On 10/3/07 4:38 PM, "Jim Zwick" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Twain was also very much
> concerned with those changes and writing about them in the same way
> so the influences involved are not so easily separated into "personal
> loss" and "societal change" categories.

Very important point there at the end, Jim.

And in augmenting that nugget, I would like to suggest how powerfully our
views and outlooks on life and humanity are intertwined with our personal
experiences.  Most social psychologists consider it to be almost a golden
rule:  belief follows practice/habits very closely.

Other sources that might be of use in this are the many fine books detailing
the rise of unbelief, such as James Turner,  WITHOUT GOD, WITHOUT CREED, or
Andrew Delbanco, THE DEATH OF SATAN.  Also, Louis Menand's tome,
METAPHYSICAL CLUB is really quite wonderful in showing the rise of the
critique of certainty.  Robert Richardson, one of our premiere biographers,
has a new book on William James at Border's which I perused yesterday; have
not read it but it looks like another winner from Richardson.

Personally, I am coming to think that we underestimate how the big ideas
growth in skepticism and unbelief must have been hugely affected by the
horrors of the Civil War -- which Menand shows in his book.

Can traumatic grief help explain the growth of cynicism?


Harold K. Bush, Jr.
Saint Louis University