As I write this I sit in fog drenched Mendocino while much of the country suffers under the horrid heat of a global heat wave. I indulge myself in quiet esthetic contemplation in the midst of an ugly political cat fight that divides the country. In a word I choose peace over war, order over chaos, quietude over chatter. “Free at last!” I cry. Unfortunately the impatient words of Jeremiah haunt me—“peace, peace there is no peace.”
How to live in a world dominated by folly, artifice and oppression, that is the question. Common sense instructs me to dropout, to withdraw in Lao Tzu fashion. A good option for one who values personal happiness over social responsibilities. William Blake offers an alternative, “the tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.” In other words, show some passion, change the world. The downside is that the world changes you or worse destroys you. The third way is simply to sit back, watch and laugh at it all. H. L. Mencken took this third route.
To take this third route requires a special type of personality with a special type of judgment about the world. He must, on the one hand, be an individualist with a serene and unquenchable sense of self-confidence; he must be supremely “inner-directed” with no inner shame or quaking at going against the judgment of the herd. He must, secondly, have a supreme zest for enjoying life and the spectacle it affords; he must be an individualist who cares deeply about liberty and individual excellence, but who can—from that same dedication to truth and liberty—enjoy and lampoon a society that has turned its back on the best that it can achieve. And he must, thirdly, be deeply pessimistic about any possibility of changing and reforming the ideas and actions of the vast majority of his fellow-men. He must believe that boobus Americanus is doomed to be boobus Americanus forevermore. Put these qualities together, and we are a long way toward explaining the route taken by Henry Louis Mencken H. L. Mencken, The Joyless Libertarian
All three are valid choices for anyone who sees the world for what it is. I’ve been stuck in option 2 for most of my life. I’ve been a great admirer of Blake since I discovered him in my high school English class.
I’ve been attracted to Lao Tzu’s philosophy from the moment I first read the Tao Te Ching but I’m not very good at putting it into practice though I try.
Lately I’m thinking the way to cope with the absurdity of our current situation here in the “shining city on a hill” is option 3. I’m no Mencken nor would I want to be. But “boobus Americanus” seems like an apt description of what I see going on around me.
Blake penned an hilarious farce called An Island in the Moon that gives me some confidence that I’m on the right track.
So, to keep my sanity I’m going to focus on Option 3 until after the upcoming sure to be disappointing Presidential election is behind us. And, depending on the result, perhaps a lot longer than that.
Song for America