Good Morning.
It’s Tuesday. Today’s excerpt is from Kurt Vonnegut’s “Cat’s Cradle.”
More specifically, it’s a speech from the novel — delivered by a fictional ambassador, Horlick Minton, in advance of a military ceremony commemorating the death of one hundred soldiers (referred to as “the lost children of San Lorenzo”).
And I propose to you that if we are to pay our sincere respects to the hundred lost children of San Lorenzo, that we might best spend the day despising what killed them; which is to say, the stupidity and viciousness of all mankind.
Perhaps, when we remember wars, we should take off our clothes and paint ourselves blue and go on all fours all day long and grunt like pigs. That would surely be more appropriate than noble oratory and shows of flags and well-oiled guns.
I do not mean to be ungrateful for the fine, martial show we are about to see—and a thrilling show it really will be … And hooray say I for thrilling shows.
But if today is really in honor of a hundred children murdered in war, is today a day for a thrilling show?
The answer is yes, on one condition: that we, the celebrants, are working consciously and tirelessly to reduce the stupidity and viciousness of ourselves and of all mankind.
Kurt Vonnegut was an author who wrote with both deep pessimism and deep kindness.
He believed in the potential for human goodness, but it wasn’t because he thought humanity was good by default.
No, nothing of the sort. He thought we might as well be pigs in the mud.
Perhaps it was the ugliness of the world — the “stupidity and viciousness” of mankind — that drew him to writing in the first place. He suggests as much in a quote from Backwards City Review:
Where do I get my ideas from? You might as well have asked that of Beethoven. He was goofing around in Germany like everybody else, and all of a sudden this stuff came gushing out of him. It was music. I was goofing around like everybody else in Indiana, and all of a sudden stuff came gushing out. It was disgust with civilization.
But for all his disgust, Vonnegut didn’t lose hope in humanity’s future.
You can see that at the end of Ambassador Minton’s speech, endorsing war memorials only insofar as they represent an active renunciation of the impulse toward conflict.
You also see it in the advice given to a pair of newborn twins by another of Vonnegut’s fictional characters, Eliot Rosewater from “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater:”
Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you've got a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies: "God damn it, you've got to be kind.”
It’s 2024, and there are multiple violent conflicts taking place across the globe. There’s no particular reason to think this will change any time soon. Indeed, it may well get worse.
But acknowledging war and accepting war are two different things.
Pessimism and kindness need not be mutually exclusive.