On being an optimist

CJ, the protagonist in my latest and probably last novel, Sodom, Gomorrah & Jones, plays out a variation of the Candide theme: surrounded by evidence of a decaying culture, he wonders why people behave as if everything was fine. His doctor sends him to a shrink for his depression.

“You can't fix what was bothering me when Helen was still alive,” CJ told Dr. Peters. “It's larger than all of us. You couldn't fix it then and you can't fix it now. You can either ignore it, or fill your life with distractions from it, or accept the fact that we live in a culture based on lies and deceit and betrayal. But how do you deal with that? You know what I think? I think the smartest among us, the most sensitive among us, can't accept it at all and that's why they're locked up in the loony bins. Insanity may be the only true response to all this shit. We lock up our best people. We punish the truly sane people in the country, the ones who see through all the shit and can't stand it.”

CJ, a retired historian who believes JFK was assassinated by a conspiracy, has a parting shot in this one and only visit with the psychiatrist:

 “Why the hell aren't you upset? Why the hell isn't everyone upset? They overthrew your government, for God's sake! How can you live your life as if nothing had happened?”

CJ's challenge is to find a way to live with integrity in a world collapsing all around him. I don't think he's alone.

This comes to mind because  last night I met an articulate optimist, which I haven't encountered in years. We were over to dinner at an artist friend of H's home. Her husband, an anthropologist, spoke of the future as if it were utopia. With two delightful daughters, both of whom appear to be addicted to reading books, I can see a reason for exuding good energy. What fascinated me, however, was his reasons for optimism: technology. In a few years, he said, there will be pre-fab houses that can go up in a matter of days. There were other examples in a spiel that reminded me of TV ads in the 50s about the wonders coming in the modern kitchen. What brave new world, to have such gadgets in it.

I was tempted to bring up global warming, the widening gulf between rich and poor, the rise of right wing extremists, the instability in the world at large. But I didn't. My only comment was to note that with Curiosity on Mars, maybe technology was paving the way for planetary exodus if his optimistic vision doesn't pan out.

So I open the L.A. Times on my Kindle this morning and the first story is about Mexico and how crimes against women are virtually ignored there. And the next story ... well, you get the picture. In my novel, I use news excerpts, ala Dos Passos, to establish the world CJ is living in. Interestingly enough, after I published the novel my first worry was that I hadn't painted grim enough a picture.

CJ learns to live in the world by dropping out. He's inspired by the end of a poem by Lew Welch:

You can't fix it. You can't make it go away. I don't know what you're going to do about it, But I know what I'm going to do about it. I'm just going to walk away from it. Maybe A small part of it will die if I'm not around feeding it anymore.

I often marvel at the challenge and difficulty of being a parent today, especially of young children. I suppose there are worse ways to go than being an optimist. Thornton Wilder believed that we always manage to get out of our human messes "by the skin of our teeth" but, as readers of this blog may remember, I parted ways from Wilder, and sadly so, a few years ago.

As I've said in many contexts recently, I'm just glad I'm not younger than I am.