One (of many) Quests

One (of many) Quests

    The last post was a bit shocking, even for me.  And upon re-reading it, it made me realize that my mood was likely down what with all that has been going on in my life with my mother, all of which is again minor compared to others who have or are going through so much more.  I feel a bit embarrassed, a bit humbled, a bit ashamed that I have let my views drop in a way, sinking to a more pessimistic viewpoint and a road I really don't care to travel.  But in my defense, it is difficult at times today making one feel as if one is swimming in choppy waters and struggling just to keep afloat and not drown; I think author John Lanchester summed it up nicely for me when he wrote in The London Review of Books about Brexit: The dominant note out there in the country since the credit crunch and Great Recession has been one of bafflement, of bewilderment and disorientation.  How did this happen?  How did we get here?  Why does nobody listen to us, why does nobody care about us?  It’s the thing you keep hearing when you engage with an audience on this subject.  Although people talk about anger, it’s revealing that they often do so by asking why people aren’t more angry.  If I had to pick one sentence I’ve heard more than any other in the last six years of conversation about economics, it would be ‘Why aren’t people more angry?’   This was how I felt, how I feel, when I read about elephants being slaughtered for ivory or innocent people and doctors being killed for fun or political gain.  Indeed, why aren't people more angry?  But if one focuses too much on that, that cynicism, it can build up inside of you and pull you away from other perspectives, separating you from your passions and beliefs and willingness to find a solution and pull you over to a place where light and other views don't exist.

    So I welcomed the ray of light that again came in the form of a TED Talk, this one by a polymath named Ben Dunlop, a person who biography one website described as "...the stuff of legend."  And what exactly is a polymath?  One definition comes from Wikipedia which describes a polymath as: ...a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas; such a person is known to draw on complex bodies of knowledge to solve specific problems.  The term was first used in the 17th century; the related term, polyhistor, is an ancient term with similar meaning...a basic tenet of Renaissance humanism that humans are limitless in their capacity for development, the concept led to the notion that people should embrace all knowledge and develop their capacities as fully as possible.   This was expressed in the term "Renaissance man" which is often applied to the gifted people of that age who sought to develop their abilities in all areas of accomplishment: intellectual, artistic, social, and physical.  Rhodes scholar, senior Fulbright lecturer, producer of the 19-part television series The Renaissance, teacher of subjects such as Asian studies and creative writing...that was Ben Dunlop.   But his talk was about none of that but rather of his learning about optimism, of learning about the good in humanity...and all from a survivor of the Holocaust, a Hungarian man named Sandor Teszler.

    Now maybe I was drawn to this because I had watched Hungary’s Katinka Hosszu shatter the world record at the Rio Olympics, her own tale of overcoming shyness and inner defeat now on display for the world to see.  But here's what Sandor Teszler, a successful textile manufacturer, did when a worker was found stealing at his factory: The night watchman had caught an employee who was stealing socks -- it was a hosiery mill, and he simply backed a truck up to the loading dock and was shoveling in mountains of socks.  Mr. Teszler went down to the plant and confronted the thief and said, "But why do you steal from me?  If you need money you have only to ask."  The night watchman, seeing how things were going and waxing indignant, said, "Well, we're going to call the police, aren't we?"  But Mr. Teszler answered, "No, that will not be necessary.  He will not steal from us again."

    Fast forward to the war, Mr. Teszler and his family now recognizing that arrest and likely death are near, so each family member being given a necklace with a vial of cyanide in case things got too unbearable.  The inevitable happened and he and his son were being beaten, almost to the point of death: ...he and his family were arrested and they were taken to a death house on the Danube.  In those early days of the Final Solution, it was handcrafted brutality; people were beaten to death and their bodies tossed into the river.  But none who entered that death house had ever come out alive.  And in a twist you would not believe in a Steven Spielberg film -- the Gauleiter who was overseeing this brutal beating was the very same thief who had stolen socks from Mr. Teszler's hosiery mill.  It was a brutal beating.  And midway through that brutality, one of Mr. Teszler's sons, Andrew, looked up and said, "Is it time to take the capsule now, Papa?"  And the Gauleiter, who afterwards vanishes from this story, leaned down and whispered into Mr. Teszler's ear, "No, do not take the capsule.  Help is on the way."  And then resumed the beating.

    In this true story, Mr. Teszler and his family did manage to be whisked away to the Swiss embassy and eventually enter the U.S. where he tackled segregation and other tough issues head on by building a plant in the most racially divided area he could find, paying high wages in his new factory and forcing blacks and whites to work, eat and sleep together: And two months later when the main plant opened and hundreds of new workers, white and black, poured in to see the facility for the first time, they were met by the 16 foremen, white and black, standing shoulder to shoulder.  They toured the facility and were asked if there were any questions, and inevitably the same question arose: "Is this plant integrated or what?"  And one of the white foremen stepped forward and said, "You are being paid twice the wages of any other workers in this industry in this region and this is how we do business.  Do you have any other questions?"...And there were none.  In one fell swoop, Mr. Teszler had integrated the textile industry in that part of the South.  Adds Ben Dunlop in his talk: Not long before Mr. Teszler’s own death at the age of 97, he heard me hold forth on human iniquity.  I delivered a lecture in which I described history as, on the whole, a tidal wave of human suffering and brutality, and Mr. Teszler came up to me afterwards with gentle reproach and said, "You know, Doctor, human beings are fundamentally good."  Dunlop continued:..."Live each day as if it is your last," said Mahatma Gandhi.  "Learn as if you'll live forever."  This is what I'm passionate about.  It is precisely this.  It is this inextinguishable, undaunted appetite for learning and experience, no matter how risible, no matter how esoteric, no matter how seditious it might seem.  This defines the imagined futures of our fellow Hungarians -- Robicsek, Teszler and Bartok -- as it does my own.  As it does, I suspect, that of everybody here.

    So while I continue to read about so much iniquity, all of which is indeed happening and needs to be addressed, I can only think of those chipping away at the seemingly impenetrable rock, doing good by performing surgery on the wounded regardless of how or why it happened or what those injured believed in, rangers spending days and months in the field to protect endangered animals of all sorts, people of everyday life carrying a poster or just walking in a march to show their belief that something needs changing, workers mailing in a check they likely can't really afford but which they feel is necessary to promote their cause, Olympians trying to show the world that we are all just human and that this level of excellence is what we're capable of without so much as a word, scientists and others so passionate about a discovery or a solution that they will works months and years in dismal conditions in the hopes of a better world, groups such as The Next System Project that simply advertise: How do we actually get on a path to a kind of society --and world-- we'd like now and for future generations?  We must begin a real conversation --locally, nationally, and at all levels in between-- on how to respond to the profound challenge of our time in history.

    There is hope out there, there is good out there.  But sometimes we can all be temporarily blinded by the noise and the darkness and the controlled broadcasts of one-sided reporting.  But the key word should be "temporarily."  I need, and one hopes we all need, to stay about the choppy waters, to recognize that help is indeed on the way, that we might be the one to save another person and that might be the person that changes the world...and to also remember that the person we save just might be ourselves.