The Center for Educational Equity at Teachers College, Columbia University, invites you to an exciting mini-conference to explore how conservatives and liberals can agree on how schools throughout the country can teach, support, and encourage students to become capable citizens despite our politically polarized culture. (I will moderate the panel discussion.)
Register to join us on March 24th from 1:30 PM – 4:30 PM (EST) on Zoom.
I was truly honored to talk on Monday with Rev. James M. Lawson Jr. and Kent Wong. This is the video of our conversation (introduced by Tisch College Dean Dayna Cunningham).
Rev. Lawson has been a leading teacher and tactician of nonviolent direct action since the late 1950s. As one of the legendary figures in the Freedom Movement, he played key roles in the Freedom Rides, the Nashville sit-ins and the broader desegregation movement there, and the Memphis sanitation strike. While working in Nagpur, India (after having served three years in US prisons for antiwar resistance during the Korean conflict), he read a news article about the Montgomery Bus Boycott and rushed home to serve as one of the most important bridges between Gandhian theory and practice and the Black American movement against white supremacy.
Rev. Lawson has never ceased his effective teaching and activism, mainly as part of worker and immigrant rights movements in Los Angeles. His efforts over the past quarter century could be described as “intersectional,” combining economic, racial, environmental, and feminist issues. His work is deeply interracial and intergenerational. Rev. Lawson often collaborates with Kent Wong, who directs UCLA’s Labor Center. They have co-taught a course on nonviolence for twenty years, and Wong has published books on the labor movement, immigrant rights, and the Asian American community.
Their new book is Revolutionary Nonviolence: Organizing for Freedom (by Lawson, with Michael Honey and Kent Wong). As I say on the video, it is a truly important work. It is clear, eloquent, rigorous, and concise. It is also unique in that Rev. Lawson can comment on recent movements, such as Black Lives Matter (BLM), from his personal experience as a leader in the 1950s and 1960s, while also discussing the Freedom Movement with knowledge of the 2020s. The book will therefore serve as a particularly accessible (and challenging) introduction to radical nonviolence for young people, and I intend to assign it.
I asked both visitors to address the biggest misconceptions about nonviolence. Rev. Lawson emphasized its power and effectiveness, countering the misunderstanding that nonviolence is somehow passive and constrained.
The book also addresses several other misconceptions. For instance, I find that people equate nonviolence with protest—and protest with marching in the streets. Rev. Lawson stresses the other activities that are required to accomplish change. For instance, he attributes the success of the Nashville campaign more to a sustained boycott than to the famous sit-ins. He even writes, “The march may the weakest tactic, not the strongest.”
In the book, Rev. Lawson describes BLM as “one of the largest, most creative nonviolent movements that have captured the imagination of the human family.” To organize literally tens of thousands of peaceful marches and events has required intensive planning, discipline, and training. Yet I observe that BLM is not widely described as nonviolent. Critics definitely don’t acknowledge its nonviolence, which is no surprise. More interestingly to me, BLM leaders and would-be allies don’t typically emphasize its nonviolent philosophy, although BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors endorses Rev. Lawson’s new book. I asked him to comment, and he offered a tactical critique of BLM that I found somewhat unexpected.
In the book, he notes that there is a lot of activism today: more than during his lifetime except for the late 1960s. He calls the “range” of organizing the greatest he has ever seen. “But people are not developing a thesis of social change that is both personally transforming and transforming of society and of the immediate social environment, and that is part of the power of a nonviolent philosophy and theory.” I asked him to elaborate on that remark, which he did.
I also asked about Ukraine and Russia. In the book, Rev. Lawson mentions that anti-communist dissidents in the former Soviet world read Gandhi and King. I’d add that Polish dissidents invited Bayard Rustin to provide trainings in the 1980s. I have had the privilege of working with pro-democracy organizers in Ukraine since 2015, and I can testify that they deeply appreciate the Black American Freedom Movement. I asked both speakers about the prospects of nonviolent resistance in (possibly) occupied Ukraine and in Russia. Rev. Lawson’s response was interesting. He is a consistent pacifist who has earned a right to that position by making sacrificial commitments to rigorous nonviolence for 75 years. I must admit that I am not so consistent: I think that Ukrainians must oppose the invasion with military force and that we should support them. But Rev. Lawson is certainly right that Putin cannot accomplish his goals with violence and that nonviolent resistance can play an important role in both Ukraine and Russia (and in Belarus). His prophetic voice is essential for that reason, as well as for our struggles in the USA.
