{"id":10196,"date":"2012-11-15T10:49:14","date_gmt":"2012-11-15T15:49:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=10196"},"modified":"2012-11-15T13:03:34","modified_gmt":"2012-11-15T18:03:34","slug":"jack-gilbert-a-brief-for-the-defense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=10196","title":{"rendered":"Jack Gilbert, A Brief for the Defense"},"content":{"rendered":"

The poet Jack Gilbert died this week. One of his most famous poems is “A Brief for the Defense<\/a>,” from which I quote a couple of excerpts:<\/p>\n

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
\nare not starving someplace, they are starving
\nsomewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
\nBut we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
\nOtherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
\nbe made so fine. …<\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
\nwe lessen the importance of their deprivation.
\nWe must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
\nbut not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
\nthe stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
\nfurnace of this world. To make injustice the only
\nmeasure of our attention is to praise the Devil.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The charge against us is that we enjoy life despite others’ suffering. Does the defense (quoted above) make a good case on our behalf? Does it depend on the mention of God? Or is there a secular, ethical case for relishing life despite suffering?<\/p>\n

Some years ago, I would have said that the best way to live is not to count one’s own happiness more than anyone else’s. My welfare or happiness should (ideally) represent about one seven-billionth of my concern. Now I am not so sure. I think that subjective happiness is only roughly correlated with objective conditions, such as prosperity and freedom. As Gilbert puts it in this poem, “There is laughter \/ every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta.” On the other hand, people are generally bad at being happy, we cannot make each other happy, and a world in which we all strove for each other’s happiness would be strangely empty. Everyone would be taking in other people’s laundry. Emerson and Nietzsche put the point too strongly, but they has an insight. Not only demanding justice for others but also achieving happiness for ourselves is a worthy moral objective. (See also my posts on “all that matters is equanimity, community, and truth<\/a>,” “unhappiness and injustice are different problems,” <\/a>and “Mill\u2019s question: If you achieved justice, would you be happy?<\/a>.”)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The poet Jack Gilbert died this week. One of his most famous poems is “A Brief for the Defense,” from which I quote a couple of excerpts: Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies are not starving someplace, they are starving somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils. But we enjoy our lives because that’s what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-notes-on-poems","category-populism"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10196"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10196\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10213,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10196\/revisions\/10213"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}