Think About It

Do you have a kidney you can spare? Do you have a donor card in your wallet next to your driver's license? I do.

Party! Party! Party!

My tiny baby son is 8 years old today! How did THAT happen?

Dying To Tell You Our Stories

I was talking with Dave Winer about what happened at the Jupiter Conference when Tony Perkins, former editor of Red Herring Magazine and now CEO of AlwaysOn.com spoke. Everyone was very tough on him. The A list bloggers in the audience wanted to give him a message -- you are NOT one of us. There was a very antagonistic crowd listening to his keynote and the Q&A was very contentious. I don't have a thing against the man, and in fact, he may be a lovely person, but he became a lightning rod for an issue which is fundamental to blogging. I don't know what to call it, but I'm going to talk about it. Let me start by saying, Tony Perkins is NOT Anne Frank.

Anne Frank was a young girl writing a diary, falling in love, hiding behind a bookcase in a tiny apartment in Amsterdam, during the Nazi occupation. Later she was dead and only a diary. Ironically, Anne Frank ended up living on a bookcase shelf. Many bookcase shelves, all over the world. The life she documented was simple and lively. The difficult circumstances under which she lived exalted her writing. She was simply telling her story. And, as you've probably guessed, I think of Anne Frank as a blogger.

Dave and I were talking about an often overlooked aspect of blogging. Blogs are not simply online diaries. They are not simply a new form of instant publishing and group-think. Many are written by people who have been to hell and back.

On June 25, Andrew Sullivan, opinionated blogmeister supreme and brilliant writer, wrote about his ten-year anniversary of finding out he is HIV positive and how he's managed to survive. On June 14, 2002, Winer's blog went black for a week when he had unexpected heart by-pass surgery. As he recounted the other day, we were wondering how his friend Brian Buck, who is battling cancer is managing. We all sit on the edge of our seats routing for him and wince when he does not post on a regular basis. Much of my early blogging was about my father's downward spiral into illness and finally his death last year on April 9th.

Am I saying you have to turn your blog into General Hospital to get readers? Not at all. I'm saying that many of us have been through personal crises that have given us new wisdom, new clarity about what matters and what doesn't. These difficult circumstances have the positive aspect of elevating our writing. The bloggers who lived through and recounted September 11, 2001 also share this legacy. It's the blood and guts of blogging. It's a life and death thing. It's not casual. We have some skin in the game.

The life and death bloggers aren't writing casually. They are writing for their lives. They are writing to stay alive. They are writing about what it feels like to be alive -- knowing that all that will be left behind is their words. They are writing because it really, really matters. Tony Perkins is not Anne Frank -- nor does he want to be, nor should he aspire to be. But like Tony, anyone who wants to join the party needs to be aware of the tradition of this medium --- enter this inner sanctum with head bowed, hat in hand. Tread lightly in this place. Show us your real self. We're naked here, are you? We're alive here, but we're also dying. Dying to tell you our stories.

Air Conditioner

It's hot as blazes here and I knew it was coming and I warned a friend to buy an air conditioner last week. Last week it was 50 degrees, so it was hard to imagine there was much urgency to the task. But around about Monday when it went from 50 to 90 in one day, my argument proved more compelling -- that owning an air conditioner would not be a bad idea.

Have you ever installed an air conditioner? It's no fun. I had done it with my dad and I knew a little bit. I'm not the kind of person you would consider terribly technical, in fact, this friend who needed the air conditioner didn't expect me to know anything at all about installing air conditioners, but that was where he was wrong.

We took the thing -- a heavy thing -- out of the box. I dove for the instruction manual. "I used to write these," I explained. I really do believe if you read the directions enough times and look at the wacky little diagrams you can figure the thing out. I read the thing cover to cover like a smutty novel while he rummaged around for a Phillips head screwdriver. I could tell he doubted our ultimate success on this already hot and humid evening. "How long do you think it will take?" he asked. His tone was not optimistic. "About 2 hours," I said. "Do you think we can do it?" he was not sanguine. "Yes," I said.

It would be so easy to spend the next two hours, hot, sweaty and biting one another's heads off with such a task ahead of us, but that did NOT happen. I think he was shocked to see I could be methodical, persistent and rather resourceful in the face of this big heavy slab of metal coils, fan, housing unit.

I told him stories of my dad and I lifting these monsters into old windows, him asking me to hold onto the cord, explaining its importance, then slowly angling the thing down a bit so the water from condensation would drip away from the unit, then watching it delicately balanced in the window, only to suddenly tip backwards just a little too far and start a suicidal slide down the roof, saved by the plug which I gripped for dear life in my strong girl hands. My dad and I would laugh as he cursed the bloody box with a mind of its own. "Halley Biz, you saved the day!" he'd say.

Back in the hot room, we were painstakingly reading the directions again. "Before we start anything, I want to tell you the story," I announced closing the manual. "Here's what they are telling us. They want us to take the whole thing -- all the guts -- out of the housing unit -- weird, eh? Then the heavy part can sit here, while we install the housing in the window. Much easier than the old days where you had to deal with the whole damned thing which weighs three tons. Then once we get the empty metal box in, we have to add these side accordian panels and make the window fit around it. After that's all snug, we put the guts of the machine back in and screw it all together."

I always like to start with the "what the hell we're doing here" overview. He was impressed. Over the next two hours we did exactly what I described. When he wanted to jump ahead and use the wrong piece in the wrong place, I calmed us both down and re-read the manual. When I got fed up and wouldn't let a certain term or direction sink in, he showed me how to be patient. We pulled it off and best of all, this spanking new air conditioner came with a remote control. I loved the idea of an air conditioner with a remote control. He thought it was bogus as any air conditioner to his mind, should just be cranked up to full blast and left on all summer. When we were done, I grabbed the remote control, pushed ON and the baby started up like a dream. We cheered! "How did you ever get so good at this?" he asked and I knew he was really surprised.

I told him my secret. Men in my life have taught me how to do things. The most important thing they've taught me is what men learn as boys. They learn they CAN'T GIVE UP. I hate to say it, but at least for my generation, as little girls we were taught WE COULD GIVE UP, that we could get emotional, throw up our hands and say, "I give up, I can't figure it out!" There was something diabolically "feminine" and "cute" about that. It's often called "learned helplessness" as girls learn that appearing helpless gets them more positive attention, and often as not, attention from men who want to help them, playing to the worst of alpha male stereotypes. I've since learned that this stance is truly insidious. I've learned from men that if you start with the premise that you MUST solve a problem, it's much easier to solve. Men have taught me to be resourceful and NOT to give up. So have women. My sister-in-law and I once had a blast installing a dimmer switch. She was good, but not typical of most women I fear. We let our girls off the hook all too often. We need to teach them how resourceful they can be.

You should have seen me install my new Linksys Wireless-B Broadband Router with no male assistance, this week. Got that baby humming too. Even after the boneheaded manual writers referred to the WAN port on the back of the thing -- and there WASN"T one labelled that way -- and were guilty of the most imprecise and sloppy language in their "fast start" booklet. Just gotta use your head and keep on plugging.

East of Eden

Oprah's starting up her book club again, but her book pick probably didn't get too many publishers excited ... John Steinbeck's East of Eden. I can't wait to read it. Wish she could have HIM on her show.

Summer Camp

Taking my son off to day camp today. I remember going to camp when I was a kid and I remember these dark green thick cotton shorts my mom bought me and she had name tapes with my name on them, spelled correctly, sewn inside. It was comforting.

All summer we'd take little side trips on weekends with my family and go to those tourist shops were you could buy tiny license plates with kids names on them and a lighthouse ... say if you were in Cape or something ....or lobsters on them if you were in Maine. And you could put these on the back of your bike to look cool. There were never nameplates with "Halley" ... I used to look for my name somewhere between Gail and Hannah, never found anything. I hated my weird name when I was a kid. There were days when I would have killed to just be a Susan.

Getting Along Famously

Yes, I was quoted in The New York Times today and a girlfriend mom took me to Starbuck's after church to buy me a copy of the paper, since I still hadn't seen it, along with a cup of coffee. with her 7-year-old son and my 8-year-old son in tow.

My guy read my name in the paper for me out loud and smiled but then told me as soon as we left and were in my broken down old Camry (still crunched in from the lady who broadsided me on Friday) that he didn't want me being famous and in the paper and it sucked and I never spent enough time with him.

We sat in the back of the car in a near monsoon of rain beating down on the roof, while he soaked my blouse with his tears raining down inside the safe comfort of the car and told me we have to spend more time together playing Legos. He's right. Also, he wants me to stop spending time with my friends and having fun. Okay. And also, we have to go to Toys R Us now. Okay. Got it boss.

