James E Hartley

The Black Dwarf Reviewed by the Author

“’Pass on your way,’ reiterated the object of their curiosity; ‘the breath of your human bodies poisons the air around me, the sound of your human voices goes through my ears like sharp bodkins.’”

That is how we meet the star of Walter Scott’s The Black Dwarf. It is one of the dwarf’s less misanthropic utterances. He has a dark heart indeed.

Walter Scott is curiously neglected these days, having once been more popular that Jane Austen. His earliest works are tales of Scotland around the time of its unification with England. Scott published the novels anonymously. The first novel was Waverly, and the next few were published as coming from “the author of Waverly,” so the whole run of Scottish novels is now dubbed the Waverly Novels. The Black Dwarf was Scott’s first attempt to pretend it was by a different author, but apparently everyone knew it was by the same author and lots of people suspected said author was Scott.

The authorial background here is interesting because of one of those marvelous things that could only happen once upon a time. Most of the reviews of The Black Dwarf were negative. Two of the harshest were published anonymously; it turns out Scott himself wrote those two reviews. Try to imagine that happening today.

The novel is indeed quite weak compared to what we know Scott was capable of doing. The misanthropic Scottish dwarf is amusing, but the relatively short novel has the dwarf surrounded by too many undeveloped characters. The bulk of the story sets up a mystery of wondering who this dwarf is and why he hates people so much, and then the whole mystery is explained in a hurried two pages by a character who just so happens to know the entire back story and suddenly decides it is a good time to relate it. It is like a condensed version of that chapter in Agatha Christie where Poirot revels the solution to the mystery, except this time there were absolutely no clues beforehand which gave even a hint of a suggestion about the solution to the mystery. Then the novel ends.

Is the book worth reading? Sure, if you love reading Walter Scott, it has that charm that you love so much. But if you haven’t read Scott before, this is not the place to begin.

So, let turn back to Scott’s own reviews, because they are a marvel to read.

The first was in Critical Review in December 1816. Given that we now know who wrote the review, it begins rather humorously with a discussion of how the novel was obviously by the same author as the Waverly novels, but all those rumors that were often repeated and just as often refuted that the author was Walter Scott were just pointless musings. He then notes that the story in The Black Dwarf is thoroughly unsatisfying first because of the absurd number of characters in such a short novel and then by the overuse of the Scottish dialect.

[The] author becomes a little careless as he gains confidence by approbation; and for merely English readers, too much of the Scottish dialect is introduced into the speeches. It is sometimes employed, however, with admirable effect; according to the character of the individual who speaks, it seems to add characteristic ferocity to the ruffian, or simplicity to the innocence of youth, and tenderness to effusions of love. On other occasions it not a little lightens the comic effect of rustic humor.

That is actually not a bad summary of the Scottish dialogue. Scott uses that trick often in the Waverly novels to good effect. But there are sections of The Black Dwarf which descend to the being nearly impenetrable for both Scott’s contemporaries and a 21^st century American reader. A little Scottish brogue goes a long way.

This review closes with another criticism of the book, which Scott deftly converts into an intriguing comment on English letters.

While exhibiting the manners, the author has endeavored also to employ something of the language of the times: he describes, but he has now and then gone too far back into antiquity, and has brought forward words that had even then been long obsolete. The error was, however on the right side, and it would be advantageous, if, instead of the prevailing fashion of importing French terms, we resorted more to the wells of undefiled English, afforded by our elder writers.

That was the nicer of the two anonymous reviews Scott wrote about his own book. The second was published in Quarterly Review in January 1817.

The summary: “It contains some striking scenes, but it is even more than usually deficient in the requisite of a luminous and interesting narrative” and “the narrative is the worst part of The Black Dwarf.”

Such is the brief abstract of a tale of which the narrative is unusually artificial. Neither hero nor heroine exact interest of any sort, being just that sort of pattern people whom nobody cares a farthing about. The explanation of the dwarf’s real circumstances in character, too long delayed from an obvious wish to protract the mystery, is at length huddled up so hastily that, for our parts, we cannot say we are able to comprehend more of the motives of this principle personage then that he was a mad man, and acted like one—an easy and summary mode of settling all difficulties. As for the hurry and military bustle of the conclusion, it is only worthy of the farce of the Miller and his Men, or any other modern melodrama, ending with a front crowded with soldiers and scene-shifters, and a back scene in a state of conflagration.

