In Search of a Worthy Burden

18 Aug, 2024

Look, I can’t help it: whenever this time of year rolls around, I start feeling some unfathomable blend of near-nostalgia and loss centered upon new school years past. It’s not that I necessarily want to be in a classroom; after all, I left the educational world of my own free will, and I still stand by my decision. I’d always thought the mood was just the result of memory’s being cued by any number of external stimulants, from scent to, in this case, the perceptible waning of a season—cued and then coated in the weird sentimentality an aging brain adds to reflections on experiences to which it can’t return.

I won’t deny that’s part of it—but I got some new insight into the matter while reading Alberto Toscano’s Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea. The book traces the ways in which the West has defined and used the concept of fanaticism, usually as a means of discrediting or diagnosing people or populations it views as pushing up against, maybe endangering, the world it’s created and maintained via the use of (its own assumptions about) reason. The insight I’ll get to came in the chapter on Thomas Müntzer, sixteenth-century theologian and leader of The Peasants’ War in Germany—an uprising of what we might today call the under- and/or lower classes against the many ways they were being shafted by rulers and customs of all sorts.¹ As Toscano describes it, “Fusing together theological radicalism with social conflicts stemming from profound economic transformations and the exactions of the German princes… around 100,000 peasants [were] killed in its repression.”² So, too, of course, was Müntzer, a reformer who’d started out as a fan of Martin Luther, but then decided the scriptures meant—demanded—application to the actual conditions of living people, and not (just) consideration about some other realm or afterlife. Captured, tortured, and killed, Müntzer became and even still remains a “revolutionary icon” for all sorts of people, including Karl Marx. And as Toscano says, the true believer’s “short-lived, tumultuous ministry became a key testing ground for twentieth-century conceptions of the relation between politics, religion and historical change.”

So… what’s the connection here with heading back to class, or rather, with wistful memories of that ritual? It’s not Müntzer himself, or his doomed undertaking, or even the fantastic history course in which I first learned about him—but rather, something Ernst Bloch said about what the revolutionary was trying to accomplish. According to Bloch, Müntzer was indeed attempting “to free the religious subject from the material burden and spiritual distraction imposed by an exploitative order.” Yes, his “theologically-driven revolt is aimed at relieving subjects from vulgar economic suffering”—but rid of that type of suffering “so that they may finally be free for Christian suffering (and redemption). As Bloch writes, when Müntzer ‘straightens up the bent backs, it is in order to allow them to bear a real burden.’”³

That doesn’t sound all that great, and seems like a far more serious version of the standard switcheroo that would happen in middle and high school, when an evangelical kid would invite you to a pizza party, which somehow transformed without notice into a weird revival with terrible music and awkwardness all around. So what struck me about Bloch’s assertion really had nothing to do with his subject, but with his description of the outcome his subject was hoping for: that people would be allowed to bear a real burden.

It’s something in line with what a guaranteed basic income is optimally designed to do: by getting enough cash each month to take care of some bills, a person won’t have to hold down three soul-crushing jobs just to stay alive, where staying alive means never getting off the cycle of work–eat–sleep–buy groceries until you’re finally dead. Instead, that person can have a shot at doing something meaningful for themselves and others, whether starting a business, going to school, or taking care of kids or another family member. Although I hate the phrase and the assumptions that usually accompany it, a guaranteed basic income might just make it possible for a person to “contribute to society” and feel a sense of dignity and purpose in doing so.⁴ Possible, in other words, to bear a real—worthwhile—burden, where “burden” is the kind of responsibility you willingly take on in maintaining close relationships, caring for any sort of living creature, committing yourself to something you’re passionate about, and so on.

And although I’m exceedingly wary of political theater and patriotic rallying cries and the (often willful) blindness they involve or ask their audiences to adopt, it’s the sort of obligation the text of JFK’s 1961 inaugural speech asked us to sign up for: “the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, ‘rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation’—a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.”⁵ Yeah! Let’s go out and make it happen! We’ll join the Peace Corps and inaugurate the Pax Americana!