Not A Good Good-bye

At church this morning we had to say good-bye to Bob and Claire and their two kids. They are two good friends of mine who have done so much for the church and done so much personally for me, it was just sad as heck. Am I happy they are starting a great new life in Princeton NJ with great new work and a lovely house and this is just terrrific for them? Yes, yes, of course. But will I miss them a ton? Yes, I will.

A God For Bloggers

I see Chris Lydon agrees with me that Emerson might rightly be called "A God For Bloggers." He did an interesting post this afternoon about Emerson. Don't miss it. Susan Kaup sent me this interesting link about the Emerson Events going on about town.

A Blog Without Comments Is Like A Day Without Something ...

Chip Rosenthal is right about blogs without comments being bogus and he names me at the top of his list. I blogged on the subject of Halley's Comment having no comments about a week or two ago and am trying to add comments, I just haven't gotten around to it. Not only is he right, but at the Jupiter Weblogs Event in Boston two weeks ago, it finally dawned on me WHY it's so important. Blogs are all about conversation and comments turn a blog from a one-megaphone event into a group conversation. I plead guilty as charged and hope to change it soon. It has been a combination of technical laziness on my part and fear of rude commenting that's held me back.

Emerson Blogging on Self-Reliance

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.

The Blog Cabin

Okay, okay, I stole the term "Blog Cabin" from my friend Walter at work. Credit is due and well deserved. In the Blog Cabin you get to visit those early bloggers like Abe Lincoln, who blogged on the back of a shovel with charcoal as his stylus, and Ralph Waldo Emerson who stayed up late when he should have been sleeping and it shows, and Henry David Thoreau who really did live in a cabin and blogged to a different drummer. This is my attempt to give blogging some undeserved credibility as well as an American tradition and precedent -- which will of course piss off all bloggers worldwide since blogging is an international genre and has nothing to do with any of these early writers. But not to worry, there's room in the Blog Cabin for all essayists of many lands. I'm counting on you international bloggers to name your forefathers and foremothers.

Emerson: Self-Reliance

[One of my favorite essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson is Self-Reliance. If you don't have a collection of his essays and you are a blogger, better get yourself into a bookstore this weekend and buy one. Something wonderfully American about them. You might even consider Emerson an early American blogger. Yes, he really is a member of the BLOG CABIN.

Self-Reliance from Essays: First Series (1841)

Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Ne te quaesiveris extra."

"Man is his own star; and the soul that can
Render an honest and a perfect man,
Commands all light, all influence, all fate;
Nothing to him falls early or too late.
Our acts our angels are, or good or ill,
Our fatal shadows that walk by us still."
Epilogue to Beaumont and Fletcher's Honest Man's Fortune

Cast the bantling on the rocks,
Suckle him with the she-wolf's teat;
Wintered with the hawk and fox,
Power and speed be hands and feet.

ESSAY II Self-Reliance

I read the other day some verses written by an eminent painter which were original and not conventional. The soul always hears an admonition in such lines, let the subject be what it may. The sentiment they instil is of more value than any thought they may contain. To believe your own thought, to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men, — that is genius. Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost,—— and our first thought is rendered back to us by the trumpets of the Last Judgment. Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato, and Milton is, that they set at naught books and traditions, and spoke not what men but what they thought. A man should learn to detect and watch that gleam of light which flashes across his mind from within, more than the lustre of the firmament of bards and sages. Yet he dismisses without notice his thought, because it is his. In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts: they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty. Great works of art have no more affecting lesson for us than this. They teach us to abide by our spontaneous impression with good-humored inflexibility then most when the whole cry of voices is on the other side. Else, to-morrow a stranger will say with masterly good sense precisely what we have thought and felt all the time, and we shall be forced to take with shame our own opinion from another.

There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, one character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none. This sculpture in the memory is not without preestablished harmony. The eye was placed where one ray should fall, that it might testify of that particular ray. We but half express ourselves, and are ashamed of that divine idea which each of us represents. It may be safely trusted as proportionate and of good issues, so it be faithfully imparted, but God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace. It is a deliverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriends; no invention, no hope.

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you, the society of your contemporaries, the connection of events. Great men have always done so, and confided themselves childlike to the genius of their age, betraying their perception that the absolutely trustworthy was seated at their heart, working through their hands, predominating in all their being. And we are now men, and must accept in the highest mind the same transcendent destiny; and not minors and invalids in a protected corner, not cowards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors, obeying the Almighty effort, and advancing on Chaos and the Dark.

What pretty oracles nature yields us on this text, in the face and behaviour of children, babes, and even brutes! That divided and rebel mind, that distrust of a sentiment because our arithmetic has computed the strength and means opposed to our purpose, these have not. Their mind being whole, their eye is as yet unconquered, and when we look in their faces, we are disconcerted. Infancy conforms to nobody: all conform to it, so that one babe commonly makes four or five out of the adults who prattle and play to it. So God has armed youth and puberty and manhood no less with its own piquancy and charm, and made it enviable and gracious and its claims not to be put by, if it will stand by itself. Do not think the youth has no force, because he cannot speak to you and me. Hark! in the next room his voice is sufficiently clear and emphatic. It seems he knows how to speak to his contemporaries. Bashful or bold, then, he will know how to make us seniors very unnecessary.

The nonchalance of boys who are sure of a dinner, and would disdain as much as a lord to do or say aught to conciliate one, is the healthy attitude of human nature. A boy is in the parlour what the pit is in the playhouse; independent, irresponsible, looking out from his corner on such people and facts as pass by, he tries and sentences them on their merits, in the swift, summary way of boys, as good, bad, interesting, silly, eloquent, troublesome. He cumbers himself never about consequences, about interests: he gives an independent, genuine verdict. You must court him: he does not court you. But the man is, as it were, clapped into jail by his consciousness. As soon as he has once acted or spoken with eclat, he is a committed person, watched by the sympathy or the hatred of hundreds, whose affections must now enter into his account. There is no Lethe for this. Ah, that he could pass again into his neutrality! Who can thus avoid all pledges, and having observed, observe again from the same unaffected, unbiased, unbribable, unaffrighted innocence, must always be formidable. He would utter opinions on all passing affairs, which being seen to be not private, but necessary, would sink like darts into the ear of men, and put them in fear.

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.

Whoso would be a man must be a nonconformist. He who would gather immortal palms must not be hindered by the name of goodness, but must explore if it be goodness. Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world. I remember an answer which when quite young I was prompted to make to a valued adviser, who was wont to importune me with the dear old doctrines of the church. On my saying, What have I to do with the sacredness of traditions, if I live wholly from within? my friend suggested, — "But these impulses may be from below, not from above." I replied, "They do not seem to me to be such; but if I am the Devil's child, I will live then from the Devil." No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. A man is to carry himself in the presence of all opposition, as if every thing were titular and ephemeral but he. I am ashamed to think how easily we capitulate to badges and names, to large societies and dead institutions. Every decent and well-spoken individual affects and sways me more than is right. I ought to go upright and vital, and speak the rude truth in all ways. If malice and vanity wear the coat of philanthropy, shall that pass? If an angry bigot assumes this bountiful cause of Abolition, and comes to me with his last news from Barbadoes, why should I not say to him, 'Go love thy infant; love thy wood-chopper: be good-natured and modest: have that grace; and never varnish your hard, uncharitable ambition with this incredible tenderness for black folk a thousand miles off. Thy love afar is spite at home.' Rough and graceless would be such greeting, but truth is handsomer than the affectation of love. Your goodness must have some edge to it, — else it is none. The doctrine of hatred must be preached as the counteraction of the doctrine of love when that pules and whines. I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me. I would write on the lintels of the door-post, Whim. I hope it is somewhat better than whim at last, but we cannot spend the day in explanation. Expect me not to show cause why I seek or why I exclude company. Then, again, do not tell me, as a good man did to-day, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I tell thee, thou foolish philanthropist, that I grudge the dollar, the dime, the cent, I give to such men as do not belong to me and to whom I do not belong. There is a class of persons to whom by all spiritual affinity I am bought and sold; for them I will go to prison, if need be; but your miscellaneous popular charities; the education at college of fools; the building of meeting-houses to the vain end to which many now stand; alms to sots; and the thousandfold Relief Societies; — though I confess with shame I sometimes succumb and give the dollar, it is a wicked dollar which by and by I shall have the manhood to withhold.

