This post's read time: 8 minutes
Dear friend,
It’s cold again in Prospect. The trees aren’t cracking in the night like gunshots, but a strong wind whipped up last night which threw some small branches down and brought with it temps into the single digits. It was just me and Sammy, snuggled under the blankets this morning. I built the fire and went back to bed to read a little as the cabin heated up. We’re running low on wood, with a good month of winter left ahead. I hope Chloe and Sammy will do well after I leave for Colorado in two days.
I am reading Smith’s “How The Word Is Passed” about America reckoning with the history of slavery. It quotes General Lee:
The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is Known & ordered by a wise & merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild & melting influence of Christianity, than the storms & tempests of fiery Controversy. This influence though slow is sure. The doctrines & miracles of our Saviour have required nearly two thousand years to Convert but a small part of the human race, & even Christian nations, what gross errors still exist! While we see the Course of the final abolition of human slavery is onward, & we give it the aid of our prayers & all justifiable means in our power we must leave the progress as well as the result in his hands who Sees the end; who Chooses to work by slow influences ; & with whom two thousand years are but a single day.
Letter from Robert E. Lee to Mary Randolph Custis Lee (December 27, 1856)
Three themes jump out at me here:
First, the idea that ending slavery is beyond the rights of man, that we are powerless to speed or slow a progress we recognize and support.
This is, frankly, nonsense. Superstitious thinking has wrought a great many evils upon us. There is a profound value in appreciating that our efforts might not have the intended consequences, but the belief that no effort ever has an effect is obvious nonsense.
These beliefs are cousin to Fred Friendly’s “Due To Circumstances Beyond Our Control” – a warning about the corruption of broadcast news by stockholder interests, and a lucid example of how destructive it is to allow profit to dominate the public interest. It was a bellwether about the dangers of media which we failed to heed and now find ourselves stupider and more polarized as a result. The mechanics can be seen across corporate America still, where we prioritize accumulation of wealth over creation of value.
It seems that slavery was a similar concept, as described in Smith’s Blandford Cemetery chapter. Many people feel that changing the past is impossible, and that they have no agency to go about changing the present.
Steve Jobs once said “Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” I plead with people to feel empowered to mend the things they feel are harming us. My life’s work is to help them find this path.
Second, the idea that “mild & melting” influence is somehow safer than the “storms and tempests of fiery controversy”.
In my mind this is akin to debates I hear over and over about who really helped the Civil Rights movement, MLK Jr. or Malcolm X. Powerful arguments are made for both but I have yet to see any meaningful social science on whether pacifism is effective without the threat of violence.
What has been studied is that as civilizations mature, they do tend to get less violent. So many people have this strange belief that the world is somehow becoming more violent, and while our tools of violence have certainly innovated very quickly, so have our tools of peace. Max Perutz’ book reminds us that the same guy who drove the use of chemical warfare in WWI also created the process for producing nitrogen fertilizer, a process which has been refined to keep literally billions of people from starvation.
My friend who worked in security for the UN told me that wars are pretty much always fought over resources. When people are happy and their basic human needs are met, then the will toward destruction just isn’t in them. I failed to ask him about the Vietnam War, but it does generally seem true to me, and possibly broadly applicable.
There appears to be an increase in urban crime, and there are still several arguments about what drove the precipitous decline in crime across the US in the 90’s. I have long wondered if there is a way to measure what drives criminal activity in major cities. Most of the studies I read use easily available data, like income and housing and police statistics, and don’t start from scratch with the question: What do people perceive as basic needs?
If we measured those, my suspicion is that we could see crime coming a long way out, and then we could use a form of Statistical Process Control to better meet people’s needs before there’s a noticeable uptick in crime.
This is what ran through my head when my friends convinced me to use the emergency door at a subway stop the last time I was in the city and my metrocard wasn’t working. I think they weren’t even conscious of a decision process. They just felt that the system wasn’t working for them and had no moral obligation to put in extra work to fix that system (make the mobile payment app or metrocard work) when they could just bypass the most obvious confound (walk around the turnstyle).
