June 1931 — Vol. 32, No. 6 — Bewildered People
Download PDF
version
We, democratic people find ourselves
bewildered. We are pricked by strange fears. Every man and
woman seems, as never before in the history of the world,
to feel an individual personal stake in the political restlessness
which is making havoc in our peaceful lives.
Development of knowledge and the great number of our inventions
complicate living. Conditions have been revolutionized for
the better, and yet we are not happy. We may not be able to
put into words the difficulties we feel, but we do know that
life is for most of us a continuous process of getting used
to things we hadn't expected.
Early settlers in America must have experienced something
of this sort. They had to cope with strange animals, unfamiliar
surroundings, extremes of climate, and the constant dread
of Indians. Our ancestors, in prehistoric times, must have
known fear as a constant feeling.
When we look back not so far, we take comfort in the thought
that every formal, material ambition of the reformers, philanthropists
and optimists of the nineteenth century has been achieved.
They wanted to end slavery, lengthen life, raise the standard
of living, establish free education. All these have been attained
by the democracies of the West, but new things trouble us,
from the high cost of living at home to the cheapness of human
life in other countries.
We boast of our literacy, because more of us can read and
write than ever before in history. The bugbear is that our
newspaper headline knowledge of events has made us accustomed
to crises. We are, too, subjected to learned expositions of
various people's views on instincts, complexes, reflexes,
glands and the traffic problem.
In all these experiences, we started out with ideals of
what should be, but these have developed into frustration
and then bewilderment. We find that compromises and adjustments
have to be made, and we become confused as we try to keep
the changes within the bounds of our principles and culture.
Life is Worth Living
Life can be worth living, and men, individually and as groups
and as nations and as mankind, can find a satisfying purpose
in it. Perfection and unchanging bliss are impossible and
undesirable, but in the search for them we have romance, adventure,
and the delight of doing things. Like Shakespeare's Guildenstern
in Hamlet, we can be "Happy in that we are not overhappy;
On fortune's cap we are not the very button."
We have made the word "progress" include a whole system
of philosophy and politics. The civilization of our century
allows the average man to partake lavishly of an abundance
of things. He is surrounded by marvellous machines, healing
arts, fatherly governments and comforting privileges of all
kinds.
Should he become self—satisfied, it will be time for
man to raise the question whether he and his culture are threatened
with degeneration. Civilization does not emerge under unusually
easy conditions of life. This is a law confirmed by palaeontology
and bio—geography: human life has arisen and progressed
only when the resources it could count on were balanced by
the problems it met with.
Well, what about atomic power? It promises abundance as
readily as desolation, but only on the condition that we solve
the problem of its use. That solution involves the setting
up of a principle and its embodiment in deeds. From some men
and nations this will demand a healthy change from destructive
impulses to constructive thinking.
Seeking a Principle
Where is the principle to be found that will appeal to all
people? That is likely the most momentous question before
us today. Of some things we can be certain, but they are mostly
negative: a uniting principle is not to be found in nationalistic
movements, political dogma, secular peace programmes or economic
panaceas. The principle we seek must be ethical and universal,
something appealing to the highest moral sense to which people
of various cultures have attained. It needs to be strong,
if it is to overcome the obstacles which social usage and
selfish impulses will put in the way of its cultivation.
No signatures on paper, and no outward rites can take the
place of a true spiritual culture, which is described by Arnold
J. Toynbee like this in his Civilization on Trial:
"the inward force which alone creates and sustains the outward
manifestations of what is called civilization."
Building on such a spiritual base does not mean that man
will renounce the activities of life or stunt his natural
faculties or scorn science and improvement. On the contrary,
as was so eloquently said in the Encyclical Letter of Pope
Pius XI in 1929, "He thus ennobles what is merely natural
in life and secures for it new strength in the material and
temporal order, no less than in the spiritual and eternal."
When the comfortable road of living at ease in a developing
civilization has been remorselessly closed by a social breakdown,
there are, says Toynbee, four ways presented as alternative
possible by—passes. Three are culs—de—sac,
and "only one, which we have called transfiguration, and illustrated
by the light of Christianity, leads right onward."
Why are we Confused?
