***
Simplify, Simplify!
1
To put it simply: Life is complex. Reality is complex. Human individuals are complex, and human societies are complex. Truth is complex, and accurately perceiving it is complex. Explaining one’s perception of “the truth” is complex too, and understanding another’s explanation of “the truth” is more complex still.
Yet we prefer to simplify.
To act, or at least to interact, requires us to proceed as though we knew that reality does exist, not just in our minds but “out there,” independent of anyone’s mind. We know that what we usually perceive all around us – and perhaps within as well – is chaos, but we want to believe that “underneath” the complexity, there is an underlying order.
We wonder about complex questions; we may ask others complex questions. Yet we prefer simple answers.
Isn’t that true?
2
When it seems more than likely that the reality within which all human beings have ever lived,
...and when we know with certainty from our own experience that the reality in which we ourselves live is not simple, and is hard to understand or to know well,
......why do we settle for relentless repetitions of definitive, uncomplicated statements of what’s supposedly true and what’s supposedly right …
.........rather than insisting upon the kind of provisional, convoluted descriptions of our world that we have every reason to know are more likely to correspond accurately to the complex reality in which we live?
Why is that?
Are we too dim-witted to prefer complex answers to complex questions, to choose complex statements about our complex world over answers that are too simple to be true?
Are we too lazy to concentrate long enough to hear complex answers explained fully, or to think hard enough to grasp the meaning of complicated statements?
Our political leaders and, even more ominously, our radio, television, and newspaper elite seem to think so, don’t they?
3
Politicians must appeal to a majority of voters. Media sources of “information” must appeal to large numbers of consumers. What we find most appealing today seems to be emotional stimulation. The politician whose campaign can elicit feelings of affection, respect, and camaderie are the ones most likely to be elected. The media outlets whose programs and publications can elicit the most entertainment, the most titillation, the most fear or the most outrage are the ones most likely to outpace their competitors.
What do we know about emotional stimulation?
Whether fellow-feeling or anger is the emotion in question, it tends to be short-lived. Thus, in order to achieve lasting success, the politician or the media outlet must keep stimulating and re-stimulating emotion. The television channel or network that presents the news of the day in a straight-forward, matter-of-fact tone without emotional commentary does not succeed. The politician who explains his position without oratorical flourish or appeal to love (family, patriotism, the Divine) or fear (the enemy, the evil-doer, an approaching cataclysm) does not succeed.
An uninflected, several-part statement of either fact or opinion is mockingly called “professorial” by media critics or political commentators and just “boring” by the rest of us. Such an appeal not to emotion but to reason – one would think – would not require frequent repetition, but the popularity of a candidate or of a reporter does require frequent stimulation of the expected emotion of the day.
4
Another thing: we are just too busy to pay that much attention or to give that much effort to prefer the truer and the more realistic (i.e. more complex) statements of what we face in our lives over simplistic platitudes, especially ones we have heard over and over.
Our jobs, our families, the business dealings necessary for our daily private lives, and our needs for stress-relieving or health-promoting activities require our immediate attention. We tell ourselves we can think carefully about the harder, long-term issues that affect us “when we get a break.”
And since the long-term issues tend to be problems, it’s no fun to think about them either.
5
Harry Truman is remembered for “plain speaking” and for saying, among other things, “Give me a one-armed economist" – one who would not answer a complex economic question, “Well, on the one hand…”
But President Truman’s witticism merely expressed a whimsical wish that the most important facts in our lives were not themselves complex, requiring multi-part statements and explanations. As a responsible leader, he recognized that they were in fact not simple and straight-forward.
We need today leaders and newscasters who are bold enough to tell us that the world we have to deal with is not simple and easy, but difficult and complicated. They can flatter our vanity by saying to us, “I know you would prefer to be moved, but it is more important for you to be informed.” But whether they flatter us or not, they need to appeal to our highest ideals and our highest abilities, our abilities to listen and to learn, to seek the real truth rather than the “simple truth,” to seek to become fully informed and to think for ourselves.
If we continue to prefer simple platitudes to careful explanations, if we continue to prefer to have our leaders appeal to us through emotion rather than reason, we have little hope of adequately facing up to the hard realities surrounding us.
***
Wednesday, July 28, 2010
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Story: What'd I Say?
***
1
“Please order whatever you’d like, Robert.”
Dr. D------ was Academic Vice President and Dean of a small residential college in the upper Midwest. He had decades of experience hiring faculty members and academic administrators. He thought he had seen just about everything.
And then there was the time he and his wife A-- took a library candidate to dinner.
Late one Spring the college was looking for a new Head Librarian. An effective interview process had been pretty well developed by that time. A Search Committee collaborated with the Dean in sifting through the applications received and selecting the top candidates. If a telephone interview and reference checks went smoothly, the Dean would select the three top candidates to actually invite to campus.
The candidate would arrive in time for an informal dinner with Dr. D------ and his wife, who would try to put the candidate at ease and make the point that the college wanted all personnel to succeed. They would also describe as honestly as they could the distinctive features of the position, warts and all, so as to avoid nasty surprises for the candidate the next day.
In this case there was nothing to be concerned about: the new person would be replacing a Head Librarian in good standing who had held the position for 25 years or so and was well-liked. There were no colleagues to warn the candidate about, as there rather often was, which meant that it was important to point out, as Dr. D------ had already done on the telephone, only that this really was a full-time job requiring 50 hours a week or so (and why that was true).
So the process was well-defined, but this particular event occurred at a time before the Internet had become an integral part of every professional activity or undertaking. But it was about to become a regular part of Dr. D------’s hiring routine.
After the dates of the candidates’ interviews were determined, about a week before the day itself came, Dr. D------’s secretary sent to everyone involved in the interview process a copy of the schedule to which a copy of the candidate’s resume was attached. In this case, early in the afternoon on the day when one of the Head Librarian hopefuls was scheduled to arrive, one of the other, current Librarians showed up in Dr. D------’s office.
2
“I thought I ought to show you something,” she said, holding up several printed papers. “To prepare for the interview tomorrow,” she went on, “I thought there would be more to talk about if I could find anything on the Internet about Robert…
“And I found this.”
They were now seated next to each other at Dr. D------’s little conference table. The Librarian placed her papers side-by-side. On the left was Robert’s resume, and on the right was a little stack of papers with a copy of a group photo on top. It was a picture of the staff of a college library in the Northeast. There in the caption, among the other names was “Robert Donald.” Counting from left to right along the row indicated, Dr. D------ identified a young African-American man as the candidate due to arrive later that afternoon.
“It’s not that Robert’s black,” she said, although that had never crossed Dr. D------’s mind.
“This library isn’t listed on his resume.”
“Hmmm,” Dr. D------ said, taking this in.
“On the resume,” she went on, “he says he was still working as Reference Librarian at this other college.”
Sure enough, the Northeastern college wasn’t mentioned at all in the resume. The date on the website was only a few months ago, and the end date of his previous job in the Midwest was listed only as the current year, with no month indicated (so – the Dean was thinkng - while leaving out the Northeast connection was peculiar, it wasn’t necessarily damning). Also, Robert’s references at the Midwestern library had given no indication to suggest that what Robert said on his resume was not accurate.
“Now, if you go to the previous page on their website,” she continued, pulling out another sheet, “it says that he was the Head Librarian there. Looks like he would mention that, since he’s applying for a Head Librarian position here.”
Dr. D------ agreed. “I’m glad you showed me this,” he said. “What do you make of it?”
“Well, it wouldn’t be fair to draw any conclusions at all now,” she said, “but I thought you might want to ask him about it.”
“Can you leave all this with me?” Dr. D------ asked.
3
“What would you like to drink?” the waitress asked that night.
Dr. D------ jumped in, saying to the candidate: “Please order whatever you’d like, Robert.” And then to the waitress he said, “Ice water for me. A--?”
“Ice water for me too. No lemon.”
“Sir?” the waitress asked Robert.
“A Coke,” he replied after a second or two. (Ordering a drink, especially hard liquor, would have been a bad sign.)
They were seated in a relatively quiet back table in the neighborhood restaurant near the Dean's home. In the car on the way from the dorm with the VIP rooms where Robert was staying, they had already covered how his air trip had gone, what route he had taken, and that kind of thing. Now all three of them were fingering the bulky menus the hostess had given them as they were being seated, so A-- said (as she often did at this juncture): “We should give you a little time to look over the menu. We come here often and we know it by heart.”
Robert started looking it over. He did not ask, as many do, if his hosts had any recommendations.
“What will you have?” A-- asked her husband.
“The Viener Schnitzle, naturally,” he replied with a smile.
Robert put the menu aside.
The drinks arrived as A-- and Dr. D------ began to go through their usual routine with candidates.
They paused long enough to tell the waitress what they wanted to eat, and then continued with their spiel. Robert listened and smiled whenever they said something intended to be light-hearted. The evening was going normally enough; Robert seemed like a nice enough, intelligent enough, professional enough young man.
4
About halfway through their meal, Dr. D------ leaned a little forward and asked Robert what he knew about the Northeastern college that had published his picture as their Head Librarian.
Robert did not react oddly. He said simply, “Well, it has a good reputation…”
A-- mentioned another topic, and the meal continued. After a short while, Dr. D----- said with his usual sympathetic smile, “I asked you about _______ College a few minutes ago, because I understand you were employed there for a time… But it’s not mentioned on your resume.”
Robert became somewhat more animated and expansive, “Oh, well, you know, in fact I never did work there. I was hired as an intern and I had even moved out there, but it didn’t work out. My wife just wouldn’t move to that little town, you know? So I never actually started.”
“Oh, that must have been awkward,” A-- said.
Dr. D------- chuckled a little and asked, “I suppose that now before you go out on any interview, you and she talk about it first. She wants for you to get this position, I guess?”
“Oh, yes, yes,” Robert said. “There is no problem like that. That’s all behind us now.”
Dr. D------ put the website pages on the other side of his plate and took a drink of water. The casual conversation resumed.
5
Fifteen minutes later or so, during coffee, Dr. D------ said, “You know, Robert,” he said. “Here’s a curious thing,” and he showed the younger man the copy of the second website page from the Northeastern college where Robert was identified as Head Librarian. “Head Librarian,” Dr. D------ said.
