(11) The enduring, and unanswerable, questions

RJ: Are you satisfied with the approach to activism that you've developed over the years?

AO: Sometimes when I try to get things accomplished, I unnecessarily offend and hurt peoples' feelings. I do it quite a bit, and I'm lucky that Gunnel calls me on it. Even when the criticism is painful, there's always a point I need to hear. I used to resist and immediately fight back and attack back, but no more. I'm finished with that. I listen to complaints like that carefully, when they are coming from a decent human being, because there's some truth in where they're coming from. She has helped me a lot. Maybe she's not as politically experienced as I am, but she's also nowhere as crippled. I am crippled in certain ways, and I have to see it. Growing up in the ghetto is not only an advantage but it's also a very disabling thing. It limits a lot of things. On the one hand, it makes possible a whole lot of things. But it makes impossible certain other things.

Let's go back to these dilemmas. Have you ever read the poetry of Yevgeny Yevtushenko? Dissident Soviet poet. Despite his open opposition to the system, he was able to survive because he was so beloved by so many people. He was able to recite poetry to an audience of a 100,000 people, because Russians love poetry. That's also an interesting question, about the role of poetry in human life. Russians love poetry. Spaniards adore poetry. Americans abhor it. Can you imagine a poet being chosen to lead a regiment of soldiers here? But that's what we had in Spain. Miguel Hernandez, one of the outstanding poets of Spain, led an infantry battalion in the war. Raphael Alberti, one of the most famous poets, returned after the death of Franco, ran for the Senate, and got up and recited poems. That's all. He was elected by a landslide running as a Communist. Anyhow, I've been reading Yevtushenko lately. I have a feeling you'd like him.

RJ: What does he capture that you like? What is it about his work that speaks to you?

AO: Besides his beautiful command of language itself, what he's saying is "I am an individual, unique and different, and I'm part of a vast group without which I am nothing." He somehow manages to merge two deep needs that we have in the human condition: The need for independence and individuality, with the need for collective life. He captures that very well. I had known about him but never read his poetry until then one of my friends, the guy that's working with me on the Peace Mobile, bought me a few of his books. I'm just overwhelmed. If you ask me, most poetry is bullshit, self-indulgence. But I'm in love with good poetry.

RJ: There are certain fundamental questions that, no matter how much we pretend that we moderns have solved problems, basically remain mystery. What does it mean to be a human being? What separates us from the rest of the animal world? What is distinct about us? How do you deal with loneliness? How do we cope with the problems that are inevitably created when our individuality clashes with our need for human connection?

AO: Exactly my words.

RJ: There is no scientific revolution that can explain those things. There is no technology to relieve the pain of struggling with them. Basic questions of inequality go back to the Bible. The Old Testament prophets were talking about inequality.

AO: You go back and read the ancient Greek philosophers -- whether it's Plato or Socrates, Aristotle -- the same questions. Plato was a highly intelligent right-winger. Socrates was a little democrat -- the only term that today would possibly fit him -- but enough of a democrat that he was ready to put his life on the line for it. Aristotle was a straddler. They talk about the same things, and we are in the same place. Why not accept the fact that this is part of being human in any culture, in any society, for any of us, in any society or stage of development? To really examine life will bring up these things. Why not accept the insolvability of certain things? Much of it is beyond solution, and the best we can do is travel toward the sunlight, so to speak, from the darkness. We will never get to the sun, but we might have the pleasure of getting to the better light there is. We will never get to that fucking sun. The sun is attached to a stick at the end of our nose, and as we go toward it, it just keeps going with us. I feel that way. I can feel it all the time. That gap -- between the human capacity to dream and the human capacity to achieve -- will always be there. That's what dreaming is all about -- the unbridgeable gap. And to me, that's the way it is.

I'm on a path that has no fucking end. That's what it is. But the motion forward, even with the stick on my nose, is of some importance. It can be more pleasurable, less pleasurable. It can be more painful, less painful. To me these questions are so central to my life, and I find so few people that I can talk to about it. Because somehow the minute I get into something like that, they're thinking, "He's a nice old man, but he's gone batty." To me, that insanity is essential in my life. It really is.

RJ: A lot of political organizers will emphasize the great rewards of struggle, about how it brings change, which it can. But there's something about that kind of speech that always leaves me a little hollow. You are talking about the other side of it, the way in which the struggle never really takes you all the way home. I've given talks like that, about how great collective struggle is, and how it historically has brought progressive social change. That's all true, but there's the other side of it, which I find people rarely want to talk about, that sense of dreams that can't be realized that you are speaking about.

AO: It's one of the horrible things about being human. We are fucked by unanswerable questions. Well, you have to make an estimate the best you can of what is the capacity of the people you're talking to. Some of the questions you are asking, other people don't ask me. There are only two or three who will talk to me like you have. I'm pretty sure that quite a few think about some of these things but for various reasons engage in some self-censorship, because it might be costly, it might increase your loneliness.

Part 12 - Reactions to 9/11: Crying and organizing

Return to index