It may be well to ask, in view of this knowledge and our
ability in the sciences and our skill in technical things,
why are we confused?
Is it because no one knows toward what centre human beings
are going to gravitate, and therefore our lives have become
scandalously makeshift? Everything that is done today by governments
and by individuals seems provisional, depending on this or
that factor outside their control.
Are we confused because we have been installed at birth
in the midst of riches and prerogatives unknown to any other
age or to any other form of human society? We did nothing
to create them, and we have to live up to them, with all their
new perplexities. It is a plain fact that the abundance of
resources we inherit as Canadians of 1951 deprives us of the
chance to live out our personal destiny by struggle and effort.
Struggle and effort were commonplace as the inspiration of
Canadians a century ago.
Is our confusion due to the fact that we take so great personal
interest in all other people that life is a long—continued
tension, so that we fidget and become irritated by little
things?
Or can it be that our confusion arises from a feeling of
aloneness on a desolate sea, cut off from help and comfort?
That is horrible indeed. As the Shepards say in their recent
novel Jenkins' Ear: "Many men, many women, have sung
and rejoiced in the midst of the flames because they felt
that their torment was known somewhere, that it would count,
that it had a meaning. But to feel that it means nothing whatever...Well,
you remember Byron's outcry: 'That way, madness lies!'"
Something about Fear
It is natural to be afraid, and our fears may range from
the atom bomb to the unknown. The man who tells you he has
no fears acknowledges that he has no imagination. Mystery
is often at the root of fear, and another way of saying "mystery"
is to refer to it as our consciousness of ignorance. When
we don't know the form of a danger, though we know it is there,
that is more tormenting than any discovery, however frightful.
Some of our fears are much too big for the kind of situation
that appears to arouse them, but the only sure way to make
certain we are not fearing unnecessarily is to find out. If
the conduct of others causes our fear emotion to arise, let's
find out the worst they can do and then react intelligently.
If we are afraid because we don't know what another person
means, let's ask and ask until we find out - otherwise our
nagging fear may develop into hatred.
It is useless to shut our eyes to dangers. Often we do not
tremble because we are afraid, but we are afraid because we
let ourselves tremble. The curative quality in letting in
the light is shown roguishly by Ibsen in one of his plays.
Björn asks: "Are you afraid of a dark room?" And Finn replies:
"Not in the daytime."
There are other things besides fear that cause us to be
bewildered people. One of the greatest sources of confusion
is our individuality. We humans differ in our heredity, our
up—bringing, and our desires. The people who jostle one
another on our streets are inevitably different. No amount
of education can make the extrovert really understand the
introvert, or the talker understand the man who finds all
his satisfaction in solitary handicraft, or the non—musical
person feel with the passion of the music lover. This diversity
may be the salt of life, but it can be confusing.
The high—minded person will not merely tolerate the
peculiarities of others, but will enjoy them. He will hold
in respect the rights and privileges of every individual;
he will listen to both sides of an argument; he will put up
with things beloved by others which are distasteful to him
- Such a spirit will go a long way toward removing the bewilderment
caused by the idiosyncrasies of neighbours, business acquaintances,
and people half a world away.
Ways of Escape
In the midst of these confusions, several ways of escape
are offered us. There are times when we become homesick for
our comparatively carefree past. As Mary Lowrey Ross wrote
in Saturday Night last month about grandmother: "In
all her lifetime she had never heard of communists or nuclear
fission or sacroiliac disturbance or supersonic flight. I
don't know that I would care to go back to my grandmother's
era to live. But it would be a wonderful place to visit."
Psychiatry, which is the medical discipline dedicated to
the treatment of psychologically sick persons, has begun to
be considered by some as something that could ultimately cure
groups, nations and the human race as a whole of such "illnesses"
as wars, interracial tensions and suchlike.
But let not these people remove the things we cling to in
our bewilderment before they have provided better things to
take their place. They have no colour of reason for taking
away our handholds in these slippery days, without giving
the ordinary people of the world more secure footing.
Social science is trying to find the answers to our great
unanswered questions: how can we get peace, freedom, order,
prosperity and progress under many different states of existence?