Virtues are, in the popular estimate, rather the exception than the rule. There is the man and his virtues. Men do what is called a good action, as some piece of courage or charity, much as they would pay a fine in expiation of daily non-appearance on parade. Their works are done as an apology or extenuation of their living in the world, — as invalids and the insane pay a high board. Their virtues are penances. I do not wish to expiate, but to live. My life is for itself and not for a spectacle. I much prefer that it should be of a lower strain, so it be genuine and equal, than that it should be glittering and unsteady. I wish it to be sound and sweet, and not to need diet and bleeding. I ask primary evidence that you are a man, and refuse this appeal from the man to his actions. I know that for myself it makes no difference whether I do or forbear those actions which are reckoned excellent. I cannot consent to pay for a privilege where I have intrinsic right. Few and mean as my gifts may be, I actually am, and do not need for my own assurance or the assurance of my fellows any secondary testimony.

What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder, because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character. If you maintain a dead church, contribute to a dead Bible-society, vote with a great party either for the government or against it, spread your table like base housekeepers, — under all these screens I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are. And, of course, so much force is withdrawn from your proper life. But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself. A man must consider what a blindman's-buff is this game of conformity. If I know your sect, I anticipate your argument. I hear a preacher announce for his text and topic the expediency of one of the institutions of his church. Do I not know beforehand that not possibly can he say a new and spontaneous word? Do I not know that, with all this ostentation of examining the grounds of the institution, he will do no such thing? Do I not know that he is pledged to himself not to look but at one side, — the permitted side, not as a man, but as a parish minister? He is a retained attorney, and these airs of the bench are the emptiest affectation. Well, most men have bound their eyes with one or another handkerchief, and attached themselves to some one of these communities of opinion. This conformity makes them not false in a few particulars, authors of a few lies, but false in all particulars. Their every truth is not quite true. Their two is not the real two, their four not the real four; so that every word they say chagrins us, and we know not where to begin to set them right. Meantime nature is not slow to equip us in the prison-uniform of the party to which we adhere. We come to wear one cut of face and figure, and acquire by degrees the gentlest asinine expression. There is a mortifying experience in particular, which does not fail to wreak itself also in the general history; I mean "the foolish face of praise," the forced smile which we put on in company where we do not feel at ease in answer to conversation which does not interest us. The muscles, not spontaneously moved, but moved by a low usurping wilfulness, grow tight about the outline of the face with the most disagreeable sensation.

For nonconformity the world whips you with its displeasure. And therefore a man must know how to estimate a sour face. The by-standers look askance on him in the public street or in the friend's parlour. If this aversation had its origin in contempt and resistance like his own, he might well go home with a sad countenance; but the sour faces of the multitude, like their sweet faces, have no deep cause, but are put on and off as the wind blows and a newspaper directs. Yet is the discontent of the multitude more formidable than that of the senate and the college. It is easy enough for a firm man who knows the world to brook the rage of the cultivated classes. Their rage is decorous and prudent, for they are timid as being very vulnerable themselves. But when to their feminine rage the indignation of the people is added, when the ignorant and the poor are aroused, when the unintelligent brute force that lies at the bottom of society is made to growl and mow, it needs the habit of magnanimity and religion to treat it godlike as a trifle of no concernment.

The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.

But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity: yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — 'Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.' — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.

I suppose no man can violate his nature. All the sallies of his will are rounded in by the law of his being, as the inequalities of Andes and Himmaleh are insignificant in the curve of the sphere. Nor does it matter how you gauge and try him. A character is like an acrostic or Alexandrian stanza; — read it forward, backward, or across, it still spells the same thing. In this pleasing, contrite wood-life which God allows me, let me record day by day my honest thought without prospect or retrospect, and, I cannot doubt, it will be found symmetrical, though I mean it not, and see it not. My book should smell of pines and resound with the hum of insects. The swallow over my window should interweave that thread or straw he carries in his bill into my web also. We pass for what we are. Character teaches above our wills. Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment.

There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour. For of one will, the actions will be harmonious, however unlike they seem. These varieties are lost sight of at a little distance, at a little height of thought. One tendency unites them all. The voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks. See the line from a sufficient distance, and it straightens itself to the average tendency. Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. Act singly, and what you have already done singly will justify you now. Greatness appeals to the future. If I can be firm enough to-day to do right, and scorn eyes, I must have done so much right before as to defend me now. Be it how it will, do right now. Always scorn appearances, and you always may. The force of character is cumulative. All the foregone days of virtue work their health into this. What makes the majesty of the heroes of the senate and the field, which so fills the imagination? The consciousness of a train of great days and victories behind. They shed an united light on the advancing actor. He is attended as by a visible escort of angels. That is it which throws thunder into Chatham's voice, and dignity into Washington's port, and America into Adams's eye. Honor is venerable to us because it is no ephemeris. It is always ancient virtue. We worship it to-day because it is not of to-day. We love it and pay it homage, because it is not a trap for our love and homage, but is self-dependent, self-derived, and therefore of an old immaculate pedigree, even if shown in a young person.

I hope in these days we have heard the last of conformity and consistency. Let the words be gazetted and ridiculous henceforward. Instead of the gong for dinner, let us hear a whistle from the Spartan fife. Let us never bow and apologize more. A great man is coming to eat at my house. I do not wish to please him; I wish that he should wish to please me. I will stand here for humanity, and though I would make it kind, I would make it true. Let us affront and reprimand the smooth mediocrity and squalid contentment of the times, and hurl in the face of custom, and trade, and office, the fact which is the upshot of all history, that there is a great responsible Thinker and Actor working wherever a man works; that a true man belongs to no other time or place, but is the centre of things. Where he is, there is nature. He measures you, and all men, and all events. Ordinarily, every body in society reminds us of somewhat else, or of some other person. Character, reality, reminds you of nothing else; it takes place of the whole creation. The man must be so much, that he must make all circumstances indifferent. Every true man is a cause, a country, and an age; requires infinite spaces and numbers and time fully to accomplish his design; — and posterity seem to follow his steps as a train of clients. A man Caesar is born, and for ages after we have a Roman Empire. Christ is born, and millions of minds so grow and cleave to his genius, that he is confounded with virtue and the possible of man. An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man; as, Monachism, of the Hermit Antony; the Reformation, of Luther; Quakerism, of Fox; Methodism, of Wesley; Abolition, of Clarkson. Scipio, Milton called "the height of Rome"; and all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons.

Let a man then know his worth, and keep things under his feet. Let him not peep or steal, or skulk up and down with the air of a charity-boy, a bastard, or an interloper, in the world which exists for him. But the man in the street, finding no worth in himself which corresponds to the force which built a tower or sculptured a marble god, feels poor when he looks on these. To him a palace, a statue, or a costly book have an alien and forbidding air, much like a gay equipage, and seem to say like that, 'Who are you, Sir?' Yet they all are his, suitors for his notice, petitioners to his faculties that they will come out and take possession. The picture waits for my verdict: it is not to command me, but I am to settle its claims to praise. That popular fable of the sot who was picked up dead drunk in the street, carried to the duke's house, washed and dressed and laid in the duke's bed, and, on his waking, treated with all obsequious ceremony like the duke, and assured that he had been insane, owes its popularity to the fact, that it symbolizes so well the state of man, who is in the world a sort of sot, but now and then wakes up, exercises his reason, and finds himself a true prince.

Our reading is mendicant and sycophantic. In history, our imagination plays us false. Kingdom and lordship, power and estate, are a gaudier vocabulary than private John and Edward in a small house and common day's work; but the things of life are the same to both; the sum total of both is the same. Why all this deference to Alfred, and Scanderbeg, and Gustavus? Suppose they were virtuous; did they wear out virtue? As great a stake depends on your private act to-day, as followed their public and renowned steps. When private men shall act with original views, the lustre will be transferred from the actions of kings to those of gentlemen.

The world has been instructed by its kings, who have so magnetized the eyes of nations. It has been taught by this colossal symbol the mutual reverence that is due from man to man. The joyful loyalty with which men have everywhere suffered the king, the noble, or the great proprietor to walk among them by a law of his own, make his own scale of men and things, and reverse theirs, pay for benefits not with money but with honor, and represent the law in his person, was the hieroglyphic by which they obscurely signified their consciousness of their own right and comeliness, the right of every man.

