In 1843 the United States Congress appropriated $30,000 for a project led by Samuel F.B. Morse. This wee investment paid for the stringing of wires between Baltimore and Washington D. C and resulted in the magic we now know as the electromagnetic telegraph.
But that's not what's interesting. What is interesting is the addition of ( & debate over) an odd little amendment to the bill. A Congressman from Tennessee proposed that a full 1/2 of that funding be diverted to a man named Theophilus Fisk's experiments in Mesmerism. I had no idea that Mesmerism & Spiritualism were such huge phenomenons in the mid 19th Century until hearing about the seances hosted by Mary Todd Lincoln at the White House (and attended... so the story goes... at least once by the President) on the radio the other day.
Ouija Board vs. Electromagnetic Telegraph.
Hmm... I suppose with 166 years of hindsight and the Parker Brother's patent board in almost every toy store across America the rolling of eyes at the thought of Congressional appropriations to fund experiments in spirit communication is the most socially acceptable thing I can do (given the traits of my society). But with the mysterious novelty of "electomagnetism" in 1843... and the diaspora of slavery... the bloodred ghost dances of the West... the slaughter of over 600,000 husbands, sons, lovers, brothers, fathers that would occur a mere 20 years later... the hopeful assumption that the magic of the telegraph could be turned toward the heavens and beyond the grave is not such an intuitive stretch for the faithful I suppose.
It is a poetic hope. A haunted hope. One I'm sure Pulitzer Prize winner James Merrill sensed during that 20 year seance that produced Changing Light at Sandover.
The scientific contraction of time and space... Manifest Destiny... empire building... the echo of a lonely hello whispered up to the heavenly ether... the missing loved one dreamt of again and again... the sorrowful and angry turn from one plantation/slave/brother/son/parent/lover to another because the first had betrayed and disappointed with its death... the wish to hold the triumphs of the past and future in perpetual reconciliation and suspense high above the fulcrum of the present... the multiplication table that predicts life unlike yours will soon dislocate you and your genetic code from the filimental thread of time that connects mankind to the collective conscious.
If it took $30,000 in 1843 to only scratch the surface of contracting time and space via the the first telegraph communication, I wonder how much $ would have been necessary to gain mastery over all the rest. $15k for Mesmerism doesn't seem like it would be enough. Maybe that's why the bill didn't pass after all. Congress knew it was too small to make a difference. And, maybe they also knew that if it were something they approved outright with all the poetic hope and vaguary dripping from it that it would cause the people in my society to roll their eyes.
In 2008, however, the United States Government allocated $481.4 billion in "base" funding to what they call the Department of Defense.
That does sound better than Mesmerism, doesn't it? Not nearly so poetic... or vague?
1 comment:
"Mesmerism, telegraphy, cryptomarsianspendthriftism, quantum mechanics. It's all there on the path toward enlightenment," Krishna said to Arjuna. "The trick is not to care."
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