Again, Scott is not wrong in his assessment.

(There is a fascinating edited volume waiting to be created: Anonymous reviews written by the author of the book.)

As noted above, it is truly strange to me that Scott is so much out of favor. His best books are still in print with professional publishers. But, as far as I can tell, the only editions of The Black Dwarf in print right now are the fly-by-night print-on-demand versions in which you roll the dice and hope they are actually proofread and not sloppy OCR scans of a library book. Why doesn’t, say, Oxford World Classics or Penguin have the complete works of Scott? Obviously they don’t think there is a demand for it. And so, unfortunately, Dear Reader if you want to read the tale of a Misanthropic Scottish Dwarf, unless your mother once gave you a beautiful late 19^th century set of the complete works of Scott, your best bet is a free Kindle version.

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Solzhenitsyn and Two-Face

“Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us it oscillates with the years. And even within the hearts overwhelmed with evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains…an unuprooted small corner of evil.”

Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

If Solzhenitsyn is right, and he is, then there is perhaps no greater representative of humanity than Two-Face, the DC Villain. (Yes I hear your groans, Dear Reader. Bear with me for a moment; perhaps Solzhenitsyn and Two-Face really do belong in the same discussion. Maybe, just maybe Great Books (The Gulag Archipelago) and ComicBooks, (Two-Face: A Celebration of 75 Years) illuminate one another.)

In the most common origin story, Two-Face began life as crusading District Attorney Harvey Dent. While prosecuting a trial of a notorious mob boss, acid is flung at Dent, burning the left half of his face. His personality then splits; one part good and one part evil. In a 1957 story, plastic surgery repairs Dent’s face, but, alas, it gets burned again in exactly the same way (funny coincidence that), prompting the Omniscient Comic Book Narrator Voice to intone, “And it becomes clear that more than Dent’s face has been re-injured! The scar reaches right through to his brain!” Omniscient Comic Book Narrator meet Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

The punchline in this here rumination is that we are all Two-Face. But first the immediate objection: Two-Face has another notable quirk. He makes all his decisions based on the flip of a coin. Faced with a choice, the coin flips, and Heads he does Good, Tails he does Evil. You (probably) don’t do that.

Before you start thinking how much superior you are to Two-Face, ask yourself this: How do you decide to do the evil things you do? You aren’t perfect. Sometimes you do things that you think were wrong. There isn’t even a need for a universal moral code to make this point; pick whatever moral code you personally have for yourself. Sometimes, maybe often, maybe not so often, you do things that violate your own moral code. Why?

Now that you have thought about why you do immoral things, ask yourself this: is it better to do evil by choice or by chance? You choose to do things you think are wrong. Two-Face lets the coin decide for him whether to do something wrong. Which is morally worse?

You and Two-Face are both frequently faced with decision to make, and you both have to decide whether to do Good or Evil. Two-Face will choose Evil half the time, which is (hopefully) more often than you chose to do Evil. But if Two-Face used a 20 sided die and only did evil when a 1 comes up, does that make him any better? If you only do evil 1% of the time, does that make you better?

Like Solzhenitsyn said, the line separating good and evil runs right through your heart. You may like to think of yourself as a good person and all those other people out there as the evil people, but no matter how good you are, there is that evil part of your heart and no matter how evil those others are, there is that good part in their hearts. You are Two-Face. So are They.

At least Two-Face lets a coin decide if he will be evil. You just do evil voluntarily.

How happy are you that you are choosing whether to do good or evil? In a rather clever story from 2008 (“Two-Face Too”), you are put in charge of the ending. There are two possible panels to end the tale. One is the “they lived happily ever after” ending. The other ends with a gunshot and blood and death. Which is the right ending for the story? The story is being told by the Joker; he tells you to flip a coin to find out what happens. Heads, the happy ending. Tails, not so happy.

Take the thought experiment seriously for at least a moment. Do you get to decide how the story ends? Or does the story really only end when you flip a coin and find out the ending? Are you more satisfied with a story where you get to choose the ending or where the ending is decided for you? Note that most stories have an ending decided for you by an author. That never bothered you. Are you satisfied with an ending decided by a coin flip? Or would you rather be in charge of deciding the ending?