The magnetism which all original action exerts is explained when we inquire the reason of self-trust. Who is the Trustee? What is the aboriginal Self, on which a universal reliance may be grounded? What is the nature and power of that science-baffling star, without parallax, without calculable elements, which shoots a ray of beauty even into trivial and impure actions, if the least mark of independence appear? The inquiry leads us to that source, at once the essence of genius, of virtue, and of life, which we call Spontaneity or Instinct. We denote this primary wisdom as Intuition, whilst all later teachings are tuitions. In that deep force, the last fact behind which analysis cannot go, all things find their common origin. For, the sense of being which in calm hours rises, we know not how, in the soul, is not diverse from things, from space, from light, from time, from man, but one with them, and proceeds obviously from the same source whence their life and being also proceed. We first share the life by which things exist, and afterwards see them as appearances in nature, and forget that we have shared their cause. Here is the fountain of action and of thought. Here are the lungs of that inspiration which giveth man wisdom, and which cannot be denied without impiety and atheism. We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy is at fault. Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm. Every man discriminates between the voluntary acts of his mind, and his involuntary perceptions, and knows that to his involuntary perceptions a perfect faith is due. He may err in the expression of them, but he knows that these things are so, like day and night, not to be disputed. My wilful actions and acquisitions are but roving; — the idlest reverie, the faintest native emotion, command my curiosity and respect. Thoughtless people contradict as readily the statement of perceptions as of opinions, or rather much more readily; for, they do not distinguish between perception and notion. They fancy that I choose to see this or that thing. But perception is not whimsical, but fatal. If I see a trait, my children will see it after me, and in course of time, all mankind, — although it may chance that no one has seen it before me. For my perception of it is as much a fact as the sun.

The relations of the soul to the divine spirit are so pure, that it is profane to seek to interpose helps. It must be that when God speaketh he should communicate, not one thing, but all things; should fill the world with his voice; should scatter forth light, nature, time, souls, from the centre of the present thought; and new date and new create the whole. Whenever a mind is simple, and receives a divine wisdom, old things pass away, — means, teachers, texts, temples fall; it lives now, and absorbs past and future into the present hour. All things are made sacred by relation to it, — one as much as another. All things are dissolved to their centre by their cause, and, in the universal miracle, petty and particular miracles disappear. If, therefore, a man claims to know and speak of God, and carries you backward to the phraseology of some old mouldered nation in another country, in another world, believe him not. Is the acorn better than the oak which is its fulness and completion? Is the parent better than the child into whom he has cast his ripened being? Whence, then, this worship of the past? The centuries are conspirators against the sanity and authority of the soul. Time and space are but physiological colors which the eye makes, but the soul is light; where it is, is day; where it was, is night; and history is an impertinence and an injury, if it be any thing more than a cheerful apologue or parable of my being and becoming.

Man is timid and apologetic; he is no longer upright; he dares not say 'I think,' 'I am,' but quotes some saint or sage. He is ashamed before the blade of grass or the blowing rose. These roses under my window make no reference to former roses or to better ones; they are for what they are; they exist with God to-day. There is no time to them. There is simply the rose; it is perfect in every moment of its existence. Before a leaf-bud has burst, its whole life acts; in the full-blown flower there is no more; in the leafless root there is no less. Its nature is satisfied, and it satisfies nature, in all moments alike. But man postpones or remembers; he does not live in the present, but with reverted eye laments the past, or, heedless of the riches that surround him, stands on tiptoe to foresee the future. He cannot be happy and strong until he too lives with nature in the present, above time.

This should be plain enough. Yet see what strong intellects dare not yet hear God himself, unless he speak the phraseology of I know not what David, or Jeremiah, or Paul. We shall not always set so great a price on a few texts, on a few lives. We are like children who repeat by rote the sentences of grandames and tutors, and, as they grow older, of the men of talents and character they chance to see, — painfully recollecting the exact words they spoke; afterwards, when they come into the point of view which those had who uttered these sayings, they understand them, and are willing to let the words go; for, at any time, they can use words as good when occasion comes. If we live truly, we shall see truly. It is as easy for the strong man to be strong, as it is for the weak to be weak. When we have new perception, we shall gladly disburden the memory of its hoarded treasures as old rubbish. When a man lives with God, his voice shall be as sweet as the murmur of the brook and the rustle of the corn.

And now at last the highest truth on this subject remains unsaid; probably cannot be said; for all that we say is the far-off remembering of the intuition. That thought, by what I can now nearest approach to say it, is this. When good is near you, when you have life in yourself, it is not by any known or accustomed way; you shall not discern the foot-prints of any other; you shall not see the face of man; you shall not hear any name;—— the way, the thought, the good, shall be wholly strange and new. It shall exclude example and experience. You take the way from man, not to man. All persons that ever existed are its forgotten ministers. Fear and hope are alike beneath it. There is somewhat low even in hope. In the hour of vision, there is nothing that can be called gratitude, nor properly joy. The soul raised over passion beholds identity and eternal causation, perceives the self-existence of Truth and Right, and calms itself with knowing that all things go well. Vast spaces of nature, the Atlantic Ocean, the South Sea, — long intervals of time, years, centuries, — are of no account. This which I think and feel underlay every former state of life and circumstances, as it does underlie my present, and what is called life, and what is called death.

Life only avails, not the having lived. Power ceases in the instant of repose; it resides in the moment of transition from a past to a new state, in the shooting of the gulf, in the darting to an aim. This one fact the world hates, that the soul becomes; for that for ever degrades the past, turns all riches to poverty, all reputation to a shame, confounds the saint with the rogue, shoves Jesus and Judas equally aside. Why, then, do we prate of self-reliance? Inasmuch as the soul is present, there will be power not confident but agent. To talk of reliance is a poor external way of speaking. Speak rather of that which relies, because it works and is. Who has more obedience than I masters me, though he should not raise his finger. Round him I must revolve by the gravitation of spirits. We fancy it rhetoric, when we speak of eminent virtue. We do not yet see that virtue is Height, and that a man or a company of men, plastic and permeable to principles, by the law of nature must overpower and ride all cities, nations, kings, rich men, poets, who are not.

This is the ultimate fact which we so quickly reach on this, as on every topic, the resolution of all into the ever-blessed ONE. Self-existence is the attribute of the Supreme Cause, and it constitutes the measure of good by the degree in which it enters into all lower forms. All things real are so by so much virtue as they contain. Commerce, husbandry, hunting, whaling, war, eloquence, personal weight, are somewhat, and engage my respect as examples of its presence and impure action. I see the same law working in nature for conservation and growth. Power is in nature the essential measure of right. Nature suffers nothing to remain in her kingdoms which cannot help itself. The genesis and maturation of a planet, its poise and orbit, the bended tree recovering itself from the strong wind, the vital resources of every animal and vegetable, are demonstrations of the self-sufficing, and therefore self-relying soul.

Thus all concentrates: let us not rove; let us sit at home with the cause. Let us stun and astonish the intruding rabble of men and books and institutions, by a simple declaration of the divine fact. Bid the invaders take the shoes from off their feet, for God is here within. Let our simplicity judge them, and our docility to our own law demonstrate the poverty of nature and fortune beside our native riches.

But now we are a mob. Man does not stand in awe of man, nor is his genius admonished to stay at home, to put itself in communication with the internal ocean, but it goes abroad to beg a cup of water of the urns of other men. We must go alone. I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching. How far off, how cool, how chaste the persons look, begirt each one with a precinct or sanctuary! So let us always sit. Why should we assume the faults of our friend, or wife, or father, or child, because they sit around our hearth, or are said to have the same blood? All men have my blood, and I have all men's. Not for that will I adopt their petulance or folly, even to the extent of being ashamed of it. But your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation. At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door, and say, — 'Come out unto us.' But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me, I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act. "What we love that we have, but by desire we bereave ourselves of the love."

If we cannot at once rise to the sanctities of obedience and faith, let us at least resist our temptations; let us enter into the state of war, and wake Thor and Woden, courage and constancy, in our Saxon breasts. This is to be done in our smooth times by speaking the truth. Check this lying hospitality and lying affection. Live no longer to the expectation of these deceived and deceiving people with whom we converse. Say to them, O father, O mother, O wife, O brother, O friend, I have lived with you after appearances hitherto. Henceforward I am the truth's. Be it known unto you that henceforward I obey no law less than the eternal law. I will have no covenants but proximities. I shall endeavour to nourish my parents, to support my family, to be the chaste husband of one wife, — but these relations I must fill after a new and unprecedented way. I appeal from your customs. I must be myself. I cannot break myself any longer for you, or you. If you can love me for what I am, we shall be the happier. If you cannot, I will still seek to deserve that you should. I will not hide my tastes or aversions. I will so trust that what is deep is holy, that I will do strongly before the sun and moon whatever inly rejoices me, and the heart appoints. If you are noble, I will love you; if you are not, I will not hurt you and myself by hypocritical attentions. If you are true, but not in the same truth with me, cleave to your companions; I will seek my own. I do this not selfishly, but humbly and truly. It is alike your interest, and mine, and all men's, however long we have dwelt in lies, to live in truth. Does this sound harsh to-day? You will soon love what is dictated by your nature as well as mine, and, if we follow the truth, it will bring us out safe at last. — But so you may give these friends pain. Yes, but I cannot sell my liberty and my power, to save their sensibility. Besides, all persons have their moments of reason, when they look out into the region of absolute truth; then will they justify me, and do the same thing.

