Mind of the South

Re: Mind of the South

That's a highly dubious proposition.


That is simply false.

joefromchicago: agreed. I find little agreeable in coberst's post.

coberst- You make a blanket generalization, with no details. You then give nothing to back up your claim.

What characteristics are you talking about? What proof do you have that your evaluation is correct?

Calm down, Phoenix. Take a deep breath. We'll walk through this together.

gus- The day that I calm down, is the day that they close the box over me!

I can feel the vibrations from here.

I think that the wheel might be a useful analogy for understanding the mind of the South. The spokes of the wheel represent the essential components of all societies--economy, law and culture. The hub to which all spokes focus is slavery. The antebellum South revolved around slavery.

This area of the United States developed as any frontier area in the US during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The climate and the circumstance of the cotton gin invention led to the evolution of a society that never lost its frontier characteristic while becoming an agricultural economy dependent almost totally upon cotton.

The economy was cotton and the power controlling the society was the cotton plantation. Early in the nineteenth century South Carolina plantation owners gained complete political control of the entire state and these plantation owners became the core that moved the eleven Southern states to emulate the South Carolina system. By the 1820s the South Carolina plantation politicians determined their goal to be separation from the Union if the Union failed to allow the expansion of slavery into the developing land as the nation moved West and new states began to join the Union.

There were three basic economic classes?-plantation owners, yeomen farmers and poor whites. I do not include slaves as an economic class?-they were basically capital (objects) just as horses and oxen are capital. The plantation owners controlled the wealth and power in their particular areas and banded together to control the wealth and political power in a region of state.

The yeomen and poor white were primarily subsistence farmers. Some of the yeomen had a few slaves but by and large the vast majority of slaves worked the large plantations. The plantations owned the good land leaving the less desirable land for the yeomen and poor white. Basically population ringed the best lands of the plantation with each succeeding lower rung in the economic ladder existing on less and less productive land.

There was somewhat of a heterogeneous mixture of relatives occupying each economic sector. The plantation owner was related by blood to many of the citizens in the area. There was not a great sense of hierarchy in class sensitivities because of the interrelated blood relationships. This fact also made it easier for the plantation owners to exercise their power over the community.

All classes recognized the importance of slavery to the whole society. While the yeoman and poor white did not, in most cases, own slaves they were as dependent on slavery as was the owner of slaves. For the yeoman and the poor white their self-esteem depended upon their sense of superiority to the slave. For these reasons the laws and the culture took the same attitude toward the importance of slavery, as did the plantation owners.

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The antebellum Southerner is violent, romantic, hedonistic and indolent. The dictionary defines a romantic as marked by the imaginative appeal of what is heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious, or idealized and hedonism: the doctrine that pleasure or happiness is the sole or chief good in life. All of these character traits were developed and maintained because of the culture of slavery. The yeoman and the poor white were strong white supremacists because it was a necessary component of their self-image, of their self-identity.

The character traits of a strong sense of honor, violence, devil-may-care romanticism and their lifetime of hard bare survival living coupled with outdoor hunting and acquaintance with guns were great assets as a soldier. The Southern officer was far superior to the Union officer and most obviously this is exemplified in the person of General Robert Lee. Also they fought for their homes and their self-identity and way of life. They managed to salvage the substance if not the form of white supremacy after defeat through the Jim Crow laws that held for one hundred years.

The South came within a whisper of winning the war because of these personal characteristics and also because of the excellent officers. The South nearly won even though the North was an industrial giant in comparison, with a greater population and wealth. The South had no industry.

self-actualized learner? interesting concept.

Re: Mind of the South


Enlisted men were roughly equal on both sides. The southern officer corps was on the whole better early in the war but by 1863 that had equalled out.

I got a bit of a chuckle out of that myself.

Come on lads.He's just retired.Give him a chance.
He hasn't had any experience of being a useless parasite like we have.It takes a while to come to terms with that after a career in engineering.

This is what I mean by being a self-actualized learner.

I am a retired engineer with a good bit of formal education and twenty five years of self-learning. I began the self-learning experience while in my mid-forties. I had no goal in mind; I was just following my intellectual curiosity in whatever direction it led me. This hobby, self-learning, has become very important to me. I have bounced around from one hobby to another but have always been enticed back by the excitement I have discovered in this learning process. Carl Sagan is quoted as having written; "Understanding is a kind of ecstasy."

I label myself as a September Scholar because I began the process at mid-life and because my quest is disinterested knowledge.

Disinterested knowledge is an intrinsic value. Disinterested knowledge is not a means but an end. It is knowledge I seek because I desire to know it. I mean the term ?'disinterested knowledge' as similar to ?'pure research', as compared to ?'applied research'. Pure research seeks to know truth unconnected to any specific application.

I think of the self-learner of disinterested knowledge as driven by curiosity and imagination to understand. The September Scholar seeks to ?'see' and then to ?'grasp' through intellection directed at understanding the self as well as the world. The knowledge and understanding that is sought by the September Scholar are determined only by personal motivations. It is noteworthy that disinterested knowledge is knowledge I am driven to acquire because it is of dominating interest to me. Because I have such an interest in this disinterested knowledge my adrenaline level rises in anticipation of my voyage of discovery.

