Moral Crisis Revisited

MORAL CRISIS REVISITED

Floyd Hayes and I share a strong interest in Richard Wright's legacy, especially in how Cross Damon, the protagonist of The Outsider (1953),  often articulates philosophical ideas in the novel more powerfully than  Wright could in his non-fiction.  It seems that fictive propositions which can't be fact-checked have greater appeal than those refuted by evidence of what has happened in reality or actuality.  For this reason, several million Americans believe in 2018 that  Donald Trump tweets "the truth" daily as he propagates tiny segments of the great American novel. Does fiction confirm the death of the Truth and the immortality of the Lie? I will not stay for an answer.  I'll just assert that fiction enables Hayes and me to enjoy  productive disagreements about how the human mind constructs knowledge.

The brief email exchange we had about my blog on "Moral Crisis in New Orleans" (see Appendix A) is a capital example of what I wish would occur more frequently among cultural critics:

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Dear Floyd,

Thanks for the Facebook rejoinder and this passage from The Outsider.  Great food for thought.

Jerry

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From: Floyd Hayes <floyd.hayes3@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, August 10, 2018 10:19 AM
To: Jerry Ward
Subject: Re: Are human being degenerating?

Hi Jerry, I wrote a rejoinder to your response.  Over the years, I have been guided by one of Wright's passages in The Outsider:

"Knowing and seeing what is happening in the world today, I don't think that there is much of anything that one can do about it.  But there is one little thing, it seems to me that a man owes to himself.  He can look bravely at this horrible totalitarian reptile and, while doing so, discipline his dread, his fear, and study it coolly, observe every slither  and convolution of its sensuous movements and note down with calmness the pertinent facts.  In the face of the totalitarian danger, these facts can help a man to save himself; and he may then be able to call attention to others around him to the presence and meaning of this reptile and its multitudinous writhings" (1953: 367).

For me, this statement provides the reason for speaking out about the various contradictions and dilemmas we face in "this place called America," as Sonia Sanchez says.

As always,

Floyd

On Fri, Aug 10, 2018 at 7:14 AM Jerry Ward <jerry.ward31@hotmail.com> wrote:

Dear Floyd,

I appreciate your posing a very tough question about degeneration in your response to my "Moral Crisis in New Orleans" blog. It moves me to think very deeply about the possible rhetorical  consequences of my speech act and about the nature of evidence I should use in saying "Yes, humans are degenerating" or "No, humans are not degenerating."  It is obvious from the reply I made on Facebook that I will be thinking about answers in the coming weeks as I move forward in analysis of Wright's thinking.  Your question doesn't allow us to have a definitive answer.  Time, ambiguity, and location just allow us to make qualified speculations.

Have a good weekend,

Jerry

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The August 10 exchange reminds me that genuine human communication is predicated on accepting that the political, the aesthetic, the literary, and the philosophical are flashes of thought that appear and disappear endlessly in a continuum or in a four-dimensional Venn diagram.  We have maximum entanglement.   My face-to-face conversations with very smart adult male inmates at Orleans Justice Center (the jail in New Orleans) are immensely more human, honest,  and important in terms of knowledge  than what I (or any reader) comes to know about evolving or degenerating  American masculinity from reading Gregory Pardlo's Air Traffic: A Memoir of Ambition and Manhood in America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2018) or John Edgar Wideman's Brothers and Keepers ( New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1984) or Walter Mosley's John Woman (New York:  Atlantic Monthly Press, 2018).

 The conversations with inmates destroy the walls that metaphors and literature (fiction and faction) create around the subject matter of American manhood and social justice; the conversations make looking into the eyes of the "horrible totalitarian reptile" that is society and systems of criminal justice a pure moment of dread and recognition.  It is this moment that must be used in the act of reading for the purpose of understanding American culture(s). The conversations expose what is undeniably artificial about literature and culture and criticism.  And if we did not have such artifice, we would likely be paralyzed  by mindless silence or greatly more enslaved than we already are by reprehensible noises!

My email exchange with Hayes did necessitate revisiting what I wrote about moral crisis and resolving to resist, more strongly than before, the "romance" that academic  theory and criticism tempts us to accept.  My efforts to construct knowledge will always be marked by errors of one sort or another.  So be it. But my future errors must be informed by critical engagements with inmates and by what David Faust examined with remarkable conviction in The Limits of Scientific Reasoning (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984) not by the love affairs many of my peers have with broadcasts about the crises of the humanities.

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.            September 1, 2018

Appendix A

MORAL CRISIS IN NEW ORLEANS

New Orleans is "celebrating" 300 years of moral crisis, but many of its citizens, elected officials and the tourists they host daily assume otherwise.  Their ideas are Trump-flavored rather than properly seasoned with the holy trinity of Creole/Cajun cuisine.  They simply transgress.  Thus, Timothy David Ray's  recent plea for support of City Council Resolution R-18-344 can appear to be a poignant supplement to prayer to Our Lady of Prompt Succor for help in dealing with violence, murder, and racism.  Or it may appear as a supplement to admonitions from Lloyd Dennis and the Silverback Society. It is easy to forget the gravity of Ray's plea as you get out there and listen to live, local music.

"The psychological trauma of constant violence witnessed by young children," Ray contends, "does not only breed an inclination to violence in them, but also an apathy towards human life and respect for one's own community or the property of others."  That trauma, however, is not limited to young children.  It is distributive and democratic.  It afflicts all of us who breathe air in NOLA.  Our silence about our self-fashioned apathy is barbaric.  And perhaps the horror and damage created by 300 years of history as process and narrative in NOLA is beyond human remedy.  The conditions that drive being beyond are not mere accidents of Nature; they are the consequences of choice.  It is hardly possible to cheer for the Saints and grieve for the children in an identical moment.  If you try to do so, you will choke on your red beans and rice.  Or violently regurgitate your gumbo.

Long ago, Tom Dent rightly said that New Orleans is weird.  And too few NOLA citizens are conversant with Giorgio Agamben's Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life and, therefore,  capable of addressing what is wicked, corrupt, and broken in the Crescent City.  Neither Dent nor Agamben, of course,  can provide us with the comfort of humor or the extreme unction of political philosophy. But they can remind us of how crucial are some of the topics being addressed at the Congressional Black Caucus Institute, August 9-11, in Tunica, Mississippi -------opioid addiction, public health and mental health  emergencies, criminal justice crisis, the future of work and human capital, emerging technologies,  21st century skills and chartered  education, corporate greed and social irresponsibility, gentrification, ecological racism, and crumbling infrastructure----significant topics which violently jazz young children in New Orleans and all American urban arenas.  Should we be optimistic about anything?

Yes.  We should be optimistic that absurd moral crisis in our city will prevail and endure and remain beyond human remedy. Now "celebrate" the enigma of New Orleans in the hurricane of capitalism.

Jerry W. Ward, Jr.                            August 9, 2018