The populace think that your rejection of popular standards is a rejection of all standard, and mere antinomianism; and the bold sensualist will use the name of philosophy to gild his crimes. But the law of consciousness abides. There are two confessionals, in one or the other of which we must be shriven. You may fulfil your round of duties by clearing yourself in the direct, or in the reflex way. Consider whether you have satisfied your relations to father, mother, cousin, neighbour, town, cat, and dog; whether any of these can upbraid you. But I may also neglect this reflex standard, and absolve me to myself. I have my own stern claims and perfect circle. It denies the name of duty to many offices that are called duties. But if I can discharge its debts, it enables me to dispense with the popular code. If any one imagines that this law is lax, let him keep its commandment one day.

And truly it demands something godlike in him who has cast off the common motives of humanity, and has ventured to trust himself for a taskmaster. High be his heart, faithful his will, clear his sight, that he may in good earnest be doctrine, society, law, to himself, that a simple purpose may be to him as strong as iron necessity is to others!

If any man consider the present aspects of what is called by distinction society, he will see the need of these ethics. The sinew and heart of man seem to be drawn out, and we are become timorous, desponding whimperers. We are afraid of truth, afraid of fortune, afraid of death, and afraid of each other. Our age yields no great and perfect persons. We want men and women who shall renovate life and our social state, but we see that most natures are insolvent, cannot satisfy their own wants, have an ambition out of all proportion to their practical force, and do lean and beg day and night continually. Our housekeeping is mendicant, our arts, our occupations, our marriages, our religion, we have not chosen, but society has chosen for us. We are parlour soldiers. We shun the rugged battle of fate, where strength is born.

If our young men miscarry in their first enterprises, they lose all heart. If the young merchant fails, men say he is ruined. If the finest genius studies at one of our colleges, and is not installed in an office within one year afterwards in the cities or suburbs of Boston or New York, it seems to his friends and to himself that he is right in being disheartened, and in complaining the rest of his life. A sturdy lad from New Hampshire or Vermont, who in turn tries all the professions, who teams it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always, like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls. He walks abreast with his days, and feels no shame in not 'studying a profession,' for he does not postpone his life, but lives already. He has not one chance, but a hundred chances. Let a Stoic open the resources of man, and tell men they are not leaning willows, but can and must detach themselves; that with the exercise of self-trust, new powers shall appear; that a man is the word made flesh, born to shed healing to the nations, that he should be ashamed of our compassion, and that the moment he acts from himself, tossing the laws, the books, idolatries, and customs out of the window, we pity him no more, but thank and revere him, — and that teacher shall restore the life of man to splendor, and make his name dear to all history.

It is easy to see that a greater self-reliance must work a revolution in all the offices and relations of men; in their religion; in their education; in their pursuits; their modes of living; their association; in their property; in their speculative views.

1. In what prayers do men allow themselves! That which they call a holy office is not so much as brave and manly. Prayer looks abroad and asks for some foreign addition to come through some foreign virtue, and loses itself in endless mazes of natural and supernatural, and mediatorial and miraculous. Prayer that craves a particular commodity, — any thing less than all good, — is vicious. Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view. It is the soliloquy of a beholding and jubilant soul. It is the spirit of God pronouncing his works good. But prayer as a means to effect a private end is meanness and theft. It supposes dualism and not unity in nature and consciousness. As soon as the man is at one with God, he will not beg. He will then see prayer in all action. The prayer of the farmer kneeling in his field to weed it, the prayer of the rower kneeling with the stroke of his oar, are true prayers heard throughout nature, though for cheap ends. Caratach, in Fletcher's Bonduca, when admonished to inquire the mind of the god Audate, replies, —

"His hidden meaning lies in our endeavours;
Our valors are our best gods."

Another sort of false prayers are our regrets. Discontent is the want of self-reliance: it is infirmity of will. Regret calamities, if you can thereby help the sufferer; if not, attend your own work, and already the evil begins to be repaired. Our sympathy is just as base. We come to them who weep foolishly, and sit down and cry for company, instead of imparting to them truth and health in rough electric shocks, putting them once more in communication with their own reason. The secret of fortune is joy in our hands. Welcome evermore to gods and men is the self-helping man. For him all doors are flung wide: him all tongues greet, all honors crown, all eyes follow with desire. Our love goes out to him and embraces him, because he did not need it. We solicitously and apologetically caress and celebrate him, because he held on his way and scorned our disapprobation. The gods love him because men hated him. "To the persevering mortal," said Zoroaster, "the blessed Immortals are swift."

As men's prayers are a disease of the will, so are their creeds a disease of the intellect. They say with those foolish Israelites, 'Let not God speak to us, lest we die. Speak thou, speak any man with us, and we will obey.' Everywhere I am hindered of meeting God in my brother, because he has shut his own temple doors, and recites fables merely of his brother's, or his brother's brother's God. Every new mind is a new classification. If it prove a mind of uncommon activity and power, a Locke, a Lavoisier, a Hutton, a Bentham, a Fourier, it imposes its classification on other men, and lo! a new system. In proportion to the depth of the thought, and so to the number of the objects it touches and brings within reach of the pupil, is his complacency. But chiefly is this apparent in creeds and churches, which are also classifications of some powerful mind acting on the elemental thought of duty, and man's relation to the Highest. Such is Calvinism, Quakerism, Swedenborgism. The pupil takes the same delight in subordinating every thing to the new terminology, as a girl who has just learned botany in seeing a new earth and new seasons thereby. It will happen for a time, that the pupil will find his intellectual power has grown by the study of his master's mind. But in all unbalanced minds, the classification is idolized, passes for the end, and not for a speedily exhaustible means, so that the walls of the system blend to their eye in the remote horizon with the walls of the universe; the luminaries of heaven seem to them hung on the arch their master built. They cannot imagine how you aliens have any right to see, — how you can see; 'It must be somehow that you stole the light from us.' They do not yet perceive, that light, unsystematic, indomitable, will break into any cabin, even into theirs. Let them chirp awhile and call it their own. If they are honest and do well, presently their neat new pinfold will be too strait and low, will crack, will lean, will rot and vanish, and the immortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, million-colored, will beam over the universe as on the first morning.

2. It is for want of self-culture that the superstition of Travelling, whose idols are Italy, England, Egypt, retains its fascination for all educated Americans. They who made England, Italy, or Greece venerable in the imagination did so by sticking fast where they were, like an axis of the earth. In manly hours, we feel that duty is our place. The soul is no traveller; the wise man stays at home, and when his necessities, his duties, on any occasion call him from his house, or into foreign lands, he is at home still, and shall make men sensible by the expression of his countenance, that he goes the missionary of wisdom and virtue, and visits cities and men like a sovereign, and not like an interloper or a valet.

I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe, for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to get somewhat which he does not carry, travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have become old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to ruins.

Travelling is a fool's paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.

3. But the rage of travelling is a symptom of a deeper unsoundness affecting the whole intellectual action. The intellect is vagabond, and our system of education fosters restlessness. Our minds travel when our bodies are forced to stay at home. We imitate; and what is imitation but the travelling of the mind? Our houses are built with foreign taste; our shelves are garnished with foreign ornaments; our opinions, our tastes, our faculties, lean, and follow the Past and the Distant. The soul created the arts wherever they have flourished. It was in his own mind that the artist sought his model. It was an application of his own thought to the thing to be done and the conditions to be observed. And why need we copy the Doric or the Gothic model? Beauty, convenience, grandeur of thought, and quaint expression are as near to us as to any, and if the American artist will study with hope and love the precise thing to be done by him, considering the climate, the soil, the length of the day, the wants of the people, the habit and form of the government, he will create a house in which all these will find themselves fitted, and taste and sentiment will be satisfied also.

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life's cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession. That which each can do best, none but his Maker can teach him. No man yet knows what it is, nor can, till that person has exhibited it. Where is the master who could have taught Shakspeare? Where is the master who could have instructed Franklin, or Washington, or Bacon, or Newton? Every great man is a unique. The Scipionism of Scipio is precisely that part he could not borrow. Shakspeare will never be made by the study of Shakspeare. Do that which is assigned you, and you cannot hope too much or dare too much. There is at this moment for you an utterance brave and grand as that of the colossal chisel of Phidias, or trowel of the Egyptians, or the pen of Moses, or Dante, but different from all these. Not possibly will the soul all rich, all eloquent, with thousand-cloven tongue, deign to repeat itself; but if you can hear what these patriarchs say, surely you can reply to them in the same pitch of voice; for the ear and the tongue are two organs of one nature. Abide in the simple and noble regions of thy life, obey thy heart, and thou shalt reproduce the Foreworld again.

