Post #119: Waiting for the Barbarians

25 June 2024

“The new men believe in fresh starts, new chapters, clean pages; I struggle on with the old story, hoping that before it is finished it will reveal to me why it was that I thought it worth the trouble.”

—J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians*

   I mentioned barbarism in my last post, but the term is open to misunderstanding: I am not thinking of the shaggy wild men in furs that the term immediately brings to mind, but of a more superficially brushed and polished type. The barbarians of our day don’t smell of sweat and campfires; they would be horrified by the very thought and have taken to full-body deodorants lately. Piña colada seems to be a favorite.

   These latter-day barbarians are not equipped with sticks and spears, but armed to the teeth with space-age gadgetry. They are not technically illiterate or slow to learn, but can be quick-witted in their way. They are brimming with health and vitality, as their precursors often were as well, but they have added all manner of sophisticated regimens and toning techniques that would have struck earlier generations, however rough or civilized, as beyond belief. The idea that muscles make the man, or a massive beard, or that the body beautiful ought to be covered in ink and piercings and other elaborate ornamentations, is evidently barbaric; but the renovated model is postmodern enough to mix freely what are really incongruous elements, and so the new barbarians cherish their cappuccinos and venerate their own websites while spouting facial hair that would impress a Victorian, a Spartan, or a caveman (#83).

   What exactly defines a barbarian, then? It is clearly not, in our times, the absence of formal education or intellectual acumen, and perhaps never has been. The Greeks thought of the Persians as barbarians in a manner of speaking, and so did the Romans of the lands beyond the Euphrates, the Tigris, or the Indus; but they knew that they were nonetheless dealing with advanced civilizations. The Chinese are notorious, traditionally, for how savage anything beyond their borders looks to them, and similar strands of chauvinism have run through most powers who prided themselves, then or now, on their political, economic, and cultural sway and savvy.

   The very origins of the term are disputed, but one prominent theory holds that it mimics the sound of an unknown language to an unfamiliar ear: barbarbar… Thus a barbarian would be, in the first place, someone with whom you do not share a common language, usually on the assumption that yours is the tongue that any civilized human being ought to be able to speak. This angle helps clarify my argument too, since I do not deny that the new barbarians have their own impressive modes of thinking and communicating; what I am saying is that they are deficient, and threatening to become ever more so, in a language I cherish. In distinction to earlier ages, I am not thinking of one authoritative idiom, much as I value our current lingua franca, arguably the first truly global one in history. What I have in mind, instead, is the common element found in the book-learning of world literature at large, whatever language it may get translated into for convenience. I do not claim that these translations are exact equivalents; but they come close enough to give all their readers something in common. In this manner the Pali Canon is more familiar and kindred to me, or Confucius’s Analects, or the Tibetan Book of the Dead, than the mental life of many of my contemporaries as it expresses itself on FaceBook or Twitter, let alone Instagram or TikTok.

   The culture of world literature that I am thinking of has, arguably, always been a rarefied phenomenon. But with the advent of near-universal literacy in many countries from the 19th century on, and the arrival of cheap paperback editions by the mid-20th, the barriers to entry were brought down so dramatically that access to the universe of great books could no longer be called a privilege of class or caste. This opening of our libraries to all who could read has made even greater strides in the meantime, of course, delivering over the past twenty years or so on the ancient promise of the library at Alexandria, to keep a copy of anything noteworthy that had ever been written. Alas, upon this stupendous accomplishment followed an equally great disillusionment, when it became clear that as in the Library of Babel imagined by Borges, we are losing the key that allows us to distinguish between the trash and the treasures, and we are proving increasingly indifferent to the latter as a result. (It always required considerable application and commitment to develop a taste for the classics by any description; the easy triumph of junk, in print as in any other medium, is as old as recorded history. Alas, things can always get worse, as they have done for some time, and as they will do until only smatterings remain of what was once an established standard.)

     First came radio, then television; then cable; then the internet; then smartphones; then AI; who knows what will be next. But what went out at the same time, or at least with a delayed effect? What was, what has been, what is being lost? What do these new barbarians lack amidst all their beaming health, their whitened teeth, and their bulging pectorals;** their optimized efficiency in all things they deign to consider important; their abundant riches amassed as swiftly, effortlessly, and mindlessly as possible?

     What I miss is a sense of depth, of patient application, of humility before the achievements and glories of the past. What I miss is a beauty that cannot be captured in a selfie or a screenshot. What I miss is any discernible appreciation for limitations and imperfections, for the tragically true side of things, for a human patrimony that is flawed and dusty, but no less deep-souled for it, quite the contrary. What I miss is the spirit of the attic and its treasures, of European flea markets, of books with worn spines covered in notes and markings. I miss the Pnyx overlooking Athens and the Agora below, where Socrates made his enemies and then confronted them during his trial; I miss the wind-swept slopes around the temple of Apollo at Delphi; I miss the Pantheon in Rome, Trajan’s column, and St. Peter’s; I miss the colonnades in Bologna, and the colors of Siena; I miss the cloisters at my college and the foot-worn stairs that were so barbarically sacrificed before fears of liability lawsuits (#101). I miss all these places, and so many more, not as tourist spots, backdrops for posed pictures that one can then post to show off, but as focal points in the mind, the physical counterparts to intellectual destinations. Without serious reading, I cannot imagine them being any more than gilded trophies one pins like postcards to the wall, for others to admire and envy.

