George Saunders on Faith & Reason

George Saunders' first short story collection was CivilWarLand in Bad Decline: Stories and a Novella (Random House, January, 1996).  Since then he has written Pastoralia, The Very Persistent Gappers of Frip, The Brief and Frightening Reign of Phil, and most recently In Persuasion Nation.

His work has also been published in The New Yorker, McSweeney’s, Harper's, and The New York Times Magazine.

Here, we asked him a few questions about the juxtaposition of Faith and Reason in today's modern world.  Mostly, he discusses falling boxes and deadly viruses.  But he has more than a few interesting points.



Did you grow up in a religious environment? Were your parents religious people?

I grew up (very) Catholic, on the south side of Chicago.  My parents were religious but in what I think of as a very Chicago way - we went to church every Sunday but they were never preachy about it.  What they were (are), is deeply moral.  Actions mattered to them.  They always placed lots of importance on how we treated others, emphasized how valuable it was to try and imagine someone else's experience, build bridges for people with whom you were having problems, etc.  There was a vast respect for a sense of humor and for being flexible and merciful, is how I would say it.


How does faith factor into your daily life?

Well, I think it makes sense to define our terms here.  If by ‘faith’ we mean a belief which persists in the face of proof to the contrary, then I think faith is approximately equal to illogic, or even superstition.  On the other hand, if by ‘faith’ we mean a belief that takes into account certain supra-logical factors -- intuition, feelings, etc – then that is another thing entirely. 

Personally, whenever I’ve felt an inclination to “have faith” – that is, to believe more than is indicated by the evidence – it has come out of some ego-need on my part.  That is, it has been a form of whipping myself up.  I’ve come to mistrust this feeling.  Why the desperation?  Wherefrom the need to answer all questions with so much certainty?

In general my feeling is, take as few leaps of faith as possible.  I believe in a few simple ideas, which I would characterize as Buddhist ideas:  Life is short and precious.  Our ability to discern the truth at any given moment is always limited; part of the process of discerning truth is to be cognizant of our own limitations in this quest.  Everything is impermanent.  Change is constant.  Human beings are not fixed entities, but constantly changing processes.  Our belief in our own autonomy, permanence, and fixed identities are delusional. 

Is this faith?  I don’t think so.  I’ve come to believe these things by reading and listening to people whose wisdom is evident in their kindness and in the things they say, and in the quality of their reason.  And then, to the extent that I’ve been able to live these beliefs, my life has gotten better and I have become a more competent person – by which I mean more adaptable, and kinder. 

So I’m not sure there’s much “faith” involved.  And the nature of the “reason” involved is complex.
 
In some of your stories, most recently I'm thinking of "CommComm," there are often characters who rely heavily on their faith and characters who rely heavily on reason, particularly faulty reason... and, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that the faithful ones (especially in "CommComm") come out better in the end than the ones who rely on reason...

I’m not sure I see it quite that way.  In that story, the difference between Rimney (who is an atheist with a sick wife) and Giff (a born-again Christian) is not so much about faith, but rather about adaptability.  Both men have, in the beginning of the story, a certain creed.  Giff’s is: The saving grace of my life is my Lord and personal savior, Jesus Christ.  Rimney’s is: I will protect my wife at all costs.  During the story, both of these creeds are called into question.  Giff, at the moment of his death, realizes that his creed is limited, and limiting; Rimney, at his moment of crisis, clings blindly to his creed, and murders Giff in the process. 

So to me, this story was sort of about fundamentalism – which I’d define as exactly this inability to change course, this discomfort with ambiguity.  In the end, contrary to what was expected, it turns out that Rimney, not Giff, was the fundamentalist.
 
Some of your recent New Yorker pieces deal in a sardonic, yet affable tone with the longstanding war in Iraq, particularly “Flooding the Zone: A New Approach To Global Diplomacy”. How does faith and reason fit into politically-charged, facetious writing?

I don’t see faith as necessarily opposed to reason.  I think faith, properly understood, constitutes a sort of leading edge of reason.  For example, I recently wrote a piece for GQ about this little boy in Nepal who supposedly was meditating for months on end without any food or water.  Reason tells us this is impossible.  But when I went to see him, I couldn’t see any possible way this scam was being conducted.  To the contrary, I saw a very poor community that had been converted to this belief after months of denial.  They had teased the kid, tried to get him to stop, etc etc, and had finally come to accept him as someone very special, doing something very amazing.  And then I spent the night out there and for various reasons, concluded that it was unlikely there was a systematic plan of sneaking him food in place.  In my heart, I feel pretty sure it’s not a scam – ie, that this kid has found a way to exist without food or water.  So, is this belief faith or reason?  I would say it is very reasonable; based on what I saw, I adjusted my hypothesis. 