See also: the case for (and against) nonviolence; civilian resistance in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus; prospects for nonviolent resistance in Ukraine and in Russia; syllabus of a course on the Philosophy of Martin Luther King, Jr.; three new cases for learning how to organize and make collective change.
I am a steadfast supporter of Ukrainian resistance, and I encourage Ukrainian friends to skip this post if it feels like a distraction from their crisis. Still, those of us in noncombatant countries face subtle ethical questions that arise with all such conflicts. How we resolve these issues probably won’t have an appreciable impact on the war in Ukraine–and if we can affect the outcome, I would be biased in favor of choices that benefit the resistance. Instead, these are mainly questions about our own internal processes and principles.
Consider these cases:
Although I strongly support the sanctions on Russia, I think the ethical issues are complex. We must navigate principles that are in some tension.
First, working with an individual can be a discretionary choice, and it may be appropriate to consider that person’s values. In general, you shouldn’t have to work with a racist–or a Putin-apologist–if you don’t want to. I serve regularly on search committees and would be hard-pressed to give my support to a pro-Putin job candidate, even if the position had nothing to do with politics, just because I wouldn’t want to work with that person. I think a refusal to engage with specific individuals is an exercise of freedom, just like their choice to express their opinions.
On the other hand, when an institution–even a small, private one–decides to include or exclude individuals based on their opinions, several hard problems arise. Suddenly, we are in the business of assessing people’s thoughts, and that can be invasive as well as unreliable. Tyler Cowan asks, “What about performers who may have favored Putin in the more benign times of 2003 and now are skeptical, but have family members still living in Russia? Do they have to speak out? Another question: Who exactly counts as Russian? Ethnic Russians? Russian citizens? Former citizens? Ethnic Russians born in Ukraine?” I would add: What about leftist critics of US imperialism who have justified Putin’s policies to various degrees over time? Would we ban editors of The Nation? And if we apply this screen to Russia/Ukraine, why not to other conflicts and injustices?
Slippery-slope arguments are sometimes classified as fallacies. Just because bad behavior falls on a continuum, it doesn’t follow that we should do nothing about any of it. But when the question is whether to work with individuals, it is morally imperative to employ clear and consistent standards. Such standards are difficult to define and maintain when everyone holds a unique constellation of opinions, and particularly when people may be afraid to say everything they believe.
Another problem with “de-platforming” or “canceling” individuals is the risk of reinforcing polarization. We can easily end up with homogeneously liberal cultural institutions (and even ordinary businesses), which then lose their ability to influence the illiberal people whom they have excluded. This is true of US universities, which risk alienating enough American conservatives that they undermine their influence over the culture. Likewise, do we want to undermine our own soft power in Russia by excluding Russians?
In a confusing time, it may be best to send the simple message that we are an open, pluralist society that does not fear abhorrent views or despise anyone because of their ethnicity–in fact, we oppose ethno-national prejudice of all kinds. To send that message may require continuing to work with some people whose views are actually abhorrent. Plus, there is always something to learn from the bad guys–even if it is only what they are thinking so that you know how to counter it better.
Although I have itemized several arguments against de-platforming people like Anna Netrebko (the soprano with the mixed political record), I am not sure where I ultimately stand on these matters. There is a case for refusing to work with individuals who hold odious views.
At first glance, it seems morally simpler to punish institutions for their odious policies than to punish individuals, such as sopranos, scientists, or Moscow apartment-owners. I have tried to apply this distinction when working with individual scholars from many countries, but not with or for their governments. However, the line between institutions and people is porous. Even a big bank is partly composed of small depositors. Even an individual scholar typically works for a state university. Even a free-thinking artist, like filmmaker Kirill Sokolov, may have taken government grants.
