Inspirations Pt 01
My new book was inspired by a lot of reading
We had questions.
This book offered possible answers.
In 2003 one of my best friends from high school came for a visit from Florida. We were both 21 but lacked the frantic disposal toward vice that age implies. We were readers and thinkers. We were trying desperately to figure out where we fit in a larger world which, it seems quaint to say now, felt like it was falling apart.
The Iraq war and the Bush era in general seemed to be sliding us toward an oblivion of stupidity, opposed to everything we valued as nascent humanists. The culture we were maturing into valued surface judgement and mindless fury. How could we picture a future for ourselves when everything was so clearly circling a great big all consuming drain?
In the lead up to his visit he had recommended I read Twilight of American Culture by Morris Berman. Berman gives convincing account of many of the cultural currents we were lamenting. Though only a mere three years out of date at the time, his account felt naive, coming as it did before 9/11 and the accelerated stupidity fetishizm that came in its wake (freedom fries, botched invasions, ignorance as a crown of glory the better to trust in violence as the universal answer).
The book makes a suggestion for how to live is such times. Converge on your intelligence. Dig deeper into learning and make it a way of life. If contemplation and understanding are nowhere in the public sphere you must be all the more diligent in making it the defining feature of your life. With the hope that doing so will attract others so inclined and you may create a version of monasticism and thus preserve traditions of intelligence.
He also suggests a number of books to help understand the precedent and possible outcome of such an effort.
How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill tells of how Irish Monasteries preserved a tradition of learning and a core of texts through a time that largely did not value either. It offers a view of a storm tossed remnant holding onto a valuable heritage until it can be retrieved and appreciated again.
A Canticle for Leibowitz tells a similar story but projects it into the future, after a nuclear holocaust. It tells of a monastic society that preserves modern learning following a nuclear war, through a time of poverty and ignorance so that it can be retrieved and utilized later.
The melodramatic nobility of this image resonated with us. We had no particular hopes of saving civilization, not even for some remote future re-awakening. But it did give us a core of belief for the now; that learning, reading, investigation, and expansion of our own souls would always be valuable no matter how stark the currents against it. In fact, the harder society pushed against intelligence the greater the importance that we resist.
This all gave me an idea. One day, after my friend had gone back to Florida and I was lost in the post holiday doldrums, after fun is had and connections made and now life stares back at you; I sat at my word processor. I had recently enjoyed imaging myself as a writer and now the image of a library appeared. A library at the end of the world.
