A Black Boy, in a Black Sea, on a Black Night

"See how elastic our prejudices grow when love comes to bend them." -- from Moby Dick, Herman Melville

I'm going to get posters and T-shirts made that say: SPREAD AWARENESS, NOT PARANOIA. Catchy, eh?

We have already convinced our young people that a moment of sadness is reason for concern -- a reason to seek help and to fear a mental health crisis. As a high school teacher, I see evidence of this every day. 

[Usual disclaimer: Mental health issues are real and people should seek help for them, but crying for days because your dog died is not a mental health crisis; it's a healthy reaction to grief and it is something you should be able recover from in time. Knowing the difference is the key. If you can't recover from it -- or if your sadness is caused by nothing discernable -- then you are having a crisis. In the end: better safe than sorry.]

I think we have made people so "aware" of mental health issues that they are paranoid every time they feel a bit of ennui and every time they don't feel like getting out of bed to go to work. 

We have done this with race, too, I think. When I teach American literature, I usually show the Patrick Stewart Moby Dick film. And, every time I do, my kids lose their proverbial feces every time Starbuck delivers a particular line. 

Pip, the cabin boy, has stowed away on one of the whaling boats and is thrown overboard. They search for him into the night and, after an apparently fruitless search, Starbuck says: "We must be mad, lookin' for a black boy on a black night in a black sea."

At that point, invariably, ripples of shock run through my classroom. When I ask them why they reacted to that line, they usually make some reference to racism. 

Fascinating, isn't it? The facts are these: It is dark on the ocean; the sea appears to be roiling black silk and the boy they are looking for is Black. Therefore, he is hard if not impossible to see. He'd be hard enough to find in broad daylight. A white boy would be hard to find in broad daylight...in the vastness of the ocean. Take away the sun, paint the sea black and add darker skin, and it is a fact: It would be nearly impossible to find poor Pip. 

(They find him, miraculously.)

Racism? I think not. The students' reaction is one of fear -- of being paranoid as to what is okay and what is not okay to say. 

We want our kids to respect each other as humans, regardless of ethnicity, for sure. But have we drawn thicker lines between them with well-inteneded lessons of political correctness? Have our commercials and TV shows -- which paint a world of racial harmony that just does not exist in our society -- led kids to think that any acknowledgement of physical differences amounts to racism? 

I think so. 

Some might argue that if we are going to be paranoid, racism is the thing to be paranoid about. I understand that sentiment, but if it leads to more division, more distance between us, then that reasoning sort of backfires. 

Maybe it's another problem that lies within professing to be "color blind." When one person picks another to marry, I think the understanding is that the significant other is simply the best person one has ever known. This person is so incredible that one has chosen to spend the rest of one's life with him or her. Even under those circumstances, when people of different ethnicities marry (even when they are in the deep fathoms of love and respect) I woudl argue that the two are conscious of their physical differences. The key is that those differences are not part of any evaluative formula. 

Pip, my friends, was a fine lad. He was simply harder to see on a dark ocean than an Irish kid would have been. Nothing in that is prejudiced or racist. It's all about how we literally see color. 

Subtle Immortality

I once heard a brilliant homilist, Father Joseph Capella, say that there is a reason we are not called "humans doing" but "human beings." I'm not usually a fan of cutesy philosophical phrases, but this one is pretty profound, when you think about it. Maybe our purpose is to just be, after all. And maybe that is not so unproductive as it sounds. 

We humans tend to equate success with what we do and then we hope that those deeds will last. Percy Shelley made it clear that nothing we do will last. This is what he teaches us in his powerful poem "Ozymandias." 

I mean, the dude was the king of all kings. What do you need to do to be remembered in this world? If you can be the "king of kings" and wind up a pile of hot sand, what can Chris Matarazzo in New Jersey do to get a permanent monument erected to him? 

Who cares? 

Even the monuments are not permanent after a certain amount of time. There is simply nothing we can do, no matter how grand, in terms of social achievements, that will remain "standing" forever.

Pericles, in the philosophical statement above, is onto something: the only immortality we can achieve, in an earthy sense, is what I will call "subtle immortality." And that is sort of guaranteed, really; it's just that we are not aware of this quiet, nearly invisible permanence unless we dig deeply in the our own existences and that is exactly why you come here, right? To pull the rabbit out of the dark and mysterious hat? We will live on in the way we are, either conceptually or genetically, "woven into the lives of others." And that is pretty much it. We will be a thread in the tapestry of human existence, but not a discernable picture. We will be there, if unseen. We will be part of the structure, but we will never get credit.

That's ok, right? Unless you have the ego issue -- which we should all work to move beyond if we are to find true contentment, say centuries of philosophers.

The imperceptible will last. A thousand years from now, there is more likely to be a descendent of mine who rubs the back of his neck exactly the way I do when I think because of genetic connection; or, who will have been infected with a deep need for music, as I have, than there is likely to be a statue to my achievements. Even if I left a statue, it would eventually crumble as Ozymandias's entire kingdom did. But if a descendent puts his elbows on the table after dinner exactly the way I do because of genetics, I live on.

That said, I think Pericles was talking more about in the present; how we affect each other within a lifetime. I still think, though, we can expand that. I tried to teach my sons, for example, to be strong yet gentle men, because that is how I men should behave.

If they pass that down, etc, etc, etc....my effect on forever will be anonymous and tiny but permanent. I will have achieved -- as we all will -- a form of subtle earthly immortality, if more men, a thousand years from now, are gentle and strong than there are today.

(Hat Tip: Michael M for posting the Pericles quotation.)