On Failing to Change the World

I have been reading The Triumph of Human Empire by Rosalind Williams. The author ties the biographies of Jules Verne, William Morris, and Robert Louis Stevenson around a common theme: Humanity has extended its dominion over every part of the globe, and while this may be inevitable, it results in great losses not only to wild nature but to human nature.

For example, in the writings of Jules Verne, Captain Nemo explores the vast unknown expanses of the oceans, in which he desires to leave behind the conflicts of the human race, which take place on land or on the surface of the sea; but he cannot leave behind his own conflict with the human race. He sees the oceans as the ultimate freedom, but he is not really free. And whether it is Captain Nemo revealing the secrets of the oceans, or riders in a balloon revealing what the unknown center of Africa is like, the very act of exploration brings these wild and unknown spaces into the range of human knowledge and therefore dominion. Verne wanted to explore the unknown world, but at the same time regretted the end of the frontier.

I would like to concentrate on William Morris, a writer about whom I knew literally nothing until I read Williams’ book. He was most famous as one of the leading British socialists of the late nineteenth century. He despised capitalism because it oppressed the poor workers, but also because it substituted cheapness for craftsmanship. He inherited a fortune and also ran a successful interior decorating business, for which he was criticized as being a socialist hypocrite. But he ran his business by artisinal, rather than industrial, standards; he particularly detested artificial dyes, and spent a lot of effort on improving natural dyes.

The triumph of cheapness in the economy was just part of the larger picture of ugliness that was gripping the world, in Morris’ view. He loved the Old Norse sagas, and mourned the loss of ancient heroism. He went to Iceland to see the places where the events in the sagas took place. While there, he was enraptured by the wildness of the volcanic landscape, and enchanted by the relative equality of all the people, country people without a rich class of capitalists. But he also loved sailing up the Thames from dirty London into the agrarian countryside. The countryside was ordered into woodlots and fields, and therefore conquered, but it was still filled with plants and animals. Morris despised the loss of the beauties of a farmed countryside.

So, what did Morris do? He spent a fair amount of time in socialist activism. But he knew that no matter how much he did, socialism would remain an elusive goal: the forces of money and power opposed it, so it didn’t matter whether socialism was better for the people or not. Instead, he spent most of his time writing poems and novels about heroic struggles in faraway or nonexistent lands. That is, he was one of the first prominent writers of fantasy. He was much revered by C. S. Lewis (Perelandra and Narnia) and J. R. R. Tolkein (Hobbit and Lord of the Rings). (Tolkein was also enraptured by the Old Norse sagas.)

This might seem like simple escape. The world is ugly and getting uglier, so we should like in our imaginations. But that is not how Morris saw it. He strongly objected to “escape” as a description of his writings. Instead, what he was doing was to create a vision of what the world could be like, how we could live, if we pursued beauty instead of ugliness. Morris could not convince very many people of socialism, but he got thousands of people to imagine a beautiful world, and many of these, in cumulative small ways, helped to partially reverse the slide toward ugliness. Morris stirred up a feeling of heroism in the minds of thousands; and, through his successor Tolkein, millions.

This is what I am devoting most of my time to, also. I do not spend very much time in political activism. Instead, my main activities are teaching and writing. This summer, my focus is on writing fiction. I have many novels that need to be refined and perfected, and a few that have not yet been written. Am I wasting my time on a dilettante activity while the masses of poor suffer violence and oppression? I hope not. I hope that my writings, about people real or imagined who pursue beauty and peace against massive opposition, will inspire thousands of other people, who will collectively do more to make the world better than I could ever do myself. My fiction is either historical (e.g. about the Cherokee leader Nancy Ward, or about the writer of Ecclesiastes, or about Heloïse and Abélard) or alternative-futures (What would happen if a new Confederacy arose in Oklahoma? What would happen if a man actually tried to quixotically live a life of altruism?) rather than fantasy like the writings of Morris, and I hope that my writings will have more impact than his did (most of which are forgotten today except by scholars).