Turning to economic sanctions: they might work in this case, and they have the moral advantage of not directly killing people–as well as a lower risk of escalating to all-out or even nuclear war. However, for sanctions to succeed, they must inflict substantial hardship on a lot of people, including innocent civilians and even active opponents of the regime. It is much easier to rationalize causing economic hardship than using overt violence, even when the economic damage is devastating.
And sanctions may not work. If they don’t, then people like me who support them must take responsibility for the hardship. We mustn’t forget Yelena Balanovskaya and millions like her, including people in noncombatant countries like Afghanistan.
By the way, true dissidents and strong opponents of their own governments’ policies should welcome sanctions that affect themselves, so long as those efforts are likely to work. That may be true for the 85 Russian academicians who have signed the anti-war statement.
One possible solution is to focus as much as possible on the “oligarchs,” the Russian billionaires. They might have more leverage than other people (although the extent of their influence is debated); they are unlikely to suffer even if they lose a lot of money; and on the whole, their wealth has been ill-gotten in the first place. They are part of the problem, regardless of their opinions. Targeting oligarchs is central to the “Progressive Foreign Policy Response to the War in Ukraine,” which I find generally persuasive. As Henry Farrell says, perhaps sanctions that target the oligarchs can “be used to reshape the underlying systems of banking and finance that the current version of globalization relies on.”
But can we really target economic measures so that billionaires bear most of the cost, while also doing enough macroeconomic damage to affect the course of the war? I doubt it. Besides, we would want to influence oligarchs’ behavior, and that might (i suppose) require giving them a way out if they act better. In that case, what must an individual billionaire do to evade sanctions? Does one anti-war remark in English count, if it is hardly seen inside Russia? How about five anti-war social media posts in Russian? We are back to drawing lines across uneven terrain.
See also marginalizing views in a time of polarization; marginalizing odious views: a strategy
Pippa Norris and Kseniya Kizlova have crunched some numbers from the European Social Survey’s Ukraine sample (2,901 people) to investigate “what mobilises the Ukrainian resistance?“
In autumn 2020, Europeans were asked: “Of course, we all hope that there will not be another war, but if it were to come to that, would you be willing to fight for your country?” About 70% of Ukrainians said yes.
That number isn’t especially meaningful on its own, since it is hypothetical. However, the correlates of the responses are interesting. As the table from Norris and Kizlova shows, Ukrainians were more likely to say they would fight if they felt patriotic, if they spoke Ukrainian rather than Russian at home, if they were confident in their government, and if they supported democratic values. Those are outputs of a statistical model, so they imply that each of these factors matters by itself. For instance, democratic values correlate with a willingness to fight when holding patriotism/nationalism constant. Also note that although speaking Ukrainian was a correlate of willingness to fight, 51% of those who spoke Russian at home said yes.
Since this was a question about personally taking up arms, it is not surprising that being male and younger correlated with positive responses. In general, the literature on nonviolent resistance suggests that it mobilizes people who are not young men.
Norris & Kizlova find regional differences, but not in a simple way. Indeed, the highest rate of willingness to fight was immediately adjacent to the Russian proxy “republics” in the east, followed by the Lviv area far to the west.
See also: civilian resistance in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus; when a university is committed to democracy (about the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv); and why I stand with Ukraine (from 2015)
Yesterday, I posted about prospects for nonviolent resistance in Ukraine and in Russia. Perhaps “civilian resistance” is a better heading. That category would include throwing a Molotov cocktail or firing grandpa’s hunting rifle as well as classic nonviolent acts like marches and occupations. My point is not that civilian resistance is better than military defense, or that refraining from violence is–or isn’t–morally superior. I hope for every possible Ukrainian success on the battlefield. But I believe that civilian resistance also has real potential, and indeed, that resistance by Russian civilians offers the best hope in this dire situation.
So I will try to track relevant developments, although with no hope of being comprehensive.
I have no way of estimating the chances of success in any of these three countries, but guessing the odds is not our task. We should do everything we can to increase the probability of successful civilian (and military) resistance by contributing money, upholding the best examples, and advocating for support in our own countries and institutions.
