The School of Life

Dying of Nostalgia; Thomas Dixon Explores Homesickness

Dr Thomas Dixon, writer of the excellent History of Emotions blog, recently interviewed Professor of History at Weber State University, and a leading historian of emotions in the United States, Susan J. Matt. Her first book, Keeping Up With the Joneses, was a study of envy in modern consumer society, and her latest work tackles another emotion: homesickness, in a book titled Homesickness: An American History (Oxford University Press, 2011) which explores how homesickness and nostalgia were transformed from deadly maladies to allegedly un-American emotions. 
 

 

Thomas Dixon [TD]: Hello, Susan, and thanks for talking to us. Perhaps I could start by asking you what got you interested in homesickness?

Susan Matt [SM]: The original impetus was that my own emotional experience of mobility didn’t match up with the mythology of American restlessness. Commentators like Tocqueville and Frederick Jackson Turner as well more modern observers all claimed Americans were naturally restless, that somehow it was in our cultural DNA to leave home. I didn’t find it so effortless or easy to move, and began to wonder if I was alone. Perhaps there was a flip side to American mobility–a hidden history of homesickness. Homesickness also interested me because it seemed in many ways to be the opposite of an emotion I had just been studying–envy. Envy sparks aspirations, pushes people forward, often causes mobility. Homesickness pulls backwards. Both emotions play a role in modern individualism in the U.S.. Americans are encouraged to repress homesickness so they can leave home, be independent, seek more of the world’s goods, act on their envy.

TD: It’s interesting that it was your own emotions that fuelled your desire to revisit their history. I suspect many historians of emotion are in that position. So, what surprised you most about what you discovered when you started digging around in the history of homesickness?

SM: First, how prevalent the emotion was. I thought it would be difficult to unearth, but instead, evidence of homesickness was abundant and easy to find in just about every archive I worked in. Secondly, and perhaps more provocatively, I was surprised at how many Americans died of homesickness, or nostalgia as it was called. I knew there had been European epidemics of nostalgia in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, but didn’t know of American ones. But indeed, the disease of nostalgia was widely known in the United States–during the Civil War, there were 74 deaths from it on the Union side, and more than 5,200 cases of it in the Surgeon General’s records. 

SD: It became such a problem that army bands were sometimes prohibited from playing “Home, Sweet Home,” which at that time, was the most popular song in the country. In peacetime, civilians suffered from nostalgia as well.  The prevalence and intensity of nostalgia and homesickness throughout U.S. history – from the colonial era to the present - ultimately led me to question whether we were and are the individualists that we are so widely reputed to be. I think we’re not.

TD: I’ve been struck too by the great power of the passions in earlier periods – to cause illness, madness or even death. Medical sources of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries abound with fatal bouts of emotion. Is it possible to pinpoint a date after which this changed – when homesickness and nostalgia became mere feelings rather than powerful and potentially fatal mental conditions?

SM: It gradually disappeared as a dangerous disease in the first half of the 20th century. The U.S. Army provides a useful gauge in its records. One soldier in the American Expeditionary Force reportedly died of nostalgia during World War I. Increasingly during the War, however, many of the symptoms associated with nostalgia came to be defined as signs of the newly established syndrome of shell shock. While the diagnosis of nostalgia stayed on the books up through World War II,  and while there were many reported cases of it among soldiers in that war, there were no deaths. In short, from the early twentieth century on, the number of cases of deadly nostalgia declined, although less lethal cases of homesickness continued (and continue) to abound. It seems worth noting that as nostalgia’s cultural meaning underwent this transformation, the tolerance for the acutely homesick declined, since their condition was now seen as less dire.

TD: Historically you clearly have a really fascinating story to tell about nostalgia and homesickness as modern emotions experienced, as all emotions always are, within a particular geographical and cultural situation, in this case in modern America. I wonder what you think about the contemporary importance of this research, and also of research into the history of emotions more broadly?

