On Politics and Poetry

Thank you, Andrew, for creating this space for us to share our thoughts.

Here’s what’s on my mind this morning:

On this, the day before the United States government sinks into third-world level despotism by arresting and prosecuting the leading political rival of the current regime, a question presents itself.

A question I have wrestled with and which has proved a formidable foe:

To what degree, as artists and thinkers, do we use our crafts to respond to the political and cultural events of the day, and to what degree do we focus on unchanging truths?

I tend to be pretty far on the “don’t respond to the news” end of the spectrum, but never fully at ease there.

Making passing events the focus of one’s work has advantages. There’s never a shortage of material to transform into spicy Twitter takes. Make them spicy enough, and engagement will go through the roof. It’s “Welcome new followers!” all day long.

The downside is that you become a journalist.

As someone who worked a long time in that field, you want to think long and hard before surrendering to that fate. Journalism fixes one’s mind on the temporal. If you want to see the dreadful outcomes of fixing one’s mind on the temporal, well, just survey the state of American journalism. The media wasteland speaks.

Perhaps it is a question of vocation. Journalists, in spite of appearances, are good for something. I don’t deny we need them. Maybe the good ones have a calling. Maybe those of us repulsed by immersion in worldly affairs hear a different call.

What unsettles me is maintaining a remove from political developments when things are getting dire as they are now. At what point do even those of us whose primary calling is to other work have an obligation to speak on developments manifestly not in the best interest of our neighbors, our families or ourselves? At what point does silence become indifference, neutrality a lack of love?

The Inklings don’t offer much guidance here, I think. Neither Tolkien nor Lewis commented much on the political developments of their day despite living through both World Wars with all their repetitive cataclysms. The closest thing I can think of is Lewis’ famous essay called “Learning in War Time”. Even there, however, he urges his hearers to focus on eternal matters while the world around them quakes.

I watch with horror the path the world is on, but say little about it because I feel my proper focus is elsewhere. And yet, I remain haunted.

What do the rest of you think?

Dean Abbott is a pastoral counselor, coach and the author of two books on the connection between virtue and human happiness. Follow him on Twitter here.