The world, in other words, is bigger, always, than our ability to conceptualize it.  So therefore we need to be sensitive to some higher frequencies of meaning…to be systematically humble as we go around trying to understand the world. 

And the truth is that, although at the moment I happen to think he’s the real deal, I’m not excessively attached to this idea.  I think it’s true, but if tomorrow he comes out and admits the whole thing was a trick, that would be ok with me.  I would add the act of his confession to the whole package, and make the necessary adjustments. 
 
To me, this whole faith vs reason thing has been brought on by the actions and speech of religious fanatics – people who operate beyond the pale of what is traditionally allowed, or permitted, by ones’ faith.  My feeling is, let’s call it what it is: if anyone advocates murdering someone in the name of religion – or let’s go farther than that, and say that, if anyone advocates killing someone in the service of some concept, some idea, some ideal – that is simply wrong.  It’s criminal.  You’ll find no advanced, sophisticated, thoughtful, righteous thinker in any religion who will tell you anything but that killing is wrong, that killing is a very, very, bad, serious, and profound thing, and should be avoided at all costs. 

So anyone who justifies murder in the name of a so-called just cause – be it religion or patriotism, or even the prevention of future murders – is on morally thin ice.  And we should have no hesitation in calling this crime a crime.  That way madness lies. 

But what we should also avoid is the mindset that says:  You have committed a crime.  Therefore, any response is wholly justified.  This is fallacious.  No crime justifies suspension of morality.  That is the pisser, I guess: we have to be as kind as we can be and as compassionate as we can be, as measured as we can be, even in the face of someone who wants to kill us.  We won’t always succeed, but that is the ideal.  This, in my view, is the great failure of the “War on Terror;” the Bush administration has operated under the assumption that the crimes of 9/11 were so great, that they necessitate and allow the suspension of our system of justice.  Big mistake: it is just such a horrific exigency for which the system was designed, in order to protect us from committing, in the throes of passion, a new set of crimes.

Remember that whole Danish cartoon scandal around the Prophet Muhammad... would you say the angry and violent reaction by the Islamic community was a result of zealous faith or that the cartoonists are guilty of a lack of reason for not considering such a reaction?

I feel that we are getting a little constrained here by this faith vs. reason dichotomy.  I would say that 1) The whole scandal was aided and abetted by certain people (clerics) who exaggerated (and added to) the cartoons in question, then energetically publicized them in order to provoke the kind of violent reaction we saw AND 2) the initial appearance of the cartoons was a deliberate attempt by an historically reactionary newspaper to provoke exactly the kind of reaction they got, AND 3) no offense justifies murder or threats of murder, or mob violence, AND 4) freedom of expression is sacred, even for morons; AND 5) God is above offense.  God, whatever God is, is not afraid of us, or insulted by us, or insultable by us.  Only we are insultable.  We insult ourselves when we act out of aggression or anger instead of peacefulness and confidence.  We insult ourselves when we assume some other set of human being is beneath us, beneath dialogue, beneath compassion. 

Now the question becomes: Okay, you say that God is not insultable, but I disagree, and my religion disagrees, and therefore, I am insulted and, insulted, I am therefore entitled to be violent.  If you interfere with my violent reaction, you are insulting my religion. 

But here our minds are running away from us – who asked us, i.e., those of us in the U.S., to decide this question?  Some people wanted to riot, they rioted, some of them were killed by their own riot.  It was very sad.  We have to mind our own shops, in a sense.  Would I, personally, print a copy of the prophet Mohammed?  I have no newspaper, and have never wanted one.  Would I draw such a cartoon?  No, I have no talent for drawing.  Would I write a story about Mohammed?  If inclined, I would.  Would that story be insulting?  I think not.  I hope not.  Do I want to write a story like that at this moment?  I do not.  Do I have a problem?  Doesn’t appear so.

I am being a little silly here – but am trying to suggest that one of the curses of this media-rich world is that we all spend a little too much time thinking about, and getting incensed about, what are primarily projections, i.e., fantasies, often paranoid fantasies, about people far away, who we are imagining incompletely.  This makes us anxious, this makes us hostile toward the perceived Other. 

And finally – it is not quite true to characterize the “reaction of the Islamic community” as “angry and violent.”  Think of the millions of Muslims who did not react in this way.  Think, for example, of the scores of Muslims in the U.S. who did not react this way.  Who reacted this way?  Poor Muslims in the poorest countries, who had been riled up and misinformed by European clerics thousands of miles away, and by their own local leaders, who are only slightly less naïve than the rioters.  It is very important, in my view, to always remember that groups are made if individuals, and individuals are mutable, and can be persuaded. 

