James Baldwin. To be found in the ‘Human Interest’ or ‘Human Authors’section of your bookshop
| “The purpose of the individual is to become greater than the definitions he has inherited” James Baldwin
I found this quote a couple of weeks ago in a book called ‘The business you were born to create” by Nick Williams which is a great read and covers a lot of ground. It has stuck with me since. I’ve been mulling it over whilst sat on the DLR and walking to and from the shops. Last night I was thinking about the statement again, and how it relates to different aspects of our behaviour and psychology. I am very much aware of the depth of meaning this statement holds having come from writer James Baldwin. James Baldwin wrote with the intention of expressing as full a range of human experiences as he possibly could. I think he was very much aware, not only of the reductive definitions that were imposed on him by others, but recognised the tendency for the individual to confine themselves to a world view or experience equally as narrow, and thus miss out on the possibility of realising their full potential. A kind of self inflicted ‘Myopia’ so to speak. It happens. I guess it’s about being who you are, yet not denying yourself the possibility of being all you could be?
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Posted on March 3, 2011, in Inside Out. Bookmark the permalink. 3 Comments.
Great blog. Brilliant insights. Hope it wins the wider recognition it so obviously deserves.
Hey, what an interesting post! Having read and wrestled with James Baldwin while at school (seriously heavy stuff for a teenager from a conservative Christian background, as I look back on it now), I think you have distilled Baldwin’s agenda admirably. This sentence is very prescient: Baldwin “recognised the tendency for the individual to confine themselves to a world view or experience equally as narrow, and thus miss out on the possibility of realising their full potential.”
I’ll be straight up – I have a seriously Christian worldview that has evolved massively from what I learnt at home growing up – and yet has remained firmly rooted in Biblical Christianity. Baldwin had been a prodigy child preacher, but his worldview expanded hugely to encompass a secularity that opened the door to a range of human experiences and emotions – not least with regard to sexuality and culture. And yet, Baldwin (by his own confession) was an ‘angry’ man, often referring to Miles Davis as a fellow traveller possessing the same spirit. Baldwin sought freedom of body and of mind by breaking out of the boundaries that characterised his formative years, but was he actually successful in actually, literally transcending the definitions that he himself inherited? Did he succeed in transcending the definitions and analyses so trenchantly expressed by W.E.B DuBois back in 1903? Or can we look back at 100 years of African-American history and place Baldwin firmly into his context and culture? How is any one of us to truly know who we are if all meaning is relative and self-created, and yet as human beings we are not self-existent – in that we live and then die?
Baldwin certainly tried to be who he was. In his own way, he tried to keep it real. If only more of us would do the same!
@ Musicologist,
Thanks for visiting and thanks for your appreciating my post. Your comment has given me some food for thought and I will certainly attempt to get my head around the questions you posed.
Thanks!
Sean