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August 28, 2008

Dear Colleague:  

    "Planet Earth," a BBC television series, is immensely successful. Watching it, I can understand why. First, there is the element of surprise. Having heard so much about how humans have ravaged the Earth, I can't help being pleased to see that much seemingly pristine nature still remain. Second, there is the sheer exhilaration of witnessing so much beauty and wonder. Of course, the film also shows death and destruction—erupting volcanoes, hurricanes on the rampage, tsunamis swallowing whole seashores, and so on, but these acts of violence too can be exhilarating, as though a supreme artist were wiping clean the slate so as to start another, even greater master work. Third, there is the curious repetitiousness of the life stories. No matter what the life form is—polar bear, Bactrian camel, or gypsy moth—the story comes down to birth, struggle for survival intermingled with brief interludes of calm well-being, degeneration and death. If nevertheless I don't find the plot line monotonous, it is because the hugely varied sizes, shapes, colors, and means of motion and gesture of the actors hold me in thrall.

    Now, the human story is not monotonous. One could almost wish that it were a little more so—that one generation passed sleepily to another without permanently marking the Earth, in the manner of Bactrian camels. Not so, of course. We have left behind pyramids and great walls, churches and supermarkets, fumy slums and glittering cities. Their story is the story of civilization. Just after World War II, many American universities offered a course called "Western civilization" that all undergraduates were required to take. Columbia famously offered a parallel course called "Eastern civilizations." Inspired professors made these courses into adventures of the human spirit, its perversions and failures almost as enlightening as its honest ventures and successes. Like "Planet Earth," I imagine that such courses could be exhilarating, that students taking them would feel pleased with themselves, their ancestors, and, more generally, with humankind, the horrors committed notwithstanding.

    Then, in the sixties, came the Cultural Revolution in America. Students were up in arms against the academic establishment, which they thought oppressive and imperialistic. The course "Western civilization" was considered little better than propaganda, a device of the elite to browbeat the underclass, and of white people to impress and humble colored peoples. Students and their professorial mentors, topped up with idealism and little else, were far better at attacking a defective system than erecting a sound one. Indeed, so engaged were they with the relatively easy task of criticizing and attacking that they had practically forgotten what it was like to construct. In the end, they came to be suspicious of the very idea of construction. A meanness of spirit permeated academia. "Art appreciation" gave way to "Art criticism." Energy devoted to evaluating the quality of a work turned to exposing the moral failings of the artist. History became a joyless affair, either a story of oppression, or a story dishonestly told to hide oppression. The idea of achievement, that anything worthwhile was done, that great institutions, noble buildings, sublime artworks, and astonishing science had been added to the Earth, seems to have disappeared from serious history. What would Leopold von Ranke, "father" of modern historiography, think—he who wrote that joy—the joy one derives from "looking at flowers"—was the gift of history to the historians and, by extension, to his or her readers?

Best wishes,

Yi-Fu