Catchwords Floating In the Air

"Clouds," by Tom Thomson, 1915; also titled "The Zeppelin(s)" or "Zeppelin, Algonquin Park"

In 1915, Canadian artist Tom Thomson took one of his famous canoeing/creating trips to Ontario's Algonquin Park. More than likely he didn't have any of his usual painting cronies with him, as most of those who would become the Group of Seven were caught up one way or another in World War I. It's never been completely explained why Thomson wasn't in the army (there might have been medical reasons), but it does seem clear that his wilderness trips at that time gave him not only a chance to paint, but also provided an escape from people who assumed he should be more actively involved.  Anyway, with whatever reasons Thomson went off to the wilderness, plus the fact that at least three of his art colleagues were serving in the Canadian military forces, plus the general news of battles (Ypres was a major one in the spring of 1915), it is not that surprising that an oil-on-wood sketch of clouds ended up somewhat resembling German zeppelins; so much so, in fact, that in its first public exhibition (about ten years later) it was titled "The Zeppelin." And the only relevant point about all of that, perhaps, is that people walking through the exhibit would have gotten it. "Zeppelin" was a spring-loaded word.

When I was in university (forty years ago, which is rather terrifying), "postmodernism" was something I was only hearing about for the first time, mostly in literature studies. But media theorist and sociologist Dick Hebdige was already publishing a book that talked about how "postmodernism" was creeping into every part of western culture, somewhat like zeppelins masquerading as clouds:

When it becomes possible for a people to describe as 'postmodern' the décor of a room, the design of a building, the diegesis of a film, the construction of a record, or a 'scratch' video, a television commercial, or an arts documentary, or the 'intertextual' relations between them, the layout of a page in a fashion magazine or critical journal, an anti-teleological tendency within epistemology, the attack on the 'metaphysics of presence', a general attenuation of feeling, the collective chagrin and morbid projections of a post-War generation of baby boomers confronting disillusioned middle-age...the collapse of cultural hierarchies, the dread engendered by the threat of nuclear self-destruction, the decline of the university, the functioning and effects of the new miniaturised technologies, broad societal and economic shifts into a 'media', 'consumer' or 'multinational' phase, a sense (depending on who you read) of 'placelessness' or the abandonment of placelessness ('critical regionalism') or (even) a generalised substitution of spatial for temporal coordinates – when it becomes possible to describe all these things as 'Postmodern' (or more simply using a current abbreviation as 'post' or 'very post') then it's clear we are in the presence of a buzzword.(Hiding in the Light, 1988, quoted in Wikipedia article "Criticism of postmodernism")

I've kept most of that intact just to show how long Hebdige's list was. In other words, he thought the Postmodern Zeitgeist was now everywhere and everything, although that in itself implied that it was running out of Geist. You might be innocently looking at clouds and get fired at by a Postmodernism.

And now? You might not be that worried about Postmodernism, but you can apply the same thinking to just about any other current "ism." When you hear it all the time, you can start to find it everywhere you look.

ALFRED: A lot of bad "isms" floating around this world... (Miracle on 34th Street, 1947 film)

Charlotte Mason suggested a tried-and-true antidote both for those who find themselves obsessing over "isms," and those who would rather ignore them: read. Read wisely. Read widely. Read orderly.

Here, again, we have a reason for wide and wisely ordered reading; for there are always catch-words floating in the air, as,––'What's the good?' 'It's all rot,' and the like, which the vacant mind catches up for use as the basis of thought and conduct, as, in fact, paltry principles for the guidance of a life. (Charlotte Mason, Philosophy of Education, p. 62)

 To misquote Michael Pollan, "Read books. Not too much. Mostly classics."  

And let the clouds be clouds.

"Days when the air is full of fallacies"

by Anne White

A due recognition of the function of reason should be an enormous help to us all in days when the air is full of fallacies, and when our personal modesty, that becoming respect for other people which is proper to well-ordered natures whether young or old, makes us [too] willing to accept conclusions duly supported by public opinion or by those whose opinions we value. (Charlotte Mason, Philosophy of Education, p. 143)

Let's pick that apart, shall we?

If we, adult or child, teacher or student, have a well-ordered nature, we will display a certain respect for other people, adults or children, teachers or students, nice or irritating. Full stop. As in, first of all, we are born persons, and so are they; and, second, within that ordered nature, we recognize the need for authority. There are captains in the army, bosses in the office, monitors in the hall, and at any given time, you may find yourself holding one of those roles--or having to obey someone who does. Now, at this point we're only talking about outward behaviour, right? We walk this way or that, we turn in the report, we don't shout in the library. We don't get in trouble.

But the respect owed to others takes us beyond simple behaviour, from  listening to what people command us to do, to listening to and agreeing with what they say. Don't speed over this, now--Charlotte says this is still part of our well-ordered natures. A default setting, maybe, if our dials haven't already been turned too hard towards "cynical." A certain amount of agreement and trust is, we assume, going to be part of a relationship that goes beyond captain-private, foreman-line worker, hall monitor-late student, and more into parent-child, tutor-learner, rabbi-disciple. Or, maybe, just a peer relationship: neighbour to neighbour, colleague to colleague. These are people whose opinions we value. We don't expect to be always disagreeing and arguing, or disbelieving and ignoring. As Charlotte says, a certain amount of that is necessary to keep us modest. 

However, there are days when the air is full of fallacies, and, as that line supposedly written by Martin Luther goes, you can't keep those birds, or fallacies, from flying over your head, but you can keep them from building a nest in your hair. The tension comes not so much from the vultures we shoo away (or the Canada geese we run from), as much as friendly sparrows arriving from people we know and respect.

"Reasonable and right are not synonymous terms" (Philosophy p. 142). Respect is one thing, Charlotte says. Reason is another. We owe it to our own minds, our own wills, and our own loyalty to the One we serve, to look for the deepest truth, to do what's right.

Even if it's not reasonable.

Always something happenin' and nothing goin' on
There's always something cooking and nothing in the pot...
Nobody told me there'd be days like these
Strange days indeed, strange days indeed
(John Lennon, "Nobody Told Me")