On Ukraine, see also: prospects for nonviolent resistance in Ukraine and in Russia; why I stand with Ukraine (from 2015); working on civic education in Ukraine (2017); and Ukraine means borderland (2017)
On civilian resistance, see also: the case for (and against) nonviolence; self-limiting popular politics; Why Civil Resistance Works; the kind of sacrifice required in nonviolence.
It is not inevitable that Russia will gain control of large portions of Ukraine, but that outcome is certainly possible, even if the invaders must resort to sustained shelling and bombing to capture cities. If an occupation does come to pass, I would anticipate (and support) an armed insurgency. My topic, however, is the possibility of nonviolent resistance–in Ukraine, in Russia, and even in Belarus.
I make no assumption that nonviolence is morally superior to war. An insurgency will be fully justified in the event of an occupation. However, I believe:
Already, we see effective moments of nonviolent resistance in Ukraine. This is the widely-viewed video of a Russian tank turning around and driving away when confronted by civilians (apparently near Zaporizhzhia). Although many such cases will have tragic results, the example is powerful. Presumably, most Russian soldiers do not want to run over or shoot Ukrainian civilians. Their reluctance will be a serious challenge to the Putin regime.
Restraint by ordinary Russian soldiers is one reason for tentative optimism. I do not share the view that Russians will be restrained because of their cultural, linguistic, and other similarities to Ukrainians. During this period of very strongly justified concern about racism, we sometimes forget that people can eagerly slaughter others who look just like them. Ukraine from 1932 to 1945 (or even from 1914 to 1945) provides catastrophic examples. Putin’s problem is different. He has failed to legitimate the invasion in any way; and human beings rarely like killing other people unless a war has been legitimized (or they are scared of being killed first).
A second favorable circumstance: Ukraine may have the largest number of highly experienced nonviolent civil resisters in the world, thanks to the successful Revolution of Dignity (2014), which is pervasively and eloquently memorialized in the parts of the country that I have visited. Certainly, the Russian regime–and any puppet regime it installs Ukraine–will be more ruthless than many of the governments that have lost to nonviolent protests. At the same time, the Ukrainian nonviolent resistance will be particularly large, experienced, and motivated. An almost unstoppable force will meet an almost immovable object, with unpredictable results.
Size is an advantage for nonviolent movements. Erica Chenoweth and Maria Stephan found that no major protest movement between 1900 and 2006 failed if it mobilized 3.5 percent of the national population. Their work has inspired claims like this one: “Once around 3.5% of the whole population has begun to participate actively, success appears to be inevitable.” The word “inevitable” overstates Chenoweth’s and Stephan’s findings: the next effort could end in failure. Many of the fully successful cases occurred during a period (ca. 1985-95) when authoritarian regimes were senile and demoralized, whereas lately they have proven resourceful and resilient.
More importantly, some people have drawn a mistaken inference from Chenoweth’s and Stephan’s finding, assuming that the presence of 3.5 percent of the population on the streets causes a regime-change or another major policy shift. As several experts have told me, the causal story is almost certainly different. If a set of organizations and networks is able to get 3.5 percent of the population onto the streets against a government, then either it is strong enough to pose a serious threat, or else the failure of the regime to stop such a large protest indicates the government’s hesitancy, incompetence or internal divisions–or all of the above. In other words, 3.5 percent is a symptom, not a cause.
Still, we could expect a large nonviolent movement in Ukraine. Maciej Bartkowski summarizes a 2015 survey of Ukrainians that showed a high degree of hypothetical willingness to join a nonviolent movement against a foreign occupier. Of course, there is no way to know whether answers to such survey questions predict actual behavior, but so far, the level of mobilization in Ukraine exceeds expectations. In the 2015 poll, three times more people stated that they would act nonviolently than violently. Given the extraordinarily high rates of voluntary participation in the war so far, that ratio would imply that virtually every Ukrainian will take part in nonviolent direct actions.