Robert looked down. “I felt awkward about it,” he admitted. “But after I had moved out there and everything, my wife just said No, she wouldn’t come. I didn’t want to work there while she was still here…” and he looked up at Dr. D------ and included A-- in his glance: “But this time we got that all straightened out beforehand. She is behind me all the way,” he said firmly.
“Good!” A-- said approvingly.
“You see, Robert,” the Dean said, “not mentioning this other position – at least in our conversation on the telephone – makes it seem like you had something to hide. Something serious, I mean.”
“I see,” Robert said, nodding slightly.
6
Twenty minutes later, Dr. D------ got out of the car with Robert outside his dorm, reminding him of the time when a Library colleague would be meeting him the next morning there at the front steps.
Robert got out his interview schedule and peered at it a moment. As they approached the steps he got out a pen and asked for the Dean’s telephone number.
At 7:30 the next morning as A-- was cleaning up after breakfast, the telephone on the kitchen counter rang. The Dean answered.
“Dr. D------,” Robert’s voice said, “I have booked my return flight in an hour this morning, and a taxi is on the way to pick me up.
“You were right, Dr. D----, he said. "You were right.”
“I see, Robert," the Dean replied. "Thank you for calling. Good luck.”
After he had hung up, A-- said, “I told you the interview wouldn’t happen, didn’t I? What did he say?”
“Yes, you did,” her husband replied. “He said I was right.”
***
1
“Please order whatever you’d like, Robert.”
Dr. D------ was Academic Vice President and Dean of a small residential college in the upper Midwest. He had decades of experience hiring faculty members and academic administrators. He thought he had seen just about everything.
And then there was the time he and his wife A-- took a library candidate to dinner.
Late one Spring the college was looking for a new Head Librarian. An effective interview process had been pretty well developed by that time. A Search Committee collaborated with the Dean in sifting through the applications received and selecting the top candidates. If a telephone interview and reference checks went smoothly, the Dean would select the three top candidates to actually invite to campus.
The candidate would arrive in time for an informal dinner with Dr. D------ and his wife, who would try to put the candidate at ease and make the point that the college wanted all personnel to succeed. They would also describe as honestly as they could the distinctive features of the position, warts and all, so as to avoid nasty surprises for the candidate the next day.
In this case there was nothing to be concerned about: the new person would be replacing a Head Librarian in good standing who had held the position for 25 years or so and was well-liked. There were no colleagues to warn the candidate about, as there rather often was, which meant that it was important to point out, as Dr. D------ had already done on the telephone, only that this really was a full-time job requiring 50 hours a week or so (and why that was true).
So the process was well-defined, but this particular event occurred at a time before the Internet had become an integral part of every professional activity or undertaking. But it was about to become a regular part of Dr. D------’s hiring routine.
After the dates of the candidates’ interviews were determined, about a week before the day itself came, Dr. D------’s secretary sent to everyone involved in the interview process a copy of the schedule to which a copy of the candidate’s resume was attached. In this case, early in the afternoon on the day when one of the Head Librarian hopefuls was scheduled to arrive, one of the other, current Librarians showed up in Dr. D------’s office.
2
“I thought I ought to show you something,” she said, holding up several printed papers. “To prepare for the interview tomorrow,” she went on, “I thought there would be more to talk about if I could find anything on the Internet about Robert…
“And I found this.”
They were now seated next to each other at Dr. D------’s little conference table. The Librarian placed her papers side-by-side. On the left was Robert’s resume, and on the right was a little stack of papers with a copy of a group photo on top. It was a picture of the staff of a college library in the Northeast. There in the caption, among the other names was “Robert Donald.” Counting from left to right along the row indicated, Dr. D------ identified a young African-American man as the candidate due to arrive later that afternoon.
“It’s not that Robert’s black,” she said, although that had never crossed Dr. D------’s mind.
“This library isn’t listed on his resume.”
“Hmmm,” Dr. D------ said, taking this in.
“On the resume,” she went on, “he says he was still working as Reference Librarian at this other college.”
Sure enough, the Northeastern college wasn’t mentioned at all in the resume. The date on the website was only a few months ago, and the end date of his previous job in the Midwest was listed only as the current year, with no month indicated (so – the Dean was thinkng - while leaving out the Northeast connection was peculiar, it wasn’t necessarily damning). Also, Robert’s references at the Midwestern library had given no indication to suggest that what Robert said on his resume was not accurate.
“Now, if you go to the previous page on their website,” she continued, pulling out another sheet, “it says that he was the Head Librarian there. Looks like he would mention that, since he’s applying for a Head Librarian position here.”
Dr. D------ agreed. “I’m glad you showed me this,” he said. “What do you make of it?”
“Well, it wouldn’t be fair to draw any conclusions at all now,” she said, “but I thought you might want to ask him about it.”
“Can you leave all this with me?” Dr. D------ asked.
3
“What would you like to drink?” the waitress asked that night.
Dr. D------ jumped in, saying to the candidate: “Please order whatever you’d like, Robert.” And then to the waitress he said, “Ice water for me. A--?”
“Ice water for me too. No lemon.”
“Sir?” the waitress asked Robert.
“A Coke,” he replied after a second or two. (Ordering a drink, especially hard liquor, would have been a bad sign.)
They were seated in a relatively quiet back table in the neighborhood restaurant near the Dean's home. In the car on the way from the dorm with the VIP rooms where Robert was staying, they had already covered how his air trip had gone, what route he had taken, and that kind of thing. Now all three of them were fingering the bulky menus the hostess had given them as they were being seated, so A-- said (as she often did at this juncture): “We should give you a little time to look over the menu. We come here often and we know it by heart.”
Robert started looking it over. He did not ask, as many do, if his hosts had any recommendations.
“What will you have?” A-- asked her husband.
“The Viener Schnitzle, naturally,” he replied with a smile.
Robert put the menu aside.
The drinks arrived as A-- and Dr. D------ began to go through their usual routine with candidates.
They paused long enough to tell the waitress what they wanted to eat, and then continued with their spiel. Robert listened and smiled whenever they said something intended to be light-hearted. The evening was going normally enough; Robert seemed like a nice enough, intelligent enough, professional enough young man.
4
About halfway through their meal, Dr. D------ leaned a little forward and asked Robert what he knew about the Northeastern college that had published his picture as their Head Librarian.
Robert did not react oddly. He said simply, “Well, it has a good reputation…”
A-- mentioned another topic, and the meal continued. After a short while, Dr. D----- said with his usual sympathetic smile, “I asked you about _______ College a few minutes ago, because I understand you were employed there for a time… But it’s not mentioned on your resume.”
Robert became somewhat more animated and expansive, “Oh, well, you know, in fact I never did work there. I was hired as an intern and I had even moved out there, but it didn’t work out. My wife just wouldn’t move to that little town, you know? So I never actually started.”
“Oh, that must have been awkward,” A-- said.
Dr. D------- chuckled a little and asked, “I suppose that now before you go out on any interview, you and she talk about it first. She wants for you to get this position, I guess?”
“Oh, yes, yes,” Robert said. “There is no problem like that. That’s all behind us now.”
Dr. D------ put the website pages on the other side of his plate and took a drink of water. The casual conversation resumed.
5
Fifteen minutes later or so, during coffee, Dr. D------ said, “You know, Robert,” he said. “Here’s a curious thing,” and he showed the younger man the copy of the second website page from the Northeastern college where Robert was identified as Head Librarian. “Head Librarian,” Dr. D------ said.
Robert looked down. “I felt awkward about it,” he admitted. “But after I had moved out there and everything, my wife just said No, she wouldn’t come. I didn’t want to work there while she was still here…” and he looked up at Dr. D------ and included A-- in his glance: “But this time we got that all straightened out beforehand. She is behind me all the way,” he said firmly.
“Good!” A-- said approvingly.
“You see, Robert,” the Dean said, “not mentioning this other position – at least in our conversation on the telephone – makes it seem like you had something to hide. Something serious, I mean.”
“I see,” Robert said, nodding slightly.
6
Twenty minutes later, Dr. D------ got out of the car with Robert outside his dorm, reminding him of the time when a Library colleague would be meeting him the next morning there at the front steps.
Robert got out his interview schedule and peered at it a moment. As they approached the steps he got out a pen and asked for the Dean’s telephone number.
At 7:30 the next morning as A-- was cleaning up after breakfast, the telephone on the kitchen counter rang. The Dean answered.
“Dr. D------,” Robert’s voice said, “I have booked my return flight in an hour this morning, and a taxi is on the way to pick me up.
“You were right, Dr. D----, he said. "You were right.”
“I see, Robert," the Dean replied. "Thank you for calling. Good luck.”
After he had hung up, A-- said, “I told you the interview wouldn’t happen, didn’t I? What did he say?”
“Yes, you did,” her husband replied. “He said I was right.”
***
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Reminiscence: Taking Our Friends to the Swimming Pool
***
This is how I remember it, the first day clear and in detail. My report here about day two is accurate, although I do not really remember any details, which may mean I only heard my father telling Mother about it at the supper table that second night.
1
It was a hot summer Sunday afternoon in the Texas city where I grew up, maybe in July. It would have been around 1950, when I was not yet in junior high.
A worn and dusty old cream-colored station wagon picked my Dad and me up at our curbside. We had rolled up towels with our bathing suits inside. The wagon was the kind with wood on it and would have been really spiffy when new.
In the car were four African-American men (except that was not what we or they themselves would have called their race back then). They seemed a little younger than my Dad but not markedly so and were no more athletic. They had rolled-up towels with them too. They helped me scramble into the little baggage area behind the second row of seats. The driver introduced each of them to Dad, and they shook hands. Then we drove off.
I knew we were headed to the favorite swimming pool in town. It was the biggest and there was a nice, big park all around it. The pool was fed by natural springs, and the water was always cold. In those days I preferred the little neighborhood pool, where the water would get warm by afternoon and it seemed to have just a little too much chlorine most of the time. But it was familiar. And this was a special occasion. I was glad to be included.
“It’ll be crowded today,” Dad said.
“Yeah, yes,” they all agreed. “Packed!” one of them said. They seemed glad of that too, though I was not.
It was hot in the car with all those men inside. The windows were all open. But I don’t remember being uncomfortable, no doubt wearing short pants and a thin little shirt. All the men were dressed in good slacks with colorful short-sleeved shirts. Dad too. He was asking each of them about themselves, where they lived and what they did for a living… making conversation.
