20 thinkers for the 20th century

By Bob Gaydos

The time has come, admittedly much to my chagrin, to wrap this thinkers thing up and return to the real world of Rand Paul, Bristol Palin and Jersey Shore. Lord, what fools we mortals be. (Yeah, I lifted it.)

A few thoughts about this exercise in ego, selecting the 20 most influential thinkers of the 20th century:

• I started it as an escape from the aforementioned world, after a conversation with a couple of friends who had begun it for unknown reasons of their own.
• It quickly became an interesting exercise for my mind and attracted enough interest (I was amazed there was any) from readers to encourage me to do more than a superficial here’s-the-list-live-with-it-if-you-care job.
• I learned a lot about a lot of people whose names were familiar but whose accomplishments --and influence -- had faded into the recesses of my mind. Learning is always good.
• This caused me to actually think seriously about what real influence is -- the kind that spans generations, cultures, life styles and supposed areas of expertise. Who are the people who changed the world?
• For better or worse, this is still my list, albeit with some important input from readers, so disagree all you want. I’m sticking with it.

At last count, I had 14 names. Here are the final six: Carl Jung, Bill Gates, Margaret Sanger, Bertrand Russell, Bob Dylan, and T.S. Eliot

Carl Jung had a profound influence, not only on psychotherapy, but on the culture well beyond. He gave us the concept of introversion vs. extroversion. He also introduced the concept of the collective unconscious, a universal storehouse, as it were, of everything that has happened, even before humans. This influenced Joseph Campbell‘s writing on mythology and the creation of the “Star Wars” movies. Jung also believed that a spiritual experience was necessary for someone to recover from alcoholism. This theory eventually found its way to Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, and in time became the bedrock of all 12-step support groups.

A young Bill Gates dreamed of one day seeing a computer on everybody’s desk. Ta da! Today, with his billions of dollars and generous spirit, he seems almost intent on putting each computer there himself, along with making sure every person on the planet has access to good health care. He may or may not be the richest man in the world, but the Gates Foundation is the largest charitable foundation in this country. And Warren Buffett, no slouch when it comes to vision and making money, has turned over his multi-billion-dollar empire to the Gates Foundation because Buffett says Gates is the smartest man he knows and his foundation is more capable of investing all their billions to help solve world problems. Talk about setting a good example.

Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood and freed women to control their own bodies and, in turn, their lives and futures. A vigorous crusader, her efforts led to family planning, research on birth control, provision of contraception and other health services and education of the public on these issues. Providing women with the ability to control their fertility directly impacted women’s progress around the world in the workplace, in education and in the exercise of economic and political power. Like it or not, those are the facts.

As controversial as he was ubiquitous, Bertrand Russell was a superstar intellectual, philosopher, writer, logician, mathematician, historian and social critic, whose opinions were eagerly sought on every imaginable topic of the day (mostly the 1940s and ’50s). That means people paid attention to what he thought, He also palled around with Albert Einstein (see No. 1 on the list). Russell was a founder of analytic philosophy and his writings influenced logic and mathematics as well as linguistics and metaphysics. When not doing that, the British subject argued against imperialism as well as against Hitler and Stalin. He also campaigned against United States involvement in Vietnam and was a staunch advocate for nuclear disarmament. He also lived to be 97.

Some Russell quotes:

• “It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.”
• “It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't go.”
• “Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so.”

Bob Dylan has been called the poet-laureate of rock-n roll and the “voice of a generation.” Funny how that voice -- all gravelly and often incomprehensible -- has kept on going through generations, influencing not only musicians and songwriters, but the culture of the country. Would the civil rights and anti-war movements have been the same without Dylan’s musical accompaniment ("Blowin' in the Wind" and “The Times They Are a-Changin'")? Would young Americans have ever found their political voice and power without Dylan’s musical urgings? Maybe, but he surely has had a major influence in both areas, as well as on the kind of music people listen to. He never played at Woodstock, but a lot of people think he did. The stuff of legends, and he’s still on tour.

