I don’t know what you think about the U.S. election, dear reader. I don’t write much about politics. But I do have political thoughts. Here is one of them.
Like a large minority of U.S. voters, I was disappointed by the result of the election. I fear that many good things will be lost in the years ahead, and for little benefit to the common good.
Like other overly-verbose people of similar political leanings, I’ve been thinking about what to do now and want to tell you about it.1
Even before the election, in order to brace myself for the possible defeat of my preferred candidates, I thought about the ending to Candide. I haven’t read Candide, but I knew the line, “we must cultivate our garden,” and now I have read at least the ending. Here it is. It’s a long quote, and I do have a bit more to say after it:
During this conversation, the news was spread that two Viziers and the Mufti had been strangled at Constantinople, and that several of their friends had been impaled. This catastrophe made a great noise for some hours. Pangloss, Candide, and Martin, returning to the little farm, saw a good old man taking the fresh air at his door under an orange bower. Pangloss, who was as inquisitive as he was argumentative, asked the old man what was the name of the strangled Mufti.
"I do not know," answered the worthy man, "and I have not known the name of any Mufti, nor of any Vizier. I am entirely ignorant of the event you mention; I presume in general that they who meddle with the administration of public affairs die sometimes miserably, and that they deserve it; but I never trouble my head about what is transacting at Constantinople; I content myself with sending there for sale the fruits of the garden which I cultivate."
Having said these words, he invited the strangers into his house; his two sons and two daughters presented them with several sorts of sherbet, which they made themselves, with Kaimak enriched with the candied-peel of citrons, with oranges, lemons, pine-apples, pistachio-nuts, and Mocha coffee unadulterated with the bad coffee of Batavia or the American islands. After which the two daughters of the honest Mussulman perfumed the strangers' beards.
"You must have a vast and magnificent estate," said Candide to the Turk.
"I have only twenty acres," replied the old man; "I and my children cultivate them; our labour preserves us from three great evils—weariness, vice, and want."
Candide, on his way home, made profound reflections on the old man's conversation.
"This honest Turk," said he to Pangloss and Martin, "seems to be in a situation far preferable to that of the six kings with whom we had the honour of supping."
"Grandeur," said Pangloss, "is extremely dangerous according to the testimony of philosophers. For, in short, Eglon, King of Moab, was assassinated by Ehud; Absalom was hung by his hair, and pierced with three darts; King Nadab, the son of Jeroboam, was killed by Baasa; King Ela by Zimri; Ahaziah by Jehu; Athaliah by Jehoiada; the Kings Jehoiakim, Jeconiah, and Zedekiah, were led into captivity. You know how perished Crœsus, Astyages, Darius, Dionysius of Syracuse, Pyrrhus, Perseus, Hannibal, Jugurtha, Ariovistus, Cæsar, Pompey, Nero, Otho, Vitellius, Domitian, Richard II. of England, Edward II., Henry VI., Richard III., Mary Stuart, Charles I., the three Henrys of France, the Emperor Henry IV.! You know——"
"I know also," said Candide, "that we must cultivate our garden."
"You are right," said Pangloss, "for when man was first placed in the Garden of Eden, he was put there ut operaretur eum, that he might cultivate it; which shows that man was not born to be idle."
"Let us work," said Martin, "without disputing; it is the only way to render life tolerable."
This passage seems relevant to the moment, something to aspire to. It’s a defense of work in the face of the world’s infinite misery — misery that will eventually engulf you, too, if it hasn’t already. Michel Houellebecq writes, at the end of The Map and the Territory, “The triumph of vegetation is total,” which I take to mean that every edifice of human civilization will one day be overtaken by jungle, prairie, lichen, seaweed, and so forth. But in the meantime, we can tend and tame the vegetation. We can hold off its triumph and even temporarily direct it toward our ends.
I have spent much of the last decade arguing that work — by which I ordinarily mean paid employment — is bad. Getting paid is good, to be sure, but in order to get paid, we usually have to endure all manner of indignities. I think it would be great if we could get paid without so much work.
I am not opposed to effort directed toward meaningful ends. (Think parenting, study, volunteering, practicing free throws, etc.) If you want to call that work, fine, though I wish we could call it something else, in order to avoid confusion.
After the 2016 election, I marched, I called officeholders, I knocked on doors, I went to a town hall and booed my representative, I got involved with a community-organizing group through my church. At the time, this was sometimes called “doing the work.” Others did more, for sure, but I did something. I didn’t really like it, and apart from the booing I wasn’t very good at it, but I understood this to be what I needed to do.2
I don’t think I’m going to these things this time. There are other meaningful things I can do — things I’m better at, like writing and teaching — apart from enacting polictical resistance. I’m eight years older and so a bit more aware that I can only do so much before the vegetation gets me. I know several more people, no different from me, now buried beneath the grass. Regardless of the political reality, I need to keep weariness, vice, and want away. I will certainly seek leisure. But I also need to work.
On election night, instead of watching the NYT Needle, I went to see Conclave. A character in the movie says that the Church isn’t what was done in the past; “it’s what we do next.” That’s a really good line.
Good friends of mine, who do not live in Wisconsin, knocked hundreds if not thousands of doors in Wisconsin this fall, in an effort to tip the election toward the Democrats. One of them basically moved to Wisconsin for several weeks. That’s really doing the work.