How can we establish the conditions of human well—being
that have been attained in some parts of the world, or by
certain groups, so that they will apply to other groups, and
to other parts of the world? How can we achieve general agreement
of minds in a mass democracy? How can we get the advantages
of a rapidly developing technology without destroying the
other values we cherish? These are questions proposed by Dr.
Louis Wirth, of Chicago University.
Governments, as well as social scientists, have their responsibilities,
but governments are all too often concerned only with political
"facts." This is symptomatic of a trend among some people
to stop thinking of what governments should be, and to think
only of what governments can do for them. By this route people
lose control of government by becoming its beneficiaries.
And people voting themselves into Eden from a supposedly inexhaustible
government purse are no match for the confusions of today.
It would be beneficial if as energetic efforts were made
by governments to improve men as are put forth to improve
men's condition. It would be worth more to people and country
to instil one single principle than to provide all the ease
of living possible.
Understanding One Another
We have only a few short years to develop instruments of
national and international understanding. One hindrance is
the difficulty of communicating ideas. This doesn't mean merely
the handicap of language, though that is a big one, but we
feel discomfited because we don't know where and how to say
all that is in our minds - and sometimes the right people
aren't listening.
Talking of our failure to communicate ideas with any degree
of satisfactory results, Wendell Johnson writes in People
in Quandaries that from the day when we arrived with bewildering
suddenness in the Atomic Age the problem has become urgent
to the point of sheer desperation. "The race against destruction
has now become a sprint," he says. "The next time words fail,
millions of us will die, having discovered a second or two
beforehand, if at all, how extremely advantageous it would
have been had we learned how to talk to other people and how
to listen to them."
Mr. Johnson doubtless had the menace of totalitarianism
in his mind when he wrote his warning. It is by the minds
of men that the work of ages may be made to crumble in the
dust, and the minds of dictators have no use for those things
our forefathers built which we consider so greatly worth while.
To the dictator, sentiment, pity, fairness, charity, spiritual
thoughts: all these are an encumbrance, and only cruelty and
brutality are efficient tools. Despotic governments dislike
dreamers, holy men, thinkers and philosophers. The fascination
of power leads them to tear down. As Thomas Campbell, the
Scottish poet, wrote: "What millions died, that Caesar might
be great!"
Out of the horribleness that is communism there is one question
that bewilders us more than all others: why do the people
in communistic countries suffer this succession of unnecessary
miseries at the hands of their leaders? We cannot see in the
communistic system any increase in human happiness: on the
contrary, it carries with it degradation, misery, a cattle—like
subservience to masters, and starvation of men's minds.
The Values We Believe In
We of the democracies believe that there is a scale of values
in life, from the simplest comforts of everyday living right
up to the highest satisfactions of love, virtue, intellect
and creative achievement. We find an innate satisfaction in
looking for the true and the noble. We believe in duty: duty
to one's family, one's country, and one's self.
We of the democracies believe in freedom. From our moral
liberty is derived our right to political liberty, and our
duty to keep it inviolate.
We believe in giving our people the right and the means
to pursue knowledge in this age of intellectual curiosity.
Intelligent human beings will never long be satisfied with
animal pleasures. For them the pleasures of the intellect
and emotions come first: "To be still searching what we know
not, by what we know; still closing up truth to truth as we
find it, this is the golden rule."
Some persons love to quote a proverb in excuse for their
ignorance: "A little learning is a dangerous thing." Much
more than a little wisdom, a lot of ignorance is a dangerous
thing. Ignorance trips us into situations that would be funny
in an individual but are tragic in a nation. One clown slipping
on a banana peel is a joke, but one world slipping on an ideology
seems pretty grim.
Increase of knowledge by ever so little will help us to
avoid prejudice and superstition. The most frightening thing
in the world is to be at the mercy of someone who is so stupid
as not to be amenable to reason. Next to that is the subject
of the Arabian proverb: "He that knows not, and knows not
that he knows not - he is a fool, shun him."
From gathering knowledge to thinking is but a short step.
Thinking is not a lazy, idle, passive mental occupation. It
is strenuous work of the intellect, and its aim is understanding.
It may begin by upsetting our complacency. As we compare this
with that we may find relationships and differences we did
not know existed.
