Hope is the thing with feathers,” wrote Emily Dickinson, inspiring Woody Allen to entitle one of his collections, “Without Feathers.“
Hope as feathers…I see more people shuffling around on the streets these days, young and old, who look plucked over. And when you start losing plumage, you want to hang on to whatever you’ve got left. I can relate. Every morning I check out my newsfeed with a mix of curiosity and aversion, wondering what fresh distortions, mendacity and lies have been cooked up for my consumption.
Some years back a reader encouraged me to keep hammering at away at corruption and bad craziness in my newspaper pieces. “It's useless of course, but some things are worth doing even if they're hopeless,” he wrote.
The reader hit on the secret fear of activists, advocacy journalists and social-minded satirists alike: that they are tolerated as a sort of pressure valve, conveniently leaving their audience with the quaint hope that democratic mechanisms still work as we all march to the brink.
For reporters, readers, and everyone else, it’s only a short step from the pressure valve trope to thinking, what’s the point of even knowing about the bad stuff, if it doesn’t translate into effective action? What’s the point of caring, when you are one small person up against the Powers That Pluck?
Like poetry, parables are a help in these increasingly dark times. There’s a Hasidic tale about those who toil unnoticed in their work of tikkun olam, which is Hebrew for “repairing the world.” There are only 36 “righteous ones,” the Tzadikim Nistarim, around at any given time. These three dozen perform their acts of service and leave as quietly as they arrive, with only their good deeds as evidence of their presence.
Through the actions of the righteous ones, tradition holds, God sustains the world from generation to generation. The critical part of the parable is that these 36 righteous ones could be anyone, and they themselves are unaware of their role. The lesson is that any one of us may be one of them, and we must each act as if we are, for the fate of the world may depend on us. Conversely we must deal with every person we meet as if they are, to strengthen them to carry on.
I’ll give you an example of a friend who pulled off a small piece of tikkun olam recently. As you know, a big country recently invaded a smaller country. At a Zoom conference she attended, a motion was made to condemn the aggressor nation. All very noble and unsurprising, of course, even though it had nothing to do with the business of the conference itself.
In response, she asked a question to the conference leader: with all the talk by her organization about diversity and inclusion, wasn’t there a risk of othering those with a heritage from the condemned nation? The flustered leader stammered and said it was an excellent question and added that it was about the politician, not the people. He was clearly thrown by the question.
“There were a lot of people in attendance, I was shaking when I asked,” she told me.
What my friend did was something radical at this moment in time: raise a question about actual discrimination being advanced - unintentionally or otherwise - by those speaking the language of nondiscrimination. After the conference, others present who were afraid to speak up later my friend for her contribution.
When she shared this conference experience with me I told her she demonstrated true leadership by being brave - and bravery can be contagious.
Myth, parable and people
“Be kind: everyone you know is fighting a hard battle.” - John Watson
More than ever it’s easy to feel alone and ineffective. The arc of corporate capitalism has been all about atomization: the erosion of community and connection through privatization and profiteering. It’s a sort of confidence trick, with marketers manufacturing new wants the atomized mistake as needs.
Over the past two years, the trend of atomization has been hugely accelerated through social distancing measures. In the Zoom era, people - especially the young - are becoming more comfortable with screen-mediated communication over actual close contact with people in communal settings - even with restrictions lifted.
As another friend put it, the most direct way of countering this trend is by reconnecting in real time in the real world, and “taking back our culture one potluck at a time.” In effect, the small but necessary acts of world repair by and for the atomized.
The kabbalistic parable of the Tzadikim Nistarim may sound a bit grandiose, but it’s the business of myth to tell truths of a different sort than journalism’s “who-what-when-where.”
Anchorunits and pundits obviously won’t be parsing my friend’s question to the conference leader, or the millions of small acts of kindness, compassion and discernment that keep everything from turning into a Hobbesian war of all against all. The humble acts of altruism that knit the world together work well below the news radar.
“If it bleeds it leads.” That’s why constant exposure to the daily newsfeed on our magic rectangles can indeed convince us that this world is a kind of Hell — but without some balance, this exposure to curated conflict can blinker us to the world’s heavenly aspect. The world repairers can help us see this better.
As far as the parable itself, the thing is not to get stuck on the number 36, which is a placeholder. I prefer to interpret it this way: we all get a chance at some point to act like one of the 36. Or not. The moment passes, but once acted upon, our deeds may have a positive effect of some kind, if only to make others feel better or braver.
The world repairers tacitly recognize there is no “me“ without a “we.” When someone asked Gandhi why he continually sacrificed himself constantly for India, he replied, “I do this for myself alone. When we serve others we serve ourselves.”
Though they don’t sport actual wings, the world repairers manage to deck out those around them with a few extra feathers -- usually not enough to soar, but enough to feel some extra warmth.
Great article Geoff and what a great song link in the article. That's a band I've never heard of before. I think the ubiquity of great rock music, quite apart from all the over-exposed bands we've heard far too much of, also proves the point that your making. All those artists who labor in relative obscurity and who yet achieve the greatness of all these other household names is a constant cause of astonishment to me.
Thank you for reminding me of this ancient parable, which I had completely forgotten
It has always been, to me, the very bedrock of what a spiritual life can be. Whilst a surprising number of our public intellectuals (JP and BW) are returning to Christianity, I prefer this as a remedy for a time of darkness and fear.