Noam Chomsky is important and really worthy, in an all too unadmirable world, of admiration. And why? Because of one simple thing: whenever our so-called leaders choose to do, with arrogant ignorance, yet another cruel and misguided act, whenever the kind of news comes out that makes the rest of us want to sit down and cry like children, or pound our heads against the walls screaming, “how can they be such idiots?”, Noam Chomsky does neither of these things. Instead he sits down and writes another book.
And not just any kind of book. A clear, straightforward book, such as an adult would write for adults in an ideal adult world, a book that makes you feel like such a world is possible, that it is possible to act like an adult among adults, and actually work together to make that world.
In other words, he’s short on whining and long on facts. As this takes a great deal of discipline (and, my guess is, a lot of intrafamilial support), it is worth admiring…and emulating, to the extent that one can.
In one of Professor Chomsky’s books, HEGEMONY OR SURVIVAL, he writes of how the US, in attempting a strategy of total hegemony, has actually threatened its own survival. His tone is dry, factual, at times ironic…but it is never despairing. And it never takes the kind of bland satisfaction in disaster that so many writers show when they analyze the world around us — i.e.: “I can see we’re going to hell in a hand basket, which makes me superior to all those idiots who can’t, and this comforts me as we all continue toward disaster together…”
Well, we’ve got a problem, here, and just moaning about it is going to get us, alas, not even nowhere…but somewhere none of us are going to like. There’s a fire in the house, and the task now is to get everyone out safely in an orderly fashion, and then rebuild so it can’t happen that way again.
And it’s toward this escape route that Noam Chomsky shows a way forward. He calls it the Second Empire. That’s us. That’s actually us. The Second Empire, he says in HEGEMONY OR SURVIVAL, is the people who join together through shared values, join together laterally, across national borders. The Second Empire, therefore, displays a kind of patriotism for all — for Us, rather than Us against Them. And, like those forces that ended the Roman Empire, it uses the roads the First Empire built for its own military ends. Only it uses those roads not for control and shock and awe, but for communication, for communion, for mutual support.
He points out that the huge worldwide outpouring of protest against the war on Iraq was unprecedented in history. Never before had it been possible for some many people to get around the power structure in their own countries to join up with people under power structures in others. Never before had so many people said no to an insane war, and said it at the same time, and KNOWN THAT THEY WERE NOT ALONE.
This is very important. The element of support is the most important element of all. Where we, the inhabitants of the Second Empire, have been weakest is in our exaggerated individuality…our belief that we were the only ones thinking the kinds of things we were, and that we were all alone. And because we were all alone, we were helpless, mute, impotent.
But we’re not all alone. It’s important to remember that, to remind each other of it, and to act as part of a healthy community every single day. And to look around for those weaker than ourselves to help them out the door as the building burns. Because, who knows? The child or weaker person you help today might be the person who solves the bigger problems of the reconstruction tomorrow. And we’re all part of that chain. And we forget this at our peril.
It seems to us, though, that Professor Chomsky does not forget. And for that, we at EAP are particularly grateful.