William Morris failed to change the world. I expect to fail also. But he succeeded, and I hope to succeed, more by writing than would have been possible by a complete devotion to political action. Lots of people can participate in political action, but only I can write the books that are currently dormant on my computer drives. Now that I have finished this essay, that is what I am going to do right now.

Silent Struggles of Faith in the Novels of Shusaku Endo

I very much appreciate, and hope you get a chance to read, the thoughtful novels of the Japanese Christian writer Shusaku Endo, which include Silence (which Scorsese made into a movie) and The Samurai. Both of these novels are about Catholic missionaries in Japan right before, or during, the persecution of Christians in Japan after 1600. These are thoughtful novels, neither championing nor condemning Christianity. I consider Endo to have been Japan’s answer to Graham Greene (The Power and the Glory and Monseigneur Quixote), or the other way around.

In both of the Endo novels that I have read, European and Japanese Christians look to God for guidance, and receive only silence in response. Endo wrote, “In the thick darkness God is silent.” Many of us have had this experience.

The historical background of The Samurai was when the shogunate (military dictatorship) of Japan sent a delegation of minor samurai, with the Spanish Franciscan priest Luis Sotelo, to open up trade relations with New Spain, a trip that eventually took them to Spain and to the Vatican in 1613. Immediately thereafter, persecution nearly eradicated Christianity from Japan. The samurai from whose viewpoint much of the novel is written, Hasekura Rokuemon, was a real person. He kept a journal, but it has been last. Most of what we think we know about this delegation comes from Sotelo’s obviously self-centered and unreliable account of the journey. He thought he would be single-handedly responsible for the salvation of Japan. He was sure he would become the Bishop of Japan. Since Hasekura’s account has been lost, we have to fill in the details with imagination, which Endo did in this novel.

The one thing we know for sure is that neither the Catholic priests nor the Japanese had simple and clear motivations. The priest, as depicted by Endo in the character of Father Velasco, is sincere in his desire to serve the Japanese, even if it means losing his life, but he was also ambitious. The Japanese—the three samurai, their attendants, and the merchants—converted to Christianity by just going through the motions so that they could establish trade contacts with Christian countries, but at the end the Japanese wondered if maybe this Jesus, this ugly beat-up Jesus hanging from crucifixes, actually did love them, he who had died even more miserably than they. Jesus, they speculated, was a miserable dog who shares our miseries.

Here are some quotes that beautifully illustrate this last point. The samurai Nishi speaks to Hasekura: “I can believe in Him now because the life He lived in this world was more wretched than any other man’s. Because He was ugly and emaciated. He knew all there was to know about the sorrows of the world. He could not close His eyes to the grief and agony of mankind...Do you think He is to be found within those garish [European] cathedrals? He does not dwell there...I think He lives in the wretched homes of those [Native American] Indians...That is how He lived His life. He never visited the houses of those who were puffed up or contented. He sought out only the ugly, the wretched, the miserable, and the sorrowful. But now even the bishops and priests are complacent and swollen with pride. They are no longer the sort of people He sought after...Those who weep seek someone to lend an ear to their lamentations. No matter how much the world changes, those who weep and those who lament will always seek Him. That is His purpose in living.” [Chapter 9]

Endo also alerts us to the rivalry between Jesuits and Franciscans for access to Japan, before the shogunate shut them both out.

This novel is tragic (not unlike Silence and Scorsese’s adaptation of it). Toward the end, the Japanese samurai discover that their whole journey had been a trick on the part of their overlords, that not only was the failure of the journey but the execution of the samurai were planned from the very beginning. One of the feudal lords had tolerated Christianity, but the shogun hated Christianity, and the feudal lord had to do something to prove to the shogun that he was serious about eradicating Christianity from Japan—by executing a samurai who had, however insincerely, converted to Christianity.

The feeling I take away from the two Endo novels I have read is that no religious question has an easy and straightforward answer.