The Bell Has Donne Tolled Me Deaf

It is reported as an historical fact that F.W. Nietzsche became as crazy as a bedbug; few argue with that. Before he did, like most bright people, he said a few things which one would wish to remember. Here is one:

"I want, once and for all, not to know many things. - Wisdom sets limits to knowledge too."

I am not familiar with the context used by Nietzsche, nor do I particularly care. Aphorisms do not always hold up when fit back in the mold from which they came. But I read it, and it has stuck with me.....although not particularly at first. I was somewhat younger when I read it, and although it was one of those things I suspected may be important, the full subjective import of it had to mature in me for some years. But I am there.

We live in a world in which the affairs, enormities, and travail of millions -if not billions- of, as one thinker puts it, "distant others" are dinned constantly into our ears or dangled before our jaded vision, and every minute of every day were it not for the blessings of sleep.

In his Meditation XVII, John Donne espoused what has become a classic line, but a part of a larger quote, and important enough to be remembered in full:

"No man is an Island, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee."

And all in the lovely English of the 17th century, full of a sweep and power that may finally be fading. A great humanistic statement, an appeal to the importance of human society at large rather than one's particular nation or tribe. It is a quote borne along on the tide of events that emerged from history in the Renaissance, and has been a flood engulfing the world. And yet, for all that, here we are.

In the aftermath of not only the Age of Genius but the Industrial Revolution, we live immured in a global network of technology that brings, in the words of a somewhat lower philosopher, "-the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat." We watch people at the trivia of their daily lives, and we watch the extremes of thousands washed away by a tsunami like dust before the wind, and the pinnacle of our time as men walk on another world.

And unless we refuse to participate, it is very difficult to escape for anyone in the developed world, where both traditional and electronic media are ubiquitous. But escape is, in the modern world, as near a sin as some can imagine. We must "be involved," we are thoroughly Emersonized into believing that "A man who does not share in the action and passion of his times may be judged never to have lived." But that was then, in a nineteenth century wherein the full impact of sharing the lives of anonymous billions had not yet become so personal. And this is now, where it requires considerable effort to escape it.

We have arrived at a time where it becomes necessary to advance an actual apologia limiting one's sphere of legitimate attention, interest, and concern. It has been demonstrated that most human beings are incapable of having any meaningful personal interaction with more than 150 people. I would submit that for most of those, it's significantly less, and in no case is it very much more.

This then poses the very important question of how we can possibly feel actual concern, sympathy, or empathy for people for whom, in reality, we cannot relate. I submit that we cannot. We are therefore claiming some sort of subjective, personal involvement with symbols abstracted from the people we know, and claiming by that tenuous connection to have genuine affect for them. And I submit that this is impossible, belief to the contrary notwithstanding.

The connections therefore proposed by some, that we have not only to pay attention to global humanity, but that we also have moral obligations to these distant others, is an illusion. The issue is not whether we want to; it's that we're incapable. And this may explain that the greater the leader, the more likely they are to represent a power that will be used irresponsibly and brutally. Not that this will be done out of some calculated viciousness (although this has been done, most notably in the past century by the Nazi government of Germany, the Soviet Union, and Maoist China, as well as other places). It's just that ultimately power is implemented on millions via impersonal policies that must needs grind up some of those people in the gears of bureaucracy. The American Indian was never viewed as some great enemy, nor was that ever the case. The Native American was simply an inconvenience in the way of those same statutes and procedures, and again like dust they were swept away.

There is universal distrust of the system of "spokespersons" and "experts" who appear in suits and skirts and chatter away in the hermetic universe of set-piece political discussions or press conferences. We now perceive that we are only told a crafted, deeply invidious version of a particular story or issue, and the "what" of things is hardly addressed at all, except in passing. No one cares whether the audience understands or not, one must only lend credence as demanded by the man or woman on the screen or behind the podium.

This anomie stems perhaps from our deepest human sense that we can't possibly relate personally to what's being discussed, and yet we are supposed to believe that those who prate so convincingly have somehow managed to do so. Absent a belief in magical powers, I submit they have not.

To revert to the opening statement, I am past pretending that I want to be force-fed any more of the grief of Germany, the trials of Thailand, the idiocies of India or Iran, the paranoia of Paraguay or the arrogance of Argentina. Stereotyping is generally decried among educated persons, and yet it is still almost a given when applied to presenting stories on a global level. The French are reported to think thus-and-so, and the South Africans this, the few people in the Yukon another thing. And if it is presented as a poll, and 56% of Laotians are opposed to the use of the Western toothbrush, what am I to make of these figures? Outside of context, how am I supposed to know whether or not 56% of Laotians even know what a toothbrush is? Or whether they use a magic bubblegum to clean their teeth that is far superior to my Pix-o-Dent? I cannot make sense of this, and unless I grant a special dispensation to the various pundits, gurus, politicians, and experts (which I have previously indicated that I don't), I do not believe they do either. At least they no longer sing to me.