That part of you that wants to do evil, to do wrong, to do that thing that is really, honestly, truly just a little tiny bit immoral, what determines when that part of you gets to indulge itself? Story after story, you think how terrible Two-Face is because he flips a coin and does evil half the time. Story after story, you feel a righteous vindication that you are not going around flipping a coin and doing evil. Real day after real day, you just decide on your own with no coin involved to do the wrong thing. Story after story, Two-Face reminds you that you have that evil part in you.

Deep theological waters here. Alas, Batman is not there to save you from your evil ways. Batman is fiction. Kinda makes you wish there was a real savior to save you from yourself, doesn’t it?

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How to Have a Great Conversation

Conversation is underappreciated.

When you think about collegiate learning environments, you instantly imagine the lecture hall or the seminar room. That seems like the place where learning is supposed to happen. A professor pontificates or asks “discussion questions.” (“Discussion questions” is all too often an inaccurate term; most “discussion questions” do not lead to “discussion.”) Students absorb information. Maybe they read some books too.

But, that image of learning leaves out conversation, the underappreciated art of the rambling, wide-ranging, topic-jumping foray into the life of the mind.

In 1890, William James’ two volume Principles of Psychology was one of the earliest textbooks in the relatively new field. It was, not surprising given the era and the author, a much more opinionated book than the pabulum which now appropriates the sobriquet “textbook.” Over time, James’ volumes faded from use as the field of psychology advanced.

James’ comments on the nature of conversation, however, deserve to be forever inscribed on the halls of the Academy.

When two minds of a high order, interested in kindred subjects, come together, their conversation is chiefly remarkable for the summariness of its allusions and the rapidity of its transitions. Before one of them is half through a sentence the other knows his meaning and replies. Such genial play with such massive materials, such an easy flashing of light over far perspectives, such careless indifference to the dust and apparatus that ordinarily surround the subject and seem to pertain to its essence, make these conversations seem true feasts for gods to a listener who is educated enough to follow them at all. His mental lungs breathe more deeply, in an atmosphere more broad and vast than is their wont. On the other hand, the excessive explicitness and short-windedness of an ordinary man are as wonderful as they are tedious to the man of genius. But we need not go as far as the ways of genius. Ordinary social intercourse will do. There the charm of conversation is in direct proportion to the possibility of abridgment and elision, and in inverse ratio to the need of explicit statement. With old friends a word stands for a whole story or set of opinions. With new-comers everything must be gone over in detail. Some persons have a real mania for completeness, they must express every step. They are the most intolerable of companions, and although their mental energy may in its way be great, they always strike us as weak and second-rate. In short, the essence of plebeianism, that which separates vulgarity from aristocracy, is perhaps less a defect than an excess, the constant need to animadvert upon matters which for the aristocratic temperament do not exist.

I first read that passage decades ago and it made a huge impression on me. Then I forgot where I read it. I have spent quite a bit of time over the last two decades trying to find that passage. I knew it was somewhere in James, and I thought it was in the Principles of Psychology, but since I had not read James’ work, I obviously read it in some other book. I didn’t know where to find it in James and reading two volumes of William James on Psychology never appealed to me enough to make it worth reading the whole thing looking for that passage. Then, for a paper I just agreed to write, I pulled Jacques Barzun’s The House of Intellect off the shelf to reread it, and much to my shock, there, in chapter 3, was the passage. Amusingly, I had no notation next to the passage indicating that I thought it was of particular interest; apparently when reading the book last time, I had no idea that this passage would form such a lasting impression. One of the many serendipitous joys of a reading life. (By the way, the passage is in volume two at the end of chapter 22, “Reasoning”.)

James is absolutely correct that the best conversations are described thus: “Such genial play with such massive materials, such an easy flashing of light over far perspectives, such careless indifference to the dust and apparatus that ordinarily surround the subject and seem to pertain to its essence, make these conversations seem true feasts for gods to a listener who is educated enough to follow them at all.” That is a perfect conversation. Start with a topic and then just let the conversation flash light over far perspectives, totally indifferent to where the conversation started or where it might be heading. One can learn a lot in a conversation like that. A whole lot.