And finally, no list of influential thinkers worth its salt is complete without a poet. Poets make us think, not only about the lives we lead, but the manner in which we describe them. Poetic language is like no other, at once incisive, evocative, rhythmic and unforgettable. When it is good. Like T.S. Eliot’s. Eliot did not write as much poetry as a lot of his contemporaries, but no one had the influence he did in the 20th century -- even allowing for the nay-sayers who tore him down after his death. The expatriate American was also a playwright and the most influential critic in England in the 20th century. Plus, one of his lesser works, a book of light verse -- “Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats” -- became the basis for the hit musical, “Cats.”

Some Eliot:

• From The Hollow Men:

“This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.”

• "Poetry may make us from time to time a little more aware of the deeper, unnamed feelings which form the substratum of our being, to which we rarely penetrate; for our lives are mostly a constant evasion of ourselves."

• From The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock:

“I grow old … I grow old …

I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?

I shall wear white flannel trousers and walk upon the beach.

I have head the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.”

No matter, sir, those lines still sing to me.

* * *

So, here it is, in no particular order, my list of the 20 Most Influential Thinkers of the 20th Century:

1. Albert Einstein
2. Gandhi
3. Henry Ford
4. The Wright Brothers (count as one)
5. Thomas Edison
6. Picasso
7. Nikola Tesla
8. Mark Twain
9. James D. Watson, Francis Crick, Rosalind Franklin (DNA trio count as one)
10. Winston Churchill
11. Philo Farnsworth
12. Rachel Carson
13. George Orwell
14. Sigmund Freud
15. Carl Jung
16. Bill Gates
17. Margaret Sanger
18. Bertrand Russell
19. Bob Dylan
20. T.S. Eliot

If you stuck around, thanks for your patience. And now, alas, back to reality.

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No Freudian slip here

By Bob Gaydos

The popular TV show “Big Brother” is a virtual hot house of Freudian slips. And that should make it easy for you to figure out the next two members of The List of Most Influential Thinkers of the 20th Century.

Bravo to “the lady in the balcony” as Dr. IQ used to say on the radio. Yes, hats off to two Europeans whose influence on contemporary thought and culture has not waned even as their ideas came under increasing criticism following their deaths: George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair) and Sigmund Freud.

Orwell died 60 years ago, at the height of his writing career. He was 46. Do you have a TV show named after a phrase you created, a phrase so familiar around the world that it tells you all you need to know about the show before you watch it? Rhetorical.

Orwell’s most famous works, “Nineteen Eighty-Four” and “Animal Farm,” have sold more than 11 million copies each and are still widely read by students today. No other writer has produced two books that have been as successful.

From “Animal Farm’s” “All animals are equal but some are more equal than others,” to Nineteen Eighty-Four’s “Big Brother is watching you,” Orwell’s memorable critiques of the failure of totalitarianism have become part of our everyday language and shaped how we regard government efforts to control our lives and the tendency of revolutionaries to abandon their core principle of equality once they gain power. Fiercely anti-fascist, then anti-communist, he was a wealthy Englishman with socialist ideals. His strength was the clear, crisp, incisive way he expressed his views.

Think of “Newspeak’’ (deliberately simple but confusing language designed to discourage independent thought) and “Doublespeak” (holding two contradictory beliefs simultaneously)” and you have Orwellian ideas. Thanks to Orwell, we recognize them for what they are when we hear them today. (Well, some Tea Partiers may be the exception.)

Orwell was not only a novelist. He also virtually invented the free-wheeling social commentary column (today we call them blogs) and wrote hundreds of essays. Any serious writer would do well to follow his six rules of writing, as presented in an essay, “Politics and the English Language.” To wit:

• “Never use a metaphor, simile or other figure of speech that you are used to seeing in print.”
• “Never use a long word when a short word will do.”
• “If it is possible to cut out a word, always cut it out.”
• “Use the active rather than passive voice.”
• “Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.”
• “Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.”

And if you dare to disagree with any of this, the “Thought Police” will get you.

And who better to police our thoughts, conscious, unconscious or preconscious, than Sigmund Freud? The so-called father of psychoanalysis was by far the most influential 20th century figure in the study of how the mind works and how it shapes what we become. He believed the unconscious part of our brain, where we store all the stuff that happens to us, including the really nasty stuff, played a primary role in this.

