Ok. Last night I spent three hours in my garden. After the hailstorm of last Friday, I was half ready just to give up on my garden this year. In addition to that, several sections of the garden were overgrown with weeds. I felt that it would be more trouble to clear the weeds than it could possibly be worth. Still, I got down on my hands and knees and started to pull weeds. After three hours of steady work, my hands were raw and I was grimy from head to foot. But I got on top of the weed problem. Not all the weeds are gone, but they are wholly gone from the tomato patch and the potato square, mostly gone from the Jefferson garden, and the wrap-up work in the American garden will take no more than two more hours. Then, if I go out for fifteen minutes per day, I should be able to keep up for the rest of the summer.
What looked so daunting that I felt faint and listless in the face of the prospect of saving the garden, turned out to be easier by the minute once I started to get serious about pulling weeds.
There is a life lesson here.
I’m reading a book this morning about the robotic revolution. I am not surprised that I don’t know much about this subject, but I am reminded, as I am perennially reminded, that I know almost nothing about anything, even subjects I am said to be an expert in. Some days while reading I make lists of things I should know but don’t: Zwingli, consubstantiation, the Crusades, the Homeric Hymns. It is a depressing business, confessing profound ignorance.
I remember when I was about twenty reading the Life of Samuel Johnson (the world’s greatest biography) and hearing Dr. Johnson say, “I knew more at eighteen than I do now.” That seemed like literal nonsense to me then, but it makes perfect sense now. This morning, I sat for five minutes trying to remember the name of North Dakota writer Louise Erdrich. It wasn’t until I ran through a list of her book titles that I managed to get her name to pop into my consciousness. This really troubles me. This appalls me, actually.
What I want is to catch up, in the same way I got control over my garden in the last 48 hours. Here’s one approach. First, read the book reviews, particularly the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Book Review, and the Times [of London] Literary Supplement. This will at least cut the worst of the ignorance, because it is possible to learn the general map of things by reading virtually every book review, and then deciding which books might be worth reading in their entirety. Most books are too long: it is possible to get their essential argument by reading the first couple of chapters. Second, watch documentary films. This is the golden age of documentary films, both in their excellence and sophistication, but also thanks to the revolution in distribution on smart TVs. A documentary on the Reformation gets you a long way down the road, and usually introduces you to great “talking heads” whose books you can purchase, often instantly, online. Third, take notes. I have taken notes every day all of my life. I almost never consult those notes, but what you remember manually (by writing what you think you need to remember) has a much better chance of being retained than something you simply read once. Fourth, talk about ideas with someone who wants to talk about ideas with you. This may be the place where things break down. Not only are most people indifferent to your interests and passions, to the point of avoiding you if you persist in talking ab
out them, but the timing is almost invariably off.
That, in fact, is the tragedy of the life of the mind, and perhaps the tragedy of life. I’m reading Great Expectations or Light in August, and I come across a passage I want to discuss with my ideal best friend. But when I call him or her, even if it is during daylight hours, the best I get is, “Yeah, I should read that sometime.” And then I feel profoundly, helplessly, pathetically, miserably alone in the cosmos.
It is not possible to know enough to be interesting, but it is possible to be much less ignorant than we are. The absence of evidence in our so-called national conversations is destroying our republic. We have entered the age of the over-confident hunch, the loudly asserted gut feeling, the evidenceless opinion or even conviction. Begin with book reviews.
But I also like books that have big overarching ambitions, to explain everything. Like Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything. Or Russell’s History of Western Philosophy. A general history of ideas is wroth a score of tightly-argued monographs.
But who will pull the weeds from my brainpan?
csj
Amen. I feel your pain.
This is what we need – an insight to make evynoere think
Curious, that your desire for understanding does not seem to extend to “weeds”…. Which fast-growing soil-restorers are trying to build root structure & give shade to the soil you broke up and denuded? (Did Jefferson not use mulch?) These plants give information about the chemistry of the soil, too. And, healthy soil needs a web of micro-organisms. It may take years (not one or two semesters).
Impatience guarantees failure.
Or, you could borrow a goat (they love “weeds”)….
Is wroth a Freudian slip?
In the end, however, we will never absorb all of the knowledge we would like, regardless of how organized and systematic we try to be. So we are best served by prioritization, starting with tending to our close relationships and progressing toward ingesting more knowledge. As you (or Dr. Johnson) pointed out, the more we know, the more we know we don’t know. Soon enough we’ll be dead and gone, along with everything we know, unless we pass on to following generations bits of what we have learned. My maternal grandfather was not an introspective man, so far as I am aware, but he left me with bits of wisdom, including, “there is nothing like having the right tool,” “have a place for everything and everything in its place,” and “never cleat the jib sheet.” I have lived or tried to live by those bits of wisdom (among others) for 60 years, and I thank him.
I much appreciate this article. Very profound. Very simple. Very true.
I have come to know weeding as a meditation. I love weeding because my stress melts away, my mind empties of garbage and sometimes solves or soothes problems that otherwise produce agitation in the confines of a room. A psychologist I know reaps the same benefits and satisfaction from the sound and exertion of pulling roots. There is also the reward of ordering chaos and restoring beauty to the bed. Catching up? Taking notes, reading book reviews and viewing documentary films – all good. I try to do the same.
I fell your profound, helpless, pathetic, miserable loneliness. Today, one of my partners wandered into my office and noticed laying on a table my latest Jefferson book purchase. He made the mistake of commenting and asking a question. The poor fellow did not realize the box he had opened by asking what I had long been dying to discuss, with anybody who maybe even sort-of knew who Jefferson was. “O! the joy.” No doubt he thereafter circulated a memo instructing our staff NOT to ask Joe about Jefferson, for he will answer.