March 11, 2002

Dear Colleague,

       At Starbucks this morning I overheard a conversation between two senior professors of political science. They were talking about the perils of submitting papers and book-length manuscripts for publication, how they must swallow their pride and respond respectfully to even the most stupid criticisms, how as mentors to junior faculty their main job is to impart to them lessons of political calculation and astuteness, how their happiness over the many favorable reviews of their work seems powerless to block the depression engendered by one or two negative opinions. This is human nature, I fear. Think of Thomas Mann, one of the most honored men of letters of the twentieth century—Nobel prize, Goethe prize, and so on. Yet he could be floored for days and even weeks by one dismissive review. I am that way myself. For example, I know that the "Dear Colleague" letters I put in my colleagues' mailboxes are, on the whole, well received. Yet when, by chance, I see them sharing the fate of junk mail, their life spanning the shortest possible distance between mailbox and wastepaper bucket right below it, I feel my spirit sink to the bottom of my shoes. Why, I ask (among other things), couldn't my colleague have done me the ordinary human kindness of disposing the letter in the privacy of his or her office?

       If rejection hurts, why do I continue to risk it—why do I continue to write these letters? Well, why I do I continue to live? And this brings me to a more intellectually serious point. Having such a point (however feeble) is my justification for adding once more to the unsolicited clutter in your mailbox. My question is, Why hasn't evolution so arranged matters that we human beings naturally dwell on the good news that flatter our ego and dismiss the bad news that wound it? Wouldn't this arrangement in our genetic make-up be better able to promote survival, which is what evolution is all about? My answer goes something like this. Perhaps the problem with us human beings lies in our having culture. It is in our nature to produce culture, and yet we do so—we have always done so—with ambivalence: yes, we are proud to have built on and adorned nature, but we also feel a bit guilty. Is this painting, book, or building really necessary? True, they provide entertainment, convenience, and comfort, and may even help to elevate the human spirit. But at the level of deep motivation, aren't they really attempts to impress other people--pull the wool over their eyes so that they will admire us? Aren't all cultural achievements a sort of illusion--the product of cunning? And what about the hidden cost in our more ambitious works—the cost to nature in the destruction of plants and animals and to other people in the demands on their time and labor? (Think of Mrs. Tolstoy copying out War and Peace five times). In a society such as our own, we are generally commended for the things we make, and that's one reason we keep on making them. But even in the midst of our success, self-doubt remains. We cannot repress altogether the feeling that we will sooner or later be uncovered, that someone in an otherwise approving audience will be either asleep or fully awake to poke through the façades of our achievements and so reveal the cranky machinery that holds them (and our reputation) up.

Best wishes,

Yi-Fu