After a while, we arrived in the parking lot outside the pool. We waited while a nice, new dark-blue car that had been parked right in front of the entrance backed out so that we could drive into that prime spot. “That’s Mr. Long,” Dad said giving a little wave. “He must have been here early.” The other car drove off slowly. The man inside waved back.
All of us got out of the station wagon. The air was already cooler under the big live-oak trees. There was a little soda stand right where we parked, where I sometimes bought a Payday bar, but no one mentioned it. We walked casually up to the entrance, where you paid, Dad leading the way.
“I’m ‘C----- Derrick,’” he said. (Dad always introduced himself.) He looked around at the rest of us standing close together right there behind him. “Please, that’ll be three… or wait, there are four of us, aren’t there, boys. So, four adults and one child.” He smiled at me. “That’s my son, ‘Byron,’” he added as he got out his wallet.
The young man sitting behind the glass to take the money was frowning now, looking down, and was silent a minute. Then, he said it would be just a minute please and went a few feet away and spoke to a man at the back desk. We didn’t hear their voices. They both went off together into the office at the back on the side of the women’s dressing room.
Dad looked at the others. “’Just a minute, please’,” he said, reporting to us what the guy had said.
The men shuffled their feet a little but stayed together up there close behind Dad. One of them took my hand.
After a short time, a new man came up briskly to the front window with a sign in his hand. “I’m sorry, folks.” By this time, there were one or two others waiting to pay. He addressed everyone; “I’m sorry, but we have a little problem and have to close the pool for the day.”
“Oh, that’s too bad,” Dad said to him. “I have my friends here with me from out of town. Can you tell us what’s wrong?”
“A technical problem, I’m afraid. We have to keep everyone safe.” The sign he put up was the printed one in a plastic sleeve that said: “Pool closed.”
Dad led us back toward the little soda stand, but instead they all turned to look down at the pool. Sure enough, lifeguards and the three men we had seen in the front office were approaching the folks sunbathing or standing near the pool. Most of them were teenagers or college students. Everyone started gathering up their belongings.
“They’re really going to close,” one of us said.
When we were driving out of the parking lot, my Dad said cheerfully, “I wonder how much money they lost today.”
The others thought that was funny. I didn’t see the joke but laughed too.
“Lots of cash!” one said.
2
The next Sunday, the same old station wagon came and got us. I don’t know if I had been swimming since the last time, but probably had. It was still hot, of course.
Dad said, “Well, let’s give them another chance.” The others quietly assented. We drove most of the way in silence (except for the roar of that old engine).
The same guy in the same blue car was parked in the same place out front. This time he was standing next to his car while waiting for us. He gave us a look and nodded our way. Then, as we waited he got in his car and drove off.
We went over to the window as we had the week before, Dad in the lead with me among the next two. The other two came up beside us. I thought everyone was looking a little grim.
The older man was sitting at the window; the sign next to him said how much it cost to swim there. “There are four of us,” Dad said, “and one child.” He started getting out his wallet.
The man said how much it would cost and gave Dad his change. The younger man appeared and brought up baskets with safety pins that had numbered tags attached, one for each of us. In the men’s bath house, as we put on our suits, Dad was the only one who spoke at first. “Well, fellows,” he said. “Let’s us have a nice little swim.”
“I hope that water is really cold,” one of the others replied. No one smiled or anything.
We stayed about a half-hour at the pool, retrieved our clothes in the baskets at the wide window where we had turned them in, and showered before getting dressed. If I’m not mistaken, a man with his two young boys was just coming in as we got ready to leave. “Well, hello, 'C-----',” he said heartily and shook hands. I don’t remember my dad's introducing his friends to this other dad.
3
A small picture on an inside page in that Monday’s newspaper showed the pool where we had been but without anybody present. The headline said, “City Pools Integrated, Parks Commissioner Says.” It was a small notice next to the photo.
***
This is how I remember it, the first day clear and in detail. My report here about day two is accurate, although I do not really remember any details, which may mean I only heard my father telling Mother about it at the supper table that second night.
1
It was a hot summer Sunday afternoon in the Texas city where I grew up, maybe in July. It would have been around 1950, when I was not yet in junior high.
A worn and dusty old cream-colored station wagon picked my Dad and me up at our curbside. We had rolled up towels with our bathing suits inside. The wagon was the kind with wood on it and would have been really spiffy when new.
In the car were four African-American men (except that was not what we or they themselves would have called their race back then). They seemed a little younger than my Dad but not markedly so and were no more athletic. They had rolled-up towels with them too. They helped me scramble into the little baggage area behind the second row of seats. The driver introduced each of them to Dad, and they shook hands. Then we drove off.
I knew we were headed to the favorite swimming pool in town. It was the biggest and there was a nice, big park all around it. The pool was fed by natural springs, and the water was always cold. In those days I preferred the little neighborhood pool, where the water would get warm by afternoon and it seemed to have just a little too much chlorine most of the time. But it was familiar. And this was a special occasion. I was glad to be included.
“It’ll be crowded today,” Dad said.
“Yeah, yes,” they all agreed. “Packed!” one of them said. They seemed glad of that too, though I was not.
It was hot in the car with all those men inside. The windows were all open. But I don’t remember being uncomfortable, no doubt wearing short pants and a thin little shirt. All the men were dressed in good slacks with colorful short-sleeved shirts. Dad too. He was asking each of them about themselves, where they lived and what they did for a living… making conversation.
After a while, we arrived in the parking lot outside the pool. We waited while a nice, new dark-blue car that had been parked right in front of the entrance backed out so that we could drive into that prime spot. “That’s Mr. Long,” Dad said giving a little wave. “He must have been here early.” The other car drove off slowly. The man inside waved back.
All of us got out of the station wagon. The air was already cooler under the big live-oak trees. There was a little soda stand right where we parked, where I sometimes bought a Payday bar, but no one mentioned it. We walked casually up to the entrance, where you paid, Dad leading the way.
“I’m ‘C----- Derrick,’” he said. (Dad always introduced himself.) He looked around at the rest of us standing close together right there behind him. “Please, that’ll be three… or wait, there are four of us, aren’t there, boys. So, four adults and one child.” He smiled at me. “That’s my son, ‘Byron,’” he added as he got out his wallet.
The young man sitting behind the glass to take the money was frowning now, looking down, and was silent a minute. Then, he said it would be just a minute please and went a few feet away and spoke to a man at the back desk. We didn’t hear their voices. They both went off together into the office at the back on the side of the women’s dressing room.
Dad looked at the others. “’Just a minute, please’,” he said, reporting to us what the guy had said.
The men shuffled their feet a little but stayed together up there close behind Dad. One of them took my hand.
After a short time, a new man came up briskly to the front window with a sign in his hand. “I’m sorry, folks.” By this time, there were one or two others waiting to pay. He addressed everyone; “I’m sorry, but we have a little problem and have to close the pool for the day.”
“Oh, that’s too bad,” Dad said to him. “I have my friends here with me from out of town. Can you tell us what’s wrong?”
“A technical problem, I’m afraid. We have to keep everyone safe.” The sign he put up was the printed one in a plastic sleeve that said: “Pool closed.”
Dad led us back toward the little soda stand, but instead they all turned to look down at the pool. Sure enough, lifeguards and the three men we had seen in the front office were approaching the folks sunbathing or standing near the pool. Most of them were teenagers or college students. Everyone started gathering up their belongings.
“They’re really going to close,” one of us said.
When we were driving out of the parking lot, my Dad said cheerfully, “I wonder how much money they lost today.”
The others thought that was funny. I didn’t see the joke but laughed too.
“Lots of cash!” one said.
2
The next Sunday, the same old station wagon came and got us. I don’t know if I had been swimming since the last time, but probably had. It was still hot, of course.
Dad said, “Well, let’s give them another chance.” The others quietly assented. We drove most of the way in silence (except for the roar of that old engine).
The same guy in the same blue car was parked in the same place out front. This time he was standing next to his car while waiting for us. He gave us a look and nodded our way. Then, as we waited he got in his car and drove off.
We went over to the window as we had the week before, Dad in the lead with me among the next two. The other two came up beside us. I thought everyone was looking a little grim.
The older man was sitting at the window; the sign next to him said how much it cost to swim there. “There are four of us,” Dad said, “and one child.” He started getting out his wallet.
The man said how much it would cost and gave Dad his change. The younger man appeared and brought up baskets with safety pins that had numbered tags attached, one for each of us. In the men’s bath house, as we put on our suits, Dad was the only one who spoke at first. “Well, fellows,” he said. “Let’s us have a nice little swim.”
“I hope that water is really cold,” one of the others replied. No one smiled or anything.
We stayed about a half-hour at the pool, retrieved our clothes in the baskets at the wide window where we had turned them in, and showered before getting dressed. If I’m not mistaken, a man with his two young boys was just coming in as we got ready to leave. “Well, hello, 'C-----',” he said heartily and shook hands. I don’t remember my dad's introducing his friends to this other dad.
3
A small picture on an inside page in that Monday’s newspaper showed the pool where we had been but without anybody present. The headline said, “City Pools Integrated, Parks Commissioner Says.” It was a small notice next to the photo.
***
Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Story: Alison’s Father
***
1
David’s letter left him rather bewildered. He didn’t know precisely what he’d been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t anything like what he’d gotten. For one thing he had written to the address in Paris that David had sent him on a postcard the preceding fall, and David’s letter had come from England. Of course, he hadn’t said anything about Alice and wouldn’t have wanted David to. He winced now, thinking that. But the crowd of emotions jumbling and dancing around the edges of the page as he had written his weak little note two weeks before seemed to Jon to call for something more than David had written back. It seemed so impersonal in a way, or at least not about the two of them as persons.
Jon didn’t even know who this Alison was, let alone her father. Maybe David thought he had written about her before. It was something to get a letter, though. And it was interesting in a curious way.
Jon looked the letter over again. It was remarkable that David could write so small and evidently so quickly, on both sides of that thin airmail paper too, and yet you could read every word. David even seemed to reveal something of a flair for writing now and then, even if most of it was simple description.
That was what was most curious to Jon. Here David seemed to be describing that scene in the London restaurant or pub or whatever it was - totally unrelated to Jon and only distantly touching David himself as it seemed at first. And yet, he really seemed to be writing about himself after all. That’s not impersonal, is it? It seemed important to David to understand the scene and the man who starred in it. That was it, Jon thought; David wasn’t writing about himself, but he was writing for himself.
