I couldn't just absorb the moment, though I wanted to sit there and do just that. I had to think quickly, and gratefully, I did. But the reason I had to do so is still pretty astonishing.
Luckily for someone who loves books, I live one block from probably the best and most attended independent bookstore in all of Milwaukee--Boswell Books. Like so many other businesses, it had to crawl through Covid, another ship tottering without help on the horizon. But it stayed afloat.
One of the surest signs of this is that, after months of online presentations, it has gotten back to the habit of inviting authors for live conversations about their work. Another one of those arrived the other night, when a Japanese-born professor, Shigehiro Oishi, came to hawk his work Life in Three Dimensions: How Curiosity, Exploration, and Experience Make a Fuller, Better Life. As far along in life as I now am, I've been through enough experiences to deep questions to myself: What makes a 'good' life? What constitutes 'happiness'? Is that even worth pursuing? Or is it something else that should spur us on?
Oishi is a professor of social psychology at the University of Chicago, one of those credentials that leaves you with one thought: Hooooo. Pretty sharp cookie. What he explored in his work, apparently, was what he called a "psychologically rich life"--one in which curiosity, a variety of experiences, and a sense of doing good for others keep one actively involved in the business of enjoyable living.
He has found, for instance, that the 19th Century Webster's Dictionary did not define "happiness" in terms of material success or the need to achieve something. That shading of definition has morphed into that direction in the next century, the one from which we've emerged. If you keep that in the front of your mind, he says, you find yourself in a trap from which you may not escape: the need to make more money and be more famous, regardless of how you may have already 'succeeded.'
What I thought, and still think he was trying to do, is to tell folks to keep it all in perspective--that other things, like helping people and maintaining a positive influence on them, are far better things to try to live for (which is a large part of what teaching as a calling and profession has always been about, whether paid for it or not). Such thinking isn't all that new, but perhaps his research is; I have to read the work now and discover what "evidence" he's developed.
All of this was kind of fun to listen to him extrapolate. His Japanese accent was evident, but not overwhelming; I kept thinking that a lecture from him might be fascinating to listen to. No doubt, either, that he must still be giving lectures; he didn't look much over 40. I got immersed into the discussion when a question occurred to me. I was the last one to be recognized before we broke up and allowed him to sell and autograph his book.
I wanted to know, in a way that might probably expose an obvious (slightly politically charged, too) answer, so I raised my hand and asked: Who had (has) the more fulfilling life--Elon Musk, or Albert Schweitzer? An admired humanitarian and religious philosopher, Schweitzer never seemed to focus on personal fame or profit, and helped thousands of west Africans through various diseases in the period between the world wars. Everyone knew who he was, I thought. That's why I used his name.
But Oishi thought he heard Schweitzer's name wrong, that I was referring to someone else. I repeated it. He gazed at the crowd and his wife in confusion. I thought it was an amazing moment: A professor at the University of Chicago, a social scientist to boot, didn't know who Albert Schweitzer was.
I gave him a path out of embarrassment. I quickly changed the comparison to Mohandas Gandhi, and he recovered. But you can't unring a bell. I wasn't trying to ambush him; I thought it was a softball question, something he was driving at all along. And, in fact, he riffed on how Musk is probably already caught in the success 'trap,' and someday that will occur to him.
That was fine, but--Wait a minute...I had indirectly brought up a new but tangentially applicable question: What makes people 'famous'? This very learned person had no clue about Albert Schweitzer and immediately knew Mohandas Gandhi, who lived roughly at the same time and had hopes for humanity, much like the (apparently) lesser-known but well-regarded Schweitzer. In fact, Schweitzer won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952 (You can look that up). Given that award, Schweitzer should be more highly regarded, right? Gandhi was nominated for the Peace Prize five times (which I bet is a record), but never won it (amazingly).
Was it because Schweitzer lived 90 years and died a natural death, while Gandhi was assassinated and lionized in literature and film? Was it because that, while Schweitzer was a controversial religious philosopher at one point, much like Gandhi, he didn't try to merge two intense religious sects together? Is that what makes the best example of active living? Is that what makes people more memorable?
Or, in a sendup of the future, is Schweitzer doomed to the shoebox of lesser-knowns, even though he doesn't deserve such a fate? Is that because he did his work on the perpetually forgotten continent, Africa, the wealth and vibrance of which has never been sufficiently recognized here because it prompts the follow-up question: Then how come we enslaved so many of its inhabitants and had to fight a bloody war to free them?
Should we give Oishi a break, though, seeing as how he understandably has a greater residence of memory in Japan? If you became a professor in Tokyo, wouldn't you forget about, or never be informed about, others who gained significant fame because Schweitzer had little to do with the U.S.? But Mohandas Gandhi had little to do with the U.S., either.
As we move through time, certain names resonate while others just as deserving somehow fade. Some are occasionally resurrected, and the rush to remember surges for a while. We build statues to them. We also leave statues up when they should be torn down. What is recognized as shining history is often the function of who is in a power position to voice that shining, or how well it is done. That is why, for instance, the 1619 Project has never really gotten off the ground, because some racial chauvinists insist on making a 1776 Project to obscure it. The overly dramatized "lost cause" of the Confederacy flicks at emotional attachment that is attractive to encourage perpetual victimization, yet not deserved. Some statues of Robert E. Lee remain up, while others come down.
We are somehow still confused by treason, attended to by those determined to shape memory. Perhaps a statue devoted to the rioters of January 6 (a date which no longer needs a specific year to underline its importance, like September 11) will also go up at Mar-A-Lago. Many of us cringe at that possibility, but its leader was elected president twice. He has already made it a point to direct schools not to include the teaching of diversity, equality, and inclusivity in their history courses.
Is it ridiculous to imagine a world that forgot that? It's possible in a world that has forgotten Albert Schweitzer.
Be well. Be careful. Resist, regardless of how futile it seems. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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