SM: The history of homesickness explains a great deal about modern American culture and our national identity. Adults in modern America have learned to repress overt expressions of homesickness, for it has come to connote immaturity, a lack of ambition, and failure. It is out of step with the ethos of modern capitalism, which prizes mobility and individualism. However, while they may not discuss their homesickness publicly, in daily habits and behaviors, American make their feelings about displacement manifest. From ethnic groceries that sell the tastes of faraway homes, to sports teams which symbolize loyalty to a hometown, to our addiction to Facebook, cell phones, and emails, Americans routinely show their preoccupation with staying connected to distant places and people. While we may think of ourselves as an individualistic society, our everyday lives suggest otherwise. And our history – full of people suffering and sometimes dying of homesickness - makes clear that mobility has in fact never been an innate trait of Americans. Instead, they had to learn to leave home, and they have still not completely mastered the art of rugged, restless individualism.

The history of the emotions offers historians and the public a new set of tools to assess the past. Rather than merely judging history on the basis of external behaviors, we can bring in people’s motivations and intentions. These often provide a completely different understanding of social life and revises many of our longstanding narratives about national identity.

 Dr Thomas Dixon is Director of the Queen Mary Centre for the History of Emotions. 

Image: American sheet music of ‘Home, Sweet Home’ arranged for piano and violin, c. 1870s. Source American History Online

NOWNESS interview Geoff Dyer on America

The cultural observations in eclectic author Geoff Dyer's recent freewheeling speech debunking Anglo-American stereotypes at London's School of Life are captured in these illustrations by Paris Vs New York's Vahram Muratyan. In a typically irreverent sermon straddling literature, comedy, etiquette and language, Dyer combined his encyclopedic knowledge with witty digressions into high and low culture. The author of four novels of genre-defying fiction, including Paris Trance and the savagely comic Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi, which traces a disaffected journalist's cocaine-fueled trip through the Venice Biennale, Dyer has also written discerning essays on everything from photography and haute couture to donuts and Andrei Tarkovsky. The writer told NOWNESS: “There's a great essay by D.H. Lawrence where he ends up in New Mexico and says, ‘something in my heart expanded’—I get that when I see the American West, the sense of endless possibilities.” Here the reluctantly London-based Dyer muses on the best aspects of life on the other side of the pond.

Unfulfilled dream
My life is a total failure because of my failure to live in San Francisco. To me San Francisco is where that project which I think of as being American—combining individual freedom with civic responsibility—has been taken to some sort of furthest point. It really is like experiencing what life is like a few rungs higher up the evolutionary ladder. 

American literature
I got turned on to reading contemporary fiction through American writers. Salinger, Kerouac, and Joseph Heller: On the Road, The Catcher in the Rye and Catch 22. There's been something about that American voice, the demotic richness of American language that is not at all class-bound, and is so varied. 

Walker Evans
Walker Evans really established the paradigm of how America looks. From an early age you're so exposed to America in films and television, that there's this weird thing that happens when you go there: it seems so different to England but at the same time exactly like you've always pictured it. When we see pictures of old American towns, or old American cars, I wonder, did it always look nice? Or did we start to think it was nice because Walker Evans photographed it? 

Comedy central
One of the ways we console ourselves with living in England is that we like to say Americans have no sense of irony. There's a beautiful irony in that comment because America is the country that has produced Woody Allen, Seinfeld and Larry Sanders, some of the great ironists of our time. I find Don DeLillo screamingly funny. The irony is raised to such a level that is seems both sincere and funny at the same time.

Service culture
Americans are friendly. It's not just friendliness, it is some sort of daily manifestation of American democratic principles. The first time I heard the expression "You're welcome" was in America. I really noticed the transaction being wrapped up in a nice social exchange. You can't help but notice the way that social ripples––friendly, American ripples––extend way beyond the immediate interaction that created them. I'd go for that “have a nice day” superficial friendliness over deep-seated English hostility any day of the week.

Read the interview with some fabulous illustrations by Vahram Muratyan at NOWNESS.COM

Our next sermon will be Professor of Space Exploration, Lawrence Krauss on 16 October 2011. For tickets and more details, click here.