That was what disappointed Jon. He wanted David to write something for him.
“Jon--” the letter began simply. “So glad to get your note. Congratulations! a B. A. in three years is a pretty good score. What are your plans now? I wish I even knew what my major was going to be when I get back in school next fall. My senior year too!”
See there? Jon thought to himself. He starts out thinking about me all right (as a letter-writer should think about the one he was writing to, isn’t that so?), but then he goes right on about himself. Jon couldn’t help getting interested, though, and that puzzled him. He enjoyed reading the letter somehow anyway. In fact, he was almost sure now about his own plans for study in Paris next fall, even if his friend Paul didn’t want to go too. Yes.
But David didn’t bother to mention why he was in London, or who Susan was. “Susan and I are booked on the same boat for New York in August. We plan to spend a good deal of the intervening time together. I don’t know if we’ll get to Scotland, but we’re going off to Wales and Ireland already this afternoon.” That was the way he ended the letter, after mentioning this person Susan only once before to say that she had been there at the pub that night in London too. But Jon didn’t really care about that after all, since he was beginning to think kind of angrily and weakly that it wasn’t unusual for everyone else to have a girl even if he didn’t himself and never would. What he did find himself wondering about was this Alison person herself.
That was odd, because David didn’t describe her at all in his letter. They must have, though, to her father since he evidently had only a small passport photo from some time ago. And yet Jon was more interested in her than all of them were. David, for example, seemed more concerned about her father.
“None of us knew why we’d been invited,” the letter read in one place. “We didn’t recognize the name on the invitations left for us all at American Express, because Alison had always used her mother’s maiden name. Her father had gone away so completely and finally after Alison had been born that he didn’t know until this year that her mother had died while Alison was still a small child. He was a fairly plain man, especially suited as he said to deal with simple, practical matters. He couldn’t explain how he felt about things, or even how he had felt about Alison’s mother those many years before. Maybe her family’s wealth had helped to complicate everything. Maybe it made her more fascinating and distant, and then less possible after their marriage. He never said how he had made his own fortune by now. We didn’t want to ask.
“But he did say it wasn’t that he felt guilty. And I don’t think it was. He had just suddenly realized one day that he had been thinking for a long time about his daughter, his little Alison. He didn’t know why. He had left her almost twenty years before feeling frustrated and weak and angry. But he didn’t feel that way anymore, and he was curious about Alison. Even more than he had been about his wife. He explained it all very simply and without many details. But something in his manner convinced all of us, I think, that he was sincere.
“At first, he would have been satisfied merely to hear the bare outlines of her history. Her schooling and so on. But the more he had learned, the more he had become enchanted with Alison. And now that her family had momentarily lost track of her and her boyfriend Tom, he had decided to look for her himself. No one was worried for her. But he didn’t want her to disappear suddenly like that, even for a while. He had lived for so long depending somewhere in his mind on the thought that his wife and child were going along normally in their own lives and in their own world that learning about the early death of Alison’s mother left him a little, oddly, shaken. And he didn’t want the same to happen with Alison herself.
“None of us could help much, I’m afraid," David wrote.
“Let me say some of this in detail, Jon.” (There, he had managed at least to mention Jon’s name. But the details of the restaurant surely couldn’t matter. Not to Alison. The balcony around the edges was perhaps important since the other people there had evidently become interested in the scene below them, on centerstage as it were, the middle-aging man and his table of American traveling students… But not the rest of it that David told. It was only vaguely interesting to Jon how they all had seemed to draw together as the evening went on, and how they had grown cheerful and talkative with the beer and wine the rich gentleman served them.)
“He listened intently and patiently,” David had written to Jon, “to each of our stories about Alison. Maybe Susan’s was the best. But none of them could really help.” (Why didn’t he say more than that? Jon thought. What were the stories like? What was she like?)
“The whole thing did seem very strange,” David said in another place. “No one thought Alison was lost or anything. She has often forgotten to write to anyone for longer than it has been now. He wasn’t really looking for her, then. Or at least not yet. He was looking for a kind of understanding of her instead. Something about it all did bother him. Fascinated him, he said.”
Oh get on with it, Jon wanted to say.
“He was never able to describe the way he feels. But once, after he had already had more than enough to drink, he tried to make a comparison. He said that sometimes now when he didn’t sleep or when he had been drinking, he had a sudden vision of a picture. It was Alison, a little like she looks in the passport photo, except that this picture was made of tiny, odd-shaped pieces of colored glass. It was beautiful. The light seemed to dance off the blue and green glass. But he just couldn’t make out Alison’s real face in it. Or behind it, as he said himself."
Jon paused at this passage. He hadn’t thought Alison’s appearance itself mattered very much to the others, but now he wasn't sure. David didn’t seem sufficiently interested, in any case.
“By then, I think,” he had written in another place, “we all cared. It was no longer just a free and liberal meal with good friends and plenty to drink. That was why we tried to say some things about Alison herself, even though we knew we couldn’t really describe her anymore than he could see her face in his wierd dream. It was all very strange. Like the round of drinks someone at the table upstairs bought for us, and saluted us after we raised our glasses to them in thanks. They were total strangers too. But the oddest thing of all was the mixture of our own feelings.
“The more I think of it now, the sadder the old man seems.” Jon didn’t think he cared about that but found himself angry that David hadn’t seemed to think it true before. Of course, it was sad. That was why it was interesting at all. If it weren’t, it would be awful. It would be laughable, in fact.
“But it wasn’t that way last night.” Jon wasn’t skipping now. “At the other end of the table, some of our people were often laughing and joking as they always had in Paris. And it wasn’t at all embarrassing, if you can imagine that. It did have the feeling of a festive outing after all.” Jon didn’t understand anything about that. “Only one of our group did not seem to feel that way. One of Alison’s roommates when she had still been in Paris, named Lucy. But even she stayed with us all the evening long… which was not really like her.”
Now he was off again on something else. Jon admitted that the reactions to the man’s story were strange. But the story itself was more interesting than that. David didn’t manage a conclusion either, leaving it all as quickly as he had begun it. Jon didn’t understand the whole business in the slighest.
Pooh, he thought. It’s no good anyway, no matter how often I look at the letter again. He tossed it aside on his desk and moved across the room to his bed. Maybe David would get back home before he and Paul would leave and they could talk about it all some more. But then again, what did it matter? Especially to him. Maybe he could nap again, until his mother came up to call him to supper.
2
“It was just a day, you know?" Susan had said during that odd dinner with Alison's father. "And just two things that happened quite by accident so close to each other that I remember them as a pair. I’m sorry I don’t tell things better because I may not be able to make it clear how or why I’ve remembered them and why I think they’re important to Alison. I know I won’t be able to explain that. It may even make her look foolish or weak, or even callous. She’s not that way at all, as I’m sure you know by now. She wouldn’t interest all of you so much if she were, you know.
“Anyway.
“Lucy wasn’t in Paris at this time because she was traveling in Germany. Alison had gone with her, in fact, part of the time but had grown homesick for Paris. A good many of us who were at school together saw each other a lot even during vacations, so Alison never had to feel lonely here. On this day I’m thinking of, I hadn’t gone out at all. Reading or just being lazy. Alison went late in the morning to be with some of our friends for lunch at the student restaurant. I didn’t know she had come back, in fact, even pretty late that afternoon when I somehow became aware that she had already been in her room across the hall for a long time. Maybe her door was usually open, but I realized that it had been closed for a while.
“That just wouldn’t be like her, you know, to sit in a closed room alone. It would be so unlike her that I felt vaguely there might be something wrong. Unless she wasn’t there after all.
“She doesn't make noise, you see. And she doesn’t come to you either, or not often. And doesn’t call at least to her girlfriends to come to her. But you always seem to know Alison’s there. She attracts your attention. I think that’s why some of the girls don’t like her. Not because they’re jealous either. They don’t see that she offers that much. Not really.
“There. I’m off the track already.
“So, she was in her room that day. And not sleeping or reading or doing anything as far as you could tell. When I opened the door a little and peeked through, she was sitting very still but not stiff on the edge of the hard chair that went with her desk. But she was facing the center of the room. She hadn’t turned on any of the lamps, and the outside light that reached the tiny window at the opposite end from the door was just strong enough to put the whole scene in twilight. It was even a little chilly. Alison usually was the first to get cold. She liked wearing soft, thick winter clothes or pulling a puffy blanket around her.
“Maybe that’s why I remember all of this. That little picture through the doorway. She didn’t seem frightened, and she didn’t even seem sad. But there was something almost alien there. I have it! She seemed alone. That’s what it was and it’s not like Alison. And, even though her room Lord knows was small enough, that day in that kind of light it seemed to spread out around her like a vast amphitheater or something, she looked so small inside it.
“My thought then was that perhaps I should leave her undisturbed. She seemed quite unapproachable. But it made me too curious, I guess. I called to her from the doorway to see if anything was wrong. She wasn’t startled, but I don’t think she really expected anyone to come be with her that time. She was sad then, as I found out, but I don’t think she was frightened. That was the difference.
“But anyway. She was willing to talk about it after all, and I went in leaving the door open because it wasn’t so cold in the rest of the house. There’s no reason to tell it all here even if I could remember it. It was just a beggar that she had seen in the park. You know, there are a good many of them all over town, and even Alison was repelled by most of them after a time. So it was a little strange that it was only a beggar that had bothered her.
“He hadn’t even approached her, I don’t think. She just saw him by himself a while and then talking to a few others. What made her so sad evidently was that he was quite a young man. She said that several times.
“She tried very hard to convey to me the poignancy of the scene itself. But really it was inside her that the whole scene had happened, and since she was describing only things that she had seen outside herself, it didn’t really come across. He must have done something a little unusual at any rate, or looked like someone, or something else, or she wouldn’t have noticed. But I never knew what it was. I did make sure, though, that he was not hurt or crippled or anything. Not even sick necessarily. That all made it worse for Alison, that he was young and physically sound. That made it all the more sad.
“All right. That’s one thing that happened. And it’s trivial enough by itself. But there was another sad event that same day too. One of the members of our school was called back to the States that day. Nobody knew anything about it even at the school or among the group of us here who always saw so much of each other, until pretty late in the afternoon. Longer after Alison had started back home after lunch and had seen her beggar in the park. So the first thing we heard about it was at the dinner table that night. She and I had got to talking about one thing or another in Alison’s room after I interrupted her that way, trying to cheer her up a little, and so didn’t see any of the other girls until we sat down to eat.
