I am not much of a crier. Nina Simone does it for me and certain passages from Moby Dick get me every time. But for the most part I don't tear up. So I was a little surprised when to find myself tears in my eyes and a tingle in my nose most of the way from Los Alamos to Albuquerque on my way to pick Beki up from the airport. I was listening to Studio 360's episode on the Lincoln Memorial.
Many things got the tears flowing in this episode. The obvious one is Martin Luther King Jr.'s “I have a dream” speech; I always tear up when I hear, see, or read that one. What was most interesting was the patriotic stuff consistently turning on the water-works. I'm a fan of America. It's my home. But I rarely consider myself especially patriotic. I don't own any American flags and I'm always willing to root for the underdog in the Olympics. So why did the words of Lincoln and the sound of Marian Anderson singing “My Country Tis of Thee” put me in such a state? To me it demonstrates the power of nationalism and group identification. For better or for worse, I'm an American. I have no say in the matter. I am a member of the group. Human's are such group animals that we can't help but identify.
In my head I know that there's a good chance that the Civil War was illegal. Certainly there's plenty of room for debate. Lincoln didn't set out to free the slaves. He was responsible for the bloodiest war in American history. But he saved America. Just writing those words make my nose tingle and my eyes moisten. It's easy to say that this is simply a product of brainwashing, but that's not convincing. It's closer to pavlovian than brainwashing, but no one ever slapped me every time some one said “God bless America” (I don't even believe in God and that alone is enough to put me over the edge). To me it's evidence of just how powerful our group identification can be.
All of this is, of course, overlooking the fact that there are lots of things to be proud of when it comes to the Lincoln Memorial, what it represents, and what's happened in that space. Bill O'Reilly doesn't make me cry no matter how many platitudes about how great America is shoots off. It's in part that I agree with the sentiments (everyone really does deserve a chance!) and part that even platitudes can be sincere and sincerity, not sentimentality, can get me.
The biggest crying moment of the episode had nothing to do with America, but with art, and religious experience, and transcendence. The playwright Suzan-Lori Parks describes the experience of the memorial:
“For me when I going there I don't even the feeling like, 'Wow, he freed the slaves.' It doesn't even come up in my mind. What comes up in my mind is this religious feeling. Like when I go into a beautiful cathedral I don't stand there and look at the Christ on the cross and go, 'Wow, he died for my sins.' I go, 'Whoa.' It's so much bigger than what I can see.”
I heard this and all of the sudden I reached a new understanding of transcendental experience. A couple of weeks ago I was watching, on C-SPAN, a discussion between Sam Harris and Reza Aslan, and Aslan was saying that he considers religion to be only a language to describe transcendental experience. I don't entirely buy this because there's just too much in the way of truth claims about the universe to only be a language to describe experience, but I think there is some truth in this way of thinking of religion. My father and I had a talk before I left about belief in religion and when I described Bertrand Russell's teapot example his immediate response was that billions of people don't have a deep feeling and experience of the teapot. I agreed. But I know that I don't have that experience of God and I couldn't say with confidence that I ever had or know what it could possibly feel like. Parks got me a step closer to understanding, although no closer to a belief in the All Mighty.
I don't know why Parks' comments made me cry in the same way that hearing the Gettysburg address made me cry. Maybe it's because both have a profound truth and sincerity in them. But truth and sincerity don't always move me. A math teacher sincerely believes and is correct that 2+2=4, but I don't get all misty-eyed in math class. Maybe it's the connection between the common human experience and the truth and sincerity of the statement. Or maybe I'm just too more patriotic than I thought.