There are three steps in thinking: collecting the facts
through observation or experience; explaining them tentatively
by an hypothesis or an "informed guess"; confirming this hypothesis
by patient observation. This method leaves no room for taking
things for granted, or for jumping to conclusions on the basis
of hearsay (which, we must remember, may be prejudiced or
coloured).
Don't Give in to Chaos
If there is any clarion note to be sounded in the democracies
today it is this: "Don't give in to chaos." We must not allow
ourselves to become so accustomed to the lower tone of the
existence we are at present compelled to live that we lose
the virtues and capacities we have so hardly won.
It would be fatal, indeed, if we allowed ourselves to think
of the present state of unrest as normal.
It is no easy job to tidy up our intellectual and spiritual
universe, but we need to do it if we are to avoid bewilderment
and to escape chaos, if we are not to allow all of our generations
of progress to be whittled down to destruction by an era of
violence and terror.
Realization of what is happening and that we should do something
about it are the first steps out of bewilderment. Like the
dice—player, we cannot tell what may be thrown; but carefully
and skilfully to make use of what is thrown, that is where
our proper business begins.
Joseph Mazzini writes bitterly of people who see their principles
trampled without taking effective action to save them: "They
lifted for a moment their drowsy heads, and then fell back
into their old torpor. They saw the funeral procession of
our martyrs pass by, knew not that their rights, their life,
their salvation, were being buried with them."
There are no clear—cut prescriptions that will apply
immediately to our particular headaches. Having learned and
thought, we need to associate ourselves with others dedicated
to serving the high principles in which we believe.
We need to become not only patrons but active participants,
perhaps not in big things, but in the innumerable little ways
that in the aggregate make up our way of life. Naaman's servants
said to him, as recorded in II Kings: "If the prophet had
bid thee to do some great thing, wouldest thou not have done
it? How much rather, then, when he saith to thee 'wash, and
be clean'?"
Little things must be considered important, just as we must
guard against the outstanding weakness of democracy: a sense
of the insignificance of personal effort in national and international
affairs. But very often the fate of society has turned upon
something trivial. A Greek philosopher went so far as to suggest
that if Menelaus had been sensible about Helen, and had made
up his mind he was just as well rid of such a wife, there
would have been no thousand ships launched, and no battle
of Troy.
There are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people,
and our democratic way of life offers greater scope than any
other for their development. Practically all of the great
discoveries and inventions of modern times made their first
appearance among people whose governments left them free to
develop themselves according to their own desires.
What is our Philosophy?
Everyone needs a philosophy of life, and possibly there
may be one hammered out of this far—reaching though inadequate
survey of today's state of the world and its bewildered people.
Surely, it may be said, there has never been another condition
of life so well suited for philosophizing as this in which
we now happen to be.
Essential to a constructive philosophy is the question "Where
do we go from here?" That is more progressive than seeking
to answer the question "Why ever did we come here?" Every
step we take forward is a gain, not only in terms of ground
gained but because we then obtain a better view of what lies
ahead. No writer has said this better than H. G. Wells in
World Set Free: "Man lives in the dawn for ever. Life
is beginning and nothing else but beginning. It begins everlastingly.
Each step seems vaster than the last, and does but gather
us for the next."
Of all important countries in the world today, Canada has
the least reason for a mood of self—pity. During the
past half—century we have ceased to be a provincial outpost
of Europe. We have become an important participant in world
affairs. We have passed from the primitiveness of the material
background that our French and British pioneers knew in their
childhood to a sophistication that was then unthinkable.
Not everyone will agree that these things are necessarily
good. There is something extravagant to the simple mind in
the contour of our destiny as pictured by some orators and
writers. But the fact remains that we are where we are, with
a high standard of living, high ideals, high ethical principles,
and a sturdy citizenry. We believe in simple kindness, common
honesty, the beauty in family life, and the rule of law.
We believe, too, that the shuttle which flies backward and
forward across the loom of Time is bringing into existence
a tapestry in which these virtues form the pattern. We are
content to contribute our part to weaving that tapestry.
Published by RBC Financial Group. All editions from the RBC
Letter collection are available on our web site at www.rbc.com/responsibility/letter.
Our e-mail address is: rbcletter@rbc.com.
Publié aussi en francais.
[ Return to RBC Letter
home page ]
|
