Study Everything, Join Nothing

What does my masthead motto mean?  I have been asked. One correspondent opined that it is "inhuman."

Do I live up to this admonition? Or am I posturing? Is my posture perhaps a slouch towards hypocrisy?

It depends on how broadly one takes 'join.' A while back I joined a neighbor and some of his friends in helping him move furniture. Reasonably construed, the motto does not rule out that sort of thing. And what if I join you for lunch, or join in a discussion?

Human life is obviously a cooperative venture, and the good life involves a certain amount of free association. You will improve your chess if you join the local chess club. Examples are easily multiplied.

Note also that to convey an important truth in four words is not easy.  The punch comes from the pith, but the latter excludes qualification. 

I borrow the motto from a man little read these days. In the context of Paul Brunton's thought, "Study everything, join nothing" means that one ought to beware of institutions and organizations with their tendency toward self-corruption and the corruption of their members. (The Catholic Church is a good recent example, and not just a recent one.)

"Join nothing" means avoid group-think; avoid associations which will limit one's ability to think critically and independently; be your own man or woman; draw your identity from your own resources, and not from group membership. Be an individual, and not in the manner of those who want to be treated as individuals but expect to gain special privileges from membership in certain 'oppressed' or 'victimized' or 'disadvantaged' groups.  Most despicable are those who fake membership in, say, the Cherokee tribe, to gain an undeserved benefit.  

"Join nothing" is quintessentially American. Be Emersonian, as Brunton was Emersonian:

"Who so would be a man must be a nonconformist."

"Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind."

"Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one one of its members."

"We must go alone."

"But your isolation must not be mechanical, but spiritual, that is, must be elevation."

(All from Emerson's great essay, "Self-Reliance.")

In Brunton's mouth, the injunction means: study all the religions and political parties, but don't join any of them, on pain of losing one's independence.

Note finally, that the motto is mine by acceptance, not by origin; it does not follow that it ought to be yours.