by Joe Miller
Hello readers, and welcome to the inaugural edition of Reason and Romanticism.
You may have noticed that Library Lines hasn’t been around the last few weeks. Hallie Herold is now sole director of the library. I’ve taken on a large project for my other job (I help universities, government agencies and research organizations build websites), and that will limit my ability to be actively involved in the library system.
Several people in the community have mentioned that they enjoyed reading my column – and I’ve certainly enjoyed writing it! So, the wonderful folks at The Pocahontas Times have offered me the opportunity to create an entirely new column.
The name – Reason and Romanticism – grows out of some of my work with the library. I had the privilege of moderating a series of discussions with Vivian Blackwood as part of her Shadows on the Mountain exhibition at the Pocahontas County Libraries.
If you were lucky enough to catch one of those talks, you’ll have heard Vivian talk about how her art draws inspiration from the Romantic tradition. And while that tradition has gone out of fashion, Vivian argues that the conditions are ripe for a new romanticism.
The original Romantic movement started toward the very end of the 18th century and peaked somewhere around the middle of the 19th century. The movement was a reaction to the Age of Enlightenment and the industrial revolution, both of which had spread across Europe rapidly during the 18th century.
Enlightenment thinkers emphasized the importance of reason and of the individual, setting the stage for much of the modern world. The Enlightenment gave us the scientific method, and with it came calculus, the laws of motion and a transition from the pseudoscience of alchemy to the science of chemistry.
Enlightenment thinkers rejected both popes and kings. Protestantism solidified its strongholds in northern Europe and much of North America. The Declaration of Independence announced that citizens are free to choose their own form of government. The Constitution established a series of inalienable individual rights – including freedom from state-sanctioned religions.
It’s a period that saw a great migration from the countryside into the city. At the start of the 17th century, London was home to about 200,000 residents—about the size of Grand Rapids, Michigan, today. A million people called London home by the start of the 19th century. The number of people working on farms declined by half during that period.
Those workers moved to the new factories, where the work was often dangerous and living conditions were poor. Millions made the switch anyway because the work was less dangerous and living conditions less bad than the subsistence farms they fled.
Charles Dickens summarized the era with his famous opening line: “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.”
The Age of Enlightenment gave us Thomas Carlyle’s “captains of industry,” who ushered in a new middle class by presiding over factories that William Blake describes as “dark satanic mills.” The American Revolution launched liberal dem-ocracy. The French Revo- lution gave us the Reign of Terror and Napoleon.
We gained science but neglected poetry. We organized, defined and systematized nature but forgot to appreciate its majesty and its beauty. We protected the rights of individuals while downplaying the communities in which individuals are embedded. We embraced logic but lost our sense of wonder and beauty.
Perhaps some of this sounds familiar.
Our modern captains of industry envision a world in which AI replaces office workers and self-driving vehicles replace cabbies and truckers. Social media feeds that once featured friends and family now surface an endless parade of rage bait and kittens driven by algorithms optimized to keep you scrolling. Smartphone-addicted young people cheat their way through school, graduating with reading skills that never progress beyond Harry Potter.
Meanwhile politicians, technologists (and technologists turned politicians) mock the humanities as worthless, gleefully slashing the federal funding that supports our Opera House, our libraries and our local radio station.
The education system isn’t much better. A decade of STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) fetishism resulted in elementary schools eliminating art programs, high schools firing band directors and universities slashing entire foreign language departments.
The original Romantic movement rejected the excesses of the Age of Enlightenment, emphasizing instead qualities like humanness, imagination and the appreciation of nature. It gave us Byron and Beethoven, Goya and Goethe. It birthed the gothic novel and science fiction. And, yes, gave us the ur-romance novel – Jane Austen’s Persuasion.
The movement’s legacy – improved working conditions, women’s suffrage and the abolition of slavery.
As we enter a new era in which machines once again threaten to redefine humans’ place in the world, perhaps it is indeed time for a new romantic movement.