Organization and leadership offer a third reason for optimism. A Russian guy who was aligned with Putin once badgered me with the question: “Do you believe in spontaneous revolutions?” He believed–as Putin probably sincerely believes–that the Ukrainian peaceful revolutions have been CIA operations. I could have named the Russian Revolution of 1905 as an example of a spontaneous uprising, since it seemed to come out of nowhere. But a better answer is: no. Massive popular movements are not spontaneous; they are organized. However, the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity was organized by Ukrainians in a decentralized way (with modest European and US support), and many of the organizers are still around to try the same approach again.
I am not sure whether the same person can serve as the leader of a nonviolent movement and an armed insurrection. (Nelson Mandela is a special case, for many reasons, including that he was imprisoned.) President Zelensky, if he survives, will presumably head the insurrection, just as he currently serves as the commander in chief of Ukraine’s armed forces. Still, one can see his principled decision not to leave Kyiv as an example of the kind of sacrifice that nonviolence demands. He may inspire, even if he cannot organize, a nonviolent struggle.
The other side of the coin is the potential for nonviolent antiwar–or even pro-democracy–movements in Russia and Belarus. I have no way of estimating the chances of success in either country. However, we have already seen very brave Russians take to the streets as well as anti-war protests in Minsk. May they succeed, not only for Ukraine’s sake but also for the good of their respective countries.
A truly effective movement in Russia or Belarus would require the kinds of organization and coordination that state security agencies are increasingly effective at destroying. Therefore, no one should imagine that success will be likely or easy. Yet resistance can take many forms: not only massive public protests but also a palace coup, emigration and disinvestment, or what James C. Scott named the “weapons of the weak”: ordinary foot-dragging and noncompliance. Russians and Belarusians might use those tools out of genuine support for Ukraine or simply because they resent their superiors and their orders. The Ukrainian official Oleksiy Arestovich appealed recently to Russian soldiers: “Like any military person, you know that there are a million ways not follow the order … You get lost, you break down, the radio station does not work, etc. We believe in you and count on your courage, honor and prudence, which will allow you to make the right choice in this time of tension.”
Indeed, courage, honor and prudence can take a wide range of forms, from throwing a Molotov cocktail at an armored personnel carrier, to holding a sign in a Moscow street, to challenging Putin in a closed-door meeting, to just failing to understand an order on the radio. I am certain we will see a lot of all these things in the days and weeks to come. Whether they succeed is perhaps the most important question of all, unless the Ukrainian military can actually win a conventional war on the ground.
See also: why I stand with Ukraine (from 2015); working on civic education in Ukraine (2017); and Ukraine means borderland (2017). See also the case for (and against) nonviolence.
If you are ready to register, you can purchase a ticket for the event now for either the in-person or online version (ticket prices go toward meeting our costs).
Otherwise, please hold the date!
Civic cases describe difficult choices faced by real groups of activists, social-movement participants, or colleagues in nonprofit organizations. By discussing what we would do in similar situations, we can develop civic skills, explore general issues, and form or strengthen relationships with other activists and thinkers.
You are invited to spend June 24 discussing your choice of two such cases in groups of up to eight peers. The day will also include plenary discussions and talks, including a keynote by Tisch College Dean Dayna Cunningham on Multiracial Democracy.
Most of the cases have been developed by the SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, Justice in Schools, or the Pluralism Project at Harvard, co-sponsors of Frontiers this summer. Selected cases can be found here, and more options will be available by June. Unlike most cases about business, public policy, or ethics, these stories involve groups of voluntary participants who must make decisions together.
You can choose to participate for the whole day remotely, joining other remote participants in Zoom rooms for the case discussions and watching the plenaries online. You are also enthusiastically welcomed to participate in-person at Tufts University’s downtown Boston campus.
Frontiers of Democracy has been held annually since 2009, with a hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It traditionally attracted about 140 activists and scholars or advanced students from many countries for relatively informal discussions of civic topics. The 2022 version is intentionally shorter and hybrid in format.
Purchase a ticket now or save the date!
Newly in print: The Palgrave Handbook of Learning for Transformation, edited by Aliki Nicolaides, Saskia Eschenbacher, Petra T. Buergelt, Yabome Gilpin-Jackson, Marguerite Welch and Mitsunori Misawa (2022).
