Grasping the Mundane

Naeem Inayatullah


Let me start my talk with an excerpt from one of the greatest satires ever made, Monty Python’s “Life of Brian.” The topic is the net effect of the Roman Empire:

REG: They've bled us white, the bastards. They've taken everything we had, and not just from us, from our fathers, and from our fathers' fathers.

LORETTA: And from our fathers' fathers' fathers.

REG: Yeah.

LORETTA: And from our fathers' fathers' fathers' fathers.

REG: Yeah. All right, Stan. Don't labour the point. And what have they ever given us in return?!

XERXES: The aqueduct?

Xerxes makes the mistake of taking Reg’s rhetorical question as real.

REG: What?

XERXES: The aqueduct.

REG: Oh. Yeah, yeah. They did give us that. Uh, that's true. Yeah.

COMMANDO #3: And the sanitation.

LORETTA: Oh, yeah, the sanitation, Reg. Remember what the city used to be like?

REG: Yeah. All right. I'll grant you the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done.

MATTHIAS: And the roads.

REG: Well, yeah. Obviously the roads. I mean, the roads go without saying, don't they? But apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct, and the roads--

COMMANDO: Irrigation.

XERXES: Medicine.

COMMANDO #2: Education.

REG: Yeah, yeah. All right. Fair enough.

COMMANDO #1: And the wine.

COMMANDOS: Oh, yes. Yeah...

FRANCIS: Yeah. Yeah, that's something we'd really miss, Reg, if the Romans left.

COMMANDO: Public baths.

LORETTA: And it's safe to walk in the streets at night now, Reg.

FRANCIS: Yeah, they certainly know how to keep order. Let's face it. They're the only ones who could in a place like this.

REG: All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

XERXES: Brought peace.

Notice that what the Romans bring is peace, not justice.

Nevertheless, the sketch is making an important point, which I will frame in terms of a question: Given that empires – and make no mistake about it, what is at stake in the current events in Iraq is not the fate of one country or its people but the terms on which the USA will build its empire – Given that empires bring great culture, technology, civilization, order and peace, what could be our objection to it? Why does the world reject Empire? Let us wait on this question a bit.

First another excerpt. These are from Thucydides History of the Peloponesian War. Pericles is delivering a funeral oration to family and friends of fallen soldiers. The year is 431 B.C.E.

As Pericles talks about the qualities of Athens, I want you to compare his words with words we hear today:

[five quotes]

- Our [country] is open to the world, and we have no periodical deportation in order to prevent people observing or finding out secrets which might be of military advantage to the enemy. This is because we rely, not on secret weapons, but on our own real courage and loyalty. 39

- There is a difference, too, in our educational systems. [Our rivals], from their earliest boyhood, are submitted to the most laborious training in courage; we pass our lives without all these restrictions, and yet are just as ready to face the same dangers as they are. 39

- We…take our decisions on policy or submit them to proper discussions: for we do not think that there is an incompatibility between words and deeds; the worst thing to do is to rush into action before the consequences have been properly debated….Others are brave out of ignorance; and, when they stop to think, they begin to fear. But the man who can most truly be accounted brave is he who best knows the meaning of what is sweet in life and what is terrible, and then goes out undeterred to meet what is to come. 40

- In questions of general good feeling there is a great contrast between us and most other people. We make friends by doing good to others, not by receiving good from them. This makes our friendship all the more reliable, since we want to keep alive the gratitude of those who are in our debt by showing continued goodwill to them: whereas the feelings of one who owes us something lack the same enthusiasm, since he knows that, when he repays our kindness, it will be more like paying back a debt than giving something spontaneously. We are unique in this. When we do kindness to others, we do not do them out of any calculations of profit or loss: we do them without afterthought, relying on our free liberality. Taking everything together then, I declare that our [country] is an education to [the World], and I declare that in my opinion each single one of our citizens, in all the manifold aspects of life, is able to show himself the rightful lord and owner of his own person… And to show that this is no empty boasting for the present occasion, but real tangible fact, you have only to consider the power which our city possesses and which has been won by those very qualities which I have mentioned. Athens, alone of the states we know, comes to her testing time in a greatness that surpasses what was imagined of her. In her case, and in her case alone, no invading enemy is ashamed of being defeated, and no subject can complain of being governed by people unfit for their responsibilities. Mighty indeed are the marks and monuments of our empire which we have left. Future ages will wonder at us, as the present age wonders at us now….our adventurous spirit has forced an entry into every sea and into every land; and everywhere we have left behind us everlasting memorials of good done to our friends or suffering inflicted upon our enemies. 41

