What Are We Doing Here?

by Marilynne Robinson

So it is with our contemporary Left and Right. Between them we circle in a maelstrom of utter fatuousness.

The willingness to indulge in ideological thinking—that is, in thinking that by definition is not one’s own, which is blind to experience and to the contradictions that arise when broader fields of knowledge are consulted—is a capitulation no one should ever make. It is a betrayal of our magnificent minds and of all the splendid resources our culture has prepared for their use.

As remarkable as the maturity of political thought in the colonies is the readiness with which at least a very significant part of the population accepted the rationale for revolution.

Wycliffe based his theology and his social thought on the intrinsically sacred human person,

It is entirely consistent with my theology to believe that this capacity for moral self-awareness is the God-given basis for the freedom and respect we owe one another.

it would be hard to imagine how their arrangements could have been more theocratic than the papacy was at the time, or than an Anglicanism that enforced conformity of worship with penalties, including loss of basic civil rights

A scarlet letter, however regrettable in itself, is certainly to be preferred to slashed nostrils and cropped ears. I name this famous letter, fictional as I assume it is, because Hawthorne’s novel has served as evidence of an appalling severity, when in historical context it would have been no such thing.

This country is in a state of bewilderment that cries out for good history.

To create a history answerable to the truth would be a gift of clarity, sanity, and purpose. The great freedom of conscience would be its liberation from our own cynicism, conventionalism, and narrowness of vision.

A society is moving toward dangerous ground when loyalty to the truth is seen as disloyalty to some supposedly higher interest. How many times has history taught us this?

is there any particular reason to debase human life in order to produce more, faster, without reference to the worth of the product or to the value of the things sacrificed to its manufacture?

Oh, yes, rowdy old capitalism. Let it ply its music. Then again, in the all-consuming form proposed for it now, it is a little like those wars I mentioned earlier. It is equally inimical to poetry, eloquence, memory, the beauty of wit, the fires of imagination, the depth of thought. It is equally disinclined to reward gifts that cannot be turned to its uses.

If I seem to have conceded an important point in saying that the humanities do not prepare ideal helots, economically speaking, I do not at all mean to imply that they are less than ideal for preparing capable citizens, imaginative and innovative contributors to a full and generous, and largely unmonetizable, national life.

From the point of view of objectivity as presently understood, beauty and holiness are excluded terms, and grace is as well. The accepted means of establishing what is real cannot acknowledge them. Yet the celebration of holiness in every form of art has shaped civilizations.