4. As our Religion, our Education, our Art look abroad, so does our spirit of society. All men plume themselves on the improvement of society, and no man improves.

Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given, something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. What a contrast between the well-clad, reading, writing, thinking American, with a watch, a pencil, and a bill of exchange in his pocket, and the naked New Zealander, whose property is a club, a spear, a mat, and an undivided twentieth of a shed to sleep under! But compare the health of the two men, and you shall see that the white man has lost his aboriginal strength. If the traveller tell us truly, strike the savage with a broad axe, and in a day or two the flesh shall unite and heal as if you struck the blow into soft pitch, and the same blow shall send the white to his grave.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet. He is supported on crutches, but lacks so much support of muscle. He has a fine Geneva watch, but he fails of the skill to tell the hour by the sun. A Greenwich nautical almanac he has, and so being sure of the information when he wants it, the man in the street does not know a star in the sky. The solstice he does not observe; the equinox he knows as little; and the whole bright calendar of the year is without a dial in his mind. His note-books impair his memory; his libraries overload his wit; the insurance-office increases the number of accidents; and it may be a question whether machinery does not encumber; whether we have not lost by refinement some energy, by a Christianity entrenched in establishments and forms, some vigor of wild virtue. For every Stoic was a Stoic; but in Christendom where is the Christian?

There is no more deviation in the moral standard than in the standard of height or bulk. No greater men are now than ever were. A singular equality may be observed between the great men of the first and of the last ages; nor can all the science, art, religion, and philosophy of the nineteenth century avail to educate greater men than Plutarch's heroes, three or four and twenty centuries ago. Not in time is the race progressive. Phocion, Socrates, Anaxagoras, Diogenes, are great men, but they leave no class. He who is really of their class will not be called by their name, but will be his own man, and, in his turn, the founder of a sect. The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men. The harm of the improved machinery may compensate its good. Hudson and Behring accomplished so much in their fishing-boats, as to astonish Parry and Franklin, whose equipment exhausted the resources of science and art. Galileo, with an opera-glass, discovered a more splendid series of celestial phenomena than any one since. Columbus found the New World in an undecked boat. It is curious to see the periodical disuse and perishing of means and machinery, which were introduced with loud laudation a few years or centuries before. The great genius returns to essential man. We reckoned the improvements of the art of war among the triumphs of science, and yet Napoleon conquered Europe by the bivouac, which consisted of falling back on naked valor, and disencumbering it of all aids. The Emperor held it impossible to make a perfect army, says Las Casas, "without abolishing our arms, magazines, commissaries, and carriages, until, in imitation of the Roman custom, the soldier should receive his supply of corn, grind it in his hand-mill, and bake his bread himself."

Society is a wave. The wave moves onward, but the water of which it is composed does not. The same particle does not rise from the valley to the ridge. Its unity is only phenomenal. The persons who make up a nation to-day, next year die, and their experience with them.

And so the reliance on Property, including the reliance on governments which protect it, is the want of self-reliance. Men have looked away from themselves and at things so long, that they have come to esteem the religious, learned, and civil institutions as guards of property, and they deprecate assaults on these, because they feel them to be assaults on property. They measure their esteem of each other by what each has, and not by what each is. But a cultivated man becomes ashamed of his property, out of new respect for his nature. Especially he hates what he has, if he see that it is accidental, — came to him by inheritance, or gift, or crime; then he feels that it is not having; it does not belong to him, has no root in him, and merely lies there, because no revolution or no robber takes it away. But that which a man is does always by necessity acquire, and what the man acquires is living property, which does not wait the beck of rulers, or mobs, or revolutions, or fire, or storm, or bankruptcies, but perpetually renews itself wherever the man breathes. "Thy lot or portion of life," said the Caliph Ali, "is seeking after thee; therefore be at rest from seeking after it." Our dependence on these foreign goods leads us to our slavish respect for numbers. The political parties meet in numerous conventions; the greater the concourse, and with each new uproar of announcement, The delegation from Essex! The Democrats from New Hampshire! The Whigs of Maine! the young patriot feels himself stronger than before by a new thousand of eyes and arms. In like manner the reformers summon conventions, and vote and resolve in multitude. Not so, O friends! will the God deign to enter and inhabit you, but by a method precisely the reverse. It is only as a man puts off all foreign support, and stands alone, that I see him to be strong and to prevail. He is weaker by every recruit to his banner. Is not a man better than a town? Ask nothing of men, and in the endless mutation, thou only firm column must presently appear the upholder of all that surrounds thee. He who knows that power is inborn, that he is weak because he has looked for good out of him and elsewhere, and so perceiving, throws himself unhesitatingly on his thought, instantly rights himself, stands in the erect position, commands his limbs, works miracles; just as a man who stands on his feet is stronger than a man who stands on his head.

So use all that is called Fortune. Most men gamble with her, and gain all, and lose all, as her wheel rolls. But do thou leave as unlawful these winnings, and deal with Cause and Effect, the chancellors of God. In the Will work and acquire, and thou hast chained the wheel of Chance, and shalt sit hereafter out of fear from her rotations. A political victory, a rise of rents, the recovery of your sick, or the return of your absent friend, or some other favorable event, raises your spirits, and you think good days are preparing for you. Do not believe it. Nothing can bring you peace but yourself. Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.

Crunch

Drove over to school to get my son on his HISTORIC last day of 2nd Grade. Yes, school's out for the summer. He's sick with a cold and feels lousy, just wants to go home. Good, we set off towards the parking lot. It's a nice day. We're walking towards the car -- lots of kids, lots of parents, balloons, lots of bags full of stuff kids have kept in their lockers for months.

We hear a loud crunch. "Ut oh," I say to my son. "Somebody crashed into that car."

We look. Yep, "that car" happens to be MY CAR. Some lady in a minivan has broadsided my front passenger door, nearly taking out the side mirror completely and leaving a big concave kiss in the door. All I need. The other mother gets out of her car and is really freaked out. I tell her not to worry -- I'll call her. We swap info. My son is sick -- that matters more in the big picture. Never a dull moment.

Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship and Marriage

Dave Winer says on Scripting that I'm talking about Friendship when I talk about the next big thing after marriage, but I don't know if that's necessarily what I had in mind. I'm not sure if that ship will float. When men say "Friendship" often as not, I think they mean a friendship where the letter "s" stands for "sex" and the letter "f" stands for ... you figure it out. That is not really what I had in mind. Dave, don't put words in my mouth. You'll have to wait for Lesson 17 of Alpha Male just like everyone else to find out.

BTW, this book, though completely unrelated to this post, is a terrific book.

Thanks Burningbird and Mamamusings

Shelley Powers is ruminating on my post called README. Also Liz at Mamamusings. Good to trackback to those guys' blogs, especially as there is great stuff to read there and I forget how good it is when I don't visit often enough.

I guess I want to add that README is not about male-bashing, since I'm crazy for men, but rather marriage-bashing, which drives me crazy. There is something new coming along to replace marriage. I don't know what it's called, but I know it's coming and it's high time.

Sexual Tourist

Welcome to my “country”
I said
With the best of intentions
But yours
Were not so pure.

In your cheesy rental car,
you came, noisily.
Your horn was so horny.
Of course, I heard you
Who wouldn’t?

Where the rubber meets the road,
bed and breakfast.
Your morning wake-up call
pressed against me.
You wanted to get the
lay of the land, I suppose.

Stop driving so hard
But slip off the shoulder
straps, one at a time,
and let me show you
a thing or two.
I’ll teach you how to navigate this body.

Off road, we’ll wander and
this landscape may well amaze you.
Take the time it warrants.
Each slow curve.
Just slow down.
I’ll send you home with souvenirs,
you won’t soon forget.

-- Halley Suitt

New-To-Me Bloggers

Met some great bloggers at the Jupiter Event last week and want to be sure to blogroll them. In particular, Gawker, Technorati, Buzzmachine, and Beth Goza's blog. I seem to be arriving late to the party sometimes.

A Blog By Any Other Name Would Smell As Sweet

Glenn Reynolds is busy telling us why a blog suceeds. Yes, he's got a point here,

The key to good blogging is simple: have something interesting to say, and say it well. Kind of like, well, every other sort of writing - just faster, and with links. There's nothing new about that, but it's still a kind of magic, as good writing always is.