 Photos ©Stephanie Wolff 

If you set up a free school, what would yours be like?

One thing's for sure, ours wouldn't be like the West London Free School, the new school run by parents and led by the author and Telegraph columnist Toby Young.

Of course, you might object to the idea of setting up a free school altogether, least of all because many of the first free schools have been set up by parents in well-off areas to start with. But if we sidestep those thorny issues for after class and just look at the style of the West London Free School, it's clear it wishes it was a five-hundred-year-old grammar school. You can see it in the pupils' blue blazers, the headteacher's black gown, traditional subjects and compulsory Latin. It even has its own Latin motto "Sapere Aude" (dare to learn). It's all very Harry Potter. 

So who cares if parents want to make their school feel so old-fashioned? Well, we do. Without getting all debating society about it, it says a lot about the confidence in our children's future to dream up something that so desperately wishes it was in the past. Imagine if The School of Life had the same rigid ideas of right and wrong subjects and rules. That we wouldn't teach you unless you wore the right blazer and you'd polished your shoes. But when a bunch of well-meaning parents in West London were given a blank slate (and chalk) that's the vision they came up with.

One thing that attracted us to The School of Life in the first place (we were students and fans first, weekend teachers second) was that it didn't feel anything like school or a typical evening class. The style of a school matters and has an impact on us in our later lives. We know this because people who come to our writing class at The School of Life tell us. We've seen it on the faces of some of the more nervous writers at the start too, and in their I-didn't-know-I-could-do-it faces when they realise there's been a brilliant writer inside them all along.

If you think of a writing class most people instantly have flashbacks to lessons about grammar, apostrophes and the dreaded red pen. We don't do any of that. Not that a few rules don't matter, they do. It's just that for most people steadfast grammar rules are wrapped up with fears of getting them wrong. So they worry more about the grammar than about what makes writing a bloody great read.

So if you've been thinking about coming to our Words for Life class but you've been worried about whether you're up to it, or if you've been held back by the autumn (shudder) feeling of going back to school, then this is the writing course for you. We won't get out a red pen once. That's our school motto. 

Rob and Molly run We All Need Words, helping companies with words and branding. They're running our Words for Life weekend on the 8th of October and 3rd of December.

Geoff Dyer on Our Fear of Conversation

For a while, on flights back across the Atlantic from America to Euroland,  we are under the spell  of America. Instead of plonking ourselves down next to someone without a word  we  say, “Hi.”  Maybe even indulge in a little conversation, though this American readiness to chat is counterbalanced by the fear that once we’ve got into a conversation we might not be able to extricate ourselves from it. By the time we’re mid-ocean a kind of preparatory freeze has set in.  As the flight stacks up in the inevitable holding pattern over Heathrow we begin to revert to our muttering and moaning national selves.  But, for a week or so after landing, a form of what might be called Ameristalgia makes us conscious  of a rudeness in British life - a coarsening in the texture of daily life - that had hitherto seemed quite normal. 

Geoff Dyer is author of several novels including the recently published collection of essays ‘Working the Room’ and the wonderfully titled: ‘Yoga for People Who Can’t Be Bothered To Do It’. http://geoffdyer.com/

Join us for the first of our autumn sermons on Sunday 18 September that will challenge our engrained ‘British’ ways of approaching life. For further details about this and the rest of the autumn series, click here.

Image: Ryan Bartaby at YCN

Fionnuala Barrett on Goethe and Fashioning Ourselves on What We Love

Goethe said, amongst many other clever things during his lifetime that “we are shaped and fashioned by what we love”.  Like all other statements which reinforce the idea that we are captains of our own destiny, there is an onerous, if not a frightening, edge to this statement: one must take responsibility for one’s own actions.  If you are spending hours of every week in a vegetative state in front of the TV or wasting away hours scrolling through celebrity tweets – well, then that waste of time is no-one’s fault but your own, and is certainly not to be laid at the door of a tawdry, celebrity-obsessed culture or the crippling power of modern media to keep you enslaved.  As I said, Goethe’s statement is onerous, if only because it robs us of such comfortable scapegoats.