Although I am not deeply knowledgable about Transformative Learning, a movement launched by the sociologist Jack Mezirow, I like its emphasis on learning as a lifelong process of transforming one’s perspective on society.
This volume includes a chapter entitled “Reconsidering the Roots of Transformative Education: Habermas and Mezirow” by Saskia Eschenbacher and me (pp. 45-58). Our abstract:
Jack Mezirow acknowledged the deep influence of the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas (1929–) on the development of transformative learning. We describe some fundamental elements of Mezirow’s and Habermas’ thought, explore their affinities, and argue that Mezirow did not give adequate attention to two important themes in Habermas: the power and value of social movements and the need to reform the overall structure of a society to enable transformative learning. We argue that transformative learning would benefit from a deeper consideration of these topics. Finally, we introduce Civic Studies, a parallel intellectual movement that also owes much to Habermas, and we suggest a convergence.
In his “Dejection: An Ode,” Coleridge describes the sparkling stars and crescent moon above but bemoans his own state of mind:
I see them all so excellently fair,
I see, not feel, how beautiful they are!
The reason is what we would call depression:
A grief without a pang, void, dark, and drear,
A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief,
Which finds no natural outlet, no relief,
In word, or sigh, or tear—
I consulted Coleridge’s “Dejection” thanks to Anahid Nersessian’s essay on Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale” (Nersessian 2021). Nersessian is great at wiping away that sense of Keats as a languorous aesthete, a maker of pretty lyrics. As she shows, the Nightingale ode reports suicidal thoughts. The narrator is “half in love with easeful Death” and seriously considering whether it is time to end it all: “Now more than ever seems it rich to die.” The three hard opening words, as Nersessian notes, violate iambic pentameter and ignore the ostensible addressee of the ode. Keats doesn’t begin, “O, Nightingale …” but rather, “My heart aches.”
Nersessian’s essay is not a close reading, but it made me turn back to the text of the ode. I wondered: what exactly is the narrator’s mental condition? (Remember: Keats had medical training, and the first stanza seems almost clinical.) The presenting complaint is a heart that aches. More specifically, “a drowsy numbness pains / My sense.”
This is complicated. Being drowsy and numb suggests a lack of sensation, and that interpretation is reinforced by the analogy to a “dull opiate” that suppresses the narrator’s conscious thoughts, sending him toward Lethe. But the numbness “pains” his sense, as though he had drunk hemlock. I am not sure whether we should assume that hemlock causes a quiet, sleepy death or an agonizing one: Wikipedia suggests that it triggers respiratory distress. I think that the question of lacking consciousness versus suffering is central to the poem as a whole.
In any case, what is the etiology of this numbness/ache? The narrator denies that he is envious of the nightingale’s “happy lot.” (The word “thy” in that sentence is the first mention of the ode’s subject.) When people deny that they are jealous, sometimes they actually are. But the narrator follows with a subtler point. He does not envy the bird’s “happy lot,” where “happy” could mean “favoured by good fortune; lucky, fortunate; successful” (OED). The bird’s lot is to sing in the mid-May evening, and Keats denies being envious of that. Instead, the nightingale causes heartache by “being too happy in [its] happiness”–in other words, by enjoying its role. This is precisely what Keats’ narrator, being depressed, cannot do. The poem describes beauty, yet the narrator cannot feel what such precise and evocative words as these should convey:
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover’d up in leaves;
And mid-May’s eldest child,
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
Do we think that the nightingale is happy, in the subjective sense–happy in its happiness? Keats writes that the bird “sing[s] of summer in full-throated ease.” I suppose I doubt that it sings “of” summer. I assume it sings because the month is May, and its song is a component of what makes an English early summer lovely. I don’t believe that the bird is describing summer, as a poet could.
To modify an example from Robert B. Brandom (who discusses a parrot trained to say “red” in the presence of red objects), the nightingale reliably informs us that it is summer by singing, but the bird cannot express the premises and conclusions that relate to this information. The bird cannot say, “It is summer; therefore, it is not winter,” or “It is summer because spring is over,” or “Since it is summer, we should spend evenings outdoors.” To express points like that would be to talk of summer. Instead, the nightingale sings because it is summer, and as an aspect of summer.