It’s true that a lot of his ideas have been challenged, but a measure of Freud’s unmatched influence is that even the vigorous debate in the field of psychology has revolved to a large extent over whether he was right or wrong. He dominates the conversation.

Freud introduced new ideas on how we think about memory, identity, sexuality, childhood, the meaning of dreams. He gave us the Oedipus complex and unconscious guilt. He introduced the therapist’s couch and lying-down talk therapy, which has evolved for the most part into sitting-up talk therapy. Dozens if not hundreds of movies, plays and novels have been influenced by Freud’s work.

Other forms of therapy have gained prominence since his death, but anyone asked to free associate when the word “psychologist” is uttered is odds-on to respond “Freud.” Sigmund makes The List. His mama would be proud.

* * *

So here’s where we stand with the list of 20 (in no specific order):

1. Albert Einstein
2. Gandhi
3. Henry Ford
4. The Wright Brothers (count as one)
5. Thomas Edison
6. Picasso
7. Nikola Tesla
8. Mark Twain
9. James D. Watson, Francis Crick, Rosalind Franklin (DNA trio count as one)
10. Winston Churchill
11. Philo Farnsworth
12. Rachel Carson
13. George Orwell
14. Sigmund Feud

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Welcome, Philo and Rachel

By Bob Gaydos

There is a statue in the Capitol Visitors Center in Washington, D.C., part of its Statuary Hall collection, that contains this simple inscription: “Philo Taylor Farnsworth: Inventor of Television.”

Need I say more?

For better and worse, Philo Farnsworth’s vision, and subsequent inventions, changed the world we live in. There’s no way he is not one of The 20 Most Influential Thinkers of the 20th century. At the delicate age of 13, he came up with his idea for television and at 21 made the first electronic transmission of television, which became the basis of all we take for granted today, from “Jersey Shore” to “Meet the Press.” His wife Emma’s face was the first human image transmitted via television.

As with many inventors, what he envisioned is not necessarily what developed. After fighting and beating RCA over patents, he hoped television would become a tool to bring education, news, and the arts into the living rooms of ordinary Americans. By the 1950s he had banned the use of TV in his own house, although he did make a guest appearance in 1957, as “Dr. X,“ on the popular quiz show, “I’ve Got a Secret.” The panel couldn’t guess his secret, but there‘s no mystery as to why he‘s on The List.

Similarly, Rachel Carson, marine biologist and nature writer, called by many “the mother of environmentalism,” surely had no idea of the profound impact her book, “Silent Spring,” would have on the planet she so wanted to preserve for the rest of us. Her research and elegant writing on the negative effects that the widespread use of synthetic pesticides to kill insects had on all life on the planet not only resulted in a ban on the use of DDT (which she never advocated, by the way), but it gave rise to a different way of looking at the interconnectedness of all organisms and the need to protect and conserve nature’s resources.

She died of cancer at 57, only two years after publication of her most famous book, but her legacy lives on in thr Environmental Protection Agency and in every environmental debate, from the Gulf of Mexico to the Marcellus Shale. She’s on The List.

So here’s where we stand with the list of 20 (in no specific order):

1. Albert Einstein
2. Gandhi
3. Henry Ford
4. The Wright Brothers (count as one)
5. Thomas Edison
6. Picasso
7. Nikola Tesla
8. Mark Twain
9. James D. Watson, Francis Crick, Rosalind Franklin (DNA trio count as one)
10. Winston Churchill
11. Philo Farnsworth
12. Rachel Carson

The two guys who started me on this quest both added suggestions last week. I think I’m not taking any more after this, but here’s what they offered:

• Tim Shannon: After visiting the Roosevelt Memorial in D.C. last week, I really think that Franklin and Eleanor should be on the list as a team. The ideas that they put into practice certainly revolutionized social consciousness of not only the USA but the world. Two people from the Upper Class trying to help the struggling average Joes. Reading the quotes from these two remarkable people brought tears to my eyes. I’m thinking that they really should be there.
• Bob Ladanyi (who is still computer-challenged: Daniel Ellsberg was very influential, not just for releasing the Pentagon Papers, which revealed the truth about much our military was hiding in Vietnam, but because he changed the way military intelligence analysts did their job. (Hope this is an accurate paraphrase.) Ellsberg, by the way, is still doing his thing.

