Ian McDonaldTHE DUKE of Wellington and Lord Uxbridge are standing together on the field of Waterloo in the midst of battle. A bouncing cannon-ball knocks off Lord Uxbridge's leg. After a short pause, Wellington says, "My God, Uxbridge, you've lost your leg!" At which Uxbridge, looking down, agrees, "My God, so I have."
Though far from possessing the capacity to emulate them, I think I admire the Stoics, most of all the philosophers. Probably we would all like to be able to approach disaster, illness, bereavement and eventually death with the unflinching restraint of the Stoics. Certainly it must be very rare for any man or woman not to need the strength of a Stoic sometimes in life since, the truth be told, we really have about as much control of what is going to happen to us hour by hour, day by day, as one of the Stoics remarked, "as a dog tied to the tail of a cart - he can run a little from side to side, and bark loudly, but if he tries to stand still his lead will strangle him since he has no power over the driver of the cart." But however useful in terrible times, it is not an easy philosophy to live up to in practice.
The Stoics took catastrophe, and the threat of catastrophe, in their stride. They believed that to be virtuous involved being unaffected by pain, pleasure, desire or fear which were emotions belonging to a lower level of existence. To them the ends most men pursue so eagerly - wealth, success, comfort - have no importance. The revered Stoic Emperor of Rome, Marcus Aurelius, in his Meditations wrote that it was man's duty to forgive injuries, regard all men as brothers and await death with equanimity.
That does not sound very similar to what Americans would regard as an acceptable approach to life. And I do not think one can easily equate George W. Bush with Marcus Aurelius. Yet one nation which is going to have to adopt the Stoic philosophy as quickly as possible is America. Basically, Stoics think and act on the basis of "what will be will be." Americans are going to have to learn that philosophy or spend their lives in desperate daily trepidation worrying constantly about what might be going to happen, taking elaborate and costly precautions against the ten million to one chance of a Bin Laden strike affecting an individual, sensing danger in every shadow that passed unseen before, changing lifestyles in ways that contradict their culture and undermine their economy, existing permanently on anxious tenterhooks. Living as if you are about to be stuck by lightning at any time is absurd and is anyway unlikely to divert the lightning strike. Paranoia in a nation spells great trouble.
Far better, like the Stoics, to shrug off the fear of awful Fate, rise above anticipated pain and look upon the prospect of suffering with indifference if not disdain.
But are Americans, with no experience in living memory of the dreadful brutalities of war on their soil and accustomed to thinking of comfort and plenty and safety as a right, likely to adopt a philosophy so foreign both to their experience and their ambitions? It hardly seems likely.
But at least they better get used to living with threats and the suggestions of threats without being paralysed by nervousness.
This war against Al Qaida is not going to be easy to control, limit and reduce to a mere high-tech skirmish against evil in Afghanistan. It is a war which the American leaders claim to understand will last for years. However, it is not at all certain that the vast majority of Americans really appreciate the implications of such a contest. In the war the Americans have overwhelming military superiority, of course, but their shadowy opponents have a tremendous psychological advantage.
This advantage is summed up in the confusion and fear and clumsy fluster which a simple sentence broadcast from a primitive hideout has brought about in America. "Muslims amidst the infidels are warned not to ride in aeroplanes or go into high buildings."
The over-reaction to such a simple produced threat is likely to be symptomatic of what is going to happen. Are they going to jump high every time Jack Taliban murmurs boo? Even without the capacity to implement it will be easy for Al Qaida spokesmen to express any threat they can think up - suitcase nuclear bombs, small pox bacilli in air-conditioning ducts, nerve gas in the subways, overturned chemical trucks in the long tunnels, poison in the water supply and so on and on and life, business, daily routines and the ordinary sense of personal security of tens of millions will be disrupted and every neighbourhood psyche made fragile as an eggshell.
And just a few actual incidents, even though on a far smaller scale than the strikes against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, will create disproportionate terror, dislocation and rage. This in turn will increase the danger of America lashing out indiscriminately. And this will then hugely escalate the danger of that 'clash of civilisations' which everyone, well nearly everyone, fears and which men like Bin Laden desire with all their heart and soul.
It is not that Americans should try to return to normality. Pre-September 11 normality is lost in America, and on this earth, for the foreseeable future. But a great effort must be made to calm down, regain balance and proportion, pick up the threads of life and weave them again into ordinary patterns of love and work without nameless dread burrowing into the heart of everything one thinks and does.
Jonathan Franzen, the novelist, has said that the problem of this new time "will be to reassert the ordinary, the trivial, and even the ridiculous in the face of instability and dread: to mourn the dead and then try to awaken to our small humanities and our pleasurable nothing-much. "The Stoics would have agreed.
Ian McDonald is a regular contributor who lives and works in Georgetown, Guyana.
