Quiet, please! The Intellectual Importance of Undistracted Silence, the History of the Cosmos Club, and the Inquisitive, Collective Spirit of America! (4th of July Edition)
An Intriguing New Trend
It is almost America’s birthday. What state is our country in? Well, let us draw our attention to one pop-cultural trend in our country that has recently gained a lot of attention. This summer, “raw dogging,” the rather inscrutable and vulgar sounding but otherwise wholesome practice of sitting on a plane undistracted for the duration of the flight (no books, headphones, magazines, movies, or sleeping), has certainly gone viral across the “friendly skies.” However, like many modern trends, “raw dogging” is nothing new. It simply applies a new label to something that has been around for a long, long time. In fact, the Tik-Tokkers of 2024 may not have realized that David Puddy (Patrick Warburton) on “Seinfeld” initially set off this trend back in 1997 (Season 9, Episode 1, “The Butter Shave”) …long before social media.
The Terrifying Difficulty of Undistracted Silence
Despite its unoriginality, there is still something very compelling about the way in which people have rediscovered this otherwise ancient human phenomenon. Given the fast-paced, highly and over-stimulated world of smart phones and 24-hour news cycles that we live in, it’s hard to imagine simply sitting still with no distractions (anywhere…not just on a plane). In fact, not only is it hard to imagine…it is downright terrifying!
The last thing many of us, including yours truly, want to do is be alone with our own thoughts. Sometimes our thoughts may drift off into wondrous, creative places. We love that! But, left to their own devices, our thoughts may also often drift off into Hellishly dark and intolerable places. Certainly, the inevitability of death, a truth that the Covid-19 pandemic sledgehammered all of us over the head with, has become a more pronounced thought.
There was a day, though, when people…often living on a much more tangible brink of oblivion than we do today…could handle their own thoughts. No prolonged or congested flights were required. People “raw dogged” it through their entire lives, and, in exchange for all their anguished mental forays, the greatest discoveries in science, philosophy, art, mathematics, engineering, and more were made. Einstein…Aristotle…Shakespeare…Newton…Mozart…Nietzsche. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote one of his most compelling essays from inside a jail cell. Henry David Thoreau wrote Walden while living alone in the woods.
But it is of course important to remember that the mental anguish that accompanies deep and serious thoughts frequently occurs in isolation. When thoughts are shared collectively across minds equally curious and motivated, the results are quite delightfully advantageous! Such positive collaborations have preceded many of humanity’s greatest achievements…from discovering the cure to polio to landing on the moon.
Great Minds Think Alike!
In late 19th century America, a dozen or more individuals living outside the U.S. nation’s capital took advantage of this wholesome and powerful principle…reigniting the very awakened and independent-minded status of their forefathers from 100 years earlier! They created an organization that strove to understand the world the best way that humanity could (collectively)! What after all could be more American than novelty and unfinished exploration?!
At the recommendation of his friend Clarence Edward Dutton, American geologist, explorer, and army Major John Wesley Powell founded the “Cosmos Club” in 1878 as a gentlemen’s club for those interested in science1,2.
The Cosmos Club met in various locations. Initially, from 1879 to 1882, they rented out rooms on the third floor of the Corcoran Building at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 15th Street NW in Washington, D.C3. However, as the club outgrew the space needed to accommodate it, they shifted up addresses several times.
They met at the Dolley Madison House (25 Madison Place), the “new building” clubhouse at 725 Madison Place, John Tayloe’s 1828 Federal style home at 21 Madison Place, and, finally, the Townsend House at 212 Massachusetts Avenue NW. The latter address- a palatial, Beaux-Arts-style mansion that the club purchased in 1950 and has occupied to this day- once belonged to railroad and coal heiress Mary Scott Townsend (1898-1900). The home is replete with dining rooms, a billiards room, a fitness center, a library, and overnight lodging6.