- …fix your eyes every day on the greatness of Athens as she really is, and …fall in love with her. When you realize her greatness, then reflect that what made her great was men with a spirit of adventure, men who knew their duty, men who were ashamed to fall below a certain level….Make up your minds that happiness depends on being free, and freedom depends on being courageous. Let there be no relaxation in the face of the perils of the war. 43

I want to note four things in these passages:

1) there is the sense that one is creating one’s fate; there is a sense of adventure, boldness, creativity, of shaping the world to fit ones own needs and image;

2) there is a sense that Athenian culture is unique, the exceptionalism seems obvious;

3) there is a stress on ideas and values such as honor, courage, initiative;

4) most important, there is the role of Athens as teacher to the rest of the world.

I now want to move ahead 15 years in Thucydides account to the year 416. This time Thucydides is conveying a dialogue between the superpower Athens and Melos a small about to be conquered Island. The Athenian generals ask for meeting with the Melians trying to persuade them to accept their terms. The terms are straightforward extortion: that Melos becomes a tribute paying colony of Athens in exchange for Melos’ survival.

This dialogue between the Athenians and Melians, in my estimation is one of the four best things ever written in international relations theory and it’s a pity we cannot read the whole thing. What I will read to you are some passages from the lines Thucydides gives to the Athenians. What I want you to do is compare these lines to what Pericles has said before.

The year is 416: The Athenians say to the Melians:

- on our side we will use no fine phrases saying for example, that we have a right to our empire because we defeated the Persians, or that we have come against you now because of the injuries you have done to us – a great mass of words that no one would believe…We recommend that you should try to get what is possible for you to get, taking into consideration what we both really do think; since you know as well as we do that, when these matters are discussed by practical people, the standard of justice depends on the equality of power to compel and that in fact the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept. 89

- …This is not a fair fight, with honor on one side and shame on the other. It is rather a question of you saving your lives and not resisting those who are far too strong for you. 101

- [The Melians make a claim that the Gods favor the them because they have justice on their side. To which the Athenians respond:]…Our opinion of the gods and our knowledge of men lead us to conclude that it is a general and necessary law of nature to rule whatever one can. This is not a law that we made ourselves, nor were we the first to act upon it…We found it already in existence, and we shall leave it to exist forever among those who come after us. We are merely acting in accordance with it, and we know that you or anybody else with the same power as ours would be acting in precisely the same way. 105

- [In the end, before the slaughter, the Athenians plead with the Melians not to force the fight:]…Do not be led astray by a false sense of honor – a thing which often brings men to ruin when they are faced with an obvious danger that somehow affects their pride. For in many cases men have still been able to see the dangers ahead of them, but this thing called dishonor, this word, by its own force of seduction, has drawn them into a state where they have surrendered to an idea, while in fact they have fallen voluntarily into irrevocable disaster, disaster that is all the more dishonorable because it has come to them from their own folly rather than misfortune. 114

I want to note a few things in this passage:

I sense the Athenians conveying a sense of annoyance, almost boredom – as if they are tired of having to subdue yet another small island;
They have moved away from the sense of their own exceptionalism, from a bold adventurism that shapes life, from their belief in the power of ideas, ideals, and values to a fatalism; they submit to the laws of nature;
They seem to grasp that it is the cycles of history that control them and that their own role in that cycle is rather mundane.
Question: So, what happened to the Athenians? Why did they move from a sense of their exceptionalism, their bravery, their spirit of adventure and initiative, to thinking of themselves as yet another entity obeying the laws of nature and the cycles of history? What is Thucydides trying to get us to grasp?