Get This Party Started -- Pink

I'm comin' up so you better you better get this party started
I'm comin' up so you better you better get this party started

Get this party started on a Saturday night
Everybody's waitin' for me to arrive
Sendin' out the message to all of my friends
We'll be lookin' flashy in my Mercedes Benz
I got lotsa style, got my gold diamond rings
I can go for miles if you know what I mean
I'm comin' up so you better you better get this party started
I'm comin' up so you better you better get this party started

Pumpin up the volume, breakin down' to the beat
Cruisin' through the west side
We'll be checkin' the scene
Boulevard is freakin' as I'm comin' up fast
I'll be burnin' rubber, you'll be kissin' my a**
Pull up to the bumper, get out of the car
License plate says Stunner #1 Superstar

The Ballad of John & Yoko

Standing on the dock at Southampton
Trying to get to Holland or France
The man in the Mac
Said, "You've gotta go back"
You know, they didn't even give us a chance

Christ, you know it ain't easy
You know how hard it can be
The way things are going
They're gonna crucify me

Finally made the plane into Paris
Honeymooning down by the Seine
Peter Brown called to say
"You can make it okay
"You can get married in Gibraltar, near Spain"

Christ, you know it ain't easy
You know how hard it can be
The way things are going
They're gonna crucify me

Drove from Paris to the Amsterdam Hilton
Talking in our beds for a week
The newspeople said
"Say, what're you doing in bed?"
I said, "we're only trying to get us some peace"

Christ, you know it ain't easy
You know how hard it can be
The way things are going
They're gonna crucify me

Made a lightning trip to Vienna
Eating chocolate cakes in a bag
The newspapers said
"She's gone to his head
"They look just like two gurus in drag"

Christ, you know it ain't easy
You know how hard it can be
The way things are going
They're gonna crucify me

Caught the early plane back to London
Fifty acorns tied in a sack
The men from the press
Said, "we wish you success
"It's good to have the both of you back"

Christ, you know it ain't easy
You know how hard it can be
The way things are going
They're gonna crucify me
The way things are going
They're gonna crucify me
The way things are going
They're gonna crucify me

READ ME: Weblogs, Work and Women

The README file in software programs has always intrigued me. It sounds alluring, very appetizing. Just as Alice was invariably being enticed to DRINKME or EATME by various potions in little blue bottles or tiny cookies on tiny plates, which once ingested made for miraculous transformations, the README file always makes me expect something utterly magical and delicious is about to happen. by its very nomenclature.

Alas, the README file is often nearly unreadable – very disappointing for a story woman like me who wants a hero’s quest, a girl meets boy, or a simple whodunit offered up to her voracious reader’s appetite. The README file for those ungeeks who would appreciate an explanation, is usually a last file added to software that will give a user updated information and other important details as current as they possibly can be. It’s simple and factual and technical at a minimum, and overly technical, obtuse and impenetrable at the max – read ‘uninspiring’ to say the least – for mere mortals.

I want to suggest that the weblogging world has gone from its README origins – where mostly technical blogs were dominating the weblogging genre -- to a READ ME! phase where at the other extreme the more personal weblogs full of stories and anecdotes were defining the genre and is about to launch into a new arena where blogs prove their usefulness in business in a myriad of ways … maybe we can call this the "NEED ME" era of weblogs, when they will be needed more and more to create a new level of customer intimacy and business transparency we all need. Here’s what I mean.

Many of the first blogs were written by the blog tool makers – that is, the developers who created the software wrote blogs and for the early years (1995 – 1999) defined the genre. Many, if not most blogs, were daily diaries of bug fix info and patches and even more long-winded diatribes on important developments in the world of software programming. All good and essential and important but not terribly inspirational to those outside that community of very gifted geeks.

I think of it as a bunch of cavemen sitting around inventing the wheel. They loved to talk radius. They loved to talk diameter. They loved their wheel. They painted cave paintings of their wheel on the wall. Looked about as interesting as those pictures that are in the middle of a patent filing.

Then cavewomen came along and were pretty unimpressed with one wheel sitting there being fondled by one caveman. She made him roll it over to her and then told him to leave her alone with it for a while. He let her have the wheel but wanted to interest her in all the diagrams and maps and charts he had scribbled to explain this cool thing called a wheel. She wasn’t interested in the documentation; she just wanted to USE the wheel. She had a plan. She knew where the wheel could take her and she wanted to go there FAST. She wanted the wheel man to go with her, so she told him, “Go take a bath.”

She then coaxed three other cavemen to hand over their wheels and also go take baths. She had plans. She and her girlfriends turned their 4 wheels into a Thunderbird. Now the guys were cleaned up and she invited them along for a joy ride in her new car.

They said, “What the hell did she do with our wheels?” But they didn’t stand around too long because they knew they’d do better to just get in the car and let her take them for a ride.

Around about 1999, a new bunch of blogs started showing up – ones you could really READ – ones that told you stories and entertained you and took you for a joyride. Many of these blogs dutifully thanked the toolmakers for their cool blogging software. Many more didn’t know anything about the toolmakers and didn’t care. They just wanted to publish stuff someone wanted to read. They took the README idea in the Alice in Wonderland direction and published incredible magical strange things … stories people wanted to read. Stories about people. Stories about pets. Stories about their jobs. You could hear them telling stories. You could hear their voices loud and clear in their weblogs. They sounded like people sitting around a fire telling great stories. They are taking us all on a joy ride, showing us how much we liked stories, how much we needed stories.

Of course, I’m being a little facetious here, but this is what happened from 1999 – 2001 in the weblog community. I mention 2001 for a reason. The weblog came into its own on September 11, 2001 when geeky weblogs, not-so-geeky weblogs and every weblog in between spoke the true stories of the terrorist destruction of the World Trade Center towers with voices so fresh, so local, so compelling that the weblog genre could well be considered to have given birth to itself on that day. The weblogs stood up on that day and with pictures and text told their truth – some would say “the truth” – about what it felt like to be that businessman coated in white debris staggering up from Wall Street to mid-town barely able to fathom what had just happened.

We were awash in real stories about real people – real tragedy, real heroism, really real stuff. The weblog had a big open heart, big enough to contain and hold these stories with a respectful wholeness. Not to take away from the excellent journalism that came from this period, there was something about weblogs that was perfectly suited to keeping these impossible stories on that impossible day whole, human, vital in all their aliveness and all their lethal At that time, one of the premier editorial efforts by an established newspaper, The New York Times, was their section of the paper that recounted the stories of the people killed in the event, the section called “Portraits of Grief’. Interestingly, The Times also had the good sense to understand the personal narrative genre was best suited to telling the truth of this historic event.

We had been inebriated on story. We were drunk on personal tales. We had, as a tribe, sat in a circle and told the harrowing stories of our wayfaring members and I think we would never be the same.

Historically we were also at an unusual time in business. We were just entering a big downturn after having been in a giddy euphoric boom economy from 1990 through 2000.

There were other edifices being toppled rather silently at this time. In August of 2001, just as the terrorists were planning their lethal attack on the gleaming business towers, there a woman named Sherron Watkins at a company called Enron, who was writing a memo demanding the truthful story of that company be told. No more hiding behind complicated accounting fantasy language, no more obfuscating the reality of what misdeeds were going down in the name of business at her company, she wanted the real, plain, unvarnished truth recounted. It didn’t seem a lot to ask. It seemed the right thing to do. She wanted the whole story told.

She wrote a memo, just words on a page, that would bring the entire company to its knees. She told the truth and a lot of people at her company were not ready for that level of transparency.

Other women did the same and strangely, the Time Magazine Person of the Year in 2002 was not a male captain of industry, not a male leader of peace in the free world, not a man who invented a new technology or cured a disease, but instead were three women who had insisted on telling the truth in the places where they worked – Cynthia Cooper (Worldcom), Coleen Rowley (FBI) and Sherron Watkins (Enron). They told the stories of what had been going on in their lives. Those truths brought down many more gleaming skyscrapers than the terrorists did on September 11th and changed the way business would be done from that moment forward in radical ways.

Time Magazine was showing no gender bias, preferring to pose three women, instead of three men on their cover in recounting the whistleblower’s tale, but we have to ask why it happened to be women who were gracing the cover of that historic issue.

Talking about women and business is so full of landmines, I can barely step in the right place without getting blown out of the water from making the suggestion that the three whistleblowers could ONLY have been women.

They could only have been women because women have finally gotten deep enough into companies to see up close what was going on and they could only have been women because women are still on the “outside” despite being on the inside. I mean, no matter how deep inside a business organization women gets, they are still not brought into the room to enjoy the spoils of business war. They are still routinely cut out of the highest, most powerful, most lucrative jobs. They are still a miniscule force on corporate boards. They are still not treated fairly. They are still unable to be in on the party.