Here are the remainders from my original list of 29: Bertrand Russell, Noam Chomsky, Carl Jung, Jean Paul Sartre, Sigmund Freud, T.S. Eliot, George Carlin, Albert Camus, Ludwig Wittgenstein, John Dewey, Bill Wilson, Dorothy Day, Bill Gates, Thomas Watson, Sam Walton, George Orwell, Margaret Sanger, Khalil Gibran, Betty Friedan and Isaac Asimov.

And here are other names suggested: Billie Holiday, The Beatles, Ken Wilbur, Vivekananda, Bob Dylan, Thomas Merton, Groucho Marx, Clarence Darrow, John Ford, Ted Williams, Al Gore, Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Jon Stewart, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Benjamin Spock, Oprah Winfrey and Diaane Ravitch.

Only room for eight more.

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What about the mysterious Rosalind?

By Bob Gaydos

Before I put my thinking cap back on, it seems like a good time to take inventory on The List of Most Influential Thinkers of the 20th Century (and beyond). When last we met, I offered my suggested list of the first 10 candidates, sort of like the introductory class of the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Here it is:

• Albert Einstein
• Gandhi
• Henry Ford
• The Wright Brothers (count as one)
• Thomas Edison
• Picasso
• Nikola Tesla
• Mark Twain
• James D. Watson and Francis Crick (again, count as one)
• Winston Churchill

Typically, that abbreviated list brought some interesting comments. On Winston Churchill, Edward B. Godwin offered this personal remembrance of the British PM’s far-reaching influence:

“Glad for the inclusion of Winnie! In January 1966 I came for a Saturday morning interview for a position in the English department at Orange County Community College. It was a good year for getting a job in my field as candidates with Master’s degrees in English were few compared to those in education. Enrollments were up.

“I had interviewed at other community colleges. Some were over the telephone – truly a surprise. I had not anticipated that experience. I had visited Adirondack Community College. I turned down both offers. Then I came to Orange’s interview.

“Now the relevance: Unexpectedly during the interview I was asked if I were given the opportunity to structure a course, what figure in the 20th Century would I chose and why. No other interview or experience prepared me for that question because I was a new teacher and did not expect that I would be creating a new course. As my mind almost went blank, Winston Churchill came to mind because of his use of language. However, I was weak in the knees and grateful I was sitting as I explained and defended my choice.

“At the end of the interview that involved many questions including a defense of textbooks I had used in teaching, I was offered a job. In later years I came to understand that it was the process of my thinking and use of language and materials that was being examined that day. Some of the contemporary authors mentioned in the interview I had to acknowledge I hadn’t read. However, I had read much of Churchill and history then and throughout my life.

“Language of our time reflects our time. The painting pallet of denotation and connotation has gone back to just the primary colors. No need to learn how to mix colors to create shades. F*** you and other grunts and farts have replaced real discussions about war and peace.”

Amen to that.

Linda Mangelsdorf had a strong argument on another of the top 10 list:

“Hey, Bob, as long as you are counting 2 for one, why not make it 3 and give Rosalind Franklin the credit she deserves for the discovery of DNA? Today most sources do acknowledge her somewhere in their articles (the quote below is from waaaaaaay down in a Wikipedia story), but at the time of the Nobel, she was already dead from cancer – work-related, no doubt, and therefore ineligible for recognition. Just a thought …

“From Wikipedia: ‘… Their mistake was partly based on Watson having misremembered a talk by Rosalind Franklin where she reported that she had established the water content of DNA by using X-ray crystallographic methods. But Watson did not take notes, and remembered the numbers incorrectly. Instead, it was Franklin’s famous ‘photograph 51’ that finally revealed the helical structure of DNA to Watson and Crick in 1953.’ ”

And finally, Kathy Garvey, who obviously had not seen my initial list, offered this: “Where, for heavens sake, are FDR, Benjamin Spock, Dorothy Day, Bill & Melinda Gates (counts as one), or for that matter Oprah Winfrey, who is as fine an example of stewardship of great wealth as I can think of. Oops! I ended with a preposition; Winston would not be happy.”

