation's Health

At this moment, 245,578 Americans have tragically lost their lives to COVID-19. Although the entire world has been struck by this devastating virus, such a high number of cases and deaths has distinguished the United States not only as the leading nation in the pandemic’s toll, but also as the one most criticized as failing its citizens. After the historic presidential election, and with Joe Biden as president-elect, our country and the world are closely watching and wondering whether we’ll be able to turn our COVID response around.

The media, and the rest of us, can’t really come to a consensus on why the U.S. has been plagued worse than most countries. Some claim that President Trump’s, and his administration’s, failure to adequately institute social distancing and mask mandates at a national level are the reason for our staggering numbers. Others posit that a deficiency of empathy and an individualistic mindset in America are the reason why we’ve come to accept the fate of this pandemic. Many others still question whether we’re at fault at all, citing the Chinese government’s lack of transparency about the virus early-on as our source of peril. But largely overlooked by politicians across the spectrum, and by virtually all mainstream media, are several factors which place a person at major risk of dying from COVID. The frequency of some of those underlying medical conditions doomed our nation to a high death toll from the beginning. 

Among the list of health conditions which place an individual at significant risk of dying from COVID, obesity is among the most threatening. According to new CDC data, obesity increases the risk of death by about 48 percent -- a disturbing statistic. Pairing that number with the prevalence of obesity in the U.S., where a shocking 40 percent of adults are obese, it’s safe to say that in addition to COVID, we have been facing a food issue for quite some time now. While obesity in itself is a major risk factor, it also poses an increased risk for other health conditions which similarly make people more vulnerable to COVID: diabetes, heart disease, a weakened immune system, and perhaps asthma, among others. Discourse on this issue has been highly stigmatized, which may explain why there is so little coverage of and focus on how our nation’s general health would naturally have affected our death rate, no matter how we handled the initial outbreak.

None of this is to say that our government’s early, and current, response to COVID shouldn’t be analyzed and criticized. We have an obligation to continuously question the actions and efforts of our government at both the national and local levels, and to demand policy changes as deemed fit. But it isn’t productive to simply name-call and assign blame to politicians and governmental entities without addressing a health issue which has affected the American population for so long. Our discomfort when speaking of this issue does our nation a disservice, because even after COVID is long gone, it will persist and will continue to harm the health of millions.

When we think about COVID and how to improve our response, we cannot conveniently ignore the fact that our population is already disproportionately unhealthy as compared with many other countries. Politicians on both sides of the political discourse have distracted us from, and divided us about, fundamental issues in American health care. Whether you favor universal health coverage or private insurance, obesity and related conditions lie at the root of a large percentage of our health concerns. We must join together as a nation to think of more productive and long-lasting solutions to address this massive health problem, rather than simply dismiss it as an uncomfortable topic.