Selection From Wendell Berry
From A Continuous Harmony
“It appears to me that the governing middle, or the government, which supposedly represents the middle, has allowed the extremes of left and right to force it into an extremism of its own. These three extremes of left, right, and middle, egged on by and helplessly subservient to each other’s rhetoric, have now become so self-righteous and self-defensive as to have no social use. So large a ground of sanity and good sense and decency has been abandoned by these extremes that it becomes possible now to think of a New Middle made up of people conscious and knowledgeable enough to despise the blandishments and oversimplifications of the extremes – and roomy and diverse enough to permit a renewal of intelligent cultural dialogue. That is what I hope for: a chance to live and speak as a person, not as a function of some political bunch.” [p. 84]
This was first written in 1971 but it seems to me that it still has some "legs," as some like to say. And wouldn't that be nice, to be able to speak not "a function of some political bunch?" And it seems to me that a lot of people would like a New Middle....
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
No Country for Old Men: The Foolishness of Government
Fact v. Fiction: No Country for Old Men
Currently in my Political Issues course I am teaching Cormac McCarthy’s book, No Country for Old Men because (a) it is a good book to read and (b) there is a good movie to show along with the book. I have discovered that our students like movies and that for me is a plus. I have said too often that if Plato were alive today he would be making movies. So would Shakespeare.
But another aspect to this book I like is that it allows me to talk about the merits of facts and the merits of what we call “fiction.” Looking for sources of what the novelist Tom Robbins calls “crazy wisdom,” which he opposes to “conventional wisdom,” I am led back to what we label “fiction” because it seems truer than fact. As Tim O’Brien has written, there are true stories that never happened. What could this mean?
Consider the following. Conventionally speaking, we say we have a “drug problem.” As a result of this fact, we look for ways to “solve” this “problem.” This has led to a war on drugs, proposals for legalizing or decriminalizing drugs, and even to a suggestion that we “just say no to drugs.” In other words, we look for some policy or policies to “deal with” our “drug problem.”
But what if, as McCarthy suggests in No Country for Old Men, our “drug problem” is not what we think it is? McCarthy illustrates this as follows. On page 194 the following dialogue takes place between Sheriff Bell and another sheriff:
“’The sheriff shook his head. Dope’, he said.”
“Dope.”
“They sell that shit to schoolkids.”
“It’s worse than that.”
“How’s that?”
“Schoolkids buy it.”
Conventionally conceived, “solutions” to our drug problem focus on those who sell drugs to school children. And this is hard enough to stop. But when we realize that, as Sheriff Bell says, school children are buying drugs, willingly, even eagerly buying drugs, then we begin to realize that we have something more than a “drug problem.” As Sheriff Bell muses at one point: “It’s not even a law enforcement problem. I doubt that it ever was. There’s always been narcotics. But people don’t just up and decide to dope theirselves for no reason. By the millions. I don’t have no answer about that.”
Seriously then all the attention we pay to solving the “drug problem” will come to naught because our policies, e.g., advertisements that make our brains look like eggs, telling parents to hug their children, or making the case that drug use supports for terrorism, are simplistic and superficial. In other words, our conventional take on the “drug problem” is simplistic and superficial and so are our policies.
This is a common phenomenon. Consider the conventional thinking about student drinking. What to do, we ask? How can we limit or stop such behavior? Drinking is a “problem” and we need “solutions.” So, what do we come up with? Such simplistic remedies as:
Don’t advertise alcohol on television.
Come up with concepts, like “binge drinking”, that “measure” the problem and our “progress” dealing with it. [Want to avoid “bingeing?” Easy. Get a really big glass.]
Create a bureaucracy to “fight” student drinking.
Most importantly: Pretend this behavior is “unenlightened” or “irrational,” needing only an “enlightened elite” [BOBs and professors] to show students how they ought to live. [Like we BOBs and academics live?]
But if there is no “alcohol problem” or if what we take to be an alcohol problem is actually something else, then all these policies won’t and can’t work. In fact, they will resemble pissing into the wind, with predictable results. Of course, when they don’t work, the blame will be placed on our implacable youth who continue to defy us despite our “enlightened” approach to their well being. Harsher measures will be adopted and soon, all too soon, the land of the free will be anything but free. In fact, this has already happened as even our liberty-loving conservatives and liberals support urine tests and sobriety check points. But as Sheriff Bell says: “…sometimes people would rather have a bad answer about things than no answer at all.”