Setting aside all manner of concerns about Cold War agendas and the benevolent paternalism of college kids telling villagers how to run their lives, there’s the fact that part of that or any other “long twilight struggle” probably involved more sitting at desks and writing reports than anything else. And then maybe the realization would creep in that, in spite of that address’s assertions that this wasn’t about gaining victory over the nefarious Commies, the structures that maintained humanity’s common enemies weren’t really up for discussion. And here’s where the dream of being freed up to bear a real burden might be circling back to my rose-colored thoughts about returning to school.

Education, I was always taught to believe, was supposed to open up the world for you: provide you not just with the discrete job skills that would get you a decent paycheck, but also the ability to think about, navigate, pitch in to, and transform what was really going on in the world. School would, in other words, result not only in subject-area understanding, but also the ability to do something with it, something that intrigued you or that you felt called to, and to understand when the powers-that-be were trying to rope you into their own agenda. Whether or not you felt like acting on that was your own choice, but at least you’d know damn well what the actual situation was beneath all the hype and propaganda. That belief itself was and is naive—institutional education, whether state sponsored or private, has usually been more than anything about moulding kids into adults who can and are willing to keep the national/religious/communal machine alive and well—but in spite of itself, that form of schooling occasionally does what it says it does, and that’s usually thanks to teachers and mentors who can instill some critical thinking abilities in spite of the institution’s aims and regulations.

But if it does work, then there you are after being filled with excitement and knowledge and ideas, ready to go out into the world and make it a little better—and you find that the possibility of doing that is severely hampered by the reality of what’s on offer, as well as by the idiotic business (or higher ed or medical or service…) jargon and LinkedInny admonitions to embrace those payroll reports and staff meetings as the source of such undeniable purpose you just can’t stop yourself from, ahem, evangelizing. If like me, you’ve had a slew of administrative jobs, you might just start to get the sense that it doesn’t matter where you are or what you’re supposed to be supporting; the tasks and tedium will be the same, and the monotony spreads to the degree that it feels like all anyone’s really doing is a lot of busy work for ends that are vague at best. In other words, there’s no worthwhile burden here—just one task after the next completed in someone else’s interest, with that interest often being more profit from things no one really needs. The early mornings, the commute or hybrid invasion of work life into your personal space, the micromanagement, the continual exhoratations to show everyone how enthusiastic you are—if you were doing something that really contributed to bringing down humanity’s “common enemies,” you could deal with it all. But if, say, you’re being bludgeoned into selling more designer luggage, all your pains amount to no more than a lot of hurt and wasted time.⁶

And it’s here that I think my memories of school, especially since they were aimed at moving on into an academic career, take on such a pleasant glow. Sitting there in seminar rooms, holing up studying in the library, depriving yourself of sleep to finish your paper, it was generally clear what the purpose or goal was, and in what direction you were heading, even if only for a single class or semester. It was also something you had (sort of) a say in shaping (at least in terms of what you wanted to investigate) and you were surrounded by and working with others who shared that same sense of purpose and determination to get behind appearances and surface levels. You were not alone, and your peers and superiors confirmed the value of what you were doing, even if—as is the case in any walled-off group or society—the atmosphere was often petty and competitive and sometimes toxic.

I’ve realized that since leaving that world behind, I’ve not encountered anything that feels comparably worth my time or energy or emotional investment, and that includes the communities and interests, such as religion, activism, or politics, in which many people do find a place where the duties or sacrifices or other sorts of trade-offs are worth it. The problem may simply be that I haven’t discovered my thing yet, and I can only hope it’s out there and will eventually be revealed. One of the other possibilities, of course, is that I’m simply my own sort of finicky fanatic, unable to accept the shit sandwich that comes with every job or venture, even the ones that are worth it.⁷ While that doesn’t bode well for my finding and living comfortably with a job or career, I guess it might at least lessen the chances that I’ll join up with the next band of millenarian crusaders that comes my way. That at least should be a comfort—right?

Subscribe to Off-Modern Onions!