Actually, Kathy, Winston would be thrilled since it was that rule up with which he would not put. And actually, Bill (but not Melinda) Gates is on my list of possibles, as is Dorothy Day. I hesitated on Spock and FDR and eventually left them off. Oprah is a force to be reckoned with, but I’m not sure how much she has influenced others in dealing with wealth. No one else is giving away cars.

One other suggestion was offered, by Roseanne Sullivan: “I finally thought of a "thinker" for you and whether you agree or not, you should really read what she's got to say. Name -- Diane Ravitch: Discovery - NCLB and Charter Schools ain't all that!! Diane Ravitch was a strong supporter of No Child Left Behind when it was first introduced into the political educational realm. Recently, she's had a reawakening. You can read about her experience and her thoughts on the subject in an article she wrote titled "Stop the Madness" in the Aug/Sept. issue of NEA Today. She's an expert on education and thought of as a key historian on NCLB issues. I agree with everything she says in this article and its about time somebody said it in layman's terms.”

I second the applause for her reawakening on NCLB and her insights on education, but I fear the influence barometer doesn’t measure up.

So here’s the upshot -- Rosalind Franklin is in the top 10 with Watson and Crick with an asterisk for now, awaiting final judgment. That would make her the only woman in the first 10. Here ae the remainders from my original list of 29: Bertrand Russell, Noam Chomsky, Carl Jung, Jean Paul Sartre, Sigmund Freud, T.S. Eliot, George Carlin, Albert Camus, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rachel Carson, John Dewey, Bill Wilson, Dorothy Day, Bill Gates, Thomas Watson, Sam Walton, George Orwell, Margaret Sanger, Khalil Gibran, Philo Farnsworth, Betty Friedan and Isaac Asimov.

And here are other names suggested: Billie Holiday, The Beatles, Ken Wilbur, Vivekananda, Bob Dylan, Thomas Merton, Groucho Marx, Clarence Darrow, John Ford, Ted Williams, Al Gore, Charlie Parker, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Jon Stewart.

I’m thinking Rachel Carson and Philo Farnsworth have to be in there, but this is already way too long. Until next time then.

bobgaydos.blogspot.com

Churchill makes the cut

By Bob Gaydos

“October is a fine and dangerous season in America. a wonderful time to begin anything at all. You go to college, and every course in the catalogue looks wonderful.”

-- Thomas Merton

Yes, I’m back to The List. The 20/20 if you will. Choosing the 20 most influential thinkers of the 20th Century, as laid down in a challenge by a friend who has since failed to participate in the actual choosing and who shall, hence, go nameless until he deigns to join in the process.

Tim and Ernie, though, they’re a different story. Both have taken a sincere interest in the project and both said I should take a look at Thomas Merton. And since I respect both of their opinions, I did.

Quite the man, Merton. I confess that with Merton, as with quite a number of names mentioned in previous columns, my personal data bank did not go much beyond the superficial labels. Catholic. Monk. Pacifist. Author. Poet. Social activist.

But he was so much more than the sum of his parts. As a priest and author he preached a gospel of peaceful co-existence, including among religions. His too-brief life was a spiritual journey seeking to discover and praise the common threads of people’s different beliefs and to put those beliefs into action, protesting against war and racism. His writings and teachings influenced thousands and figured prominently in the 1960s anti-war and civil rights protests and the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh to this day carries on his crusade for peace and social justice.

Coincidentally, the Center in November will present the annual Thomas Merton Award to Noam Chomsky, another renowned thinker, scholar, writer and long-time activist and potential member of The List.

The Merton quotation at the top of this column is not necessarily representative of his life’s work, but I like the simple truth it conveys as well as the timely convenience. It makes October a perfect time to start whittling The List to 20. This is not going to be easy, so I will start with those I think have to be on it and then consider the rest, the way baseball teams do in spring training.

