It’s not unusual for us to refer to an individual’s soul. Whether or not we mean “immortal soul” or “deep-seated character,” we understand that a soul is some sort of essence that belongs to an individual. But can a “soul” be shared? What do we mean by “soul mate”? My goodness! We even use the term “soul of the team.” How extensive is the sharing? What of a “soul of a race”? What of the “soul of a nation”? In times of political and social turmoil, would we argue that there is no national or racial soul? Maybe there never was such a “soul” if by it we mean a consistent sense of unity or underlying character. Is soul a myth?
I mention this in regard to a statement by a German-American who addressed America’s participation in World War I as a necessary intervention. Otto Kahn was that German-American, and he had traveled back and forth from the New World to the Old in the two decades leading up to the Great War. He noted that Germany had undergone a Prussianization that led the country down the path to the war’s unnecessary atrocities. He argued that the 12 million German-Americans should have an American loyalty regardless of the affinities they might have for a country many of them left two decades earlier.
You might ask why anyone should revisit a war long over. Isn’t it as extinct as the dinosaurs? Its causes and fighters long dead? Why should anyone today consider the “soul of a time long gone”? These are different times, aren’t they? But Kahn makes a point we sometimes forget or cannot understand in the context of twenty-first century societies, that there are tradeoffs in the formation of a national or racial soul if such a “soul” exists. And sometimes those tradeoffs are far more injurious than beneficial.
In a “melting pot” country like the United States or Canada, the genetic mix makes the concept of “national soul” or “national race” different from a land with greater genetic homogeneity. Take Queens, NY, for example. Its residents are probably more genetically diverse than any other human gathering on the planet, certainly, for example, more heterogeneous than the indigenous people of Papua-New Guinea today or of Germany before World War I. In the context of Germany’s prewar genetic homogeneity, Otto Kahn saw his fellow Germans as a “race.” During the years prior to World War I, Germany underwent a transformation. In his book that argues for German-American participation in the war against Germany, Right above Race, Kahn notes that Prussianism “had given to Germany unparalleled prosperity, beneficent and advanced social legislation, and not a few other things of value, but it had taken in payment the soul of the race. It had made a ‘devil’s bargain.’”*
A “devil’s bargain” for an entire country meant, for Kahn, a selling and corruption of the nation’s soul. And since there was homogeneity of national background in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Germany, the national soul was also the soul of a “race.” Kahn thought that "soul" had changed over the pre-war era of immigration. As he writes,
“I believed that this was no ordinary war between peoples for a question of national interest, or even national honour but a conflict between fundamental principles, aims and ideas. And so believing I was bound to feel that the natural lines of race, blood and kinship could not be the determining lines for one's attitude and alignment, but that each man, regardless of his origin, had to decide according to his judgment and conscience on which side was the right and on which was the wrong and take his stand accordingly, whatever the wrench and anguish of the decision” (p. 17).
Is there a morality to consider? Should a “race” turn member against member in choosing “right” over “race”? Or, is soul a matter of the oft-quoted line by Stephen Decatur? “Our Country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but right or wrong, our country!” You can replace “country” with “race,” “group,” “party,” or any term that implies homogeneity.
Right, wrong, soul. How do such words figure into our communications today? Do we believe, for example, there is a soul to a race or a nation? We don’t have to limit the term to nationality or genetics, but rather apply it to our general understanding, however faulty and filled with misconceptions, to one or another of us and our diverse appearances and genetic backgrounds.
Is there a pure race? In Mirror for Man, Clyde Kluckhohn, ethnologist, suggests the answer is “No.”* If there were (or is) one, does it have an identifiable soul? If Kluckhohn is correct in saying there is no “perfect race,” meaning a group of genetically homogeneous people, then on what grounds do we identify “German,” “Italian,” “Jew,” “Arab”? Certainly we throw the term race around a bit flippantly. On a trans-national scale, we use “Hispanic,” “Caucasion,” “Asian,” “African.” We seem to retain a generality: We are familiar with the familiar souls. But, as Kluckhohn points out, the familiar might be the mythical, writing, for example, that contrary to popular concept Scandinavians aren’t dominantly blondes.
Given the nature of melting-pot countries, do their citizens have some way of finding a unified “soul”? Is there an “American race”? “A Canadian race”? No? Of course, any unified group will eventually find its soul divided, if not in the first generation, certainly in the second or third. Heterogeneity and diversity do that to souls. So, look around. Are there identifiable “souls” out there? Does the concept of shared “soul” devalue an individual soul even in the context of soul mates?
Look at history. Regardless of their probable loyalty and feelings of “Americanism,” individual Japanese-Americans suffered through American internment camps during World War II and the early restrictions placed on those who deigned to serve in intelligence and military units. Was no one paying attention to the national “soul”? Even if the Japanese-Americans felt it, those in power obviously didn’t share the feeling.
And nowadays, is any semblance of a national soul shredded by a constant chatter of the disgruntled during the 24-hour news cycle and trans-world social media activity? Are we headed away from a shared soul—if there ever was one—to a myriad of isolated ones, some of them ironically connected over great distances? Do we share soul only in the most restrictive and homogeneous clubs, neighborhoods, assemblies, and ideological groups? Or, are we through interconnectivity headed at least temporarily toward a “world soul”?
