Monday 30 September 2024
“Why should I care about other people’s suffering… ones that I don’t even know? Why?” My student’s question astounded me; for a moment, I didn’t know how to respond. What do you say to such a withering, even cynical question like that one? Did the student see me as a “bleeding heart,” someone who easily and excessively sympathizes, a professor who needed to be reminded about the world’s heartlessness? Is being a “bleeding heart” wrong, when considering that being “hard hearted” may be worse?
I have long stopped trying to psycho-analyze students who ask such questions… what led them to ask such a question? What prior classroom or life experience instigated or maybe caused them to adopt and embrace such an attitude? What did I say or do to trigger them to ask that question? Asking and finding out the answers to such questions aren’t mine to know; however, there must be something in contemporary youth culture that might shed light on this pessimistic and grim attitude.
The student’s question wasn’t one I never heard or had to deal with before; no, I usually hear this kind of argument later in the semester. Not on the second day of my war class. For a moment, I felt discombobulated, unsure what to do next. Recovering from the stunning question, I reflected—I tried to be quick about it—however, I felt as though this might be “a make-or-break” moment. How and what I would say might determine whether the student chooses to remain in the course or simply drop out to another professor’s classroom. How and what I might say might serve as their teaching evaluation of me: “Is this professor any good?”
Starting on the second day of my war class, I begin preparing my students for the Paper One Assignment. For this academic task, students must choose one of the five primary texts we will study during the first six or seven weeks of class. Then they must choose one of seven short passages or quotes I have selected from other artists, journalists, or soldiers writing about war, using one of those quotes to write their papers.
On the second day of class, we always review these seven quotes. Students are to analyze the course primary text and use one of the seven “war quotes” as a “outside source” to help them to shed further light upon their chosen primary text. Some students approach this assignment as a “compare and contrast,” while other students use the “war quote” to help themselves to identify and clarify larger issues of war in their primary texts.
Before the students and I begin studying the course primary texts (Franscisco Goya’s Disasters of War; Leymah Roberta Gbowee’s Nobel Peace Prize speech; Irene Gut’s In My Hands; testimonies from survivors of the Srebrenica Genocide; and former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzeziński’s political essay, “After Srebrenica”)[1], we interpret the seven passages, the so-called “war quotes.” I call this in-class activity as “The War Quotes Exercise.”
Lately, I have been using the same “war quotes” for several semesters, weeding out ones that students never choose. Some “war quotes” are more popular than others; nonetheless, each of these seven “war quotes” are used by the students for their first major assignment. The “war quotes” typically consist of excerpts from: Tim O’Brien; Khaled Hosseini; Martha Gellhorn; Harper Lee; Judith Lewis Herman; William Tecumseh Sherman; and Susan Sontag.
The third “war quote” was a section from a Martha Gellhorn letter, as quoted from Gellhorn: A Twentieth Century Life (2003) by Caroline Moorehead. Gellhorn wrote:
War happens to people, one by one. That is really all I have to say and it seems to me I have been saying it forever. Unless they are immediate victims, the majority of mankind behaves as if war was an act of God which could not be prevented; or they behave as if war elsewhere was none of their business.
After I had recited the letter’s content, the student posed their question: “Why should I care about other people’s suffering… ones that I don’t even know?”
Indeed, why?
“What would the world look like if no one cared… if no one gave a shit?” I began. Yes, yes… I know… I shouldn’t curse in class, but I do… sometimes. Mentally, I started flipping through my mind’s Rolodex (an old-fashioned rotating paper card file device that lists business contacts) of titles of books, movies, paintings… everything and anything that could possibly buffer the student’s challenge and explain why they should be interested in the plight of others.
I thought of Primo Levi’s If This Is a Man (original Italian is Se questo è un uomo; and inexplicably retitled as Survival at Auschwitz in The United States), specifically the untitled poem’s last four lines that also is a part of Levi’s Preface. I chose not to recite them, and I choose not to quote them here because the words are too strong, too guilt-tripping in tone. If I had repeated Levi’s words, I think I would have shut down this student. I wanted the student to learn another perspective on the world, one not so bleak, fatalistic, or punishing as Levi sees in this poem.
“OK, but why?” the student countered, utterly unconvinced by my first rebuttal. “A tough one,” I thought to myself. I wanted to bring up Anna Politkovskaya, the slain Russian journalist who opposed Vladimir Putin; precisely, I wanted to recite “Prologue” from her A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya. The passage:
People call the newspaper and send letters with one and the same question: “Why are you writing about this? Why are you scaring us? Why do we need to know this? I’m sure this has to be done, for one simple reason: as contemporaries of this war, we will be held responsible for it. The classic Soviet excuse of not being there and not taking part in anything personally won’t work. So I want you to know the truth. Then you’ll be free of cynicism. And of the sticky swamp of racism that our society has been sliding into. And of having to make difficult decisions about who’s rights and who’s wrong in the Caucasus, and if there are only any real heroes there now. (26-27)
I didn’t. We are going to study Politkovskaya in October, during the anniversary of her murder; so, I saved it for later. I wanted to build up to Politkovskaya, not reveal all my playing cards right here, right now.