So, not in any order, here’s the proposed foundation of the 20-person roster (If you object, speak now or start your own list):

• Albert Einstein
• Gandhi
• Henry Ford
• The Wright Brothers (count as one)
• Thomas Edison
• Picasso
• Nikola Tesla
• Mark Twain
• James D. Watson and Francis Crick (again, count as one)
• Winston Churchill

Churchill is the only statesman on The List, suggesting to me that most of them, while having influence because of their positions, are not necessarily great thinkers. I think Churchill was the exception in the 20th Century. His oratory, courage and vision, not to mention leadership, were profoundly important in saving the world from the Axis powers in World War II and in shaping the modern world. He was also an artist and prolific writer, who enjoyed cigars and brandy. A sampling of his quotations provides a good snapshot of the multi-dimensional man:

• “From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.”
• “Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.”
• “Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.”
• “If you're going through hell, keep going.”
• “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”
• “We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”
• “I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.”

What can I say? I like the way he thinks.

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What's a list without Tesla?

By Bob Gaydos

“Nikola Tesla,” my friend Ernie said. “He should be on the list. He invented electricity and radio; he just didn’t get credit because he was a terrible businessman and didn‘t know how to promote himself.”

All true, and to which I might add, he had the good sense to be friends with Mark Twain, whom Beth Quinn says definitely belongs on the list.

The List, as I will henceforth call it, giving it capitalization for added prestige, is a collection of the 20 most influential thinkers of the 20th century and beyond. As I wrote previously, a couple of friends of mine had been talking about such a list and asked me who would be on mine. Given the choice of writing about fracking or why we are such a nation of hypocritical, self-important, narrow-minded bigots, I preferred to think about thinkers. I stopped my list at 29 and asked for other suggestions. Hence, Tesla and Twain, both of whom I would agree have merit.

To be accurate, Tesla gave us the alternating current system, which makes all of this possible today. Edison, (also on the list) preferred direct current. He was also a master of self-promotion, which is not necessarily bad thing. For example, Tesla sold his AC design on the cheap to Westinghouse, who got rich on it, while Tesla eventually wound up impoverished and, some said, a little nutty. His critics pointed to Tesla’s “death ray” as evidence of his instability. But Tesla, a militant pacifist, called it a “peace ray.” Unveiled in July of 1934, The New York Times reported that the new invention "will send concentrated beams of particles through the free air, of such tremendous energy that they will bring down a fleet of 10,000 enemy airplanes at a distance of 250 miles..." Tesla stated that the death beam would make war impossible by offering every country an "invisible Chinese wall."

The idea was that no nation would think of attacking another one defended by a ring of particle beams. Sound familiar? He couldn’t find any financial backers or interested countries and it seems no prototype or plans for the death ray were found after his death. But science fiction has prospered on the concept and the idea of preserving peace through overpowering defensive weaponry continue to challenge scientists.

As for Twain, no less than Hemingway and Faulkner called him the “father,” as it were, of modern American literature, the man who gave voice to a nation and challenged it to deal with its prejudices, All with great humor. So yes, Beth, English teacher that you are, even though he died in 1910, Twain’s thinking had a profound influence after his death (earlier reports of which were “greatly exaggerated”) and continues to do so.

Some other suggestions from readers:

-- Jim Bridges (who gets the award for answering from the farthest distance: Australia! Wow, Jim, that’s dedication.): “While you listed a few names I puzzled over, I noticed no musicians in your list of thinkers. I would add either Billie Holiday (birth name of Eleanora Fagan) or The Beatles (counting them as one), both of whom made significant contributions to contemporary music.” A maybe on the Beatles, Jim.

-- Tim Shannon (one of the guys who started this): “I agree with most of your list. I would add Ken Wilber, Vivekananda, Bob Dylan and Thomas Merton as candidates.” Hmmm, Dylan?

-- Michael Kaufman: “W.E.B. Du Bois, Charlie Parker, Lenny Bruce.” Liking Du Bois and Lenny, Michael.

-- LeeAgain (a loyal Zest follower) offers a couple of excellent local candidates: “Dr. Frederick Franck (Pacem in Terris) and Pete Seeger.” Pete’s influence is undeniable.