World soul. Wouldn’t that be something?
*Kahn, Otto H., Right above Race, London, New York, Toronto. Hodder and Stoughton, 1918.
**Kluckhohn, Clyde. Mirror for Man. New York: Whittlesey House, 1949.
I mention this in regard to a statement by a German-American who addressed America’s participation in World War I as a necessary intervention. Otto Kahn was that German-American, and he had traveled back and forth from the New World to the Old in the two decades leading up to the Great War. He noted that Germany had undergone a Prussianization that led the country down the path to the war’s unnecessary atrocities. He argued that the 12 million German-Americans should have an American loyalty regardless of the affinities they might have for a country many of them left two decades earlier.
You might ask why anyone should revisit a war long over. Isn’t it as extinct as the dinosaurs? Its causes and fighters long dead? Why should anyone today consider the “soul of a time long gone”? These are different times, aren’t they? But Kahn makes a point we sometimes forget or cannot understand in the context of twenty-first century societies, that there are tradeoffs in the formation of a national or racial soul if such a “soul” exists. And sometimes those tradeoffs are far more injurious than beneficial.
In a “melting pot” country like the United States or Canada, the genetic mix makes the concept of “national soul” or “national race” different from a land with greater genetic homogeneity. Take Queens, NY, for example. Its residents are probably more genetically diverse than any other human gathering on the planet, certainly, for example, more heterogeneous than the indigenous people of Papua-New Guinea today or of Germany before World War I. In the context of Germany’s prewar genetic homogeneity, Otto Kahn saw his fellow Germans as a “race.” During the years prior to World War I, Germany underwent a transformation. In his book that argues for German-American participation in the war against Germany, Right above Race, Kahn notes that Prussianism “had given to Germany unparalleled prosperity, beneficent and advanced social legislation, and not a few other things of value, but it had taken in payment the soul of the race. It had made a ‘devil’s bargain.’”*
A “devil’s bargain” for an entire country meant, for Kahn, a selling and corruption of the nation’s soul. And since there was homogeneity of national background in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Germany, the national soul was also the soul of a “race.” Kahn thought that "soul" had changed over the pre-war era of immigration. As he writes,
“I believed that this was no ordinary war between peoples for a question of national interest, or even national honour but a conflict between fundamental principles, aims and ideas. And so believing I was bound to feel that the natural lines of race, blood and kinship could not be the determining lines for one's attitude and alignment, but that each man, regardless of his origin, had to decide according to his judgment and conscience on which side was the right and on which was the wrong and take his stand accordingly, whatever the wrench and anguish of the decision” (p. 17).
Is there a morality to consider? Should a “race” turn member against member in choosing “right” over “race”? Or, is soul a matter of the oft-quoted line by Stephen Decatur? “Our Country! In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right; but right or wrong, our country!” You can replace “country” with “race,” “group,” “party,” or any term that implies homogeneity.
Right, wrong, soul. How do such words figure into our communications today? Do we believe, for example, there is a soul to a race or a nation? We don’t have to limit the term to nationality or genetics, but rather apply it to our general understanding, however faulty and filled with misconceptions, to one or another of us and our diverse appearances and genetic backgrounds.
Is there a pure race? In Mirror for Man, Clyde Kluckhohn, ethnologist, suggests the answer is “No.”* If there were (or is) one, does it have an identifiable soul? If Kluckhohn is correct in saying there is no “perfect race,” meaning a group of genetically homogeneous people, then on what grounds do we identify “German,” “Italian,” “Jew,” “Arab”? Certainly we throw the term race around a bit flippantly. On a trans-national scale, we use “Hispanic,” “Caucasion,” “Asian,” “African.” We seem to retain a generality: We are familiar with the familiar souls. But, as Kluckhohn points out, the familiar might be the mythical, writing, for example, that contrary to popular concept Scandinavians aren’t dominantly blondes.
Given the nature of melting-pot countries, do their citizens have some way of finding a unified “soul”? Is there an “American race”? “A Canadian race”? No? Of course, any unified group will eventually find its soul divided, if not in the first generation, certainly in the second or third. Heterogeneity and diversity do that to souls. So, look around. Are there identifiable “souls” out there? Does the concept of shared “soul” devalue an individual soul even in the context of soul mates?
Look at history. Regardless of their probable loyalty and feelings of “Americanism,” individual Japanese-Americans suffered through American internment camps during World War II and the early restrictions placed on those who deigned to serve in intelligence and military units. Was no one paying attention to the national “soul”? Even if the Japanese-Americans felt it, those in power obviously didn’t share the feeling.
And nowadays, is any semblance of a national soul shredded by a constant chatter of the disgruntled during the 24-hour news cycle and trans-world social media activity? Are we headed away from a shared soul—if there ever was one—to a myriad of isolated ones, some of them ironically connected over great distances? Do we share soul only in the most restrictive and homogeneous clubs, neighborhoods, assemblies, and ideological groups? Or, are we through interconnectivity headed at least temporarily toward a “world soul”?
World soul. Wouldn’t that be something?
*Kahn, Otto H., Right above Race, London, New York, Toronto. Hodder and Stoughton, 1918.
**Kluckhohn, Clyde. Mirror for Man. New York: Whittlesey House, 1949.
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