more H. Adams relevance? Misc.

[Ian Livingston]

"...the profoundest lessons are not the lessons of reason; they are
sudden strains that permanently warp the mind" (EHA 74).

On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 12:13 PM, alice wellintown
<alicewellintown at gmail.com> wrote:
> Mark Kohut wrote:
>> somewhere in the Education, he mentions explosives/dynamite as one of history's
>> ways of 'educating"...
>> couple times uses the word traverse when a simpler one would do.....
>
> That somewhere is Chicago, world columbus exposition, 1893, white
> city, and dynamite is not merely ONE of the ways history educates, it
> teaches most. In the same paragrpah Adams sez, the dynamo teaches
> least.
>
> Why, at this point in american exceptionalism, do explosives teach
> most and dynamos teach least? Well, it has much to do with the war,
> labor, and the fact that the dynamo is only finished its slouching
> toward the cradle.
>
> The force that Henry encounters when he returns to America is
> pragmatic labor--no intellectuals or society snobs need apply. The
> irish on th railroads the negro, the indian, the jew, the dust of coal
> and the explosive blasts. Henry can only play his part; he becomes a
> spy. Yes a spy. But he is never happier, for the war, all that waste,
> has left a nation with no society, no system. It is a jumble. And the
> men of the army, not Grant eventually, but the spirit of these men who
> volunteered to fight, these pragmatic men who abhor system and being
> told what or how to do their dirty work, are building a new nation
> with pragmatic determination and immigrant energy. Henry finds he too
> is a new american.
>
> But explosives and anarchists; that is is subject next, then the
> Virgin, then mechanical history.
>



-- 
"liber enim librum aperit."