That’s it for now in Social Studies 2010. I haven’t begun to whittle to 20 and I welcome new suggestions or comments on what we have (original list below). I have noticed that I have no presidents or military leaders on my list, perhaps because, while they may have been influential, it was not necessarily their own thinking that made them so. This effort has proven to be somewhat interesting and educational for me and I can‘t figure out the stock market, so I will not give it up yet. However, to maintain touch with reality I will also continue reading the autobiography of Jim Murray, one of the great (and influential sports writers) of the 20th century.

Here’s my original List of 29: Albert Einstein, Gandhi, Henry Ford, the Wright Brothers (they count for one), Thomas Edison, Picasso, Bertrand Russell, Noam Chomsky, Carl Jung, Jean Paul Sartre, Sigmund Freud, T.S. Eliot, George Carlin, Albert Camus, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rachel Carson, John Dewey, Bill Wilson, Dorothy Day, Bill Gates, Thomas Watson, Sam Walton, George Orwell, Margaret Sanger, Winston Churchill, Khalil Gibran, Philo Farnsworth, Betty Friedan and Isaac Asimov.

I already see some candidates for Triple A ball.

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To think, perchance to influence

By Bob Gaydos
A couple of friends of mine, who clearly have too much time on their hands, recently asked me a question that was guaranteed to provoke feelings of anxiety, inadequacy and insecurity: Who are the 20 most influential thinkers of the 20th century and beyond?

My inner voice immediately screamed out (in?), “How the hell should I know? I know baseball and politics, a few writers, some movie directors, and enough philosophy to be decent at Jeopardy. That’s it.”

The truth is, something inside me recoils at the challenge to come up with my list of the “best” or “most influential” or “most important” or “my favorite” of anything. I haven’t figured out why. Then I thought, “Well, that’s just an excuse to avoid thinking a bit beyond the normal exertion and, being retired, I have no legitimate excuse for that, so why not give it a try. Besides, it will give me something to post on my Facebook page.

The trick, for me, in compiling such lists is getting past the obvious names, the ones that go on the list automatically and, if anyone challenges them, their name goes on another list. So I have to have Albert Einstein, Gandhi, Henry Ford, the Wright Brothers (they count for one), Thomas Edison and Picasso. Already, it’s getting tough.

Off the top of my head and with just the briefest scanning of the web to remove the cobwebs, I also came up with Bertrand Russell, Noam Chomsky, Carl Jung, Jean Paul Sartre, Sigmund Freud, T.S. Eliot, George Carlin, Albert Camus, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Rachel Carson, John Dewey, Bill Wilson, Dorothy Day, Bill Gates, Thomas Watson, Sam Walton, George Orwell, Margaret Sanger, Winston Churchill, Khalil Gibran, Philo Farnsworth, Betty Friedan and Isaac Asimov.

That’s 29 names in all and I don’t think I’m done. Even my cursory Internet refresher suggests to me that Martin Heidegger was a great 20th century philosopher, if just because all the other philosophers seem to think he was. (Personal confession: Reading philosophical writings often demands the kind of attention to minute detail for which I have seldom had the patience, even in college when I wanted to get a decent grade. This is one of my character defects with which I have learned to live. It’s also probably why I got into journalism. Truthfully, when Bill Clinton said he wasn’t sure what the meaning of the word “is’’ is, I got a headache even though I knew what he was trying to do.)

But this list, say my friends, is for influential thinkers, not just philosophers, and Heidegger happened to be a genuine Nazi, to which I can only ask, “What was he thinking?” And since this is a personal list, even though he had wide influence I will leave him -- and Adolf Hitler -- off my list since their core idea was soundly rejected.

I’m going to stop here before I start including Knute Rockne because he popularized the forward pass or Miller Huggins for making Babe Ruth a fulltime outfielder. Those were pure genius.
* * *

Dot, dot, dot: No, I’m not going to leave it there. This is a blog, which means it’s interactive. I’m sure someone thinks I’m an idiot for names I included or excluded. Or maybe you’re just nice and want to share your own names. Send them along and we’ll compare notes. It’s bound to be more satisfying than following the ramblings of the tea partiers.