This is also why my reading groups have a feature which always surprises first time participants. We read a book and then get together for two hours to discuss it. Sooner or later, usually sooner, someone will say something about the book which will spontaneously generate a discussion about a topic other than the book itself. That inevitably leads to another topic which is not exactly the book. Eventually a student who has never seen this happen before will get nervous and apologize that the discussion is not about the book. I laugh and note that the conversation is most certainly about the book because the conversation arose from the book and generating interesting conversations is exactly what a good book does. Or as James would put it, a good conversation about a book shows a “careless indifference to the dust and apparatus that ordinarily surround the subject and seem to pertain to its essence.” If the book was great and the conversation was great, why would anyone complain? Does anyone really believe that if we put a two-hour conversation about a Great Book in a straightjacket, we will enjoy the conversation more, learn more, or do anything more than scratch the surface of book? Great Books can generate multitudes of Great Conversations. Let them breathe the fresh air of unrestricted conversation.

The passage from James also points to another feature of a great conversation, one upon which there is a set of people who curiously frown. Interruptions. In a great conversation, “Before one of them is half through a sentence the other knows his meaning and replies.” It is indeed a massive relief in a conversation never to have to actually complete the articulation of a thought before your conversation partner commences the next thought. In such a conversation, one never has to spend time thinking of what to say. One thought flows into the next immediately as new themes are introduced and flashes of insight occur. Subjects change direction on a dime as topic A morphs into topic B without anyone noticing the change. There is something magical about the moment when someone suddenly wonders how the current topic came up when the starting topic seems so far away.

Practice the art of Great Conversation, full of half-formed thoughts, partially expressed, full of interruptions leading on tangents which turn into new subjects with even more half-formed thoughts and occasions for assorted references to all those things in your and your conversation partners’ cabinets of intellectual curiosities.

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Do We Need Shane?

“He was the man who rode into our little valley out of the heart of the great glowing West and when his work was done rode back when he had come and he was Shane.”

In the category of final sentences which perfectly capture a book, that one is about as good as it gets.

The book is (presumably rather obviously) Shane by Jack Schaefer. You know it is good because the Library of America included it in their volume The Western: Four Classic Novels of the 1940s and 1950s.

Want another sign of how good it is? I read it in a reading group with a set of students; they thoroughly enjoyed it. Who knew the Western still had that something that appeals?

The tale is told by Bob, a young boy living with his parents, Joe and Marian Starrett. Everyone in the book towers over Bob; everything and everyone in this story is larger than life. Joe and Marian are quintessential salt of the earth types, the sort of people around whom you build a civilization. You want Joe and Marian Starrett living in your town, or even better, in your family. Hard-working, determined, and good. They know right from wrong, that nothing comes for free, and that showing kindness to a stranger is just a thing you do.

But, Joe and Marian are no match for Evil. Luke Fletcher is Evil; a rancher who is perfectly willing to resort to cruel ways to drive the good and noble settlers away from his territory. You want Joe and Marian to win, but you know that they are no match for the Fletchers of this world. You want good to triumph, but good just is not as strong as evil.

Enter Shane, literally riding into the story from nowhere. (The original title of the story: Rider from Nowhere.) No background, no history, no origin story. He is just there one day. In the Clint Eastwood movie Pale Rider, a rather loose retelling of Shane, the man form nowhere is a literal ghost, the pale rider from Revelation. Shane is a real man but Eastwood captured an ineffable quality of Shane; he is real and unreal at the same time.

By the end of the first chapter of the novel, we get this description of Shane:

“I like him.” Mother’s voice was serious. “He’s so nice and polite and sort of gentle. Not like most men I’ve met out here. But there’s something about him. Something underneath the gentleness…Something…” Her voice trailed away.
“Mysterious?” suggested father.
“Yes, of course. Mysterious. But more than that. Dangerous.”
“He’s dangerous all right.” Father said it in a musing way. Then he chuckled. “But not to us, my dear.” And then he said what seemed to be a curious thing. “In fact, I don’t think you ever had a safer man in your house.”

There we have the central tension of the novel. To build civilization on the frontier, do we need Shane, the most dangerous and the most safe man you could ever find? We like to think that the Joes and Marians are the foundation of civil society. We like to think that all Bob needs to grow up in a civilized world is to have it filled with Joes and Marians. But what if the forces of anarchy are more powerful than the forces of civilization?

