Once more, in dubious battle

So here we are, once more locked in dubious battle, and I suddenly discover that Steinbeck had pulled it all together in a sensible fashion more than half a century ago – 1936 to be exact.

I’m talking about man as a part of nature – man the collective and man the individual - and war and insanity and loving violence and Iraq and Bush and how they manipulate the media which manipulates us and all that stuff – including blogging and why the hell I do it.

You see, this is the Summer of Steinbeck here at 1346 Drift Road. Not for me, but for Bren, and enough of her enthusiasm rubbed off on me so that I picked up “In Dubious Battle” and started reading it. But I became bored, so I put it down half-way through. Then today I was even more bored, so I picked it up again and stumbled right across these wonderfully insightful observations from the enigmatic Dr. Burton who is helping the communists organize the apple pickers. He does this even though, as Mac, the chief communist, points out, he isn’t a “believer.”

Doc replies:

“ Well, you say I don’t believe in the cause. That’s like not believing in the moon. There’ve been communes before, and there will be again. But you people have an idea that if you can establish the thing, the job’ll be done. Nothing stops, Mac. If you were able to put an idea into effect tomorrow, it would start changing right away. Establish a commune and the same gradual flux will continue.”

[Ah – and I am the Lord of the Dance cried he!]

“Then you don’t think the cause is good?”

Burton sighed. “You see? We’re going to pile up on that old rock again. That’s why I don’t like to talk very often. Listen to me, Mac. My senses aren’t above reproach, but they’re all I have. I want to see the whole picture – as nearly as I can. I don’t want to put on the blinders of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ and limit my vision. If I used the term ‘good’ on a thing I’d lose my license to inspect it, because there might be bad in it. Don’t you see? I want to be able to look at the whole thing.”

[Now there’s a positive definition for a skeptic! Not to mention what happens once we label someone or some thing "evil."]

Mac talks about social injustice. Doc talks about the injustice of tetanus, syphilis and “the gangster methods of amoebic dysentery – that’s my field.”

Mac argues:

“It’s different, though, men are doing one, and germs are doing the other.”

“I can’t see much difference, Mac.”
[Nor can I. All is natural. All is nature. We like to think we stand outside looking in. Doc is trying to do just that. But in the end, we are part of the problem, which makes it very difficult to be part of the solution.]

“Well damn it, Doc, there’s lockjaw every place. You can find syphilis in Park Avenue. Why do you hang around with us if you aren’t for us?”

“I want to see,” Burton said. “When you cut your finger, and streptococci get in the wound, there’s a swelling and soreness. That swelling is the fight your body puts up, The pain is the battle. You can’t tell which one is going to win, but the wound is the first battleground. If the cells lose the first fight the streptococci invade, and the fight goes on up the arm. Mac, these little strikes are like the infection. Something has got into the men, a little fever had started and the lymphatic glands are shooting in reinforcements. I want to see, so I go to the seat of the wound.”

“You figure the strike is a wound?”

“Yes. Group-men are always getting some kind of infection. [Think of the wound of September 11, 2001, and the infection that has followed.] This seems to be a bad one. I want to see, Mac. I want to watch these group-men, for they seem to me to be a new individual, not at all like the single men. A man in a group isn’t himself at all, he’s a cell in an organism that isn’t like him any more than the cells in your body are like you. I want to watch the group and, and see what it’s like. People have said, ‘Mobs are crazy, you can’t tell what they’ll do.’ Why don’t people look at mobs not as men, but as mobs. A mob nearly always seems to act reasonably, for a mob.”

“Well what’s this got to do with the cause?”

“It might be like this, Mac. When group-man wants to move, he makes a standard. “God-wills that we re-capture the Holy-Land,’ or he says. ‘We fight to make the world safe for democracy;’ [Or he says both and throws in an “Axis of Evil” for good measure.] or he says, ‘We will wipe out social injustice with communism.’ [Or like bin Laden, he wants to wipe it out with his own brand of religious evil.] But the group doesn’t care about the Holy Land, or democracy, or Communism. Maybe the group simply wants to move, to fight, and uses these words simply to reassure the brains of individual men. I say it might be like that, Mac.” [Enter the “war lover” - or "An Irish Airman forsees His Death."]

Mac’s not happy with what this implies about “the cause,” of course – he’s itching for a fight to weld the men together - and continues to argue. Doc eventually notes:

“ . . . it might be worth while to know more about group-man; to know his nature, his needs, his desires. They’re not the same as ours. The pleasure we get by scratching an itch causes death to a great number of cells. Maybe group-man gets pleasure when individual men are wiped out in a war. I simply want to see as much as I can, Mac, with the means I have.”

And later he concludes [are you listening Geroge W.? Of course not.] “You practical men always lead practical men with stomachs. And something always gets out of hand. Your men get out of hand, they don’t follow the rules of common sense, and you practical men either deny that it is so, or refuse to think about it.” And when someone wonders what it is that makes a man with a stomach something more than your rule allows, why you howl, ‘Dreamer, mystic, metaphysician.’ I don’t know why I talk about it to a practical man. In all history there are no men who have come to such wild-eyed confusion and bewilderment as practical men leading men with stomachs.”

Oh – and what does he have to say about blogging? Just this;

“I shouldn’t have talked so much. But it does clarify a thought to get it spoken, even if no one listens.”

And a bit later he seals it when Mac turns to his companion, Jim.

“Listen, Jim, you didn’t get bothered by what Doc said, did you?”

“No, I didn’t listen.”

If you happen to be listening to Doc, or Steinbeck, or even me, remember comments are always welcome.

Posted by Greg Stone at August 21, 2003 03:35 PM | TrackBack