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf refuses to wear the ring of power, Aragorn refuses to wear the ring, Boromir – who wanted to use the ring to defend his kingdom – has a wiser brother, Faramir, who also refuses to wear the ring. Each of these characters refuse the ring at every chance. Why? Why are some of the strongest characters in the saga refusing power?

We can guess at a simple answer to this question. Power tends to corrupt; it slowly corrupts the spirit and then takes it over. It makes slaves of those who think they are doing their own bidding.

Tolkien’s strongest characters understand that good intentions are not good enough. Even under immanent attack from the combined forces of Saruman and Sauran, they refuse the ring because they know that, Good intentions when combined with Power, lead not to good results but to disaster – a disaster even worse than what power with bad intentions can cook up. There is a simple Biblical aphorism that conveys this idea: “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

But, lets slow down a bit. We can ask: just how is the creative spirit overtaken by Power? How do good intentions pave the path to Hell?

Here are 4 of the assumptions that, I think, need to be in place for good intentions to become disastrous:

- We start with the belief that: we are good; we are great;we might even believe we are the greatest;

- Sometimes, we believe also that this greatness is not momentary, accidental, or the result of the conjunction of various contingencies; we believe, therefore, that this greatness is in the very makeup of our being; in our essence. It is natural to who we are;

- In tension with this, however, we also sometimes believe that our greatness is the result of ideas, institutions, and forms we have discovered. Others can also discover these and can become like us;

- Most important, we believe, that as ethical beings, we have an obligation, a right, even a duty to teach others how they can become like us.

So with the best of intentions, we set out to give our gift to the rest of the world; we want to share our gift and to teach everyone what we know.

So starts empire. It starts as the imperative to teach.

I do think teaching and empire building has a deeper hidden motivation to which I will turn in a minute. But for the moment let me stay with this teaching imperative.

The great problem with the teaching imperative is that it never confronts the possibility that teaching may not be possible. Think about it. How many times have each of us tried to teach and it just has not happened; inversely, how many times, for example, have our parents tried to teach us something and it just comes out as, “a great mass of words that no one would believe.”

There is a reason that the teaching imperative does not work. Here is that reason:

Teaching is a gift that always re-creates the hierarchy between giver and recipient. That is why Reg, in the Monty Python skit, is so deeply resentful of the Romans. The Romans have given him plenty: sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, but they have imposed it upon him. The Romans never asked him if this is what he wanted. The net result is a deep, deep resentment.

In North America we tend to underestimate the depth and meaning of this resentment. It is so sharp that people to want to destroy the giver, the teacher, the superpower, the empire – even at the cost of their own lives. Sometimes, anticipating such a death gives their lives more meaning than all the gifts of empire.

On the other side, let’s remember that teaching is not attempted by ideas alone. Its machinery operates with a combination of ideas and force. All teachers propose the following: learn what I am teaching you, or else suffer the consequences. Sometimes the consequence is the disapproval of the teacher, sometimes it’s merely a poor grade, sometimes its, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Dresden, Baghdad.

Here is the paradox for the teacher: The more that Force is used in teaching, the greater is the teacher’s loss of power. The show of Force is the loss of Power. This is because using force is an admission that, as teachers, we have lost our ability to convince with arguments, we cannot get others to emulate our ideals, or our way of life.

This is where I think we are today, the project of forcing the world to become Americans is now explicit, obvious, unhidden; and since the resistance, as we should expect, is stronger than ever, force must be used to teach the reluctant and impetuous student/child/barbarian.

I do not think that the USA has the will or logistical density to teach everyone that the USA wants to teach. If it continues along this path – Guatemala, Iran, Cuba, Vietnam, Chile, Grenada, Libya, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, N. Korea, Yugoslavia, France, Germany, San Francisco – the State will soon be overextended, if it isn’t already so.

I could be wrong about this overextension – almost all my predictions are wrong. Either way, the loss of human life and perhaps more importantly the loss of cultures will be massive.

