"What Then Must We Do?"

Both Lewis Wheelwright and Gerry St Martin have rightly pointed out that I tend to show what's wrong with the world but don't provide clear advice when students ask what they might do. I will try to provide some specifics here, but there are dangers. My way is not the way.

In 1886, Tolstoy published an account of his discovery of poverty in Moscow ("What Then Must We Do?") and his search for its cause. Tolstoy, deciding that his own "personal habits of luxury" promoted the evil of poverty, tried to give away all his wealth and renounce both church and government. He took up a Christian anarchism that led to his excommunication and he died seeking a hermitage in a remote province.

I too have renounced church and government. I live in a place in the south of Ecuador very far away. But, unlike the hermit Tolstoy, I am an activist. I read and I lecture. I build educational opportunities. Through my work, I strive to challenge injustice every day.

"But what can I do?" asks Lewis. "I don't know anything."

All right. Let me try to answer clearly.

1) Read. Education is possible inside the university and out.
Start here:
a) The Nation (a magazine)
b) The Guardian (a newpaper)
c) The Sermon on the Mount (I'm very serious about this.)
d) "Denmark and the Jews" (a chapter from Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jersulem)
e) "Letter from Birmingham Jail" (an essay by Martin Luther King)
f) "Money" (A chapter from James Agee's Let Us Now Praise Famous Men)

There is, of course, so much more. But these texts are key. I'll post a longer reading list later.

2) Find mentors. They seem to be more scarce lately (or am I just old?) I still have quite a few. When I just arrived at the University of Chicago, I heard about a professor of Shakespeare who was often too drunk to come to class. His students sought him out at a local bar and claimed he was even more inspiring there. I regret that I missed it, but I did.

3) Travel. Most of my students are doing this, of course, so the advice isn't worth much. But I would add this: travel with humility and try to learn. Most travelers do neither.

4) Become an Activist. The possibilities are immense and nearly all good, it seems to me. If you Google "how to be an activist," you will get 341,000 hits. I've not looked at many, but I will bet that they all lead to an interesting path. Find your fit. A life without activism is a tragic waste. Consider Thoreau: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." Avoid quiet desperation at all costs.

5) Renounce citizenship but not politics. Superiority is relative. The idea of the superiority of any nation requires the idea of the inferiority of other nations. Edward Said wrote that the West invented the East to have someone to be better than. Don't fall for superiority. Not too long ago, before the invention of patriotism and school spirit, pride was a deadly sin. The world is divided into nations and armies in order to justify the abuse of power. Choose where to live and try to make that place better. But try to do no harm. Swear your allegiance to community and avoid any allegiance to a nation. The Hippocratic Oath is the only commandment that matters. Try not to harm yourself, others, or the planet. Pride does harm. Nations do harm.

6) Study the idea of anarchy (which is badly defined in most dictionaries). The world desperately needs more anarchists.

7) Get the news, but be skeptical. I read Al Jazeera these days because I think it important to always hear the voices of those under attack by an empire. (http://english.aljazeera.net)

8) Think about money as an analytical tool. If you live in a country where the cost of a senate campaign is more than an average annual salary, you do not live in a democracy.

9) Live deliberately (I'm quoting Thoreau.) I live in Cuenca, Ecuador, on purpose. I chose this life. You, too, can choose a life, though most people do not. Yet (it seems) we have only one life. It takes great effort to choose a life and to build it, and our culture seems not to know how.

Enough. I am sufficiently embarrassed for having revealed my pedantic side. Gerry and Lewis are to blame.