I’m very happy to be back with “The Glass Bees” this week, and I’d like to offer a short thanks to everyone for waiting on this third essay while I was sick. In the first part of our discussion of the book, we covered the social pressures and movements that create the feelings of alienation and replacement that we, like Captain Richards, experience and are swept up in. In the second part, we discussed a more personal confrontation, one that we live through as we encounter automatonism, AI, and managed life. Our second essay covered the reality of the elites who enact this change, and who bring the techno-society into being. Now in the third installment, we will discuss two distinct reactions to the Techno-Society shown in the book.
The first reaction, which I marked out for the reader at the end of Part II is that of Captain Richards’ old comrade Lorenz, who might remind us of many young men today - or for some of us, we might see something of ourselves in him.
In those days almost everyone was possessed with an idea… Lorenz’ idea consisted in seeing the machine as the source of all evil. Therefore, he intended to blow up the factories, to redistribute the land, to transform the country into a large peasant commune in which everyone would be peaceful, healthy, and happy. In substantiation of his opinion, he had assembled a small library— two or three shelves filled with well-thumbed books, chiefly by Tolstoy, who was his saint.1
Lorenz here is confronted with the same feeling of alienation as Captain Richards, perhaps even triggered by similar events. Certainly this idea of the encroaching machine age is one that Richards identifies easily with regard to Wittgrewe. Where Lorenz’ and Richards differ, though, is in their reaction. Lorenz seems entirely captured by political solutions, a man like a spec of sediment caught up in the rushing current of the river, attempting to drop the anchor of politics to save himself. Importantly, Richards never mocks Lorenz' motives. Though his theories showed, in some way, a lack of serious grappling with the world at hand.
“The poor boy did not know that at present there is only one kind of land reform; expropriation. Indeed, he himself was the son of an expropriated farmer who had not survived his losses. Oddest of all, Lorenz advocated these ideas on the top floor of a tenement…
As a result, he was constantly interrupted as he developed his ideas: ‘Back to the Stone Age,’ we’d mock, or, “Neanderthal, I love you.’ But we overlooked, or failed to recognize, that our friend was consumed with something like a holy if helpless wrath; for life in these burnt-out cities, which smoldered as if gutted by metallic beaks, was ghastly. Lorenz shouldn’t have been in our rowdy company; in those days he should have been in the hands of a family or wife who loved him.”2
Lorenz is very much a figure that we can understand today, seeking political solutions - even radical ones - as he watches society shift quickly under and around him. He has a need to theorize, to wordcel, to come up with theories to explain the movement in national identity, in social forces, and in political program. He hopes that if only he can perfect the theory, the world will be fixed. In the marketplace of ideas, populated by rational actors, the truth will win out and so he will naturally speak the truth and move the country to action by force of that truth. This is his reply to the world of “The Glass Bees.” Of course, after some time of the world not playing by these rules, he breaks.
It was obvious he was not drunk but in a sort of trance. He no longer defended his idea; instead, he complained about the lack of men of good will— his plans could so easily be realized if only such men existed. Our fathers had set an example. It would be easy to consummate the sacrifice which the times expected from us. Only when it was consummated would the crack which split the world in two be closed…
He smiled and repeated: ‘But it’s so easy. I’ll show you.” Then he shouted: "‘Long live—” and jumped out the window.3
Lorenz’ suicide is a serious matter for Richards, who says it leaves for him scars which last forever. Obsession with politics and with political restructure pushes man in this direction; at least, the average man. The average man, Richards or Lorenz, have no ability to make policy or to change the government. Democracy, the great charade of power shared equally and a government responsible to the will of the people, is laid bare in its shallow form; like scratching paint to find concrete beneath. Richards was right, of course, that Lorenz should never have been holed up alone with his books and theories, plotting the system to tune up a government fit to run society to utopia. He should have been with family, with a loving wife - like Teresa, who throughout the novel constantly rises in the thoughts of our good Captain Richards, grounding him back to the real. Richards, at Lorenz’ funeral, comes to this final thought on the nature of his comrade’s example:
“If a person of strength and good will who draws his nourishment from the past isn’t able to find firm ground under his feet in the present, he is doomed to impotence. If he strives for the impossible, he must destroy himself.”4
Junger himself makes the connection here that I do through Captain Richards at the end of the novel. If the allegory wasn’t obvious enough already, Junger states clearly just moments after Richards has destroyed the Glass Bee:
“Today, only the person who no longer believes in a happy ending, only he who has consciously renounced it, is able to live. A happy century does not exist, but there are moments of happiness, and there is freedom in the moment. Even Lorenz, suspended in nothingness, still had a moment of freedom; he could change the world. They say that during such a fall your whole life passes before you once again. This is one of the mysteries of time. The moment is wedded to eternity.”5
I think it would be a misreading of this bloc to say that Richards is making light of Lorenz’ death here. He’s obviously digging at something deeper, especially since we know of Richards’ disgust towards his other comrades for their unserious interpretation of his death at the time. What Richards is saying instead is that life is lived in the moment, and that man makes himself there. Lorenz is the striving for the happy century but it doesn’t exist. To tie up one's own happiness to the happy century is to be forced to destroy oneself. We simply do not have that amount of control. We live in the moment. We all have a particular position, or series of positions in which we find ourselves, and it is in that position where our decision is made.