“To an outsider there wouldn’t have been anything that seemed unusual in what happened there. The girl who had to go back was a lot of fun and was even very intelligent and so got along with everyone, male and female, wonderfully well when we were together for meals at the student restaurant or in class. But she lived all the way on the other side of Paris and so far had been more interested in getting to know French people than in pursuing our friendship. So she was not an especially close friend. She had been notified to come back to the U. S. because her father was dying of cancer. Mouth or throat, I think. There had been no warning before the telegram came.
“That’s right, you wince now yourself not even knowing this girl. Sure, it’s that much of a thing that you can’t just not notice. And since we all knew this girl, it was a little more than that. When they told us about it, then, we must have said a few things about it. Must have asked for more details, for example, about when she was leaving and if we could help. Her roommate was going to send most of her things over later, but she herself had probably already gone, seeing no one but the roommate across town since the telegram had come. And so on. Even the French boarders around the dinner table expressed their sympathy, and perhaps someone told of a similar happening to one of their own friends.
“But after a while, naturally, the meal went on pretty much as usual, and we talked about other things. About a play that was supposed to be pretty good, for example, or a party someone had been invited to. Alison hadn’t said anything at all really while we had been talking about the friend who was going to have to go home. Or she might have said that it was too bad she would have to miss the rest of her year in Europe on top of everything else. But she didn’t avoid speaking. She was often quiet like that in larger groups.
"But when the conversation changed, Alison just about took it over. As the meal went on, she became more and more eager to chatter about one thing or another. She’s quite pleasant when she does that, you know, because she certainly never forcibly dominates anyone. It’s just that after a while most of the comments anyone would make seemed to get directed toward her. And she would laugh lightly and reply with something that didn’t matter at all but that was pleasant enough just from the way she said it. The two younger Frencg bachelors at our boarding house always found Alison charming and that night were pleased to talk primarily with her. They would ask her something, and when she answered, they would smile and look around at the rest of us as if they were showing her off.
“Then after a while, before we were served our cheese or fruit for desert, Alison excused herself and went to make a telephone call. Some of us sat around the table after dinner talking, and when I did go back down the hall to my room later to get a coat for a walk some of us were going to take, I saw that Alison had gotten all dressed up and was excited and still ready to chatter gaily about things, as she was going off to the theater with our David here.
“It was only after she had left that it struck me that there was something a little out of shape in that. At first, it was just pleasant for her to be happy. But then she seemed - looking back - a little nervous rather than just content. For a while I thought I must have imagined it. The next morning and from then on, she didn’t say anything at all again about the beggar she had seen or about the girl who was going home. She seemed to have forgotten, and when Lucy got back it was me who told her about our friend’s leaving, even though she was Alison’s roommate at that time, not mine, and she had been back for several days.”
3
When he awoke the next morning, he felt awful. Not only was his head in sad shape and his stomach very queasy, but even before he was fully conscious why he was that way, where he was, and how he’d gotten back to the hotel the night before, he knew also that he was wretchedly embarrassed. He must have been too far gone as they helped him to bed - he did not like to think of that - even to take the pills he usually took to prevent the next-day headache.
He tried to move very slowly and smoothly out from under the sheet, off the bed, and across the room to the bathroom. It is more difficult to do that in an unfamiliar room than at home, but he managed it pretty well. He was trying to concentrate intently and solely on the facts of the present moment. How did his head feel? Could he sleep some more? If he didn’t, if he dressed and tried to read or even eat something with his coffee, would he be sick? He decided by the time he was noticing in the mirror above the sink that, to his surprise, he didn’t look a bit different from the way he looked every morning, though it felt as if his head was larger than normal and that the skin was pulled too tight and too thin around it.
The water didn’t look very inviting even though the warmth of it felt good on his face. His mouth was parched, but he would wait until he could have coffee. (Why had it happened anyway?) So that he left the water running and went across the room, feeling a little steadier in the head at least, to call for some coffee to be brought up. He told them he would be in the shower, and they said there was a note for him.
It was still pretty early, he thought.
But when he first stuck his head under the hot shower faucet, it was as if not only the steamy water was rushing over him and making his eyes looking down feel puffy and full. His consciousness of the night before, and the strength of his humiliation, washed over him too. He had been their host, and they were only kids besides. He was not an emotional man, he thought, and besides he had not been saddened or even excited by what they had told him. Perhaps, he thought, he had simply relaxed himself with them, had become something of a child himself who needed someone else, someone outside, to suggest he should drink less or more slowly. That was his deepest humiliation. He was not like that. All his life had indeed been contrary to that kind of childish weakness.
He found himself staring stupidly at his feet as the hot water flooded over his ears and down his back. He shook himself.
But those kids, friends of his daughter too, would never know that. They had enjoyed themselves certainly, and were sympathetic enough to be grateful for that. But they must have been embarrassed for him too. He did not know why it was important to him for them to care about what he was doing, but - as he dried himself and felt still better - he felt certain now that they wouldn’t, even if they were able to understand what he was doing. He hadn’t quite realized before, that that was why he had looked up all of the ones he could find in London at that time… Not really to learn from them, but to enlist their support. Yes, he had wanted them behind him. No one he knew at home understood at all.
The coffee they had left him helped even more, and he thought he might go downstairs soon for soft-boiled eggs.
And even though everything had gone so well at first he had lost them anyway. What a ridiculous old buffoon he must have seemed! He felt frustrated by it. But there was nothing to be done anymore. That part was over, forfeited. He accepted his humiliation, knowing that he would never have to face any of them again. At least there was that. But he hated it. And most of all, he hated the loss it meant for him from now on.
He went back to the bathroom and felt that even his stomach was beginning to return to normal. If he waited a while to see if it really was all right, he could have lunch downstairs instead. He wanted some lean, rare beef to put himself right again. He sat on the bed. He still felt very tired.
In what seemed only a few seconds, he awoke once more. He felt a little strained lying backwards on the bed with his feet still dangling off toward the floor, but as a whole, he felt better. His stomach was all right now, he thought, only hungry. As he stood up to toss his robe away and dress, he realized that he must have slept for more than it seemed, and crossed the room again to the bathroom.
But they had said, hadn’t they? he remembered there, that someone had left a message for him. From his office, he thought, and that would be all right. He wanted to leave the other thing behind him for a while. That was too bad - he was slipping on some clean shorts and tearing the laundry band off a shirt - too bad that he couldn’t go on and think of it now. Just because he had been so stupid and childish... No. It was unfortunate since they had said a lot about his daughter and some of it might help him to know what to do when he finally saw her for himself. Was that what it was after all? Was that what he was trying to do?
The note was in a hotel envelope and was not sealed. He had thought it might even be a letter. He would have liked that. But it was written on a small piece of lined paper as if from a pocket notebook or an address-book.
“Thank you,” it said in pencil, “for a wonderful evening. All of us appreciated it so much, and we were happy to get to know you too.” It looked very strange somehow, and he found it hard to associate it with the young man who had sat next to him the night before. “All of our plans are different, of course, but Susan and I are off tomorrow morning” (which would mean today, he thought) “to Wales and Ireland. And then all of us will be going home soon. Perhaps some of us might see you again there sometime.” That, he thought reading it, must be a mere convention. He liked it, but didn’t think - even so, even though he might have been wrong before about how they felt - that he’d really want to see them again.
“Again,” the other side of the tiny page went on, “Again, let me thank you for our dinner and conversation. When you see Alison, please” and he had marked out the word give, “please tell her we often think of her. Goodbye now, David and Susan.”
Well, they were polite… But did they care?
***
1
David’s letter left him rather bewildered. He didn’t know precisely what he’d been expecting, but it certainly wasn’t anything like what he’d gotten. For one thing he had written to the address in Paris that David had sent him on a postcard the preceding fall, and David’s letter had come from England. Of course, he hadn’t said anything about Alice and wouldn’t have wanted David to. He winced now, thinking that. But the crowd of emotions jumbling and dancing around the edges of the page as he had written his weak little note two weeks before seemed to Jon to call for something more than David had written back. It seemed so impersonal in a way, or at least not about the two of them as persons.
Jon didn’t even know who this Alison was, let alone her father. Maybe David thought he had written about her before. It was something to get a letter, though. And it was interesting in a curious way.
Jon looked the letter over again. It was remarkable that David could write so small and evidently so quickly, on both sides of that thin airmail paper too, and yet you could read every word. David even seemed to reveal something of a flair for writing now and then, even if most of it was simple description.
That was what was most curious to Jon. Here David seemed to be describing that scene in the London restaurant or pub or whatever it was - totally unrelated to Jon and only distantly touching David himself as it seemed at first. And yet, he really seemed to be writing about himself after all. That’s not impersonal, is it? It seemed important to David to understand the scene and the man who starred in it. That was it, Jon thought; David wasn’t writing about himself, but he was writing for himself.
That was what disappointed Jon. He wanted David to write something for him.
“Jon--” the letter began simply. “So glad to get your note. Congratulations! a B. A. in three years is a pretty good score. What are your plans now? I wish I even knew what my major was going to be when I get back in school next fall. My senior year too!”
See there? Jon thought to himself. He starts out thinking about me all right (as a letter-writer should think about the one he was writing to, isn’t that so?), but then he goes right on about himself. Jon couldn’t help getting interested, though, and that puzzled him. He enjoyed reading the letter somehow anyway. In fact, he was almost sure now about his own plans for study in Paris next fall, even if his friend Paul didn’t want to go too. Yes.
But David didn’t bother to mention why he was in London, or who Susan was. “Susan and I are booked on the same boat for New York in August. We plan to spend a good deal of the intervening time together. I don’t know if we’ll get to Scotland, but we’re going off to Wales and Ireland already this afternoon.” That was the way he ended the letter, after mentioning this person Susan only once before to say that she had been there at the pub that night in London too. But Jon didn’t really care about that after all, since he was beginning to think kind of angrily and weakly that it wasn’t unusual for everyone else to have a girl even if he didn’t himself and never would. What he did find himself wondering about was this Alison person herself.
That was odd, because David didn’t describe her at all in his letter. They must have, though, to her father since he evidently had only a small passport photo from some time ago. And yet Jon was more interested in her than all of them were. David, for example, seemed more concerned about her father.