Indeed, its happiness relates to its ignorance. Keats wishes to forget
What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret Here, where men sit and hear each other groan; Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies ...
That last line may describe the recent and agonizing death of Keats’ brother from tuberculosis, and it eerily foretells Keats’ own death from the same cause two years later. These are serious matters, wrenching tragedies, and the bird’s enviable condition is to know nothing of them. Its mental state is like that of a human being who has forgotten memories and fears of suffering.
We might expect that the bird’s song would cause Keats to forget pain, at least briefly, as he becomes absorbed in the music; but that doesn’t work for this narrator, because he is depressed. “Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain.” Instead, the narrator considers artificial solutions: “some dull opiate,” “a draught of vintage,” distracting reveries of “faery lands,” or–most effective of all, intentional death.
The darkness and anger of the poem should be taken seriously; it is not some pretty thing. Yet it is rapturously beautiful, the source of such nuggets as “tender is the night” and Ruth “amid the alien corn.” It is about not being able to feel beauty, yet it conveys beauty from that ailment.
In the fourth stanza, Keats commits to join the nightingale not by drowning his sorrows in drink but through the power of verse:
Away! away! for I will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of Poesy, Though the dull brain perplexes and retards ...
His brain is a problem: it perplexes and retards. “Poesy” looks, at least temporarily, like a way out. But why is it “viewless”? That word could mean invisible: we cannot observe how poetry moves the writer or the reader to a better place. Or it could mean unable to see. Certainly, this poet has trouble seeing. Due to the deep darkness where the nightingale sings, “I cannot see what flowers are at my feet.” Poetry offers words that name objects, but it does not actually allow us to see them. I think the central idea in the fifth stanza (Keats knows which flowers are present from their scent but cannot see them) is a metaphor for literary description. A poem conveys information but not actual experience.
Then he addresses the bird: “Darkling, I listen.” Calling a nightingale “darkling” is a clear allusion to Book III of Paradise Lost, where Milton writes:
... as the wakeful bird Sings darkling, and in shadiest covert hid Tunes her nocturnal note. ....
The argument of this passage is that God is light; beautiful things reflect God’s love. Since Milton is blind, he cannot see these objects. He misses the “sight of vernal bloom, or summer’s rose … the cheerful ways of men.” Yet a miracle occurs. God makes the “celestial Light, / Shine inward,” and by purging and dispersing all the ordinary sights of life, allows Milton to “see and tell / Of things invisible to mortal sight.” Milton is like the nightingale, whose song tells of grace even though the bird cannot see in the darkness.
No such consolation is available to the narrator of Keats’ ode, who offers no hint that nature has a benign author. Nature is what gives people tuberculosis. Keats’ narrator is not only depressed but angry about it.
I will offer an alternative perspective, even though I don’t think Keats would agree with it. We are all like the nightingale; our vocalizations and other behaviors are caused by natural processes. (“Dependent origination.”) We cannot escape suffering, which is intrinsic to sentience and afflicts the bird as well as us. (“The first noble truth.”) Mental pain arises naturally. For instance, Keats must think of his recently deceased brother, because he is physically designed to feel grief. Forgetting such things is impossible, and drowning them out would be unethical. (“The middle way.”) However, Keats is not a real entity, and his condition needn’t interest the poet as much as it does. As he writes elsewhere, the poet “has no self”; “not one word I ever utter can be taken for granted as an opinion growing out of my identical nature–how can it, when I have no nature?” (“No-self.”) His protean mind can, however, fill with thoughts such as appreciation, gratitude, and compassion. (Mindfulness, the “third noble truth.”) The beauty of the night is real, just like suffering, and he can focus on the former.
