A word’s worth revisited

Let it be known that at this time of year I have a particular fancy for the leather armchair by my light and bright corner window, where I can curl up and read, to the waft of slow food simmering on the stove. Before I emerge, I thought I might end this year by sharing the titles of some of the many wonderful books I have read during the past year:

J.M. Coetzee, Waiting for the Barbarians, Boyhood
Margaret Atwood, The Cat’s Eye
Doris Lessing, The Diary of Jane Somers (A Good Neighbor)
Nicole Krauss, The History of Love
Joan Didion, Year Of Magical Thinking
Willa Cather, Death comes for the Archbishop
Mary Gordon, Final Payments
Siri Hustvedt, What I Loved
Gail Godwin, The Good Husband
Anita Shreve, Body Surfing
Doris Lessing, The Grandmothers

Like most people in the western world, perhaps, I have been focusing my attention this past week on the “small” world of family, friends, neighbors, and my natural networks. I realize that I am able to do this only to the extent that everything around me in the “big” world of politics, institutions, and markets is working smoothly. I am able to do this to the extent that I have a choice.

According to the Swedish sociologist Hans Zetterberg (ref. SvD 29/12), people separate their small and big worlds from one another these days because the values of the two don’t mix. Sharing, caring, generosity and emotions are reserved for the small world. Competitiveness, calculating, strategic thinking, and even heartlessness drive the big world.

How long can the human being survive the dichotomy of conflicting states? Some will tell you to make sure there’s a breadwinner in your household, eat your bread, and keep your mouth shut (about how it got there?) while you're eating. Some still save sugar, old newspapers, and books to burn if the going gets rough. How long can the human being survive without being able to integrate the small and the big world, life and death, in common cultural values, in creativity and art? I see children of the schism trying to bridge the gap by flying back and forth across and between continents, propelled by gallons and gallons of jet fuel, leaving behind little more than a vapor trail and a hole in the ozone layer. I see others escaping to the virtual underground, falling to the depths of the chasm where the sun never shines, or to religious fundamentalism. Personal insecurities may be stifled for a generation or two, but to what end?

The murder of Benazir Bhutto abruptly alters my focus. I am reminded of the precariousness of democracy, of the freedom of choice itself.