“None of us knew why we’d been invited,” the letter read in one place. “We didn’t recognize the name on the invitations left for us all at American Express, because Alison had always used her mother’s maiden name. Her father had gone away so completely and finally after Alison had been born that he didn’t know until this year that her mother had died while Alison was still a small child. He was a fairly plain man, especially suited as he said to deal with simple, practical matters. He couldn’t explain how he felt about things, or even how he had felt about Alison’s mother those many years before. Maybe her family’s wealth had helped to complicate everything. Maybe it made her more fascinating and distant, and then less possible after their marriage. He never said how he had made his own fortune by now. We didn’t want to ask.
“But he did say it wasn’t that he felt guilty. And I don’t think it was. He had just suddenly realized one day that he had been thinking for a long time about his daughter, his little Alison. He didn’t know why. He had left her almost twenty years before feeling frustrated and weak and angry. But he didn’t feel that way anymore, and he was curious about Alison. Even more than he had been about his wife. He explained it all very simply and without many details. But something in his manner convinced all of us, I think, that he was sincere.
“At first, he would have been satisfied merely to hear the bare outlines of her history. Her schooling and so on. But the more he had learned, the more he had become enchanted with Alison. And now that her family had momentarily lost track of her and her boyfriend Tom, he had decided to look for her himself. No one was worried for her. But he didn’t want her to disappear suddenly like that, even for a while. He had lived for so long depending somewhere in his mind on the thought that his wife and child were going along normally in their own lives and in their own world that learning about the early death of Alison’s mother left him a little, oddly, shaken. And he didn’t want the same to happen with Alison herself.
“None of us could help much, I’m afraid," David wrote.
“Let me say some of this in detail, Jon.” (There, he had managed at least to mention Jon’s name. But the details of the restaurant surely couldn’t matter. Not to Alison. The balcony around the edges was perhaps important since the other people there had evidently become interested in the scene below them, on centerstage as it were, the middle-aging man and his table of American traveling students… But not the rest of it that David told. It was only vaguely interesting to Jon how they all had seemed to draw together as the evening went on, and how they had grown cheerful and talkative with the beer and wine the rich gentleman served them.)
“He listened intently and patiently,” David had written to Jon, “to each of our stories about Alison. Maybe Susan’s was the best. But none of them could really help.” (Why didn’t he say more than that? Jon thought. What were the stories like? What was she like?)
“The whole thing did seem very strange,” David said in another place. “No one thought Alison was lost or anything. She has often forgotten to write to anyone for longer than it has been now. He wasn’t really looking for her, then. Or at least not yet. He was looking for a kind of understanding of her instead. Something about it all did bother him. Fascinated him, he said.”
Oh get on with it, Jon wanted to say.
“He was never able to describe the way he feels. But once, after he had already had more than enough to drink, he tried to make a comparison. He said that sometimes now when he didn’t sleep or when he had been drinking, he had a sudden vision of a picture. It was Alison, a little like she looks in the passport photo, except that this picture was made of tiny, odd-shaped pieces of colored glass. It was beautiful. The light seemed to dance off the blue and green glass. But he just couldn’t make out Alison’s real face in it. Or behind it, as he said himself."
Jon paused at this passage. He hadn’t thought Alison’s appearance itself mattered very much to the others, but now he wasn't sure. David didn’t seem sufficiently interested, in any case.
“By then, I think,” he had written in another place, “we all cared. It was no longer just a free and liberal meal with good friends and plenty to drink. That was why we tried to say some things about Alison herself, even though we knew we couldn’t really describe her anymore than he could see her face in his wierd dream. It was all very strange. Like the round of drinks someone at the table upstairs bought for us, and saluted us after we raised our glasses to them in thanks. They were total strangers too. But the oddest thing of all was the mixture of our own feelings.
“The more I think of it now, the sadder the old man seems.” Jon didn’t think he cared about that but found himself angry that David hadn’t seemed to think it true before. Of course, it was sad. That was why it was interesting at all. If it weren’t, it would be awful. It would be laughable, in fact.
“But it wasn’t that way last night.” Jon wasn’t skipping now. “At the other end of the table, some of our people were often laughing and joking as they always had in Paris. And it wasn’t at all embarrassing, if you can imagine that. It did have the feeling of a festive outing after all.” Jon didn’t understand anything about that. “Only one of our group did not seem to feel that way. One of Alison’s roommates when she had still been in Paris, named Lucy. But even she stayed with us all the evening long… which was not really like her.”
Now he was off again on something else. Jon admitted that the reactions to the man’s story were strange. But the story itself was more interesting than that. David didn’t manage a conclusion either, leaving it all as quickly as he had begun it. Jon didn’t understand the whole business in the slighest.
Pooh, he thought. It’s no good anyway, no matter how often I look at the letter again. He tossed it aside on his desk and moved across the room to his bed. Maybe David would get back home before he and Paul would leave and they could talk about it all some more. But then again, what did it matter? Especially to him. Maybe he could nap again, until his mother came up to call him to supper.
2
“It was just a day, you know?" Susan had said during that odd dinner with Alison's father. "And just two things that happened quite by accident so close to each other that I remember them as a pair. I’m sorry I don’t tell things better because I may not be able to make it clear how or why I’ve remembered them and why I think they’re important to Alison. I know I won’t be able to explain that. It may even make her look foolish or weak, or even callous. She’s not that way at all, as I’m sure you know by now. She wouldn’t interest all of you so much if she were, you know.
“Anyway.
“Lucy wasn’t in Paris at this time because she was traveling in Germany. Alison had gone with her, in fact, part of the time but had grown homesick for Paris. A good many of us who were at school together saw each other a lot even during vacations, so Alison never had to feel lonely here. On this day I’m thinking of, I hadn’t gone out at all. Reading or just being lazy. Alison went late in the morning to be with some of our friends for lunch at the student restaurant. I didn’t know she had come back, in fact, even pretty late that afternoon when I somehow became aware that she had already been in her room across the hall for a long time. Maybe her door was usually open, but I realized that it had been closed for a while.
“That just wouldn’t be like her, you know, to sit in a closed room alone. It would be so unlike her that I felt vaguely there might be something wrong. Unless she wasn’t there after all.
“She doesn't make noise, you see. And she doesn’t come to you either, or not often. And doesn’t call at least to her girlfriends to come to her. But you always seem to know Alison’s there. She attracts your attention. I think that’s why some of the girls don’t like her. Not because they’re jealous either. They don’t see that she offers that much. Not really.
“There. I’m off the track already.
“So, she was in her room that day. And not sleeping or reading or doing anything as far as you could tell. When I opened the door a little and peeked through, she was sitting very still but not stiff on the edge of the hard chair that went with her desk. But she was facing the center of the room. She hadn’t turned on any of the lamps, and the outside light that reached the tiny window at the opposite end from the door was just strong enough to put the whole scene in twilight. It was even a little chilly. Alison usually was the first to get cold. She liked wearing soft, thick winter clothes or pulling a puffy blanket around her.
“Maybe that’s why I remember all of this. That little picture through the doorway. She didn’t seem frightened, and she didn’t even seem sad. But there was something almost alien there. I have it! She seemed alone. That’s what it was and it’s not like Alison. And, even though her room Lord knows was small enough, that day in that kind of light it seemed to spread out around her like a vast amphitheater or something, she looked so small inside it.
“My thought then was that perhaps I should leave her undisturbed. She seemed quite unapproachable. But it made me too curious, I guess. I called to her from the doorway to see if anything was wrong. She wasn’t startled, but I don’t think she really expected anyone to come be with her that time. She was sad then, as I found out, but I don’t think she was frightened. That was the difference.
“But anyway. She was willing to talk about it after all, and I went in leaving the door open because it wasn’t so cold in the rest of the house. There’s no reason to tell it all here even if I could remember it. It was just a beggar that she had seen in the park. You know, there are a good many of them all over town, and even Alison was repelled by most of them after a time. So it was a little strange that it was only a beggar that had bothered her.
“He hadn’t even approached her, I don’t think. She just saw him by himself a while and then talking to a few others. What made her so sad evidently was that he was quite a young man. She said that several times.
“She tried very hard to convey to me the poignancy of the scene itself. But really it was inside her that the whole scene had happened, and since she was describing only things that she had seen outside herself, it didn’t really come across. He must have done something a little unusual at any rate, or looked like someone, or something else, or she wouldn’t have noticed. But I never knew what it was. I did make sure, though, that he was not hurt or crippled or anything. Not even sick necessarily. That all made it worse for Alison, that he was young and physically sound. That made it all the more sad.
“All right. That’s one thing that happened. And it’s trivial enough by itself. But there was another sad event that same day too. One of the members of our school was called back to the States that day. Nobody knew anything about it even at the school or among the group of us here who always saw so much of each other, until pretty late in the afternoon. Longer after Alison had started back home after lunch and had seen her beggar in the park. So the first thing we heard about it was at the dinner table that night. She and I had got to talking about one thing or another in Alison’s room after I interrupted her that way, trying to cheer her up a little, and so didn’t see any of the other girls until we sat down to eat.
“To an outsider there wouldn’t have been anything that seemed unusual in what happened there. The girl who had to go back was a lot of fun and was even very intelligent and so got along with everyone, male and female, wonderfully well when we were together for meals at the student restaurant or in class. But she lived all the way on the other side of Paris and so far had been more interested in getting to know French people than in pursuing our friendship. So she was not an especially close friend. She had been notified to come back to the U. S. because her father was dying of cancer. Mouth or throat, I think. There had been no warning before the telegram came.
“That’s right, you wince now yourself not even knowing this girl. Sure, it’s that much of a thing that you can’t just not notice. And since we all knew this girl, it was a little more than that. When they told us about it, then, we must have said a few things about it. Must have asked for more details, for example, about when she was leaving and if we could help. Her roommate was going to send most of her things over later, but she herself had probably already gone, seeing no one but the roommate across town since the telegram had come. And so on. Even the French boarders around the dinner table expressed their sympathy, and perhaps someone told of a similar happening to one of their own friends.
“But after a while, naturally, the meal went on pretty much as usual, and we talked about other things. About a play that was supposed to be pretty good, for example, or a party someone had been invited to. Alison hadn’t said anything at all really while we had been talking about the friend who was going to have to go home. Or she might have said that it was too bad she would have to miss the rest of her year in Europe on top of everything else. But she didn’t avoid speaking. She was often quiet like that in larger groups.