Apparently we prefer bad answers to no answer which is why we fall back on policies to combat what we think is the “drug problem” that are simplistic, superficial, and even oppressive. Perhaps though our preference for “bad answers” reflects a misunderstanding of our own, that is, the human, situation. We think and have thought for some time that government is the cornerstone of any decent society. Again, though, Sheriff Bell may have it right: “It takes very little to govern good people. Very little. And bad people can’t be governed at all. Or if they could I never heard of it.” Now there is something to think about.
Currently in my Political Issues course I am teaching Cormac McCarthy’s book, No Country for Old Men because (a) it is a good book to read and (b) there is a good movie to show along with the book. I have discovered that our students like movies and that for me is a plus. I have said too often that if Plato were alive today he would be making movies. So would Shakespeare.
But another aspect to this book I like is that it allows me to talk about the merits of facts and the merits of what we call “fiction.” Looking for sources of what the novelist Tom Robbins calls “crazy wisdom,” which he opposes to “conventional wisdom,” I am led back to what we label “fiction” because it seems truer than fact. As Tim O’Brien has written, there are true stories that never happened. What could this mean?
Consider the following. Conventionally speaking, we say we have a “drug problem.” As a result of this fact, we look for ways to “solve” this “problem.” This has led to a war on drugs, proposals for legalizing or decriminalizing drugs, and even to a suggestion that we “just say no to drugs.” In other words, we look for some policy or policies to “deal with” our “drug problem.”
But what if, as McCarthy suggests in No Country for Old Men, our “drug problem” is not what we think it is? McCarthy illustrates this as follows. On page 194 the following dialogue takes place between Sheriff Bell and another sheriff:
“’The sheriff shook his head. Dope’, he said.”
“Dope.”
“They sell that shit to schoolkids.”
“It’s worse than that.”
“How’s that?”
“Schoolkids buy it.”
Conventionally conceived, “solutions” to our drug problem focus on those who sell drugs to school children. And this is hard enough to stop. But when we realize that, as Sheriff Bell says, school children are buying drugs, willingly, even eagerly buying drugs, then we begin to realize that we have something more than a “drug problem.” As Sheriff Bell muses at one point: “It’s not even a law enforcement problem. I doubt that it ever was. There’s always been narcotics. But people don’t just up and decide to dope theirselves for no reason. By the millions. I don’t have no answer about that.”
Seriously then all the attention we pay to solving the “drug problem” will come to naught because our policies, e.g., advertisements that make our brains look like eggs, telling parents to hug their children, or making the case that drug use supports for terrorism, are simplistic and superficial. In other words, our conventional take on the “drug problem” is simplistic and superficial and so are our policies.
This is a common phenomenon. Consider the conventional thinking about student drinking. What to do, we ask? How can we limit or stop such behavior? Drinking is a “problem” and we need “solutions.” So, what do we come up with? Such simplistic remedies as:
Don’t advertise alcohol on television.
Come up with concepts, like “binge drinking”, that “measure” the problem and our “progress” dealing with it. [Want to avoid “bingeing?” Easy. Get a really big glass.]
Create a bureaucracy to “fight” student drinking.
Most importantly: Pretend this behavior is “unenlightened” or “irrational,” needing only an “enlightened elite” [BOBs and professors] to show students how they ought to live. [Like we BOBs and academics live?]
But if there is no “alcohol problem” or if what we take to be an alcohol problem is actually something else, then all these policies won’t and can’t work. In fact, they will resemble pissing into the wind, with predictable results. Of course, when they don’t work, the blame will be placed on our implacable youth who continue to defy us despite our “enlightened” approach to their well being. Harsher measures will be adopted and soon, all too soon, the land of the free will be anything but free. In fact, this has already happened as even our liberty-loving conservatives and liberals support urine tests and sobriety check points. But as Sheriff Bell says: “…sometimes people would rather have a bad answer about things than no answer at all.”
Apparently we prefer bad answers to no answer which is why we fall back on policies to combat what we think is the “drug problem” that are simplistic, superficial, and even oppressive. Perhaps though our preference for “bad answers” reflects a misunderstanding of our own, that is, the human, situation. We think and have thought for some time that government is the cornerstone of any decent society. Again, though, Sheriff Bell may have it right: “It takes very little to govern good people. Very little. And bad people can’t be governed at all. Or if they could I never heard of it.” Now there is something to think about.
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