"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