A Reflection
When I wrote the first draft of The Exciting Nightmare, ten or so years ago, I appended three epigraphs to it. The first was from Leszek Kolakowski’s book, Is God Happy? “But unease as an essential quality of the spirit is a distinctive feature of our time and culture—a culture which, though still alive and hurtling forward on its creative momentum, we nevertheless perceive as sick, even if we cannot agree on the diagnosis.” The second was from The Notebooks of Robert Frost. “I should hate to spend the only life I was going to have in being annoyed with the time I happened to live in.” The third was from an essay by Hannah Arendt, “Karl Jaspers: Citizen of the World?” “What begins now, after the end of world history, is the history of mankind.”
Kolakowski sounds what has been a frequent note during the past century and a half, that of unease and dis-ease, the feeling that something is very wrong. Frost, ever the shrewd one, makes the case for our enjoying the sheer fact of being here. Why protest what you can do little about, particularly if that protest gets in the way of your being present to the resplendent wonder of life on earth? Isn’t such annoyance little more than pettiness? As to Arendt’s remark, it has, like many of her thoughts, haunted me.
It seems what we face on this planet at this time is the reality of “mankind,” not as some humanist abstraction but as the stark environmental impact that speaks to the sum of our actions on the earth—history. Given all the difficulties we have in dealing with our personal situations, this large thought feels overwhelming. To think of “mankind” is very hard. Immediately, our minds fly to the many differences that divide human beings, how little we can truly agree on. It can be argued that the very notion of “mankind” is impossible, particularly at a time when, for many, all human doings are merely cultural constructs. If everything is at once manipulated and arbitrary, how can there possibly be some coherent agreement? It is as if we want to take responsibility for our actions and avoid that responsibility at the same time. Perhaps we have always been that way.
Yet I think what Arendt is positing is the challenge the human race faces about its penchant for depredation in the name of whatever announced or unannounced cause, whether capitalism, communism, free markets, fascism, globalism, imperialism, colonialism, authoritarianism, monarchism, or nationalism, to cite some prominent ones. These dispensations (or manias) have been, for all the words and energy (both literal and figurative) invested in them, utterly blind in regards to caring for the earth. They have been schemes, predilections, and prejudices that easily became realities, some as ancient as the tribal impulse and some as modern as the secular faith residing in ideology. They have created world history in the sense of their relentlessly pushing forward some program, however deluded. This medley has been world history, a cacophony in which wants are relentlessly presented as needs.
The real needs—water, food, air, light, shelter—have been taken for granted, particularly by those with the power to enforce their wills on others. This power begins with what men have done to women but has hardly ended there. One can argue that world history is nothing more than male revenge against Mother Earth, a deep animus toward the genius of female fecundity and creativity. As a woman, Arendt was certainly aware of that argument, but she chose to not make one more differentiation since the totality of the depredations is human, both male and female. I imagine the human talent for differentiation, expressed at this historical juncture in the passion for identity, would amuse and appall her.
To reach the place of the “history of mankind” seems the task that confronts us. We reach for more inventions but the issue is one of consciousness. It always has been, as much as we inveigle ourselves with our latest toys. In writing these essays, I have struggled with the task of trying to show what happened, not through extensive historical analysis—an impossibility given the reach of my endeavor—but through the intuitive yet grounded manners that go with essay writing. Essayists must trust themselves in a way that is somehow different from other writers. They are borrowing from the world yet proposing their own takes on what they borrow. Something headstrong resides in that stance yet, echoing Montaigne, something skeptical and humble: What do I know? I would be the first to say, “Not much but I am trying.”
To sound a final, personal note, I have felt more alone than the usual authorial solitude in this endeavor. At the time I wrote this (and I have revised each chapter for posting on Substack), I queried some presses and the editors who bothered to reply were incredulous, as in “Who are you to do this?” Not the first time I have been asked that question. I well understand. Our world thrives on qualifications and specialization. As a poet and writer, I am a perennial amateur. No one has given me any right to pursue this task but that seems to me the crucial point. We are all amateurs in the modest time we are here. We can, however, be attentive and take a longer view, one that includes future generations of all creatures. “Extinction” is a very dark word that shadows each day. Men have been trying to wipe one another out from the beginnings of world history and sometimes wipe out other creatures. It is not a news bulletin to say that we—men and women—can be very nasty, self-involved creatures. Is that all we are? No, we say. And the planet, the home of all of us, says, “Show me.”
Answer to Who are you to write these essays?
One of a handful of thinkers with a deep sweep of knowledge writing with nuance, elegance, and humility.
Baron, Thank you so much for this essay. It makes me feel less alone. I have been walking around the house all morning feeling terribly bereft of any belief in human "goodness." It seems the more the earth is threatened by our actions, the more rapacious and cruel we become. The only thing I trust is the oak leaf blown onto the grass. Not the grass, mown and fed for the benefit of...what...my reflection as a good member of society? Not myself, human-centered creature so angry at "them" I lose all compassion in my own dark soul. This nightmare once felt exciting to me, filled with the potential to find the path out of the nightmare. Now it feels like a prison. Wish I had known about your reading at Longfellow Books the other night. It would have been great to see you!!