Dec 11 2009
Philosophical Tramping
President Obama is one of the more thoughtful, intelligent, and humane world leaders to come along in recent years, and that is why he has received the Nobel Peace Prize ahead of any real accomplishments. All the same, he didn’t shy away from harsh geopolitical realities when he gave his acceptance speech yesterday. It made a lot of people squirm, I’m sure. Realism or idealism? “I reject this choice,” he said in his defense of “just war,” thus exposing him self to criticism from all quarters. And suddenly I feel a tremendous urge to pull on my hike boots and go for a long walk.
Some insights come to me instantaneously, while I’m conversing with someone, reading, driving, showering, or just staring out the window. Others have to be wrenched from the deepest recesses of my brain. Complex problems, harsh realities, difficult matters both personal and universal – these I cannot face while sitting or standing still. My legs have to be moving in order for me to gain any fresh insight into them whatsoever. I am one of those “philosophical tramps” that Barbara Hurd talks about in her book, Stirring the Mud, who can face great difficulties only by walking. And now, after reading Obama’s acceptance speech, I have much to consider, requiring a good, long stretch of the legs.
I too reject the false choice between realism and idealism – between the harsh realities that all pragmatists learn to accept over time, and the unsinkable hopes of dreamers. But it’s a tough place to be, between the two, and only the perpetual contradiction of wild nature gives me room enough to maneuver between what is and what could be. Only in the wild does anything human make sense to me, including my own pragmatism, my own cherished dreams.
The other day I cut tracks in the snow while walking among the trees, trying my damnedest to get to the root of personal matters that have been troubling me for quite some time. On other outings, I have walked to gain a morsel of wisdom concerning metaphysical matters way too abstract to trouble most people. Personal or impersonal, it’s all the same to the wild. That oracle doesn’t differentiate between the one and the many.
Perhaps we shouldn’t either. Perhaps that which affects one of us affects us all. Perhaps the most profoundly philosophical matters are those that determine how we go about our daily lives. The gas in the tank of my car, for example, is geopolitical. Its emissions will have an impact, great or slight, upon every other creature on this planet. That’s something to consider, anyhow, as I’m motoring to the nearest trailhead. And perhaps that’s what Obama was driving at in his speech. I don’t know, I’m not sure, so I’ll go for a long walk and think about it. That is, after all, what we philosophical tramps do.
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