It All Adds Up (Penguin Modern Classics) by Bellow Saul

Author:Bellow, Saul [Bellow, Saul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141913797
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2016-03-24T04:00:00+00:00

There is Simply Too Much to Think About

(1992)

Forbes September 1992.

Asked for an opinion on some perplexing question of the day, I sometimes say that I am for all the good things and against all the bad ones. Not everybody is amused by such a dinner-table joke. Many are apt to feel that I consider myself too good for this world, which is, of course, a world of public questions.

Was President Kennedy right to tell us, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country”? In the ordinary way of life, what can one do for one’s country? One can be preoccupied with it. That is, one can hold enlightened opinions. Most people conclude that there isn’t much, practically speaking, they can do. A few become activists and fly around the country demonstrating or remonstrating. They are able to do this in a free and prosperous America. I speculate sometimes about the economics of militancy. There must be a considerable number of people with small private incomes whose lifework is to march in protest, to picket, to be vocal partisans. At this moment the Roe v. Wade issue has attracted demonstrators to Washington and to Buffalo. Atomic energy, environmentalism, women’s rights, homosexual rights, AIDS, capital punishment, various racial issues—such are the daily grist of newspapers and networks. The public is endlessly polled, the politicians and their advisers are guided in their strategies by poll statistics. And this, let’s face it, is “the action.” This is where masses of Americans find substance, importance, find definition through a combination of passion and ineffectuality. The level of public discussion is unsatisfactory. As we become aware of this, our hearts sink. The absence of articulate political leadership in the country makes us feel that we are floundering.

What are we, today, in a position to do about the crises chronicled daily in the New York Times—about the new Russia and the new Germany; about Peru and China and drugs in the South Bronx and racial strife in Los Angeles, the rising volume of crimes and diseases, the disgrace of the so-called educational system; about ignorance, fanaticism, about the clownish tactics of candidates for the presidency?

Is it possible to take arms against a sea of troubles so boundless?

Wherever it is feasible, arms, of course, should be taken. But we must also consider what it requires to face the trouble-sea in its planetary vastness—what an amount of daily reading it demands of us, to say nothing of historical knowledge. It was brave of Karl Marx to assert that the time had come for thinkers to be doers. But to consider what his intellectual disciples did in the twentieth century will send us back to our seats. It is, after all, no small thing to correct our opinions frequently, and when you come right down to it, the passivity imposed upon us forces us to acknowledge how necessary it is to think hard, to reject what is mentally dishonorable.

We feel heavy

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