[digg-reddit-me]About a month ago, one of my two favorite living novelists, Haruki Murakami, went to Jerusalem to accept an award. He had been advised, he said, by many of his friends and admirers in Japan, not to go to accept this award because of Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. From this point in his speech it was clear he could go one of two places – to stand forthrightly with Israel (as Rupert Murdoch recently did) or to use his place of honor to criticize. Murakami apparently struggled with what to do – and it was apparent in his speech. He tried to do neither. But he laid out this basic tenet of his philosophy:
“Between a high, solid wall and an egg that breaks against it, I will always stand on the side of the egg.”
Yes, no matter how right the wall may be and how wrong the egg, I will stand with the egg. Someone else will have to decide what is right and what is wrong; perhaps time or history will decide. If there were a novelist who, for whatever reason, wrote works standing with the wall, of what value would such works be?
Murakami explains that the wall can be many things, and the egg many things – but that more than anything else, the wall is the System, and the eggs are individuals:
I have only one thing I hope to convey to you today. We are all human beings, individuals transcending nationality and race and religion, fragile eggs faced with a solid wall called the System. To all appearances, we have no hope of winning. The wall is too high, too strong — and too cold. If we have any hope of victory at all, it will have to come from our believing in the utter uniqueness and irreplaceability of our own and others’ souls and from the warmth we gain by joining souls together.
Take a moment to think about this. Each of us possesses a tangible, living soul. The System has no such thing. We must not allow the System to exploit us. We must not allow the System to take on a life of its own. The System did not make us: We made the System. That is all I have to say to you.
I’ve struggled with this critique of Murakami’s since I read it a month ago. I wanted to dismiss it as too simplistic, too easy. It struck me as – to some degree – embodying the worst of Western leftist movements. At the same time, it reminded me of the critique Ann Coulter, that shrill harpy, made of liberalism in her Treason:
Whenever the nation is under attack, from within or without, liberals side with the enemy.
In her view of history, liberals sided with criminals over law enforcement, terrorists over counter-terrorists, Communists over patriots, Vietcong over the American military, hippies over the cops bashing the hippies in the head. And, though Coulter neglects to mention these: blacks over racist Southern mobs and sheriffs, the poor against a system that allowed them to be impoverished, and the public against faceless, greedy corporations. There’s a certain logic and appeal to Coulter’s view – but to accept it one must first be wiped of all knowledge of American history and liberalism – which is the story of tough, pragmatic choices by men and women trying to uphold the system by reforming it and protecting it. Reform – not treason or revolution – has been the rallying cry of the American liberal.
There is a strain of thinking on the left that is and has been mainly marginalized in America that sees the “System” as the problem. In many other countries in the world, this strain of thinking is more mainstream – as are the leftist movements in those countries. I think what Coulter was referring to in her comment is the attitude that Murakami displayed in his speech – siding with the egg over the wall, regardless of “right” and “wrong.”
And yet, I still struggle with Murakami’s construction. It reminds me of the Catholic Church’s “preferential option for the poor.” And at the same time, it’s modesty appeals to me. Murakami does not say that he is “right” – only that it is his duty, his role to take the side of the “egg.” I believe it is important to have the worldviews of everyone articulated – as it is the only way to understand.
But after struggling I cannot say I am on the side of the egg or the wall. What I finally realized is that the problem with this construct is not in the description of the egg or the wall – but in the lack of empathy for either side. I think in a real sense, this attitude – “May the egg always be right, but the egg, right or wrong!” – explains and motivates a great deal of the left, with it’s sympathy to any group or individual who presents themselves as attacking the “System” or as a victim of the “System.” Whether that individual be José Bové or a Gazan covered in blood or Hugo Chávez. The problem for me is that this egg versus wall scenario provides no meaningful distinction between Mohandas Gandhi and Osama Bin Laden.
The failure of this metaphor seems to arise – for me – in it’s lack of empathy. The “wall” – or the “System” is itself fragile – and individuals are far more than mere shells containing souls – they interact with the environment, they see, they hear, they make choices. This split between self-contained, solitary individuals and a menacing system is a basic theme of Murakami’s work – and the lack of culture or society within these works is actually what makes them so accessible to a Westerner like myself. At the same time, it makes them surreal. The heightened reality in these novels reveals something true about the nature of our world – but it is incomplete.