Those who make it across the river and come back to help others over do the most good (“karma”), and Keats’ lyrics provide an example. They enrich the inner lives of us who read them. Keats claims no satisfaction from doing this, because he is depressed and because he doesn’t hold a Buddhist-ish theory. But he achieves what he cannot recognize, and we can read him compassionately for that reason. After all, the last five words (“Do I wake or sleep?”) are no longer addressed to the nightingale, which has departed for the “next valley-glades.” They must pose a question for us, opening a dialogue with readers and perhaps seeking our compassion, which we can give. If our minds are filled with compassion, we have less space for pain.
Keats was an unbelievably good poet. What if we can’t write immortal verse–can we then return to help others cross to a better place? I would say: Keats is a stranger to us, dead two centuries, and worth reading because his words are so excellent. The rest of us just say mundane things, like, “Did you hear that bird?” But we can say such things in relationships–to people we know and like or love. When embedded in a friendship or love, a remark like “Did you hear that bird?” conveys pleasure and care. By that means, we can alleviate suffering even if we could never come up with a phrase as good as “with beaded bubbles winking at the brim.”
Sources: Robert B. Brandom, Articulating Reasons: An Introduction to Inferentialism (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000); Anahid Nersessian, Keats’ Odes: A Lover’s Discourse (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2021). See also the sublime and other people; the politics of negative capability; “Keats against Dante: The Sonnet on Paolo and Francesca“; a poem should; empathy: good or bad?; and three endings for Christabel.
A comparative approach is useful for testing theories about one of the prominent phenomena of our time: polarization.
If you assume that people naturally polarize because of hard-wired features, such as the human tendency to prefer members of our own groups, then you would expect levels of polarization to be consistent across time and countries.
If you assume that polarization is specifically an American issue, you might look at unusual features of US society that have persisted over time, such as our two-party system, the salience of race and racism, sheer size, the private news media, or the fact that we have several regional elites who don’t necessarily know each other (Wall Street financiers, Texas oilmen, Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, etc.).
If you assume that the problem is global and recent, you might look at international developments, such as social media, plutocracy, the decline of a neoliberal consensus, or the revival of illiberal nationalism.
If you assume that the problem is specifically American and recent, you might focus on changes in the US system, such as the departure of Southern conservatives from the Democratic Party after the 1960s, or the replacement of national party structures with entrepreneurial candidates, or more sophisticated gerrymandering, or the election of Barack Obama, which may have alerted some White voters to the emerging reality that the Democrats are decisively more diverse than the Republicans:
The comparative graph for this post illustrates a few selected points.
FIrst, current levels of polarization in the USA are comparable to those in Weimar Germany or India at the time of partition and worse than Denmark’s under occupation. Bolsonaro’s Brazil and Venezuela score even higher than the USA today, but that is not good company. Polarization cannot be hard-wired if it varies so much, and our levels are alarming.
Second, social media cannot simply and straightforwardly explain the recent growth in polarization, for media would affect tech-savvy Denmark as much as the USA. Yet Denmark is one of several democracies that demonstrate consistently low polarization. (The EU as a whole shows some increase in polarization since 2000, but much less than the USA.)
Third, the USA has seen polarization increase a lot lately, which works against explanations that evoke stable features of US society, such as the two-party system.
I am not one who views polarization as an intrinsic evil. If a society is divided between democrats and authoritarians, the problem is not polarization; it is the authoritarians. Less division between good and bad players may indicate a harmful compromise. In the Weimar case, I think polarization posed a challenge to the fragile representative system, but the main problem was the Nazis. (Stalinists made things worse.) Describing Weimar as an example of “polarization” suggests that there were several groups who just didn’t get along. Instead, some groups belonged in jail.
Nevertheless, polarization poses challenges of its own. It encourages political actors at all levels to push their own rights and interests to the limits, without concern for any collateral damage to the institutions. The levels in the USA today exceed those in comparable countries by large margins and resemble those recorded just before notorious historical disasters.
Caveat: the graph (from V-Dem) does not show objective measures of polarization, but the assessments of social scientists who study these countries. See also: affective polarization is symmetrical; promoting democracy and reducing polarization; empathy boosts polarization; marginalizing views in a time of polarization; civic education in a time of inequality and polarization; vaccination, masking, political polarization, and the authority of science