Crisis 22
Both In and Out of the Game
Options - Ostrichism - Ukraine 101 - Realism - Whitman
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Options
How can we possibly live our lives normally when we’re bombarded by talk of genocide and nuclear war, and by images of trench warfare, destroyed hospitals, and exploded dams? How can we keep our temper, let alone our sense of humour, in the face of Putin’s brutal invasion, his mad arguments, his nuclear threats, his unholy alliance with Xi, Un, and the mullahs of Teheran — in brief, his total disruption of global peace and order?
In attempting to regain something of our former calm, there are two courses of action I suggest we avoid: 1. ignoring the conflict (trying to wish it away), and 2. following the war too closely (trying to understand its every thrust and counter-thrust). Instead, I suggest: 3. some form of simultaneous attachment & detachment — what Whitman referred to as being both in and out of the game.
It’s true that our discomfort is almost nothing compared to the trauma and dislocation suffered by the Ukrainians. Yet still, for those who follow the war, it takes a heavy psychological toll. It’s therefore worth thinking about ways to pay the toll and yet have money left over for a holiday.
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Ostrichism
For most people the first option — ignoring the war — is out of the question. How can we make a conscious choice to live like ostriches, creating inverted landscapes beneath the sand? Even if we could manage such a neck-twisting, sand-breathing feat, it wouldn’t dissolve our awareness of the problem, however numbed that awareness might be. It would always be there, only invisible, undealt with. It doesn’t take a psychologist to tell us where that leads.
Even if we did manage to ignore it, drowning it in other concerns, rum, or drugs; even if we did manage to tune out Putin’s brutality and all it implies, just as we’ve finally relaxed into our beach chairs and forgotten about that place called Ukraine, with a cigar and a mojito in our hands, having convinced ourselves that the river of sugar cane and the tobacco censor swinging was taking us up to Heaven, a subterranean wave, like a tsunami but from beneath the sand, would throw us downward, toward the centre of the earth.
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Ukraine 101
The second course of action — to pay close attention to the war — also has its dangers. We may escape our anxieties to some degree by looking into the details, as if we were taking a course on Ukrainian geography, artillery shells, and F-16s. Yet we also run the risk of getting overwhelmed by these details. We might end up running endlessly from one piece of frightening news to the next — from atrocities in Bucha to massacres in Mariupol, to cluster-munitions in Avdivka to glide-bombs in Kharkiv. At what point do we begin to feel like chickens watching the heads of the other chickens being chopped off?
This option brings with it another danger: in following one complex conflict, we’d end up following others. Inevitably, we’d see that there are many peasants with cleavers, and that all sorts of animal’s heads are on the block. For instance, in learning about the glide-bombs pummelling Kharkiv, we’d also learn about the weapons of Kharkiv’s erstwhile sister-city Belgorod. This would lead us to Kursk and Murmansk, into the military complex in Russia, as well as the exports of Iran and North Korea. And this would lead us to Seoul, Nagasaki, Taipei, the South China Sea, the wide Pacific… Eventually, the battle lines of Ukraine would lead to San Diego and to the military bases south of Vancouver. At some point, the roaming chickens of our knowledge would come home to roost.
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Realism
In looking at the Ukraine War I want to be realistic about the situation we’re in, yet I also want to suggest optimistic, idealistic, poetic possibilities as well. Before getting to my point about idealism and poetry, I need to stress the point about realism, lest my arguments be seen as forms of escapism or quietism. To be realistic, we must know the facts and not hide from them. For instance, we can’t whitewash colonialism, exploitation, Vietnam or Iraq, just because Putin and Lavrov twists them to justify their own colonialism and brutality. Nor can we ignore the danger of nuclear war, however much the Kremlin uses it to limit our aid to Ukraine.
Life is complicated enough without such problems. Yet we’ve had this war thrust upon us, much as Ukraine has — although of course Ukraine is taking the brunt of it all. Yet in our own way we too need to adapt to the new reality: we must be engaged enough to grasp some of the historical and political complexities. But given the monstrous scale of this war, we must also find a way of thinking and feeling which allows us to cope with it. We need to find ways to lighten this burden, to find a correlative perspective that alleviates, rather than erases, the real problems.
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Whitman
In Song of Myself Whitman suggests that we balance detachment & engagement by remaining both in the game of life and out of it at the same time:
Trippers and askers surround me,
People I meet, the effect upon me of my early life or the ward and city I live in, or the nation,
The latest dates, discoveries, inventions, societies, authors old and new,
My dinner, dress, associates, looks, compliments, dues,
The real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love,
The sickness of one of my folks or of myself or ill-doing or loss or lack of money, or depressions or exaltations,
Battles, the horrors of fratricidal war, the fever of doubtful news, the fitful events;
These come to me days and nights and go from me again,
But they are not the Me myself.
Apart from the pulling and hauling stands what I am,
Stands amused, complacent, compassionating, idle, unitary,
Looks down, is erect, or bends an arm on an impalpable certain rest,
Looking with side-curved head curious what will come next,
Both in and out of the game and watching and wondering at it.
— Song of Myself, 4
Whitman’s balancing act is also a habit, one that applies to everyday situations as well as to war years and catastrophe. Before arriving at the phrase both in and out of the game, Whitman lists a variety of situations that might disturb us, that might make us want to go out of the game. The situations include “the horrors of fratricidal war” — like he saw between Unionists and Confederates all the way down the Mississippi, and like we see between Russians and Ukrainians all the way down the Dnipro. Yet Whitman also includes more personal concerns, such as the “real or fancied indifference of some man or woman I love.” The strategy of caring and detachment, a sort of engaged compassion, may help us deal with the Ukraine War, but it may also help us deal with our more immediate concerns.
On the next page I’ll look at several other ways that might help us be at once engaged and detached: stoicism, mysticism, and religion.
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