As human beings we have a very unique ability: the ability to do deeper in our thinking, in the direction of increased specificity.  We can start with a broad conceptual idea (rioting irrational Muslims) and go deeper (a group of rioters in a particular country – Pakistan say) and deeper (in a particular town – Karachi) and deeper (a group of men leaves their work as, say, vegetable vendors, caught up in the general frenzy) and deeper (one particular man, slightly pale – he has a fever, say) and then even beyond this individual, to the recognition that “he” is actually mutable – has changed many times over his life and will change many more times; he is convincible, his opinions can change, he is rioting for specific reasons, including his childhood, his fever, a quarrel he had with his wife, etc – and what is the nature of his “rioting?”  At the moment he is shouting.  But then his throat hurts, he pauses, thinks of returning to work, but the crowd is too great….

This is a great skill, a literary skill, a very hopeful skill.  It is what can save us from the despotism of the merely conceptual. 

As for the few individuals who are too far gone to be persuaded – those too angry, too obsessed with dogma, too full of hate – I think it is best to think of them as criminals, and unfortunates, but also as our brothers and sisters who have gone off the track.  They have to be stopped, and will not be stopped by warm looks etc – but maybe it would be profitable to think, really think, about how they got where they are, and how the younger versions of themselves, who have not yet gone off the track, can yet be saved. 

If a deadly virus attacked us, our first step would be to coldly, objectively, try to analyze its origins, so we could protect ourselves.  In the case of so-called terrorists, this would involve trying to understand the roots of these activities – not in order to whitewash the crimes, or allow them, but precisely to prevent them from reoccurring.  We would not spend a lot of time “hating” the viruses, since, in this case, it seems obvious that this is an extraneous, even stupid, emotion, that might impede our progress, and keep us from seeing important data.

And when, above, I said “the few individuals who are too far gone to be persuaded,” I didn’t just mean violent Islamic fundamentalists.  The world is full of people willing and ready to kill and die for an abstraction. 

If I ran the world, I’d eliminate certain terms: “faith” for one, “reason,” for another, “terrorism” for a third.  It would be interesting to see how the discussion went, with those words denied us.  Because in my view, behind every zealous “person of faith” trying to impinge on the rights of another, is neurosis – a tendency to want to hide behind some simple, all-comprehensive truth, whether that truth is “I am blessed and my course in life determined by my personal knowledge of Jesus Christ, my Lord and personal Savior” or “It is right and just to kill the infidels.”   A revved-up person of faith is a frightened person.  In many cases, an extraordinarily active person is a frightened person, especially, and in proportion to the extent that, the action is aggressive, prohibitive, restrictive, violent.

Likewise, an excessive belief in what we call “reason” is a form of fear.  What was reasonable a thousand years ago looks nuts to us now.  In the end, this divide between “faith” and “reason” is false and maybe even harmful.  There is abundant faith required to believe in reason – at the deepest level, the validity of logic cannot be proved via logic.  And there is abundant reason required in what we call faith – who “has faith” that, say, toothbrushes are sacred and must never be offended?  No one, because this is irrational, random, unsupported by reason. 

It’s only when we talk about – let’s call it “true reason” -- that I think we come to a sensible place, and what I’m calling “true reason” involves 1) a calm looking at the world, with no attachments to preexisting belief systems; 2) a belief in the workability of any situation; 3) a trust that people are basically – biologically, neurologically, psychologically – similar enough to be able to imagine one another’s circumstances – ie, to be compassionate with one another, 4) a humility about our ability to act in the world. 

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This “true reason” is, and has always been, struggling to make itself clear in the human mind, and all of our great moments – in and out of traditional religious systems -- have involved the sudden manifestation of this clear, luminous quality.

Can we change the world?  Well, we can change parts of it, temporarily.  But mostly, the world is what the world has always been, a big, gorgeous, terrifying and sublime process, and although good and evil certainly exist relative to a given individual (that box falling toward my head is Bad; that chocolate with my name in it is Good), it is also true that, as Christ said, the poor will be with us always – as will the scary, the violent, the lascivious, the anxious.  It is all, in a certain sense, display, and while we can do some good, and should do it, there is actually much that is beyond our control.  Boxes will continue to fall toward heads long after we’re gone.  Which doesn’t mean we shouldn’t duck, or cry out “Yo!  Box!”  But when we work to ensure that no boxes, ever, will fall on anyone ever again, we soon find ourselves trying to outlaw Gravity, and Containers, and All Downward Motion.  And suddenly there is no soccer, or falling confetti, or gift-wrapped boxes - a pretty dull world.

Website

http://www.georgesaundersland.com

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