Do we need Shane? Shane will never be a part of civilization. He rides in, beats back evil, and rides out. He doesn’t stay to reap the rewards of gratitude. You know he will never settle down with a wife and child of his own; he is forever on the move, arriving with the sunrise, doing what needs to be done, and riding off into the sunset. What is the reward to Shane for doing what he does? What motivates someone like Shane? We have absolutely no idea. He has his code; he does what is right; he moves on.

Do we need Shane? We obviously need Joe and Marian. We want Bob raised by Joe and Marian, not by Shane. We want Bob to grow up to be like his parents. Bob is fascinated, as only a child can be, with the idea of Shane. The ending of the Alan Ladd move version nails this fact with Bob screaming into the vast open lands at the back of Shane riding into the distance, “Shane, come back.” (As an aside, the comparable scene in Eastwood’s Pale Rider is painful beyond belief. Eastwood really whiffed there.) Yet despite the allure of Shane to Bob, Joe, Marian and the Reader, we all know that Shane has to ride on, that civilization is not built on the back of Shane.

Do we need Shane? Is it important to raise up a new generation of Shanes? Should we teach children that while we want most of them to grow up to be Joe and Marian, we hope a few of them become Shane? Do we teach them to ride through the land, taking on the tasks of beating back the forces of anarchy and evil and then riding on without waiting for gratitude or rewards, to never settle down and enjoy the benefits of what has been done? Do we need to train up people to be dangerous to evil, but completely safe to the good? How do we raise people to be like that?

Do we need Shane? Oddly, we probably do. But I cannot see any way to guarantee that Shane will be there when he is needed. Maybe that is the point. When the need arises, Shane will arrive. Or at least we hope that Shane will arrive. The Shanes of the world do not announce their existence or even their arrival. They don’t stick around afterwards for the party. Maybe you never even notice they were there.

Curiously, now that I am writing this, it reminds me of this:

“And when they bring you before the synagogues and the rulers and the authorities, do not be anxious about how you should defend yourself or what you should say, for the Holy Spirit will teach you in that very hour what you ought to say.” (ESV)

The Holy Spirit as Shane. Hmm. “’He’s dangerous all right.’ Father said it in a musing way. Then he chuckled. ‘But not to us, my dear.’ And then he said what seemed to be a curious thing. ‘In fact, I don’t think you ever had a safer man in your house.’” Hmm. I guess we do need Shane.

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Looking at Life Off Kilter

“It was the living who ignored the strange and wonderful, because it was too full of the boring and mundane. But it was strange.”

Windle Poons had that realization while he was munching on celery in the dark lying in his coffin shortly after his burial.

Let’s back up a bit. Reaper Man, by Terry Pratchett, beings with Death being fired from his job. Apparently Death had developed too much of a personality (he is one of the most amusing characters in Discworld, after all), so the Powers That Be decide to forcibly retire him, both from his job and his existence. But, alas, you don’t just replace Death with any old person, so it takes some time for a new Death to appear. What happens in the meantime?

The hour glass for the old wizard Windle Poon’s life runs out during the interregnum. But, if there is no Death, what happens when you die? Fortunately, you don’t have to experiment yourself; it turns out you become something not quite like a zombie, not really dead, but also not really undead, just sort of in between dead and undead.

There is one huge advantage to this state (well besides the opportunity to munch on celery in your coffin): you notice things.

And it suddenly dawned on the late Windle Poons that there was no such thing as somebody else’s problem, and that just when you thought the world had pushed you aside it turned out to be full of strangeness. He knew from experience that the living never found out half of what was really happening, because they were too busy being the living. The onlooker sees most of the game, he told himself.

There is much wisdom in Windle’s post-life pre-death reflections. Life is indeed strange, but we the living have a hard time noticing it because we are too busy with the mundane details of living.

Living does involve a lot of mundane things. Eating, Sleeping, Bathing, Dressing, and Tearing Unwanted Plants out of the Ground. Much like a Left Guard or a Third Basemen, when you are in the Game of Life, you have a hard the seeing the whole game. Marching along in our tiny little ruts in life, we do indeed have a hard time seeing how our little ruts fit into the larger traffic system.

Thoreau screamed at you about the life of quiet desperation you are leading. He wants you to break our patterns. Go life in a cabin in the woods for a couple of years. Or whatever. Just get out of your rut. You read Thoreau and sigh, “That seems a tad bit extreme.”