“Quite soon the happenings in Zapparoni’s garden began to fade in my memory. There is much that is illusory in techniques. But I never forgot Teresa’s words, and her smile when she spoke. Now she was happy about me. This smile was more powerful than all the automatons— it was a ray of reality."6
To end the book on this final comment on Teresa is the perfect capstone for the piece and executes the fullness of Teresa’s role throughout the novel, as Richards’ anchor to the real. Throughout the novel, important moments end with this return to Teresa - if not physically, mentally, as Richards constantly uses her to guide his perspective, to understand his position. He is not a man awash at sea, he is a husband with a wife at home; one who loves and trusts him. Lorenz, of course, does not have such an anchor - a comment made by Richards explicitly. We can imagine an alternative Captain Richards, one who does not have the love and support of Teresa, or their life together as an anchor — a Captain Richards alone and frustrated, deracinated, dissembled, and unsure of his future. This character is far less likely to be the hero of our story, or to negotiate the difficult tightrope of life with but not of or by the automata that pervade the day.
Of course, the novel does not simply end with Richards’ destruction of the Bee. Importantly, it ends with his accepting a job from Zapparoni. After everything, after the whole journey— after destroying the Bee, he takes a job from Zapparoni. It is easy to say that this destroys the message of the text, or unnecessarily complicates Richards’ position, or any number of other things. It really is the most human ending. Ironic, yes, but human most importantly. More than anything, it should put us at ease. We have gone with Captain Richards as he grappled with the most trying events of his life, and he took a job with Disney. With Walmart. With Google. With Tesla. Just like us, he was put in the position of not just contending conceptually with the problems before us, but of living in the world where those problems exist.
Richards did not choose the ritual suicide of the purity spiral. While he did resist, in his own, measured way, a human resistance to encroaching automatonism, he did not saddle on his own shoulders the burden of reshaping all of society. He keeps his friends and he keeps his family, anchored by them to a real life.
In recognition of this, Zapparoni offers him a different job than the one he came for— his new job is to settle internal disputes within the company, to work with people, to discern prudent and fair outcomes. In this world of Glass Bees, Captain Richards has cut his human niche. We must do the same.
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p.60-61
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p.64
p.207
p.209
"He has a need to theorize, to wordcel, to come up with theories to explain the movement in national identity, in social forces, and in political program. He hopes that if only he can perfect the theory, the world will be fixed."
This is something that has been bothering me about the GOP, and to a lesser extent the e-right/dissident right sphere. I touched on it in what I wrote this past weekend: the belief that if we just perfect the history, find the true name, come up with the right rules, etc and all will fall into place.
Another brief thought was that it may be the nature of 'conservatism' for a generation (or two or whatever) to glom onto ideas and ossify instead of being able to respond to reality on the ground. They don't want things to change and become incapable of responding in a visionary or positive manner (the RETVRN crowd).
On politics as an anchor - politics is an ever shifting sea in a storm. There is no peace to be had in it.
"A happy century does not exist, but there are moments of happiness, and there is freedom in the moment."
I think this has always been true at all times.
Great conclusion to the series here! I can't help be notice a striking similarity to the Odyssey, and Penelope's continual re-focusing effect on Odysseus, another mythical man who resisted the well-trod path