There
is a remarkable passage in Nietzsche’s Jenseits (26), which helps me
raise one most interesting point, concerning my professional and personal
perceptions of America before and after that fateful day of March 17th,
1981. Here it is:
“Every choice human being strives for a citadel and a secrecy,
where he is saved from the crowd, the many, the great majority-- where he may
forget ‘men who are the rule,’ being their exception-- excepting only the one
case, in which he is pushed straight to [them] as a seeker after knowledge in
the great and exceptional sense. [Then, one day, as he remains proudly hidden
in his citadel, he would say to himself] ‘The devil take my good taste but the
rule is more interesting than the exception, than myself, the exception!’ And
he would go down and above all, he would go inside… The long and serious study
of the average man… constitutes a necessary part of every philosopher’s
life-history perhaps the most disagreeable, odious, and disappointing part. If
he is fortunate… he will encounter suitable shortcuts and helps for his task; I
mean so-called cynics who simply recognize the animal, the commonplace, the
rule in themselves... Cynicism is the only one form in which base souls
approach honesty and the higher man must listen closely… and congratulate
himself...” (Jenseits:
26)
My
big point in this connection is that only exceptions can be successfully
studied from afar, because they stand out so prominently, that they can be
observed from a distance with very little distortion of the image. The rule on
the other hand can be studied only at ground zero, and because of the great
difficulties, or even the impossibility of studying it from a distance in
certain critically important cases, the most commonplace rule becomes vastly
more challenging and instructive than any exceptions.
As
a student of America in Russia, I did all my learning from the exceptions, and
very seldom from the rule. During the 1973-1974 trip to the United States,
which “enriched” me with the distinction of having visited twenty-two cities, I
never really profited from that “distinction,” as the position of a Soviet
official in this country (the United States) had to be necessarily surrounded
by an iridescent bubble of artificiality, which was not only non-edifying in
any sort of way, but even plainly misleading, as the artificiality of the
bubble prevented one even from a critical reassessment of the familiar
exceptions at close range, to say nothing of the totally unfamiliar rule.
Alas,
it took some doing to break the bubble and reach for the rule, at ground zero.
Nietzsche’s hero goes down as his first step. I did no such thing. Like
a suicidal fish, leaping out of the water, not upwards, to be able to get back
in its pool, when the journey was done, but way across, and over the bank, on a
kamikaze trip of no return, I left my accustomed citadel not to go up
or down, for the love of knowledge, but because there was no
other direction for me than sideways, and over the edge. And so it happened,
and I ended up with much more than I had bargained for, in terms of knowledge,
and not until I started writing this book, did I even know what to do with it
all!
And
now, about that cynicism of the “rule.” As I was still clouded in the fumes of
my illusion that I would be able to reeducate America about certain basic
things, for the greater glory of all humanity, I received an enlightening
lesson in cynicism from a certain Leon Coleman, a member of the Marin
Republican Council in California, who told me back in 1987 in no uncertain
terms that nobody gave a damn about reeducation, because nobody gave a damn
about education in the first place. All America cared about, he said, were the
sweet trappings of success, and in order to be successful, everybody in America
was ready any time of day and night to be a “prostitute” (he did not introduce
this word, I did, in the context of telling him that I was not one of those),
which had apparently become a sine qua
non of being successful… Unless one was born filthy rich, he went on, it
was the only way, and then, and only then, could you do whatever you wanted to
do. And then, and only then, would other people agree to listen to you,
because, only being successful, can one make people interested in your person,
and in hearing from you…
Now,
was this really a valuable lesson in knowledge from a bona fide cynic?
Say, would Odin have given his eye for this… and why not? Who would have
thought that our best education could be a bane, instead of a boon? And, well,
it is, and spectacularly so, in this particular case. Because, as we pride
ourselves in our learning, we learn predominantly about the exceptions, whereas
the rule remains despised and neglected in the process, and, unless we abandon
our high ground, our ivory citadel in the clouds, and go down into the mire and
clay, where the rule rules, we shall remain professorial ignoramuses,
surrounded by our splendid gallery of exceptions, which completely obscure from
our noble view the ordinary realities of the ordinary world’s existence.
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