Terry Pratchett has a simpler solution. Just step outside yourself and notice that life is strange and wonderful. For a moment, look past all the boring and mundane things you have to do today, and look around until you notice something really, really odd. Think about that oddity for a bit. Then, laugh.

This is exactly what Pratchett does in every one of the Discworld novels. Take some really boring part of life or some well-known story, and turn it ever so slightly until it is not quite on its normal axis and then look at it afresh. It will look a bit funny when you do that.

Consider: have you ever really thought about shopping carts? Have you ever noticed how they are constantly trying to escape the buildings in which they are housed, rushing out to vehicular traffic hubs perhaps in the vague hope that maybe they will be liberated by a passing vehicle or pedestrian? Or maybe some of them are hoping to be struck by a vehicle so they can end their miserable lives. Have you ever realized that the Store sends out humans to round up the escaped shopping carts and connect them in a chain gang and forcibly move them back into slavery inside the Store where they will be eternally pushed around by people who never give a moment’s thought to the welfare of the shopping cart? Pratchett noticed that. Think about that the next time you are in a Store. Imagine your shopping cart is sentient. Really, try it out. What is the harm in imagining this? Are you afraid you might laugh?

Life doesn’t have to be boring and mundane. No matter what you are doing today, you can always look at it a bit off kilter and laugh. It is a much better way to go through life, after all. And it may even have Divine Sanction. As Chesterton notes in Orthodoxy:

And as I close this chaotic volume I open again the strange small book from which all Christianity came; and I am again haunted by a kind of confirmation. The tremendous figure which fills the Gospels towers in this respect, as in every other, above all the thinkers who ever thought themselves tall. His pathos was natural, almost casual. The Stoics, ancient and modern, were proud of concealing their tears. He never concealed His tears; He showed them plainly on His open face at any daily sight, such as the far sight of His native city. Yet He concealed something. Solemn supermen and imperial diplomatists are proud of restraining their anger. He never restrained His anger. He flung furniture down the front steps of the Temple, and asked men how they expected to escape the damnation of Hell. Yet He restrained something. I say it with reverence; there was in that shattering personality a thread that must be called shyness. There was something that He hid from all men when He went up a mountain to pray. There was something that He covered constantly by abrupt silence or impetuous isolation. There was some one thing that was too great for God to show us when He walked upon our earth; and I have sometimes fancied that it was His mirth.

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Commerce and Culture

Consider the Introduction to Economics class. One of the intriguing challenges in teaching that class is that you can neatly divide the room into two camps. These two sets of students are not only taking the course for very different reasons, they are rather suspicions of the other group, wondering a bit why those others are even in college at all.

The first group is heading for an MBA and a career in “business.” (One of my many amusements is pointing out to such students that all jobs, by definition, are in business.) They are taking Introduction to Economics because they are sure it is the first step in unlocking the mysteries of the business world, keys which they need to have in order to land that first job which will enable them to get that MBA and amass much wealth.

The second group is dutiful fulfilling the need to take some social science distribution class, and either because it fit into their schedule or because of parental pressure to take a “useful” class like economics, they wander into the introductory course. (Another one of my amusements is pointing out to students that introduction to economics, as a part of the liberal arts, is, by definition, useless.) These students know there is a moral stench surrounding capitalism and hence economics, and have braced themselves to make sure they are not duped into thinking markets might serve a useful societal function.

Both types of students are a joy to teach. It is the fact that they do not understand one another than interests me.

I was recently at a conference at the Acton Institute, and one of the readings was a chapter from William Ropke’s book, A Humane Economy. The book was first published in 1960. One might think a few things have changed in the last sixty years, but in this respect, it was eerily contemporary.

Ropke is concerned that few people understand the cultural aspects of the economic realm. “The feeling for the meaning and dignity of one’s profession and for the place of work in society, whatever work it be, is today lost to a shockingly large number of people.” We all know work is important to pay the bills, but how often do we talk about the place of work in a society? Indeed, who even talks about such things? As Ropke notes:

This is the place, too, to note that the hard-boiled business world, which ignores such questions or leaves them, with contempt, to the “unbusinesslike” intellectuals, and these same intellectuals’ distrust of the business world match and mutually exacerbate each other. If the business world loses its contact with culture and the intellectuals resentfully keep their distance from economic matters, then the two spheres become irretrievably alienated from each other. We can observe this in America in the anti-intellectualism of wide circles of businessman and the anti-capitalism of equally wide circles of intellectuals.

