"Control"

Aksel Waldemar Johannessen, Actors at Norwegian theater during an interval (1918)

The title today is taken from the essay of that title by E.B. White from December 1942. Back then, as at the present moment, there was a revolt at the powers-that-be by "the common man," as White refers to the ordinary American who does the work but is not part of the spoils system. And "control" in the 1942 context means the intrusion of "government" into the private life of the common man.

Jim Richardson (photographer), Card players in Kansas

The essays opens with White, a practicing farmer as well a writer, going out to his barn and finding two men from "the State," one of whom had put a hook in his cow's nose "and was pulling hard, [while] the other was poised with a needle, about to draw a sample of blood from her neck." The two men were conducting a test for Bang's disease. White thoroughly approved of the test, but, as he writes, "I also thoroughly approve of the old idea that a man's home is his castle and that anyone who arrives with a needle is expected to knock before entering."

After discussing the controls by the State, which "seem unable to make or lives more agreeable in some particulars without making them insupportable in others," he goes on to the "most challenging control that occupies the attention of our social architects and designers," namely, the control of wealth. Private enterprise is not a system in which all can participate and take their chances and thereby contribute to the general wealth; rather, the common man works and dies, but never participates. Instead, the century is being constructed for him. It is agreed that he "must be secure. He must hold insurance. He is not to be permitted to starve to death, or run up hospital bills, ... or to be buried without proper rites. ... The century has gone to the cutter."

David Carlins (photographer), Rickshaw drivers in Delhi

"The true shape of man," he continues, "is an elusive thing." Man, he believes, is a natural born gambler, whose instincts are constantly frustrated, one who is less interested in security "than in gain, less in safety than in risk, and he has always been a fool for anything that gave him a chance at the jackpot." Thus, "the terrible urge of the multitudes to participate in the chancy side of life" -- pinball games, bingo, race horses, stock markets, lotteries -- and thereby recover the gift that they are cheated by the State, by its wish to make all activities of men flat and unchangeable "in a world that is neither flat nor unchangeable." The common man will even grab at cards for a game of solitaire, "to restore himself and taste the wine of luck."

What White saw occurring in 1942 has progressed by leaps and bounds, and the present American -- and, indeed, Western -- political moment seems to be exploding with the unrest of the so-called common man, who sees more and more of his life controlled and his money being collected for who knows what, in any case, for a politics in which he has little participation. People who complain at the low voter turnout misunderstand the situation; most people feel their vote doesn't matter.

The 18th-century Enlightenment thinkers urged man to take his freedom in his own hands and to jettison the restrictions mandated by traditional institutions, primarily the Church and the Crown. Those institutions molded people's thoughts and actions in a way that people accepted as the way of the world or justified by divine sanction. The philosophers urged: "Take your destiny in your own hands!" Instead, traditional institutions have been succeeded by the rationalist structures of the State. The State justifies its actions by insisting that it has our security and our interests at heart. Who can object to that? Thus, the notion that each of us can craft our own destiny is ever more in doubt.

Picture credits: Aksel Waldemar Johannessen; Jim Richardson; National Geographic; Young Americans for Freedom

The West and the Rest

This post elaborates on ideas discussed in the previous post on the nature of tolerance. Tolerance is something we all need in order to navigate daily life: for instance, when we are put on hold while phoning to make a dental appointment, or when we have to put up with snarky customers if we are a salesperson. Marriage and family teach us to put up with others, even those we don't care for. We don't tell people, especially lowly employees, that they are bloody fools.

But the contemporary version of tolerance is different. It means not judging, no matter how ludicrous or suspicious someone's behavior. The classic example would be Pontius Pilate. This version of tolerance, which has become part of our modern Western moral code, was evidently abhorrent to the lady I wrote about in my previous post. She saw evil in our ways and wanted to return to old-fashioned truth telling on subjects like good and evil, words that have no purchase among the tolerant. She is not alone.