"But when the conversation changed, Alison just about took it over. As the meal went on, she became more and more eager to chatter about one thing or another. She’s quite pleasant when she does that, you know, because she certainly never forcibly dominates anyone. It’s just that after a while most of the comments anyone would make seemed to get directed toward her. And she would laugh lightly and reply with something that didn’t matter at all but that was pleasant enough just from the way she said it. The two younger Frencg bachelors at our boarding house always found Alison charming and that night were pleased to talk primarily with her. They would ask her something, and when she answered, they would smile and look around at the rest of us as if they were showing her off.
“Then after a while, before we were served our cheese or fruit for desert, Alison excused herself and went to make a telephone call. Some of us sat around the table after dinner talking, and when I did go back down the hall to my room later to get a coat for a walk some of us were going to take, I saw that Alison had gotten all dressed up and was excited and still ready to chatter gaily about things, as she was going off to the theater with our David here.
“It was only after she had left that it struck me that there was something a little out of shape in that. At first, it was just pleasant for her to be happy. But then she seemed - looking back - a little nervous rather than just content. For a while I thought I must have imagined it. The next morning and from then on, she didn’t say anything at all again about the beggar she had seen or about the girl who was going home. She seemed to have forgotten, and when Lucy got back it was me who told her about our friend’s leaving, even though she was Alison’s roommate at that time, not mine, and she had been back for several days.”
3
When he awoke the next morning, he felt awful. Not only was his head in sad shape and his stomach very queasy, but even before he was fully conscious why he was that way, where he was, and how he’d gotten back to the hotel the night before, he knew also that he was wretchedly embarrassed. He must have been too far gone as they helped him to bed - he did not like to think of that - even to take the pills he usually took to prevent the next-day headache.
He tried to move very slowly and smoothly out from under the sheet, off the bed, and across the room to the bathroom. It is more difficult to do that in an unfamiliar room than at home, but he managed it pretty well. He was trying to concentrate intently and solely on the facts of the present moment. How did his head feel? Could he sleep some more? If he didn’t, if he dressed and tried to read or even eat something with his coffee, would he be sick? He decided by the time he was noticing in the mirror above the sink that, to his surprise, he didn’t look a bit different from the way he looked every morning, though it felt as if his head was larger than normal and that the skin was pulled too tight and too thin around it.
The water didn’t look very inviting even though the warmth of it felt good on his face. His mouth was parched, but he would wait until he could have coffee. (Why had it happened anyway?) So that he left the water running and went across the room, feeling a little steadier in the head at least, to call for some coffee to be brought up. He told them he would be in the shower, and they said there was a note for him.
It was still pretty early, he thought.
But when he first stuck his head under the hot shower faucet, it was as if not only the steamy water was rushing over him and making his eyes looking down feel puffy and full. His consciousness of the night before, and the strength of his humiliation, washed over him too. He had been their host, and they were only kids besides. He was not an emotional man, he thought, and besides he had not been saddened or even excited by what they had told him. Perhaps, he thought, he had simply relaxed himself with them, had become something of a child himself who needed someone else, someone outside, to suggest he should drink less or more slowly. That was his deepest humiliation. He was not like that. All his life had indeed been contrary to that kind of childish weakness.
He found himself staring stupidly at his feet as the hot water flooded over his ears and down his back. He shook himself.
But those kids, friends of his daughter too, would never know that. They had enjoyed themselves certainly, and were sympathetic enough to be grateful for that. But they must have been embarrassed for him too. He did not know why it was important to him for them to care about what he was doing, but - as he dried himself and felt still better - he felt certain now that they wouldn’t, even if they were able to understand what he was doing. He hadn’t quite realized before, that that was why he had looked up all of the ones he could find in London at that time… Not really to learn from them, but to enlist their support. Yes, he had wanted them behind him. No one he knew at home understood at all.
The coffee they had left him helped even more, and he thought he might go downstairs soon for soft-boiled eggs.
And even though everything had gone so well at first he had lost them anyway. What a ridiculous old buffoon he must have seemed! He felt frustrated by it. But there was nothing to be done anymore. That part was over, forfeited. He accepted his humiliation, knowing that he would never have to face any of them again. At least there was that. But he hated it. And most of all, he hated the loss it meant for him from now on.
He went back to the bathroom and felt that even his stomach was beginning to return to normal. If he waited a while to see if it really was all right, he could have lunch downstairs instead. He wanted some lean, rare beef to put himself right again. He sat on the bed. He still felt very tired.
In what seemed only a few seconds, he awoke once more. He felt a little strained lying backwards on the bed with his feet still dangling off toward the floor, but as a whole, he felt better. His stomach was all right now, he thought, only hungry. As he stood up to toss his robe away and dress, he realized that he must have slept for more than it seemed, and crossed the room again to the bathroom.
But they had said, hadn’t they? he remembered there, that someone had left a message for him. From his office, he thought, and that would be all right. He wanted to leave the other thing behind him for a while. That was too bad - he was slipping on some clean shorts and tearing the laundry band off a shirt - too bad that he couldn’t go on and think of it now. Just because he had been so stupid and childish... No. It was unfortunate since they had said a lot about his daughter and some of it might help him to know what to do when he finally saw her for himself. Was that what it was after all? Was that what he was trying to do?
The note was in a hotel envelope and was not sealed. He had thought it might even be a letter. He would have liked that. But it was written on a small piece of lined paper as if from a pocket notebook or an address-book.
“Thank you,” it said in pencil, “for a wonderful evening. All of us appreciated it so much, and we were happy to get to know you too.” It looked very strange somehow, and he found it hard to associate it with the young man who had sat next to him the night before. “All of our plans are different, of course, but Susan and I are off tomorrow morning” (which would mean today, he thought) “to Wales and Ireland. And then all of us will be going home soon. Perhaps some of us might see you again there sometime.” That, he thought reading it, must be a mere convention. He liked it, but didn’t think - even so, even though he might have been wrong before about how they felt - that he’d really want to see them again.
“Again,” the other side of the tiny page went on, “Again, let me thank you for our dinner and conversation. When you see Alison, please” and he had marked out the word give, “please tell her we often think of her. Goodbye now, David and Susan.”
Well, they were polite… But did they care?
***
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Dealing with Fanatics (essay)
***
Don't believe all you think!
1
Our Founding Fathers do not seem to have had to work or struggle with fanatics. They themselves were not motivated by dogma, bias, certitude, superstition, anger or fear, and – apparently – neither were those they had to work with and against, not even the British. Thus, the Founders were able to operate on the basis of observation and experience, reason, knowledge, wide reading (even outside their own culture), practicality, and what they would have called “enlightened self-interest” – a reasonable and predictable interest in providing sufficiently for themselves and their families - and they seem to have been confident of the likelihood that others would operate the same way...at least more often than not.
Another defining trait of the Founders was their optimistic expectation that individuals and also societies could be expected to improve or make progress.
As the decades passed, our forebears spread all the way across the continent, reaching their geographical limits, and the nation apparently became less confident in the future and more vulnerable to intermittent waves of fanaticism. But unlike most others of the basic realities we still face today, this does not seem one for which the Founders of the United States can provide us much guidance.
Americans' vulnerability to fanaticism has made it even more difficult than it would have been otherwise to maintain the republican democracy that is the most precious gift we have received from those who created our nation.
2
Just about all of us pride ourselves on our heritage of democracy and the republican forms of government that facilitate democracy. The fanatics among us claim to do so as well, but as true fanatics, they do not in fact believe in liberty (or justice) for all but only for those whom they perceive as like themselves.
Despite pious claims to the contrary, they do not seek to emulate the Founding Fathers; and, unlike Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, and the others, they are not motivated by knowledge and wide learning, observation, reason, and practicality but instead by emotion, belief, dogma, bias, superstition, force, and their own superiority to their compatriots.
For democracies to work, most citizens must be confident in the basic decency, the common sense, and the good will of most other citizens. Not believing that the majority have these qualities would be to question the wisdom of democratic rule itself. Those of us who prefer not to think or behave like fanatics do not want to undermine rule by “we the people.”
3
The fanatics who threaten our essential institutions and conventions look back to forerunners who believed (or claimed) to find truth not by looking around them and by learning from the observations and experiences of others, but instead by looking within. Like all religious men and women, they were more interested in eternal truths than with the everyday facts that surrounded them and surround all the rest of us. Those capable of finding within themselves the higher truths, then as now, may be educated or not, predictable or not, public-spirited or not, disingenuous or not.
They are convinced and passionately believe that they know the one and eternal truth and that the rest of us do not. This is the basis of their elitism; in matters of debate, their position is right, and differing opinions are wrong.
We can tolerate this snobbish, anti-intellectual stance in a democratic republic and have in fact done so for generations. When a majority of Americans have agreed with the view espoused by the fanatics, we have passed laws and have taken other actions along the lines they believed were right. When the majority of Americans have not agreed with the fanatics’ opinion, however, we together have done something different. Then and now, what they do in their own lives is their business, not ours; but as a society, the majority are surely going to adopt policies and allow personal behaviors that the fanatics deem wrong, contrary to their "higher truths." We have muddled along well enough in this fashion for 150-200 years.
In our time, however, we are facing several circumstances that underline the threat to democratic rule posed by fanatics.
4
Fanatics gain true and certain knowledge from looking within. They proceed by starting with the truth they have discovered in this fashion and then look for facts or knowledge gained through observation or by experience of others which supports or confirms the truth with which they began. An old joke seems to fit them: they use information as a drunk uses a lamppost - for support, not for illumination. Once they have found an observation or a fact that can be interpreted to support the a priori truth with which they began, they sometimes use the techniques of reasoning – or at least rhetoric – in order to convince others.
Since they begin from the premise that they have superior knowledge, of moral truths as well as others, fanatics think it is their duty to convince others. This usually takes the form of exhortation or their kind of argumentation, appeal to emotions, and warnings of dire consequences for those who do not come to believe as they do.
But none of this is new to American culture. For generations, fanatics have tried to convince others of the truth of their positions and values by “reason,” inspiration, and attempts to instill fear (or what could be called intimidation). What appears to be a growing threat now is that more and more fanatics are seeking to impose their views on others by force.
