Processing Krakauer

Literary critic and Christian apologist G.K. Chesterton stated "[f]or children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy."

Huh.

Yep.

I agree with this and I struggle with this and I come out still agreeing with this. I can remember, not too long ago, when I fell into the children category. The world was black or white and I was good at identifying which was which. And boy could I weigh in with a healthy dose of moral authority. I can also attest to the wicked category, living comfortably in it right now, and I can state without exception that mercy rules.

But there are times when I feel myself slipping backwards into childlike innocence, backwards into my uninhibited moral authority, backwards where I am always right and that part of the world which stands against me is wrong.

Notice what I did just now, with the ironic use of backwards...? After all, only a Sith deals in absolutes.

Krakauer strikes a nerve

I bring all this up because I just finished Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild. I will be teaching this book second semester in the upcoming school year, and to be perfectly honest, I don't know what to do with it.

I am at a total loss as to how I want/need/ought to present this material to my high school seniors. Quickly, the book journalistically follows the life and ultimate death of Chris McCandless, a young, educated man who in 1992 decided to leave civilized life behind him and, with the ideals of his favorite Romantic writers as his guide, walk into the wild of Alaska to live off the land. The nonfiction account follows McCandless on his journey and attempts to come to terms with that peskiest of all questions: WHY?

Why did he live this way? Why did he die? Why did his ascetic walk have to take him away from his family? Why does that level of sacrifice stand as a prerequisite for experiential truth?

If McCandless died naively, arrogantly, foolhardily, then why are we still reading Thoreau?

Krakauer's use of the Chesterton quote is masterfully done. It is within the two categories--innocent children and the rest of wicked us--that carries the tension of this entire book. McCandless was young. He had ideals. He attempted to live an absolutely principled life. Can the rest of us say as much, especially while the rest of us live our comfortable lives out? Should the rest of us apologize for these lives?

Or bank on mercy? Two helpings for me, please.

I am a parent, and to that I mourn with the McCandless family. But I am a Romantic, and to that I celebrate Chris's spirit.

But I am a teacher, and to that I caution against Chris's path. Justice and mercy. Innocence and wickedness. A young man in a nonfiction tale who will never come home.

I am still at a loss, gentle reader, but perhaps less so. Perhaps my reaction to Chris McCandless and his fate will change depending on the day, the weather, the last song I heard, the last book I read. Like any good art, I believe Krakauer's book stands up to this necessary blurred vision, and, at the risk of typing out of turn, I think Chris McCandless would have been okay with this.

And so I act on what I believe. And so I type.

And you?

For more details from Jon Krakauer regarding Into the Wild, visit http://instagram.com/krakauernotwriting.

Words as the Root of Human Suffering?

Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me.

Anyone old enough to use this phrase knows how flimsy the logic really is, kind of like the rules to rock, paper, scissors. We only call upon sticks and stones when someone has attacked us with words, and we use the phrase to deflect, to diminish, to pretend at how the words don't matter. How they don't hurt. We use it to negotiate terms, both to our relationship with the attacker (you don't mean so much to me as to actually affect me) and to our own feelings (wow that stung, but I'm not going to cry, at least not in front of them). In short, words can hurt.

And this is no surprise, gentle reader. You've heard this before. Part of the growing-up process is coming to terms with the naivety of this children's phrase. But we know better. We know just how badly words can hurt. How truly twisted and evil words can be. It was with words that Satan, disguised as the serpent, convinced Eve to take the fruit; it was with words that Hitler rallied the fears of a nation into genocide; it is because of words that a growing number of drivers perish on the road while trying to balance a steering wheel and a text message. Words give voice to our own deepest fears and prejudices, our most honest and basest thoughts, whether spoken aloud or not. Words cause pain and suffering. Words, it would seem, have grave potential; even sticks and stones are no match.

Slow down, right? Perhaps not.