[An Alternative:]

It does not have to be this way. We can think of an alternative: to say that teaching may be impossible is not thereby to say that learning is the same. Perhaps it is possible to create learning opportunities; perhaps we can design forms in which hierarchy gives way to mutual learning; where the student’s dependency on the teacher is minimized because the obsolescence of the teacher’s role is built into the exchange. Paolo Friere has much to say about this.

Such a possibility also serves what I think of as the real hidden needs of the teacher or imperialist – namely, the need to be with others, to have access to their potential healing co-presence.

- The problem of believing in an exceptionalist greatness is that it brings a huge emptiness;

- My belief in my greatness disallows me to admit my loneliness to myself;

- Thus, I must find a way to make contact with others but in a manner that denies my need for others;

- the solution -- of how to create such an asocial sociality -- is to teach. I must teach others how to become great, like me. Others must become me. And here is the key, this mission comes from such a powerful need that it must be fulfilled even if it injures both the giver and the recipient. It is my duty to force people to be free, to love my version of democracy, even if they hate me for it; bomb me for it. This is the weight that Ruyard Kipling described as the “White man’s burden.”

In the view that I am trying to develop, it is important to understand that the teacher, the empire builder, is suffering; suffering from his greatness; that the greater the greatness the more it is imbued with an emptiness, slashed by a wound, and deep with strife.

That is why in the Lord of the Rings, the most powerful characters – Gandalf, Aragorn, Elrond -- bestow the ring to Frodo and Sam – the smallest of creatures. Their small size and gregarious nature acts as the most powerful counter-balance to the temptation of absolute power and absolute corruption. The meek inherit the earth, not because they are meek, but because they have resources that can resist the temptation to power, to teaching, to creating empire.

This takes me back, finally, to Monty Python, and the question which I have deferred: Given that empires bring great culture, technology, and a civilized peace, what could be our objection to it? Why does the world object to Empire?

Let me suggest the following as a hypothesis: One wants to earn the fruits of one’s life with one’s own labor, with one’s own insights, with one’s own struggle. Then, as Marx points out, life has meaning. Without one’s own labor and struggle, one lives someone’s else’s life, an alienated life

I think that the ultimate meaning of freedom is the ability to make one’s own mistakes and perhaps learn from them. We can be given sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, and it can mean nothing to us, it can mean less than nothing. In part, this is what the American revolutionaries were saying to the British Empire in 1776 – even while they were muting the same demand from the Indians.

Let me begin to wind down:

In my interpretation, the American War on Terror is a teaching project. It has been that since at least since 1492. In my estimation, this project has no chance of long-term success. This is so for two reasons: first, as I said, I do not think that teaching is possible; and second, nor is teaching and empire creation what the teacher really wants or needs.

The future of International Relations, to borrow from Dickens, is be the best and the worst of times: the worst because the USA is now committed to creating a world in its own image through the force of teaching and the teaching of force; and the best of times, because, as I said before, the “show of force is the loss of power,” therefore, it becomes possible for the critically minded to expose – as Gandhi did to the British, and as Thucydides did in the Melian Dialogues – that the empire has lost touch with its own ideals, and all that is left is the shell of force.

With that another cycle of history can begin, one in which, as a civilization, we might, just might, learn how to learn. We can begin, then, to grasp the mundane.

I close with the following conversation recalled by Frodo as he and Sam decide whether or not to kill Gollum -- the former ring bearer:

Frodo: What a pity Bilbo did not stab the vile creature, when he had a chance!

Gandalf: Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need.

Frodo: I do not feel pity for Gollum. He deserves death.

Gandalf: Deserves death! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give that to them? Then be not too eager to deal out death in the name of justice, fearing for your own safety. Even the wise cannot see all ends.

- J.R.R. Tolkien (The Two Towers, 221)

As Gandalf offers this advice, he knows that everyone’s fate, including his own, rests with the resources carried by the humble Hobbits.

[1] Talk given at Hobart and William Smith Colleges for the Symposium, “A New World Order? Iraq, Terrorism, and the Future of International Relations, March 24, 2003.