Election Got You Down? Read Johnson

Samuel Johnson

By the end of today in the United States, some will be celebrating and others will be rending their garments and gnashing their teeth. While I am not one to underestimate the significant of elections—I think voting is one of a citizen’s most important responsibilities—I also caution everyone not to become (in the words of Alexander Pope) “too soon dejected [or] too soon elate.” Let us not forecast either a new millenium or an apocalypse. As the great 18^th century essayist Samuel Johnson instructs us, “Let us cease to consider what, perhaps, may never happen.”

The advice comes from one of the wisest and most reasonable works that I know. In The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, Johnson shows the folly of getting either too up or too down. Prince Rasselas and his sister Nekayah journey the world seeking for a way of life that will guarantee happiness, only to find flaws in every option. The book ends with a chapter entitled “The Conclusion, in which Nothing Is Concluded.” Johnson’s point is that we will always be seeking for something different than we have and we will always be dissatisfied. The real question is how we are to deal with this eternal human condition.

In one passage, Rasselas and his sister Nekayah are discussing the challenges a country faces. Nekayah talks about the threat of calamities that can befall us, to which Rasselas cautions that we must stop imagining worst-case scenarios. “I cannot bear that querulous eloquence,” he says, “which threatens every city with a siege like that of Jerusalem, that makes famine attend on every flight of locusts, and suspends pestilence on the wing of every blast that issues from the south.”

Even when disasters occur, he continues, most are unaffected:

On necessary and inevitable evils, which overwhelm kingdoms at once, all disputation is vain: when they happen they must be endured. But it is evident, that these bursts of universal distress are more dreaded than felt: thousands and ten thousands flourish in youth, and wither in age, without the knowledge of any other than domestic evils, and share the same pleasures and vexations whether their kings are mild or cruel, whether the armies of their country pursue their enemies, or retreat before them. While courts are disturbed with intestine competitions, and ambassadors are negotiating in foreign countries, the smith still plies his anvil, and the husbandman drives his plow forward; the necessaries of life are required and obtained, and the successive business of the seasons continues to make its wonted revolutions.

Rasselas counsels us to instead focus on the life before us:

Let us cease to consider what, perhaps, may never happen, and what, when it shall happen, will laugh at human speculation. We will not endeavor to modify the motions of the elements, or to fix the destiny of kingdoms. It is our business to consider what beings like us may perform; each laboring for his own happiness, by promoting within his circle, however narrow, the happiness of others.

In Saturday’s “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear,” comedian John Stewart said something similar. As reported by Slate, in a concluding talk Stewart took off his “clown nose” and engaged in what he called a “moment for some sincerity.” Here is Slate’s account:

He admitted not knowing what exactly the rally was about. “Some of you see it as a clarion call for action. Some of you more ironic cats see it as a ‘clarion call’ for ‘action.’ ” He could only speak to his own intent, he said, which was to show that civil discourse and cooperation are possible. “We work together to get things done every day,” he said. Most people are not political animals—they “don’t live solely as Democrats or Republicans or liberals or conservatives. Most of them [are] just a little late for something they have to do.” Likewise, things are not as bad as they seem. “We live in hard times, not End Times.” But you wouldn’t know it from the way the media portrays politics. “The perpetual pundit conflicterator did not cause our problems, but its existence makes solving them that much harder.” Individuals may not physically be able to restrain Glenn Beck from going to work. But they can change the channel, Stewart said.

Stewart said the process of common people working together should provide a model for the political system.

As for fixing the political process, he compared problem solving with cars merging lanes to squeeze through a tunnel. “They do it, concession by concession. … There will be days of darkness. And sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel isn’t the promised land. Sometimes it’s New Jersey.”

Neither Stewart nor Johnson are advocating that we ignore national and world politics. Quite the contrary. But both believe also in maintaining a balanced perspective.