We often use the metaphors of ?'seeing' for knowing and ?'grasping' for understanding. I think these metaphors significantly illuminate the difference between these two forms of intellection. We see much but grasp little. It takes great force to impel us to go beyond seeing to the point of grasping. The force driving us is the strong personal involvement we have to the question that guides our quest. I think it is this inclusion of self-fulfillment, as associated with the question, that makes self-learning so important.

The self-learner of disinterested knowledge is engaged in a single-minded search for understanding. The goal, grasping the ?'truth', is generally of insignificant consequence in comparison to the single-minded search. Others must judge the value of the ?'truth' discovered by the autodidactic. I suggest that truth, should it be of any universal value, will evolve in a biological fashion when a significant number of pursuers of disinterested knowledge engage in dialogue.

The experience the September Scholar seeks is solely determined by his or her own internal ?'voice'. The curiosity and imagination of the learner drive the voice. Our formal education system has left most of us with little appreciation or understanding of our own curiosity and imagination. That characteristic so obvious in children has been subdued and, I suspect, stilled to the point that each one attempting this journey of discovery must make a conscious effort to reinvigorate the ?'inner voice'. We must search to ?'hear' the voice, which is perhaps only a whisper that has become a stranger in our life. But, let me assure you, once freed again that voice will drive the self-learner with the excitement and satisfaction commensurate to any other experience.

I seek disinterested knowledge because I wish to understand. The object of understanding is determined by questions guiding my quest. These guiding questions originate as a result of the force inherent in my curiosity and imagination.

The self-learner must develop the ability to create the questions. We have never before given any thought to questions but now, if we wish to take a journey of discover, we must learn the most important aspect of any educational process. We must create questions that will guide our travels. We can no longer depend upon education by coercion to guide us; we have the opportunity to develop education driven by the "ecstasy to understand".

I suspect that most parents attempt to motivate their children to make good grades in school so that their child might go to college and live the American Dream. The college degree is a ticket to the land of dreams (where one produces and consumes more than his or her neighbor). I do not wish to praise or to bury this dream. I think there is great value resulting from this mode of education but it is earned at great sacrifice.

The point I wish to pivot on is the fact that higher education in America has become a commodity. To commodify means: to turn (as an intrinsic value or a work of art) into a commodity (an economic good). I would say that the intrinsic value of education is wisdom. It is wisdom that is sacrificed by our comodified higher education system. Our universities produce individuals capable of developing a great technology but lacking the wisdom to manage the world modified by that technology.

I think that there is much to applaud in our higher educational system. It produces graduates that have proven their ability to significantly guide our society into a cornucopia of material wealth. Perhaps, however, like the Midas touch, this gold has a down side. The down side is a paucity of collective wisdom within the society. I consider wisdom to be a sensitive synthesis of broad knowledge, deep understanding and solid judgement. I suggest that if one individual in a thousand, who has passed the age of forty would become a September Scholar, we could significantly replace the wisdom lost by our comodified higher education.

In the United States our culture compels us to have a purpose. Our culture defines that purpose to be ?'maximize production and consumption'. As a result all good children feel compelled to become a successful producer and consumer. All good children, both consciously and unconsciously, organize their life for this journey.

At mid-life many citizens begin to analyze their life and often discover a need to reconstitute their purpose. I suggest, for your consideration, that at mid-life you consider becoming a self-learner. Some of the advantageous of this self-learning experience is that it is virtually free, undeterred by age, not a zero sum game, surprising, exciting and makes each discovery a new eureka moment. The self-learning experience I am suggesting is similar to any other hobby one might undertake; interest will ebb and flow. In my case this was a hobby that I continually came back to after other hobbies lost appeal.

I suggest for your consideration that if we "Get a life?-Get an intellectual life" we very well might gain substantially in self-worth and, perhaps, community-worth. As a popular saying goes ?'there is a season for all things'. We might consider that spring and summer are times for gathering knowledge, maximizing production and consumption, and increasing net-worth; while fall and winter are seasons for gathering understanding, creating wisdom and increasing self-worth.

I have been trying to encourage adults, who in general consider education as a matter only for young people, to give this idea of self-learning a try. It seems to be human nature to do a turtle (close the mind) when encountering a new and unorthodox idea. Generally we seem to need for an idea to face us many times before we can consider it seriously. A common method for brushing aside this idea is to think ?'I've been there and done that', i.e. ?' I have read and been a self-learner all my life'.

It is unlikely that you will encounter this unorthodox suggestion ever again. You must act on this occasion or never act. The first thing is to make a change in attitude about just what is the nature of education. Then one must face the world with a critical outlook. A number of attitude changes are required as a first step. All parents, I guess, recognize the problems inherent in attitude adjustment. We just have to focus that knowledge upon our self as the object needing an attitude adjustment rather than our child.

I am not suggesting a stroll in the park on a Sunday afternoon. I am suggesting a ?'Lewis and Clark Expedition'. I am suggesting the intellectual equivalent of crossing the Mississippi and heading West across unexplored intellectual territory with the intellectual equivalent of the Pacific Ocean as a destination.