# 219: BOOK OF THE WEEK — “Silent Spring” (Part I)
Story behind the Book Choice
Today is one of these rare occasions when I have to break my promise of writing about a new book I have read. I simply did not manage to complete the reading load today. But I had a very fulfilling day. I worked my first shift in a food truck, something that came to me due to a new collective business initiative in my neighborhood. And it was so rewarding, I can hardly tell. I am dead tired now after jumping around between fries, fresh waffles and bratwurst for hours, but it was totally worth it. Making people happy by selling them good food to eat and being a good host is such a great thing. It is like the stereotypical cab driver, you know. Hardly any other “profession” knows so much about the human species as cab drivers. And the same applies to people working in bars and restaurants. If you want to learn about the human race — serve them when they behave most “humanely,” i.e., driven by their innermost instincts — sex, food, pleasure of any kind.
This reminds me a lot of Frithjof Bergmann, the inventor of New Work. I will still blog about his book at some point (or did I already do so?) but right now, the reason why I am thinking of him is because of his life path. He also worked as a farmer, boxer, port worker, and in many other “low-paying” jobs until he finally became a professor of philosophy at the University of Michigan, the university where I also had the privilege of spending a year as a visiting scholar. I do not know if I ever get to be a professor of philosophy, not even talking about becoming a professor in the U.S. Still, I totally know how the path Bergmann walked in the end led him back to university. The universities of today are different than back then, of course. They do not care much about people who know life. But Bergmann did when he took the position. And the reason why I know this is because of his life journey. I know, many “armchair professors” will have no clue what I am talking about. How does serving fries and picking fruits in the field relate to “philosophy”?
Well, go figure.
Or just stay where you are.
It is ok, most people will not be able to tell the difference between a really enlightened person and a career academic anyways.
As I mentioned above, I did not get through with the reading today. So, this will be a divided post again. I can only talk about one passage today and next week the others will follow. I already look forward to sharing more next week, actually. I like that I did not rush today. I want to enjoy reading this book because it is a special one. It was written by someone who really made a difference in the history of the world an the way in which the world thinks about the environment. Carson was a pioneer and I wish that we start educating pioneers again in universities. I am not talking about students only. I talk about scholars as well. People who have the guts to make a difference by using their excellent brains to pursue a research track that is out of bounds in order to then also reveal findings that are out of bounds for many; that piss off even more people, even the president. This was the case with Carson’s book. But the reason why she even wrote it touched me deeply today.
- Not keeping silent
When I read this passage in the foreword today, I had to stop reading for a while because it touched me deeply. Yes, Carson was in a superior position already when she decided to write Silent Spring. But that does not necessarily mean that things get easier when we talk about the publishing business. Especially at the point when you already are a celebrity, you face even tighter challenges. You have to fulfil the expectations of your readers, you have to nicely stick to the boundaries of the drawer that people put you into. Presses do not publish anything, especially if this “anything” is critical. At the time, nobody cared about the exploitation and mistreatment of the earth. But Carson decided to speak up. And then there is this remarkable sentence which almost made me cry:
“There would be no peace for me,” she wrote to a friend “if I kept silent.”
There is not much more to say about this, actually. If you are a passionate thinker and writer, you know what it means. You HAVE TO WRITE, there is no other way. Of course, more people will tell you to not write than there are people who encourage you. But these people do not matter. What matters is that you HAVE TO WRITE to speak truth to justice — from your perspective. This is even more remarkable because, as it says in another sentence in the forweword, Carson did not write in some boring scholarly paper. She addressed the public with her book, even though some parts were published in the New Yorker. This special role of the book as a fairly independent format is also mentioned in the foreword.
Such a book bridges the gulf between what C. P. Snow called “the two cultures.” Rachel Carson was a realistic, well-trained scientist who possessed the insight and sensitivity of a poet. She had an emotional response to nature for which she did not apologize. The more she learned, the greater grew what she termed “the sense of wonder.”
I wrote about C. P. Snow and the “Two Cultures” problem extensively in my last book. So, this sentence struck me a alot — especially because of the term “poet.” Carson wrote like a poet to reach and touch people. You see this on the first page as you start reading about her vivid observations. But the point is: as a poet, you do not write like this because your only goal is to touch people. The reason is much more simple. As a poet, you simply cannot just write like a scientist, even though you are using the very same brain and the sophisticated insights in your writing.
As you know, I fight for this, I struggle with it. I am not succeeding with it because academia does not want to understand in this way, it does not want to feel anything.
Carson still wrote her book and it changed the world and it changed politics. I simply have to close with another powerful sentence that is also given on these first few pages that are just remarkable. This sentence underlines how important writing is in the world. Writing is not just art or activism, it is also a business, as you can see in the quote about Carson’s status at the presses. But it also means a thousand of other things. It means: really making a difference. As it states at the end of the foreword:
“And Silent Spring will continue to remind us that in our over-organized and over-mechanized age, individual initiative and courage still count: change can be brought about, not through incitement to war or violent revolution, but rather by altering the direction of our thinking about the world we live in.”
Reflection Questions
1) When did you last change people’s thinking with your work?