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The Metaphysical Club ::
I have this theory about the Cold War era. I think the moral and political absolutism we saw during that time in this country, the clarity was an historical anomaly.
For the better part of the century, there was no question in this country that we, the capitalists, were right and they, the communists, were wrong or, for that matter, that we would emerge victorious from the battle. At the time, we were lucky that the Cold War was a battle of ideologies, images, and ideas and (Vietnam and the ongoing wars in South America notwithstanding) not an outright battle of military might. However, it turned out that the damage that ideologies can do should not be underestimated. Since the Cold War ended, we seem to lack a certain purpose or vision. Having a clear enemy for so long made it easy to talk about vision and direction; when they were vanquished, our vision once again had to come from within.
To find that vision, what better place to look than history?
Enter The Metaphysical Club. The book follows four pre-Cold War thinkers -- Oliver Wendell Holmes, William James, Charles Pierce, and John Dewey -- all of whom, in some way or another, defined what was going on in the American Mind as the country transitioned from the era of the Civil War into the Twentieth Century. Their ideas (paired, of course, with their political influence), gave rise to what we have accepted by now to be Modernism -- a way of thinking of the world that started with the lack of common vision of a country that had been fragmented by the Civil War, then tried to figure out how all of these divergent people could be brought (or forced) together so our way of life could be preserved and, hopefully, improved. During the time in which the Metaphysical Club was set, the concept of the Constitution became less about the preservation of individual rights, and more about what freedoms were required in order for the Country to Survive. We also saw a reinterpretation of Religion, through the introduction of Pragmatism, which suggested that the chasm between science and faith could be bridged by the simple fact that believing in god works for people. (In psychological terms, it is the lever that gets us the food pellets.) We also saw massive changes how people were educated. The commonality among all these ideas was a desire, not to preserve the rights of individuals in this country, but to move society forward. After the tragic realities of the Civil War, it was clear to the members of the Metaphysical Club that the survival of the United States rested with its ability to move forward, and we were going to have to progress in that direction together.
The ideas of Modern thought were viewed as antiquated during the time of the Cold War. Except for a few crazy dissenters, people were typically on the same page; if some were not, they would be ignored, blacklisted, beat up, or some combination of those three. But when Communism fell, we lost our enemy, we lost our vision as well. And suddenly the ideas put forward by the Metaphysical Club have become strangely relevant once again. It seems almost as though we are picking up right where we left off before the Cold War came in and, for a time at least, made things easy.
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