Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

them that at the same time he was an American who fought some of our battles forus, whose experience we are to follow with a sort of anxious suspense. The rewardswe obtain from the contemplation of Thoreau, however, begin their consolatory andinspiriting effect upon us as we move through our forties.I wish I were somewhere else.Ladies and gentlemen:We were talking last time about how difficult it is to be an American.We spoke of the support which Europeans receive from all those elementswe call environment—place, tradition, customs: “I am I because my neighborsknow me.” Their environment is so thickly woven, so solid, that thegrowing boy and girl have something to kick against. The American, onthe other hand, is at sea—disconnected from place, distrustful of authority,thrown back upon himself.Here I am again.And suddenly, as my eyes rest on the upturned faces before me, I am encouraged.It is in many ways a sad story I have to tell. Whenever I think of Thoreau,I feel a weight about my heart, a greater weight than descends in thoughts of Poeor Emily Dickinson. Yet all of us here are Americans. My subject is the lonelinessthat accompanies independence and the uneasiness that accompanies freedom. Theseexperiences are not foreign to anyone here. So forward.Perceptive visitors to America from Europe are uniformly struck bywhat they call an “American loneliness,” which they find no less presentin that fretful and often hollow gregariousness we talked about last time.Now there are several forms of this loneliness, and the one that occursto us first is the sentimental form. In America the very word is sentimental,and it makes us uncomfortable even to employ it. Yet we see this kind ofloneliness about us everywhere; like the loneliness which springs from pride,it is a consequence, a deformation, and a malady of that deeper form whichwe are about to discuss. Both proceed from the fact that the religious ideascurrent in America are still inadequate to explain the American to himself.The sentimental loneliness arises from the sense that he is a victim, thathe was slighted when Fortune distributed her gifts (though it is notablyprevalent among those who seem to “have everything”); the proud lonelinessarises from the sense of boundlessness which we described as relatedto the American geography and is found among those who make boundlessmoral demands on themselves and others.208