Tolerance is a liberal idea that emerged in the West in the course of the early modern period. Although the thinkers of the Enlightenment are given credit for spreading this idea, tolerance is what Reinhold Niebuhr called the "highly contingent achievement" of a culture that we have taken to be "the final form and norm of human existence." It is easy to be tolerant, to be non-judgmental, when you have a roof over your head and enough to eat. It is thus a phenomenon of advanced societies, and you don't even have to be a particularly rich person to be tolerant in the non-judgmental sense. If you live in Tucson or Indianapolis and eat Thai or Indian food, if you like to shop at Whole Foods (rather than at the local, lower-priced corporate supermarket), if you don’t mind subtitles with your movies, you are half way to being tolerant of every new "progressive" idea that comes down the road. And if you listen to TED talks and know the difference between Tom Stoppard and Andrew Lloyd Weber, it’s a good chance that you are the real thing, except when it comes to American evangelicals.

Our present-day open-mindedness is not a virtue; it is an attitude contingent on the prosperity that we in the West have enjoyed for several centuries, an enjoyment stemming from exploiting the resources of non-Western countries. We take it for granted that people should have choices, e.g., be allowed to follow the profession they desire or marry the person they love, not someone chosen by their parents, but for most of the world choice is not and has never been an option. I came across a very minor example of how we take tolerance for granted while searching for images for this post. A site called How to Forgive recommends "Embracing Other People's Freedom." It goes on as follows, with a statement that reeks of being "virtuous": "Everyone has a right to decide what’s good for them and the freedom to make mistakes. It’s not usually worth playing the role of a preacher, teacher, judge, critic or parent in anyone’s life. Freedom allows everyone to focus on their own lives, choices, responsibilities and continual learning." Practically every American college student has absorbed this platitude.

Bien pensant

Not only is such wisdom incomprehensible to most people who have not grown up in a Western country; the attitude underlying it is also historically unprecedented. Historically, human beings did not have the luxury of focusing on their own lives, their own choices, etc. Most people in the world today would love to have our choices, and for that reason they seek to leave the hell holes in which they live. We don't help them by being "tolerant" toward those who wish to put an end to freedom.

As mentioned in the previous post, it has been amusing to observe Donald Trump's "progress." The man has demolished our doctrinaire insistence on not judging, e.g., in the matter of illegal immigrants or whatever. The apoplectic outrage of the bien pensant class indicates that Trump has violated a powerful taboo. There is indeed something anthropological about contemporary tolerance. The chattering class now stands in for the gods who once punished violations of the sacred.

Picture credits: Observations citoyennes; Lone Wolf Base Camp; How to Forgive

"Being an American"

"I want to be an American!"

For me, the most interesting thing about the recent "progress" of Donald Trump has been his demolition of political correctness, especially the notion of tolerance. The present-day concept of tolerance has its origins in the late 17th century with the rise of the Enlightenment in Europe. Like most parts of the earth then (and still so today), tolerance for the manners and mores of other peoples does not come naturally to humans. Indeed, the various European peoples had little tolerance for one another, as can be seen in the vicious wars they have waged against one another, up into the Second World War.

That Europeans are now more "open" toward one another has to do with the fact that, outwardly anyway, there is not much difference between Germans and French and Italians and so on anymore. I mean, of course, different in their material way of life. Remember when Germans used to look like Germans, and French like French, and so on? In the new millennium, we all dress and drive alike, all drink good wine, and all have the same "values."

Who wants to disturb such a good thing? The downside of having "progressed" beyond all the intolerance with which we once greeted the stranger in our midst is that many of us imagine that everyone would like to be like us. Indeed, I do believe (with George W. Bush) that most people in the world would prefer to live in freedom and enjoy our standard of living. Yet, as in the U.S., there are people who are perpetually dissatisfied with the state of the world. There are legions out there that feel this way.

Would anyone thirty or forty years ago have believed that the woman pictured above wanted to be like us? That she wished to be "an American"? If so, as a first step, she would not have been trailing that bearded man behind her. Even as a Muslim, she would not have had to wear that oppressive garment. Everything about her appearance suggests that she did not aspire to be like us. Yet, such is the power of the ideology of tolerance that we seek to deny what our eyes tell us.

Which brings me back to Donald Trump. He has ripped away the "veil of tolerance," so to speak, and asks us to make judgments about what our eyes see. It is going to be interesting to see how things proceed.