Goethe’s point can be mightily empowering, if embraced in the right way.  A prime example of someone latching on to this sentiment is Jay-Z.  In his 2010 memoir Decoded, Jay-Z says of his formative years that he and his fellows “were kids without fathers … so we found our fathers on wax and on the streets and in history, and in a way, that was a gift.  We got to pick and choose the ancestors who would inspire the world we were going to make for ourselves … Our fathers were gone but we took their old records and used them to build something fresh.”

Thus Goethe’s maxim became for Jay-Z an enormously potent means of overcoming all of sorts of familial and societal narratives which would otherwise keep the nascent rapper down.  He forged his own narrative and, in his own words, inspired the world he was to make for himself through a conscious adoption of that which he would love.  As a strategy for living well, it hasn’t served him so badly.

Fionnuala Barrett is a freelance writer who blogs at http://basilexposition.wordpress.com/

John-Paul Flintoff on Being Consumed by Ruskin

Have you caught on to the Ruskin revival yet? All of a sudden, it seems that the Victorian artist, critic and revolutionary thinker has become interesting again.

Emma Thompson is making a film about Ruskin's five-year marriage to Effie Gray, who ran off with Ruskin's protege, the pre-Raphaelite John Everett Millais (who painted this portrait  of Ruskin before that unfortunate turn of events).

Nobody has ever quite understood what caused the marriage to fail. Some argue, not without evidence, that Ruskin was unable to accept his wife's having pubic hair. It remains to be seen how Thompson, and her husband Greg Wise, who plays Ruskin in her film, will handle this mystery. But to suggest that Ruskin's failed marriage is the most important thing about him is like saying that the point to remember about Socrates was that he wore sandals.

Ruskin was an extraordinary thinker whose ideas were influential throughout the British empire and beyond. He championed many great artists – not just the pre-Raphaelites but also – at a key point in his early career - William Mallord Turner. He substantially inspired the arts and crafts movement founded by William Morris. His observations about the natural world opened the way for environmentalists.

And he wrote and lectured widely to lecture on social justice. Tolstoy described Ruskin as one of the most remarkable men, “not only of England and of our generation, but of all countries and times”. And not long after Ruskin died, Gandhi read one of his essays on a long train journey - and said it cast a "magic spell" that changed his life.

 

Join us for our next Conversation Meal: Dine with Ruskin on Monday 12 September 2011 19.30-22.30. The evening will be hosted by writer and faculty member John Paul Flintoff and will take place at The Saatchi Gallery.

 

Lizzie Shupack on Anger and Synchronicity

Week 3 of The Artist's Way, is all about emotions.  The chapter starts with Anger.  It continues with further discussion about Synchronicity.  I found the passage about Anger extremely synchronous, given that prior to reading it, I had just had a blow-out argument, centered around my struggle to make decisions about what I want, what I need, and what I am striving for, both in this process and beyond.

Helpfully, Cameron explains that Anger is useful, and is there to be listened to.  That said, she does note that it is "to be acted upon.  It is not meant to be acted out." Oops…  Nonetheless, I am glad that the emotional turbulence that surrounds me, has some context, and I am relieved that I'm not an anomaly in my confusion.  

In my first post, I wrote that one of my motivations for embarking on this process, was to become unselfconsciously creative, and find clarity around what it is in life that makes me fulfilled, makes me feel excited, makes me feel proud of what I do.

It's a big ask to be honest.  Those are big questions.  In my case, they are also complicated by the fact that as I write this, I'm sitting in Kaffe 1668 in New York, which means that in the three weeks since embarking on this course, I've travelled to five cities; cities which are all inspiring, creative and full of people and opportunities which all contribute to my decision-making process.

However, despite all that, the biggest thing that's holding me back, is without doubt, me.  Cameron spends some time talking about Shame, which I think is deeply tied to self-esteem and confidence.  Shame is often what prevents people from pursuing creative projects; "What if my work/my idea isn't any good?", "I can't write about that, it's too embarrassing!", "If I'm not honest, this won't have integrity, and I'm too scared to be honest".  They are all understandable fears, but fears that keep us wedded to analytical work, and logic-based activities, which are all very safe.  And very boring.