I later learned I could just use a credit card, and felt relieved. I like paying for services I appreciate, and I actually have a deep affection for the subway system.
So when it comes to a melting influence or a fiery one, I guess I reject the whole paradigm. Either can work, but must be grounded in reality – in an observation of whether or not it is working. The only way I know how to do this is by studying probability, which is why I am applying to grad school for decision analysis.
Third, there’s this idea in the letter of allowing God to work by slow influences.
I don’t really know what Lee meant in his letter, but it is clear his logic was deeply flawed. He was looking for a way to get reality to fit his beliefs – something we are all guilty of to some degree. In some ways, one could view his argument as in favor of evolution. If man is powerless to God, then we have no intelligent design of our own, we are not autonomous but tools of His will. This would leave only natural law, allowing things to play out over millennia. It sounds an awful lot like natural selection to me, applied to social systems as opposed to animals or genes.
Well friend, this isn’t what I was initially thinking I wanted to write about, but I hope you’ve found it interesting to see me grapple with my readings. The Smith book has grown on me, even if I don’t love his flowery writing and crude journalism. He has focused me on an important question: What is the role of our past when we chart the future?
My instinct is to focus on the present day, and use the past to give us a trend. In this way, we can be hopeful. Even Smith recognizes that many horrible injustices which survived centuries are beginning to crumble just in the past decade. I have seen this, certainly, in Maine’s system of incarceration. It was not long ago when people were released with nothing but $20. Now, there’s serious support to help people find community, housing, and work. There’s often someone there to be your ally in reentry.
A friend recently was describing a program, “Open Table” which provides you with a team of community volunteers each of whom is there to assist with one of your key needs. It brings the whole group together as equals, to value the process of being in community with purpose together.
The biggest issue? Because of the lack of housing in this area, they have struggled to find an eligible reentry participant (I think they call them “Friends”).
It has been stressful for me the last couple of months, and I have ended up harboring a resentment which has unfairly found itself aimed toward Chloe. I think, in large part, this is because she decided that living off grid, the way I do, doesn’t work for her, at least during winter.
This was heart wrenching for me. My partner and I became at odds, and stuck at the same time, since I had originally hoped to stay someplace warm, but cheap for a good chunk of winter (and that isn’t Maine). I felt like she convinced me to stick around, and I made all these commitments which feel good with a partner, but my convictions shear apart against the strain they have put on my relationship.
And thus I have subjected myself to the very housing insecurity I strive to fight. It has made me think deeply about buying a normal house cheaply and fixing it up, so I can have a refuge to offer people.
If Chloe can’t hang in here, then my hopes are dashed that others would want to. It has been several long years of slowly improving Inchoate, and suddenly I am back to feeling like I don’t have much to show for it.
There’s a stubborn part of me which wants to stay the course. I like where I live, I love the people of my town. I don’t want to live someplace which requires constant accumulation of wealth and the bondage of needing to pay rent, mortgage, taxes. I feel free when I think of how much I feel I belong here, with my being here a conscious choice and not the burden of necessity.
The other part of me wants to do better providing for others. It is a challenge trying to find a model which is unusual, and which fits my values and tendencies.
I recognize I must let go of my strong belief that I do things myself. It is so much easier to get a “real job” and pay other people to tend my orchard a build my home.
I grapple with whether or not volunteer work is a form of fooling myself. Through one lens, I am doing the work which feels most meaningful, capitalism be damned. On the other hand, I think by not being paid, I am held to a lesser standard by my peers, and therefore my work is maybe less serious when there is less accountability.
Alas, I must return to it all the same. I have promised to go a certain distance, and perhaps once I get there, the next bit of my path will resolve. Off I go to review the Housing section of Prospect’s Comprehensive Plan.
With Love,
Brad