Hayes, Strosahl, and Wilson state in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy that "human language gives rise to both human achievement and human misery." They define human language as "symbolic activity in whatever form it occurs," so we may chronicle both our greatest triumphs and most epic failures with this symbolic activity (enter iPhone text symbol or Facebook update or profile avatar here). On a less technological level, this symbolic activity includes written words. Books. Novels. Poetry. That includes quite a lot, things like the low, slow ha-ha and the barbaric yawp and the one ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them and to smile and smile and be a villain and to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield and it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.

Hayes, Strosahl, and Wilson claim, broadly speaking, that this symbolic exchange is at the source of human suffering because it is concretely linked to human achievement, something that has been racing forward at light speed over the course of the past century. Consider, as Hayes & Co. point out,  that "[f]ifty years ago the Oxford English Dictionary weighed 300 pounds and... today, it fits on a 1-ounce flash drive." We as humans have evolved, and with this new potential comes the possibility of not achieving it. For every ball caught, this one thrown just a little higher than the last, there must be the possibility of dropping it. Otherwise, why play, right?

As an English teacher, I see it as my job to introduce lots of words to my students. Which words to use, and how to use them. Why this word fits better here and that word there. My entire job is words. So am I contributing to the general vastness of human suffering every time the bell rings? (A rhetorical question, gentle student!)

I'm not so sure. Dostoevsky's lead characters might rail against such a claim. After all Raskolnikov and the Underground Man seem to suffer due to their excessive consciousness, not in spite of it. Words are their burden. Yet how unable, how poorly equipped would Dostoevsky be if he could not call on all his words to fully articulate this suffering? Where would Hamlet be (or not be) with his slings and arrows and eating of crocodiles if Shakespeare didn't use so many words that he was forced to create his own?

Literature would certainly suffer. But, likewise, don't we? Because words give rise to suffering?

No.

I don't think the words themselves are the root of anything. The words are not the experience, merely our way of processing the experience. My day might be simply "good" or "bad" or it could be a "sliding vortex down melancholia" or "a fabulous jaunt through rainbow bliss" but the day doesn't change based on the extent of my own personal vocabulary.

Does it?

To be continued...

The Huh? of the Future

What is a Super PAC?

What does the Supreme Court mean when it says that it recognizes corporations as people?

Why is heroin so popular right now in quiet suburban communities?

How much does it cost to dig a well in a Third World country? And how much is one month's data plan on the most inexpensive smartphone?

What is our current minimum wage?

Is Amazon's new Lending Library the beginning of the end for our current Public Library system?

Why aren't windshields covered on anybody's bumper-to-bumper warranty plan?

Will my generation remember enough of its history to not repeat the bad parts of it?

And will yours?

...

I don't know either, gentle reader. But I want to know.

Aldous Huxley's Brave New World poses the conflict caught in the teeth of knowing too much and not enough. It displays happiness as an end while struggle is personified as the one thing to be avoided at all cost. In fact, World Controller Mustapha Mond goes so far as to liken the ideal population to the iceberg model, where seven-ninths of the population float safely below sea level. They live in the murk, and they are happy there.

I want to be part of the two-ninths. Or better, I want to raise the seven-ninths upward, to breathe the fresh air. I want to struggle. Together. I want to read and read and read and then discuss things, with defensive mode flipped off, and then go back and read some more. And I want to trust the fiction that I have read, because human nature hasn't changed. Because what motivated people in Othello and The Moon is Down and My Antonia are the same things that motivate our family, our bosses, our world leaders. I want to trust the fiction that I love, because it allows me to see my reality with sharper focus. Because I have seen many things already, safely in the pages of my books, or on the screen of my e-reader (yes, I can be a fancy pants now too, I suppose), like gazing into the proverbial crystal ball.

It is not our place to know everything. But the only way we will impact the world around us is to first know something about it. Personally, I am a fan of more than just "something," aren't you?

Go find the answers. Go ask the unasked questions. Go be the expert.