The world is too much with us

Facsimile of Saturday Evening Post Oct. 26, 1929

(Note: Associated Press update: U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes in Washington granted a request late Monday to pause the termination of temporary protected status, or TPS, for Haitians while a lawsuit challenging the administration’s effort to end it proceeds. The TPS designation for people from the Caribbean island country had been scheduled to expire Tuesday.) 1

“Much reading after a certain age diverts the mind from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking, just as the man who spends too much time in the theaters is apt to be content with living vicariously instead of living his own life.”— Albert Einstein (1879–1955)

EINSTEIN’S LEGENDARY intelligence was not limited to mathematics and physics. He was also a musician, a philosopher, a raconteur, and a bit of a jokester.

The quote above is taken from an interview Einstein granted to a journalist named George Sylvester Viereck in the 1920s. 2

While the quotation itself is thought-provoking, the entire article is worth the few minutes it takes to read it, because behind the article is the enormous irony that George Sylvester Viereck, without registering as a foreign agent, worked on behalf of Hitler in the United States during World War II. He served nearly four years in prison for his crime.3

The interview is engaging. Printed in the venerable Saturday Evening Post, it ranges over five pages and includes some erudite exchanges between the two. (There also are interesting advertisements for Chicago’s Hotel Knickerbocker, Metalcraft Motor Car Heaters, and Hanes Underwear.)

To the point at hand, Einstein is quoted with this, too:

"The meaning of relativity," he said, "has been widely misunderstood. Philosophers play with the word, like a child with a doll. Relativity, as I see it, merely denotes that certain physical and mechanical facts, which have been regarded as positive and permanent, are relative with regard to certain other facts in the sphere of physics and mechanics. It does not mean that everything in life is relative and that we have the right to turn the whole world mischievously Topsy-turvy."

In their long-ranging conversation, which Viereck said went on for several hours, they touched on many contemporary topics, including politics. What they didn’t know is all that we know now, and erasing that, as often happens with reading history, is a temporary necessity to understanding the thinking of the age. To illustrate, consider this exchange:

Viereck: Do you look upon yourself as a German or a Jew?

Einstein: It is quite possible to be both. I look upon myself as a man. Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.

Viereck: How then do you justify Jewish nationalism?

Einstein: I support Zionism in spite of the fact that it is a national experiment, because it gives us Jews a common interest. This nationalism is no menace to other peoples. Zion is too small to develop imperialistic designs.

Viereck: Then you do not believe in assimilation?

Einstein: We Jews have been too adaptable. We have been too eager to sacrifice our idiosyncrasies for the sake of social conformity.

Viereck: Perhaps assimilation makes for greater happiness.

Einstein: I do not think so. Even in modem civilization, the Jew is most happy if he remains a Jew.

Viereck: Do you believe in race as a substitute for nationalism?

Einstein: Race, at least, constitutes a larger unit. Nevertheless, I do not believe in race as such. Race is a fraud. All modern people are the conglomeration of so many ethnic mixtures that no pure race remains.

In the context of what David Brooks a few days ago called the Great American Awokening, such a frank exchange tests one’s comfort level. If we imagine the gas chambers uncovered fifteen years after this exchange, we are additionally unsettled by a Nazi sympathizer talking so boldly with a prominent Jew.

There’s more to the story, and it relates directly to today’s current events. Viereck’s son, Peter, to add even more irony, is considered by some to be the father of modern conservative thought in America. While Peter rejected his father’s political allegiance, he formed his own political ideas while a teacher at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Mass. In an article in The New Yorker in 2005, writer Tom Reiss said of Peter Viereck:

By introducing this background, I do not mean to indict conservative political views. And yet, in today’s news is the fear that another type of racial cleansing will begin — in Ohio. 5 The people at issue aren’t Jewish; they’re Haitians.

Before he was elected, President Donald Trump openly called for removing them, and he’s been responsible for spreading lies about them. They eat cats and dogs, he said. The disparaging and inaccurate language he used is similar to that used by Hitler when speaking of Jews. 6

Many Haitians in Ohio, especially in Springfield, are there on temporary visas that expire tonight. A federal judge may intervene, but unless that happens soon, the Haitians may not be allowed to stay. They could stay, if conditions in their home country remain horrible, as they were when they sought asylum in the U.S. But the administration recently took a look at current conditions in Haiti and decided things are fine, so the Haitians should go back. That conclusion is debatable.

The mayor of Springfield, Ohio, and the governor of Ohio have a different take on Haitians living there. Rather than hurting the community they say they are greatly helping it. Here’s Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s comment:

We will see what happens. It may seem a stretch to speak of the holocaust and the plight of Haitians as similar. There is no equivalency, to be sure. But the consequence of nationalism and racial supremacy are etched firmly in history. As Einstein said in his interview with a Nazi journalist, “I look upon myself as a man. Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind.”

As for the remark attributed to Einstein at the top of this post, I am not in complete agreement. I qualify regarding the issue of age. I enjoy my daily doses of reading books and articles, my email, and the hints of educational opportunity that occasionally cross the transom. In fact, it was an email from a person who curates quotations and publishes them on Substack that caused me to dive deeper for background on the source of Einstein’s quote.

At the same time, news “feeds” today are actually like a beast that wants feeding itself, and a heavy diet of it can rob any person, even one of significantly lower intellect that Professor Einstein, of creative energy.