Riddle of America, The - Waldorf Research Institute

But now it really is “We the People,” if perhaps only ironically, andgovernment has shifted its method of dealing with the masses to one ofcalling the tune if it is paying the piper (mostly with the masses’ money).And to keep that connection with the people alive in an industrial societylike ours, it must control the main source of the culture—schooling—andraise the populace to accept the idea of hierarchy so that government cancontinue to impose its will on the populace economically in the “real” world.Behind the government, and exploiting it, stand the real successors of theframers, those who have the broadest vision of how private property rightsare the leverage to power and influence worldwide. To that end, the majoreconomic interests seem to be extremely busy promoting a culture beyondschooling that is not designed to lead the common person to a genuinefeeling of control.That many individuals have felt this problem intellectually on a personalscale is made clear in a remarkable book written by a Smith Collegehistory professor named R. Jackson Wilson. It has the allusive title Figuresof Speech, where the “figures” are five (actually six, including the epilogue)famous authors, through whose careers he convincingly depicts the evolutionof this struggle for control, at least in the 17th, 18th, and part of the19th centuries. Benjamin Franklin’s unheralded but highly successful effortto make writing pay in economic terms opens up the theme and exposes adilemma that apparently could not be resolved openly. Washington Irving,William Lloyd Garrison, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, and morebriefly, Walt Whitman, follow in turn.Using mostly the Autobiography, Wilson traces Franklin’s life as heflees Boston and his oppressive brother and carves out a brilliant career forhimself in Philadelphia. Franklin the man spent his younger years emancipatinghimself from the underdog side of power/dependency and patronage/clientele.Franklin the printer, writer, and publisher took advantage ofpatronage whenever he needed it but was soon independent of that, and hewas able, at a relatively early age, to retire from dependency on economicgain and to write at leisure and without constraints. Later, famous as astatesman, Franklin sought to reach with his writing a new phenomenonof his time: an anonymous “Publick.” Wilson provides the background ofthis new readership through the eyes of 18th-century observers. “The debateturned on the consequences of a popular idea that Britain was making afateful passage from what Adam Smith termed a crude to a civilized state”(p. 57). The division of labor resulted in a dramatic stupefaction of the massof men. In a crude society, “all men understood implicitly how the worldworked” (p. 58). Civilization, however, specialized not only labor but also323