That is a perfect description of my Introduction to Economics classes. One set of students needs to be persuaded that that thinking about economics is not simply thinking about how to get a job on Wall Street. The other set of students needs to be persuaded that thinking about economics is not just marshaling a list of critiques of capitalism.

This is more than simply an interesting pedagogical challenge, however. It is very much a cultural challenge in an age of specialization. Ropke was very concerned that if the two segments of society remained alienated from one another, the results would inevitably be “a vicious circle of mutually intensifying resentment which threatens to end up in catastrophe.”

Is there a solution? Ropke has one:

One has to break out of this vicious circle by making the world of the mind as respectable to the business world as, conversely, the business world to the world of the mind.

Ropke is certainly right. On the one side, the world of commerce is littered with philistines, who have zero appreciation for the cultural triumphs that allowed the creation of the economy in which they participate. If your only experience with Shakespeare was your 10^th grade English class, your only experience with Mozart was background music in a commercial, your only experience with Michelangelo was kitschy parodies, then your world is truly impoverished no matter how large your bank account is. Any rising business leader would benefit immensely from reading Macbeth or All the King’s Men and reflecting on the lessons therein. The trick is finding a way to convince people that they will enjoy doing this.

On the other side, the disdain for economics among the cultural mandarins is truly astonishing. Every time I hear a tenured faculty member making a six figure salary arguing about the evils of a capitalist system, I truly wonder if they have ever paused to wonder why they have such a high salary and a nice house and a job in which they can bite the hand that feeds them without once worrying about losing their job. The trick is finding a way to convince people that they should pause and think about such questions.

Thinking about both the world of commerce and the world of culture is not as odd as many people believe it to be. After all, Adam Smith wrote two books in his life, one exploring the wealth of nations and one exploring moral sentiments. He certainly did not think of these things as belonging to two different realms of thought.

There is one way that things have changed a bit since Ropke penned A Human Economy. The warring camps which view each other with intensifying resentment have themselves split into many factions. An interesting thought experiment: what is the book or movie or TV show or cultural event which spans the largest number of these groups?

The most obvious answer would be the most watched television event every year: the Super Bowl. What percentage of the American population watches the most watched event of the year? Less than one-third. Think about that for a moment. There is no show or event on television which even half of Americans watch. The highest grossing movie of the 21^st century (Avengers: Endgame) was seen by about 10% of Americans. The bestselling book (the first Harry Potter, obviously) has only been read by about a third of American children. And, believe it or not, less than a third of Americans read this here blog.

So, while you may think there are things that unite people across the spectrum, that is only because you live in a small little bubble. No matter what you read or watch, over two-thirds of Americans have not read or watched that. So, the problem has gone far beyond the fact that those in the world of commerce and those in the world of culture have no-overlapping interests, even within those worlds there are many subgroups with non-overlapping knowledge and belief sets.

Is this a new phenomenon? Not even remotely. What percentage of Elizabethan England do you suppose saw a Shakespeare play? What percentage of late 18^th century France had read Voltaire? Societies have always been broken up into small subgroups.

So, what is new? The vitriol? Again, the fact that one tribe hated another tribe is built into the fabric of human history.

I think what concerns Ropke, and what concerns us today, is not the existence of these mutually exclusive groups, but rather that those at the highest levels of a society are locked in “a vicious circle of mutually intensifying resentment.” It is one thing when the Hatfields do not like the McCoys, and quite another thing when the upper echelons of commerce and the cultural elites have utter disdain for one another. And when the resentment is mutually intensifying, sooner or later soothing must give.

What can fix this? Ropke’s solution is, to say the least, impressively simple:

The chain reaction between the business world’s distrust of intellectuals and the intellectuals’ retaliating resentment should be broken by both sides: the intellectuals should abandon untenable ideologies and theories, and the “capitalists” should adopt a philosophy which, while rendering unto the market the things that belong to the market, also renders unto the spirit what belongs to it. Both movements together should merge into a new humanism in which the market and the spirit are reconciled in common service to the highest values.

Let us all imagine the halcyon days of 1960 when such a statement would not cause an amused smile.

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