Cameron therefore suggests, that you find a couple people who can nurture and protect your early work.  Your prototypes, test-cases, scribbles, stories.  They are probably not the people you go to for constructive criticism - that’s a whole different thing - but instead they are simply proud of you and your aspirations, and have the creative and emotional intelligence to help you along.

Throughout all this, Cameron advises you to be nice to yourself.  To not beat yourself up, and to accept compliments and nice things from people along the way - things like an invitation to dinner, or new socks.  She acknowledges that yes, you will be babying yourself, but that thinking positively, and kindly, will go a lot further towards aiding your productivity; creative or otherwise, than tough-love or deprivation.

Next week, Week 4, is about Integrity.  And it requires a whole week of reading deprivation!!!!!!  A whole week!!  Beyond the books, magazines and newspapers I read, I have at least 50 RSS feeds and hundreds of bookmarked articles that I look through all the time...  Help!

 

'The Artist's Way' is by Julia Cameron and can be found at amazon.com

Lizzie Shupak is a Digital and Brand Strategist.  She is also one half of the international social experience, Wok+Wine.  She is currently on a journey of creative discovery, which may or may not affect her biography, in the weeks and months ahead.

Wok+Wine - The World's Most Delicious Social Network

Global Lifestyle Project - A Global Experiment in Lifestyle Design

Mark Vernon on the Rules of the Group

 The last couple of nights, we’ve sat in the house – watching the blogs, exchanging texts – as our part of London operates a virtual curfew. The looting and arson is rightly condemned. I’m glad about that. But the moment is arriving to try to understand what has been happening on the streets of the UK’s cities too.

It is complex. However, one concept might be particularly useful. It’s the psychological phenomenon of group conscience.

The modern world teaches us that we are individuals. I make my own choices, attend to my own interests and strive to be self-sufficient. Autonomy and individual rights are the moral ideals that shape our age.

In truth, though, no-one is an island. We are social animals, as Aristotle observed, meaning not that we like to socialise, but that our identity is primarily collective. My family, my gang, my team, my nation are where I feel most fully myself and we will go to extraordinary lengths to maintain that sense of belonging. This is what group conscience protects and enforces. It keeps you in, even if that means keeping others out.

It can be likened to the way birds flock in the air, making the most extraordinary patterns as they wheel and swirl. The science suggests that the birds obey just one or two rules. Head for the centre. Mimic your neighbour. They are the rules of the group. We humans are driven by similar compulsions. We long to know our place.

What, then, of the rioters? There is a lot of outraged comment about why youths don’t know the difference between right and wrong. But criminologists point out that this is necessary but by itself also misses the point. Like the birds, the looters are not primarily acting as self-autonomous individuals. They are copycats – doing what their mates are doing; doing what other gangs are doing. This also explains why the violence spreads, and why that is so alarmingly hard to control.

As journalists interview rioters, this is what you hear them say. ‘It was fun.’ ‘We show we can do what we want to.’ ‘It’s time for payback.’ These are collective sentiments. The morality these guys obey is that of the group. And unsettlingly, it can be half good as well as bad. Some of their values, it seems, are driven by a sense of rage and injustice. Others are driven by the culture of greed that opportunistically puts its hand in the till – a value embodied in many other groups too, it should be said.

In fact, we are all the same. The difference is that our groups probably follow values that are mostly, thankfully, pro-social. Group conscience has been heart-warmingly demonstrated by #RiotCleanUp: ‘It's a movement’ declares Dan Thompson, the organiser of the broom army. It has also been on display amongst the vigilantes seeking to protect their property – though they must be careful to monitor the rules they obey.

Heading for the centre and mimicking your neighbour are powerful urges that can lead anyone astray.

Mark Vernon is a philosopher, author and faculty member of The School of Life.  Follow his blog www.markvernon.com

Image by illustrator Emmeline Pidgen [email protected]