5
Fanatics are ruled by emotion, not reason; in our time it is fear that seems to rule them most often. Since the others in the world are not in touch with fanatics' eternal truths, they cannot be trusted. In fact, they should be seen as a threat and every expression of opinion contrary to the fanatics' way of thinking should not only be rejected but stamped out, destroyed, since it is viewed as an attack.
The high degree to which the fanatics among us today think and act this way is new. Not only is it in direct contrast to our Founding Fathers, who respected others' opinion even when they disagreed; it also inhibits the discourse that must be allowed to fluorish if our republican democracy is to thrive.
And the emotion that typically follows fear is anger. If you are significantly different from me, I despise you; I hate you. If you try to say something blatantly contrary to my eternal truth, my canon, I will angrily shout you down. I will call you ugly names. Secretly or publically I will condone violence exacted upon you or your sort, and I will take every opportunity to promote such violence in the future. If you oppose my personal values, you are my enemy; I not only fear you; you and your allies make me furious!
6
Since our time's fanatics are so susceptible to fear and so easily moved to anger, they are particularly vulnerable to intimidation and manipulation. To win their support and gain power over them, a cynical would-be leader need only express passionate adherence to one of their cherished tenets or behaviors, using their vocabulary when it already exists and, when it does not, creating emotive and simple phrases designed to capture their passionate conviction.
Such phrases need simply to identify the particular threat to their tenet in question and identify it - or those who support it - as the enemy to be feared and reviled. The fanatics' emotions may then be enlisted in support of a policy or an action that the would-be leader wants, even if he or she wants it for an undisclosed reason, perhaps merely for personal gain. In this fashion, the fanatics' proclivity to fear and anger is rather easily manipulated in support of actions and policies of which they are unaware.
Since their form of "reasoning" starts with emotion, no evidence challenging their conviction or their leader can threaten their allegiance to the leader's cause. Only observations or facts that can be used to defeat the odious enemy are credible since they alone are in tune with the emotional commitment the fanatic has already made.
7
Fanatics are essentially spontaneous, moved by passions, but those who have the power to exploit them - by hypocrisy, intimidation (appealing to their built-in fear), and manipulation (appealing to their anger) - are free to operate by a long-range plan designed explicitly to prolong their own control.
Many fanatics themselves are not particularly self-interested – to an astonishing extent – but cynical big businesses and the media that big businesses now control are essentially greedy, for both money and power. This is a critical source of the prudent concern that today our repulican democracy, pursuing "liberty and justice for all," is in peril.
Since so many, loud, media voices today espouse the views fanatics are known to hold and to identify as enemies to be hated and attacked opponents of these views - though fanatics remain in the minority - they are mobilized by self-interested big media to "defend the faith." They can thus be unwittingly used to support the policies and actions that their leaders secretly pursue for personal gain and extension of their own power. And since they are convinced it is their duty to impose their views on others, fanatics are willing to use force and violence when necessary to do so, extending their leaders' control or at least influence over others.
Through intimidation and manipulation, fanatics can be led to espouse a cause that more reflective individuals - like the humane and rational Founding Fathers whom we all profess to venerate - would probably see as distinct from the fanatics' own cherished beliefs, seeking to force not only their adherents but all of us to follow their narrow dictates and in so doing to bring us under the control of leaders whose goals they do not accurately perceive.
***
Don't believe all you think!
1
Our Founding Fathers do not seem to have had to work or struggle with fanatics. They themselves were not motivated by dogma, bias, certitude, superstition, anger or fear, and – apparently – neither were those they had to work with and against, not even the British. Thus, the Founders were able to operate on the basis of observation and experience, reason, knowledge, wide reading (even outside their own culture), practicality, and what they would have called “enlightened self-interest” – a reasonable and predictable interest in providing sufficiently for themselves and their families - and they seem to have been confident of the likelihood that others would operate the same way...at least more often than not.
Another defining trait of the Founders was their optimistic expectation that individuals and also societies could be expected to improve or make progress.
As the decades passed, our forebears spread all the way across the continent, reaching their geographical limits, and the nation apparently became less confident in the future and more vulnerable to intermittent waves of fanaticism. But unlike most others of the basic realities we still face today, this does not seem one for which the Founders of the United States can provide us much guidance.
Americans' vulnerability to fanaticism has made it even more difficult than it would have been otherwise to maintain the republican democracy that is the most precious gift we have received from those who created our nation.
2
Just about all of us pride ourselves on our heritage of democracy and the republican forms of government that facilitate democracy. The fanatics among us claim to do so as well, but as true fanatics, they do not in fact believe in liberty (or justice) for all but only for those whom they perceive as like themselves.
Despite pious claims to the contrary, they do not seek to emulate the Founding Fathers; and, unlike Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, and the others, they are not motivated by knowledge and wide learning, observation, reason, and practicality but instead by emotion, belief, dogma, bias, superstition, force, and their own superiority to their compatriots.
For democracies to work, most citizens must be confident in the basic decency, the common sense, and the good will of most other citizens. Not believing that the majority have these qualities would be to question the wisdom of democratic rule itself. Those of us who prefer not to think or behave like fanatics do not want to undermine rule by “we the people.”
3
The fanatics who threaten our essential institutions and conventions look back to forerunners who believed (or claimed) to find truth not by looking around them and by learning from the observations and experiences of others, but instead by looking within. Like all religious men and women, they were more interested in eternal truths than with the everyday facts that surrounded them and surround all the rest of us. Those capable of finding within themselves the higher truths, then as now, may be educated or not, predictable or not, public-spirited or not, disingenuous or not.
They are convinced and passionately believe that they know the one and eternal truth and that the rest of us do not. This is the basis of their elitism; in matters of debate, their position is right, and differing opinions are wrong.
We can tolerate this snobbish, anti-intellectual stance in a democratic republic and have in fact done so for generations. When a majority of Americans have agreed with the view espoused by the fanatics, we have passed laws and have taken other actions along the lines they believed were right. When the majority of Americans have not agreed with the fanatics’ opinion, however, we together have done something different. Then and now, what they do in their own lives is their business, not ours; but as a society, the majority are surely going to adopt policies and allow personal behaviors that the fanatics deem wrong, contrary to their "higher truths." We have muddled along well enough in this fashion for 150-200 years.
In our time, however, we are facing several circumstances that underline the threat to democratic rule posed by fanatics.
4
Fanatics gain true and certain knowledge from looking within. They proceed by starting with the truth they have discovered in this fashion and then look for facts or knowledge gained through observation or by experience of others which supports or confirms the truth with which they began. An old joke seems to fit them: they use information as a drunk uses a lamppost - for support, not for illumination. Once they have found an observation or a fact that can be interpreted to support the a priori truth with which they began, they sometimes use the techniques of reasoning – or at least rhetoric – in order to convince others.
Since they begin from the premise that they have superior knowledge, of moral truths as well as others, fanatics think it is their duty to convince others. This usually takes the form of exhortation or their kind of argumentation, appeal to emotions, and warnings of dire consequences for those who do not come to believe as they do.
But none of this is new to American culture. For generations, fanatics have tried to convince others of the truth of their positions and values by “reason,” inspiration, and attempts to instill fear (or what could be called intimidation). What appears to be a growing threat now is that more and more fanatics are seeking to impose their views on others by force.
5
Fanatics are ruled by emotion, not reason; in our time it is fear that seems to rule them most often. Since the others in the world are not in touch with fanatics' eternal truths, they cannot be trusted. In fact, they should be seen as a threat and every expression of opinion contrary to the fanatics' way of thinking should not only be rejected but stamped out, destroyed, since it is viewed as an attack.
The high degree to which the fanatics among us today think and act this way is new. Not only is it in direct contrast to our Founding Fathers, who respected others' opinion even when they disagreed; it also inhibits the discourse that must be allowed to fluorish if our republican democracy is to thrive.
And the emotion that typically follows fear is anger. If you are significantly different from me, I despise you; I hate you. If you try to say something blatantly contrary to my eternal truth, my canon, I will angrily shout you down. I will call you ugly names. Secretly or publically I will condone violence exacted upon you or your sort, and I will take every opportunity to promote such violence in the future. If you oppose my personal values, you are my enemy; I not only fear you; you and your allies make me furious!
6
Since our time's fanatics are so susceptible to fear and so easily moved to anger, they are particularly vulnerable to intimidation and manipulation. To win their support and gain power over them, a cynical would-be leader need only express passionate adherence to one of their cherished tenets or behaviors, using their vocabulary when it already exists and, when it does not, creating emotive and simple phrases designed to capture their passionate conviction.
Such phrases need simply to identify the particular threat to their tenet in question and identify it - or those who support it - as the enemy to be feared and reviled. The fanatics' emotions may then be enlisted in support of a policy or an action that the would-be leader wants, even if he or she wants it for an undisclosed reason, perhaps merely for personal gain. In this fashion, the fanatics' proclivity to fear and anger is rather easily manipulated in support of actions and policies of which they are unaware.
Since their form of "reasoning" starts with emotion, no evidence challenging their conviction or their leader can threaten their allegiance to the leader's cause. Only observations or facts that can be used to defeat the odious enemy are credible since they alone are in tune with the emotional commitment the fanatic has already made.
7
Fanatics are essentially spontaneous, moved by passions, but those who have the power to exploit them - by hypocrisy, intimidation (appealing to their built-in fear), and manipulation (appealing to their anger) - are free to operate by a long-range plan designed explicitly to prolong their own control.
Many fanatics themselves are not particularly self-interested – to an astonishing extent – but cynical big businesses and the media that big businesses now control are essentially greedy, for both money and power. This is a critical source of the prudent concern that today our repulican democracy, pursuing "liberty and justice for all," is in peril.
Since so many, loud, media voices today espouse the views fanatics are known to hold and to identify as enemies to be hated and attacked opponents of these views - though fanatics remain in the minority - they are mobilized by self-interested big media to "defend the faith." They can thus be unwittingly used to support the policies and actions that their leaders secretly pursue for personal gain and extension of their own power. And since they are convinced it is their duty to impose their views on others, fanatics are willing to use force and violence when necessary to do so, extending their leaders' control or at least influence over others.
Through intimidation and manipulation, fanatics can be led to espouse a cause that more reflective individuals - like the humane and rational Founding Fathers whom we all profess to venerate - would probably see as distinct from the fanatics' own cherished beliefs, seeking to force not only their adherents but all of us to follow their narrow dictates and in so doing to bring us under the control of leaders whose goals they do not accurately perceive.
***
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)