Even in the booming economy of the 1990’s, they were still fighting to take part equally with their male business school colleagues. Many are still doing majority of the grueling work at home of caring for their children, their husbands and their households while trying to succeed at work. Most know you can not succeed at work when you’re up at 5:00am to breastfeed babies, put in another load of laundry, make school lunches and get to a weekly sales meeting at 8:00am since the school bus comes at 8:00am and their husbands, for the most part, are already at work and are not juggling the non-negotiable truth that family life and corporate life are next to impossible to integrate. They know this truth, it is their truth and all the books and magazine articles and other propaganda about work/life balance being pumped out of the business book factory they see right through and know it for what it is – baloney. They know they are running a race at work with their male colleagues and they are losing. They went to business school with Andrew Fastow and Jeffrey Skilling, for God’s sake, they know they are just as smart if not smarter than those guys. They all started on the same starting line at the corner of Soldier’s Field Road and Storrow Drive right outside of Harvard Business School. After twenty years, most of them are way behind. Did they have a cerebral accident and lose brain cells while their male counterparts gained wisdom? Are they just not good enough to cut it? Are they not as good as men?

They knew they won the vote in 1923, but something about equality was escaping them. They knew as African Americans knew in the 1960’s that the Civil War was over, they had all the rights they deserved on paper, but that an uncivil war for civil rights had to happen if they were even going to sit next to whites at the lunch counter. If women were ever going to sit next to men on corporate boards, in corporate suites, on corporate jets as equals, something had to give.

They wanted to tell their stories. They knew the game of business was rigged. They knew the rules of business are fashioned to favor men. They knew men knew it. Their husbands knew it and weren’t their husbands just the same as the guys at work? Didn’t that mean the guys at work were in on the lie too. And then when the economy got bad and their husbands were getting laid off, wasn’t it even more obvious that if women had been treated fairly and paid equally, the families now supported by her salary (and not his) would be in better shape. Their husbands began to notice the inequality they had been a part of. in their own companies and that it had come back to bite them in the ass, as they tried to live on their wives limited salaries.

Lots of things were changing suddenly. Women starting looking at their lives, telling their truth. They were losing the race because if they are mothers, they were running a race with concrete shoes on. They were losing the race, even as single women without kids because they were not respected at work and they were cut out of the most important conversations at work, they were not able to fully participate in business, they were passed over for promotions, they were excluded from the highest positions of power, jobs where men helped other male colleagues up into the boat.

Being a woman without a wife to help you in business is a sucker’s game. You can’t succeed. Women knew this. They saw it every day. They knew they were even worse off than any guy without a wife. Women knew they were not only without the support of a wife, but most of them were were busy being wives, an emotionally draining and physically exhausting form of sanctioned slavery, taking hours away from the time they could spend being ideal workers. Ideal workers are men. Men who can travel, men who can relocate, men who can sit around at big client dinners until 10:00pm because they don’t have to be home tucking their precious children into bed at 8:30. Why do you think most divorces are initiated by women? We are witnessing a one-woman-at-a-time Civil War and underground railroad to freedom. Free at last, free at last, Thank God Almighty, I’m free at last. Divorce and separation agreements spell out an equal sharing of child-raising responsibilities between husband and wife that women have never been able to negotiate peacefully in marriage. Divorce eradicates wifely duties in one fell swoop and the unhappy faces of men testify to that.

Women are fed up. They are telling the truth about their lives. Changing poopy diapers tends to ground one in reality. Whether at home or at work in a corporate-speak memo about accounting practices, women know shit when they smell it. It makes them a little impatient with lies. They know a kid with strep throat is not a business event that can be rescheduled. They see with the eyes of mothers. They see hunger. They see tears. They see the tears of the husbands and other men in their lives. They deal in the truth. They know when they are being conned. They know they are second class citizens at work. They are not so dumb as they look. They know they are second class citizens at home. They know they are getting ripped off. They know they are raising the next generation of citizens, that no one much appreciates it and they are really exhausted. This makes them lethal. This makes them whistleblowers of the most courageous ilk. They are disenfranchised and therefore have nothing to lose and everything to gain by telling the truth. They want the truth told. They want to know why Andrew Fastow of Enron made $15 million dollars in an afternoon and they made $50,000 a year if they were really lucky.

They have changed the face of business. They have demanded a new transparency at work and in business. Although the three women on the cover of Time Magazine were not bloggers, the women using blogging tools are doing a variation on daily whistle-blowing as they blog. They are using weblogs to tell their truth. Much of their truth has been silenced and not allowed to appear in main stream press which is dominated by men. I honestly don’t believe this is any conspiracy by men, but rather a shocking disconnect from the reality men live in and the reality women live in. Weblogs are not controlled or controllable by any one group. Weblogs are a no-barriers-to-entry publishing phenomenon. Weblogs are giving women a publishing platform unparalleled in history. Women are not self-editing their voices out of existence. With weblogs, women are telling their truth without even noticing. Weblogs are creating a level-playing field for women.

Weblogs sound truthful and give a reader access to a real person’s real voice. They are all about transparency. If someone tries to write a corporate-spin weblog – it sounds like that – and guess what – no one wants to bother reading it.

If someone writes in an honest truthful voice, people are drawn to it like the proverbial bees to honey. Women are doing this every day in weblogs. Women will be doing this more and more in business. The woman who runs customer service will have a weblog where she and her customers write in truthful, helpful voices. The woman who runs sales will invite clients to write weblogs entries next to hers to solve the riddle of how they can all work together better. She will welcome their comments, neatly embedded in weblogs, a standard feature of weblogs that is the software manifestation of collaborative thinking. Weblogs work the way women work, they invite conversation and interaction in order to solve problems. They are not designed with women in mind, but they are all about cooperation, conversation and transparency. They are perfectly suited to a woman’s view of business. “Can’t we all just get along,” per Rodney King and can’t we all just work together and get something done around here?” as most women would say.

Women will continue to erode the business edifice shored up and falsely constructed on the tenuous practices of withholding information or purposefully twisting the truth. There’s no going back on transparency from the corporate board room to the janitor’s closet and everywhere in between. Weblogs will help women do this.

So perhaps we're finally entering the NEED ME phase of business. We need honest voices. We need transparency. We need to tell the truth. Weblogs are ready and willing to deliver it. But are businesses ready to tell the truth?

Like women in business, weblogs in business are the next big thing, and the two will work in concert to make the workplace radically new and transparent. The Net brought transparency to the travel business, to the financial business, to many other transaction based businesses. As for weblogs, the most innovative initiatives will not be in the arena of weblogging technology, but rather the innovation demanded of business as business grows more transparent, more open to the stories of all people who need to tell their stories and need to bring business back into reality and a place of truth.

Didn't Fall Off The Face Of The Earth

Just been so darned busy with a new job, last week of school for my son (and 5 birthday parties ... well, almost 5) and getting him ready for summer camp (starts next week) and a million other things, blogging seems to be taking a back seat. And still have a cold. Don't mean to sound so darned cranky, but it all adds up after a while. Yesterday, had my eyes checked for cataract surgery. Both eyes are very bad and I'll need surgery on the left one mid-July and the right mdi-August. The eye exam ran from 2PM to 6:30PM, leaving me with saucer-sized diliated pupils that made me look like some strange animal on the cover of an O'Reilly publication.

Gretchen ... need I say more

She is just swell, in fact, the most swelliest , smartest, wry, kind, generous, "Come On Over To Our House!" person you'll ever get the chance to meet. Weirdly, she was in Boston last year and she and I and Steve Himmer were planning to meet and at the last minute ... and I mean last minute from more than one perspective, my Dad took a turn for the worst and we had to cancel. In fact, if I remember correctly, we were supposed to meet on a Sunday afternoon and two days latter my dad passed away. So glad we hooked up in San Fran this past week under much happier circumstances.

Why Chris Pirillo Reminds Me Of Oprah

There's no easy way to explain this. I'd seen a lot of pix of Oprah before I finally met her and then when I finally saw her up close she looked like some black girl with Oprah's head stuck on her. Same with Chris Pirillo, not that he looks a lot like Oprah, no, that's not what I mean, but he looks just like some great, cute geek with Chris Pirillo's head stuck on him. He is pretty damned brilliant and makes the word entrepreneur sound like some slow-moving washed-up has-been word. There must be a better word that includes the "whirl" feeling Chris' brain gives off. So what I'm trying to say is that if you don't think Chris will be famous, like WAY famous one of these day, think again. And then there is Gretchen.