An Intellectual Gathering Place
The Cosmos Club currently offers book conversations, chess and bridge tournaments, dancing lessons, holiday events, lunch and dinner lectures, seasonal dinner dances, monthly concerts, champagne brunches, prime rib buffets, anniversary parties, derby parties, cocktail parties, debutante parties, birthday parties, wedding and funeral receptions6.
It is one of the few places in our casual, high-speed modern world that still adheres to the dress codes of yesteryear. Men must wear formal slacks, collared, long-sleeved shirts/turtlenecks, and jackets. Women, who were formally admitted to the club in 1988, must wear dresses.
Over the years, the Cosmos Club has welcomed numerous people. They have included 36 Nobel Prize winners, 61 Pulitzer Prize winners, 55 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients, three U.S. presidents, two vice presidents, U.S. Supreme Court justices, artists, writers, businessmen, government officials, journalists, scientists, university presidents, and “a partridge and a pear tree”5,6. The father of yours truly also became a member of the Cosmos Club several decades ago, and so there is a reason yours truly is writing about the organization. He has several happy memories of events that took place there (sorry for speaking in the dreaded “third person”).
Among the club’s several stated goals, the major one has been the “advancement of its members in science, literature, and art and also their mutual improvement by social intercourse”4.
Lost in Thought
I certainly write in an emphatically and poetically charged manner. I scour the inexplicable and ineffable depths of my own thoughts. But I also write in a manner that is equally straightforward, expository, and concrete. It is a constant battle between the left and the right brain…enlightenment vs. romanticism…. Thomas Paine vs. William Blake.
To be philosophically minded is not always an enviable state, though. My proclivity to ruminate, ponder, and postulate is less a matter of intelligence and linguistic prowess than it is of existential anxiety! There is a reason why I write so many of these types of articles. Like any proclivity or addiction, ruminating, pondering, and postulating is at best a distraction or a defense mechanism. What would happen if I really sat in complete meditative silence…neither meddling with nor entertaining any thoughts and simply letting the thoughts run their course!? I’ve done it a lot. It can be quite difficult!
Out of Many…One (E Pluribus Unum)
What I do know with certainty, though… bouncing around all my unfettered thoughts with a crowd of people equally eager to bounce around their own is powerfully redemptive. Not just for myself…but all of us! Our society needs it more than ever…raw, nuanced, organic, and authentic ideas that blossom in undistracted silence and are shared across devoted and thoughtful groups of people.
Therefore, this is why the wholesome version of “raw dogging” is more important than ever. To paraphrase Elaine Benes, those who appear to just be “staring at the back of the seat” are doing far more than that. If they could only share all their thoughts, we may slowly but surely turn our entire country into a new “Cosmos Club” …that kind of place that would re-epitomize the endlessly curious, inquisitive, and adventurous spirit of America. And with that…Happy Fourth of July!!
SOURCES
- Evans, Richard Tranter; Frye, Helen M. (2009). “History of the Topographic Branch (Division)” (PDF). U.S. Geological Survey Circular. 1341.
- “The Cosmos Club Journal”. www.cosmosclub.org. Retrieved 2017-11-08.
- Oehser, Paul H. (1960). “The Cosmos Club of Washington: A Brief History”. Records of the Columbia Historical Society, Washington, D.C. 60/62: 250–265.
- The Cosmos Club: A Self Guided Tour of the Mansion (PDF). Washington, D.C.: The Cosmos Club. Retrieved March 27, 2022.
- Feinberg, Lawrence (1988-10-12). “18 Women End Cosmos Club’s 110-Year Male Era”. Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved 2022-03-28.
- “The Savile Club | Reciprocal Clubs”. Retrieved 2022-09-29.
- “Corcoran Building on the northeast corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and 15th Street NW”. Historical Society of Washington DC. Retrieved 2022-03-28.
- Bendar, Michael J. L’ Enfant’s Legacy: Public Open Spaces in Washington, D.C. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. p. 105.
- Washburn, Wilcomb E. The Cosmos Club of Washington: a Centennial History, 1878-1978. Washington, D.C.: The Cosmos Club.