I did hint at Politkovskaya’s words; I think I was paraphrasing them when I said the following: “Why be like everyone else? I mean… if everyone else doesn’t care about people’s suffering… people who live on the other side of the world… why should you? Why should I? You’re not wrong, or you? It is safer not to get involved, right?” I paused. “Isn’t it easier to go with the flow? Like everyone else?” I paused. I was ad-libbing, not sure exactly where I was going with this line of thought, or if I were restating Politkovskaya’s sentiment.
“We like to flatter ourselves that we are good people. But… what makes us ‘good’ people? How do we really know we are ‘good’ people? Is compassion a ‘bad’ thing? “Is helping the less fortunate ‘wrong’? During times of peace, doing the ‘right’ thing doesn’t cost us much; however, doing that same ‘right’ thing during times of war might be the ‘wrong’ thing to do…. Doing the ‘right’ thing could get us killed. And doing the ‘wrong’ thing during times of war might actually be the ‘right’ thing to do. Upside-down ethics.” I paused, sensing that what I was saying probably was confusing, maybe contradictory.
“Why” they said, again. I felt as though I were being interrogated.
“We’re all going to die someday; we don’t know when, how, or even why… but we will die. We can, though, choose the manner in which we die… our sensibilities… our attitudes toward living… our beliefs shaping our actions… can… maybe… influence… guide us how we’re going to die.”
I paused, again recognizing that my ideas weren’t easy or clear ones. “How we die… doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do, regardless of whether I fail trying to accomplish it… is that ‘doomed heroism’?… regardless of whether I get punished for it. Some people are plagued by self-doubt… regret… why didn’t I do this or that when I had the chance… when they’re on their deathbeds. At that point, it’s too late, right? They knew they should have done the ‘right’ thing, but now they see they chose the ‘wrong’ thing.” I paused.
Silence.
“In about two weeks or so, we will be reading about the Righteous Gentiles, those individuals who risked their own lives… and in some cases risked their families, too… to save Jews during the Holocaust. Some of these people were caught by the Nazis… interrogated and tortured and sent to a camp… or simply killed on the spot. No questions. Nothing. They were caught hiding Jews from the Nazis. Were they right or wrong for caring about other people’s suffering? And sometimes, they didn’t even know the people they were aiding personally. Were they ‘wrong’ for caring?” I paused, wondering what to say next…. Of course, now it’s my turn to say: “Why?”
Absolute silence. I looked at the clock, stunned by how much time had gone by. This back-and-forth debate was intense. I was running out of time; I still needed to review the remaining four war quotes. Nonetheless, I didn’t want to stop. Was anything I said remotely affecting the inquisitive student?
“What about that kid you saw getting bullied in your high school hallways. What did you do? Look away? Pretending it wasn’t happening? Maybe you chuckled because you didn’t like that kid either? Maybe you wanted to help, but didn’t know how? Were you hoping someone else would intervene? Where’s that damned teacher?” I paused. “What if… you were that kid… the one getting bullied? What would you want to happen? Would you want others to get involved? Even just to distract the bully for a moment….” I paused, again, wondering if I now was guilt-tripping the student.
I didn’t know if I, too, was sounding more like Levi in his deservingly heavy-handed, shame-laced poem in his Preface in If This Is a Man, or if I was sounding more like Politkovskaya in her powerfully necessary guilt-tripping but redeeming Prologue in A Small Corner of Hell? Cynicism is a difficult problem to wrestle with and treat. I didn’t think that the student was trying to “entrap” me in an “ah ha” moment: “I got you, Professor… you naïve idealist!” Something else was going on here in the classroom.
No, I think they might have sensed in me a professor who didn’t shy away from such questions; after all, my war class should invite such questions like theirs to be reckoned with. Did the “foolosophers” they read in their previous humanities classes answer, ignore, or possibly confirm their suspicions about the seeming callousness of the world? Did reading Hume or some “realist” theorist—a political writer who insists that the world only is a battle of competing interests, interests larger than my student’s, thereby making them feel less invested in the world—intensify their intellectual (and possibly their existential) dilemma, rather than possibly rescuing them from the deep Abyss of political and social cynicism?
“One more thing… I need to say this, too.” I paused. “It’s a dog-eat-dog world. (Ugh, a damned cliché!) Survival of the fittest! It’s ‘me, myself, and I.’ I want that job, that promotion… I want to get ahead. You’re my competition. Get out of my way… We all see enough of it. We see how certain politicians and celebrities get away with things, which ordinary people would normally get punished for. Utterly shameless… egotists.” I paused, again. “I don’t blame you; I get why you might feel that way…. Why should anyone care about the suffering of other people, especially those who aren’t our families or friends. Maybe we should revisit this debate when we read Irene Gut’s memoir, a Righteous Gentile, who at great risk to her life, rescued several Jews from the Holocaust. Then we can ask your question again, and at that time, perhaps answer it: ‘Why should I care?’”
The student nodded. I wasn’t sure at all what their gesture meant.
No wonder I’m behind in my classes. I wish I had more time than the allotted 75 minutes, twice-a-week teaching schedule to address as fully as possible the dilemma of empathy. To me, now that I’m realizing it, that student’s question: “Why?” is the true theme of my war class. Has it always been the question, the true theme of my war class? Is the answer to their question also “why” I continue to teach this war class?
Another student suddenly and straightforwardly asks, “What’s justice?” Five minutes before the class ends, and this student poses that question! “Next class,” I blurt out, and I end the class meeting.
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[1] I rotate course primary texts or change up the order of appearance every semester. Over the years, I consistently use Goya and Gut in my war classes.