The only way out of the existing quagmire is for the leaders in the United States to revisit the 19th century movement named transcendentalism, which paved the way for revolutionary ideas, such as abolition of slavery, women's rights, educational reform, civil disobedience and many more
The United States saw its zenith of power and influence in the world towards the close of the 20th century. But with the beginning of the 21st century and through the subsequent years, a series of events, forced as well as unforced, marked the gradual decline in the clout America exerted around the world.
The moral decay in the United States that culminated in former president Donald Trump's refusal concede a fair and square election and succeeding Capitol building attacks, which he instigated, left the anxiety-ridden world with a leadership vacuum, where autocratic leaders around the globe started using demagoguery and brute force to marginalise dissent within their electorate and in the surrounding weaker and smaller neighbouring countries.
The only way out of this quagmire is for the leaders in the United States to revisit the 19th century movement named transcendentalism, which paved the way for revolutionary ideas, such as abolition of slavery, women's rights, educational reform, civil disobedience and many more.
The 21st century started with a terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre in New York City. The world sympathised with the United States, however, then president Bush and his administration used this incident to get involved in the business of "regime change" through protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The purported mission of these wars was propagating American values of democracy and freedom in a culture so alien that after 20 years of involvement in Afghanistan the country was handed over to the Taliban, from which the Afghanis were supposed to have been liberated. Then there was the incident of Abu Ghraib in Iraq where prisoners of wars were tortured, raped, and a host of other unfathomable human rights crimes were committed by the United States military service personnel.
Furthermore, the Bush administration widely used the technique called "waterboarding" on suspected terrorists to coerce them to divulge valuable information. The technique has been widely described as a form of torture by the international community, and the subsequent president, Barrack Obama, allegedly stopped the practice.
At home, the United States enacted several legislation curtailing the rights and power of individual citizens. From heavy tax breaks to corporations and the super-rich to the formation of Super PACs (political action committee) to further increase the influence of the powerful in the election process to gerrymandering the voting legislation to marginalise the poor and the minorities, the United States is moving in a direction where a handful of oligarchs and their cronies are running the show, making it harder for the populace at the bottom rung of the economic ladder to move up.
Also, the global financial crisis and the prolonged recession that followed pre dominantly affected the population at the bottom half while the banks and the giant financial institutions were bailed out by the U.S. government. Furthermore, the land of immigrants has kept its nearly 20 million undocumented workers and visa overstays in limbo for decades, including 5 million children who were brought to the United States by their parents. It was hard to witness a scene where migrant children were literally separated from their parents at the border in 2018.
Finally, the rise of the far right is marked by racial tension, police brutality and packing of the Supreme Court with conservative ideologues who recently overturned the landmark Roe v Wade ruling, ending the right to abortion upheld for decades, subjugating half of the population as second-class citizens.
In this environment, if America were to reclaim its stature as a global leader, it has to revisit its place within and outside the greater world through the lens of transcendentalism. The heart of the transcendental philosophy lies in the notion of intuition over objectivity.
The idea of civil disobedience and abolition of slavery cannot be quantified.
Similarly, the notion that "Black Lives Matter" as a movement is to address the disproportionate injustice wrought by the criminal justice system on African Americans and not to impugn the lives of other citizens as suggested by the slogan "All Lives Matters".
When we start to operationalise every human thought, desire, actions and imagination, then we render ourselves to wild animals whose sole purpose is to survive and procreate.
One of the founders of the transcendental movement, Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote: "The highest revelation is that God is in every man". If God is in every man, then every man must be treated equally.
"These thinkers emphasised the crucial importance of the personal self and the need for completely unfettered expression of individual minds, and they advocated a separate "inner light" that could guide each man and woman," writes Ashton Nichols, a scholar on transcendentalism.
Moreover, the movement has nature at its core from where insights are garnered. In this industrial age where we are destroying nature through rugged capitalism, if our leaders can get in tune with this "inner light" then maybe we can leave a healthy planet for future generations to enjoy.
To conclude, objectivity, which is a hangover from the era of the European Renaissance and Protestant reformation, has replaced the human spirit with operational data. If our leaders want to reclaim that guiding inner light that makes us love, cry, mourn, dream and imagine, then it might be a good idea to visit the core philosophy of this unique American movement, and in the process reclaim that stature of what America was: the shining city upon a hill.
Pathak is education management consultant at Islington College
A version of this article appears in the print on July 6, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.