     I do not hold that books are everything; how could they be. There are so many things that go into a well-rounded, well-balanced, well-examined, well-lived sojourn on this planet of ours. I would not wish for anyone to live on books alone (or as nearly as humanly possible) any more than without any at all. I simply cannot conceive what should take the place of all the treasures I have seen by reading, which is only a tiny glimpse of all that the great library of human experience contains. The world of images with which we are displacing the world of print has its own powers (who would deny it); but what I fail to see is how anyone might pass for a civilized human being, not just before his immediate age-group or his contemporaries, but before the great assembly of historical man, without having done his share of reading. This faith in books is something that almost everyone my age or older will at least recognize as a valid position, agree with it or not. But among the younger,  with every day a little more, it seems, I cannot even count on it being understood, let alone taken seriously. We have long passed the ante portas stage; the barbarians are not at the gates, they are in the city, and what I am awaiting is not so much their arrival as their triumph over what scattered pockets of resistance remain.

     The old story—why indeed is it worth the trouble? How about this: only a few days ago I discovered that the latest prophet of the hour seems to be qualified for answering life’s big questions mostly by a major cocaine addiction and an accidental baby (bless the little creature). Apparently it is becoming very old-fashioned, even retrograde, to think that the human will is quite sufficient for overcoming the former and inviting the latter into existence; such things “manifest” themselves instead, we are to believe, from who-knows-where (trendy labels on new bottles, but inside nothing very fresh at all, but only a stale, insipid vintage of the kind that does not age well). Once upon a time one could count on faddish gurus and other traders on the spiritual market to have at least read a sacred text or two, or to pretend they had with a modicum of credibility. These days one wonders whether they are able to get through a serious book at all. Just who wrote their bestsellers for them may not even be an intelligible question much longer, as the ubiquitous ghostwriters give way to dei ex machina on all sides. It may improve the writing in a technical sense; it will not do much for the quality of the thinking (#118).

     Granted, the old stories were not always more salutary. God knows how many were the work of dark powers. But were they ever so embarrassingly shallow before, so utterly unfounded on anything but celebrity for celebrity’s sake? And worse still, were they ever so incoherent, so evidently afflicted not only by a deficit of attention, but an advanced atrophy of the intellect itself—a kind of diarrheic influenza of the influencer? Father forgive them, for they know not what they are doing. If it only tiks and toks enough, moves enough air, and fills enough accounts, then no further questions seem necessary. Well, I will keep holding with the old stories for many reasons, but not least this one, that they should remind us, while anyone can still be bothered, of just how much the newest stories leave unanswered.

     The crude old quid-pro-quo arrangements in which religion has so often manifested itself among mankind (our devotions in return for the gods’ gifts) was never any very evolved expression of spiritual life; but at least it left a little room for humility inasmuch as the benefactions were attributed to higher powers. Under the new dispensation, such restraints are no longer necessary, it seems, and indeed unhelpful—little more than “self-imposed limitations” with which we supposedly get in our own way. Now, liberated of all constraints of nature or common sense, higher or lower, it appears we may simply wish into being, without crediting anyone or anything, whatever we like, picking it at will off the shelves in an all-purpose semi-divine supermarket franchised by the latest spiritual entrepreneur. As a celebration of the unbounded powers of the human will (or of globalized commerce), this might leave room, at least, for some kind of pseudo-humanism; but no, because then the spiritual mummery would need to be dispensed with that is so integral a part of the marketing strategy. That all this may be presented to us in perfect sincerity only goes to show how low we have been sinking intellectually. As a devious ploy it would be merely distasteful; as an honest expression of where we find ourselves in this Year of Our Lord 2024 it becomes only more pitiful with every added million or billion views that pile up before us all the way to our low-hanging skies.

*My choice of title and epigraph may be an even greater invitation to misunderstanding than my use of the term “barbarian.” I’ve been listening lately to a recording of the novel (nota bene with a view to my note below) and the quoted lines resonated with me. Between the magistrate’s situation and mine, however, or between our outlooks upon inspection, there can be no real comparison, and I do not mean to suggest any parallelism at all. Coetzee captures so well, in the image of his abominable wire, something so quintessentially evil that I could proceed no further. The column of prisoners and the commencement of the beating did for me; I do not wish to hear how a scene thus begun might end, lest I never get it out of my head again. Consequently I am quite ignorant as to the conclusion of the novel, and perhaps that is just as well, considering that I am equally ignorant of how my own waiting for the barbarians might one day be resolved, or not.

**Bigger breasts than the leading lady, as Groucho Marx sneered about the male lead in “Samson and Delilah” (1949). Hollywood was, as always, ahead of the times.

PS: As if to echo these themes by way of negative manifestation (sending me what I least wished for under the circumstances), a squad of five protein-hungry prize-bulls descended, as I was trying to keep my mind on the above, upon my reading corner at “The Library,” my regular café, run by nineties-types like me who will soon have to rethink the name. A well-scrubbed, good-looking, and friendly-enough group of latter-day Visigoths they were, aggressive without meaning to be, and quite intent on not being mistaken for meat-heads.

     They were readers too, the two nearest to my corner assured me, and claimed that Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow was among their favorites. This impressed me considerably, for a bit; after all, even pretense and conceit might be considered a kind of tribute paid by vice to virtue in a fallen world. Alas, it only took a minute before it became clear that they made no distinction whatever between reading and listening (ruling out what I mean by serious reading, pen in hand, however much I may think of a well-performed reading, see the concluding note to #75). They had not in fact gotten through Kahneman’s book “yet” (the triumph of hope over experience), and freely added, when I observed that Kahneman was pretty difficult, even for me, that they found Dale Carnegie more challenging (!) and The Alchemist more sophisticated (no surprises there).

     I am sure they would have been glad to clarify for me, in a few easily understood sentences, all that I, after thirty years more study than they, could not adequately explain to myself. No doubt any qualms on my part would have been met with good-natured shrugs and pleasant but uncomprehending smiles. It takes insight to understand how ignorant one is. A Socratic education would begin there; but barbarians do not study Socrates, or if they do, they either fail to understand and brush it aside, or else they cease to be barbarians.