Altruistic Punishment
We may condemn extremist groups that predict the apocalypse and arm themselves for end times, but are these people just crazy or is something deeper at work? Why would people buy expensive automatic weapons and pickup trucks just to swap stories or act out conspiracies? If they aren’t thoughtful enough to see through the contradictions, what motivates them to sacrifice themselves to such a harsh master?
They may be acting out an ancient behavior, where they believe they are enforcing social norms to save society. We have seen numerous examples of this role and its grisly effects throughout history, with witch trials, anti-American committees, and ethnic persecution. These people err on the side of caring too much, and lose their humanity in the process. Yet this behavior persists, even when the perpetrators suffer along with their victims.
These sometimes suicidal warriors punish anyone who violates the social contract. Slackers do not eat, or get pushed out into the cold. Thieves lose their hands or eyes. Unbelievers must be either enlightened or killed, committing their souls to God for judgment. They appoint themselves as the guardians of civilization, while at the same time destroying other cultures or practices that they find alien or threatening.
We do hold the gun-toting true believers accountable in the novel, and recognize the paranoia and absurdity of the son-in-law’s complex web of nefarious deeds and entities wrapped up in the ”deep state”. The pastor comes off with a somewhat more coherent belief, but still is so far gone to be impossible to convert back to pacifism and universal love. The pastor’s son and the granddaughter somehow see through the fog of their parents’ belief systems, and may piece together something more appropriate for themselves, that is if they can see through their own assumptions.
Evidently, both the grandfather and the pseudo-soldiers are too far from the mainstream to be tolerated. Neither extreme can persist. The grandfather must return to the mainstream if he is to be a part of his daughter’s and grandchildren’s lives. The violent avengers of immorality must be tried and jailed, as they are clearly a threat even to the faithful. There is a reason why people have cars and cell phones, and a reason why the government holds a monopoly on killing.
Just as we cannot go back to pre-industrial ways of life, we cannot return to prehistoric methods of social control. We invented the judicial system to bypass the bias and delusions of ordinary people acting as judge, jury, and executioner. We built multi-level government to organize behavior in logical and harmonious ways. We rely on those systems for our very existence. When they fail, everyone suffers.
Jess Walter may be showing us that our state is in danger today, not from just extremists, but from illogical and contradictory drifts in social norms. Without the capacity to curate, moderate, and authenticate ideas, we have become prey to every crazy conspiracy theory and blatantly false assertion that has a shiny wrapping or can excite boosts from eager victims. This social pandemic attacks the fabric of modern civilization, undermining the power of government and the rule of law. No wonder the book ends with a somewhat dissatisfying conclusion. How can we feel good about the way things are, when nobody has any idea how to fix it?
What Have You Learned?
After spending seven years in the woods and reading over nine hundred books, when his newspaper editor friend and ex-lover asks the old man what he has learned, he gropes through his mind for an answer: Water. Seriously? Come on, Zarathustra, give me a better answer. You must have accomplished something after all that reading and thinking.
Of course he has. His answer returns our attention back to the substance that is the foundation of all life. It does not, however, address her problems of slacker reporters or shrinking readership for her paper. Her disappointment and scorn suggests the typical attitude toward those who opt out of society: that they are fleeing the problem, not actively trying to solve it. The ones who stay in the trenches and slug it out day to day are the real heroes, right? Maybe, if you believe in trench warfare. If not, not so much.
Asking such a question in the first place reveals a fundamental difference in approach. Those who would not take the time to read nine hundred books just want a simple answer. Those who would take the time to read all those books just want to read. They may or may not be looking for something. The process of reading and thinking is its own reward.
Did all those years and books leave their mark on the grandfather? Perhaps, as he does come across as a literate person. He shares a keen interest in all things with his granddaughter, who resembles his daughter at that age, but that innate quality may have been a cause of his reading and thinking rather than an effect of it. Still, we sense a subtle difference in him, perhaps in the longevity of his curiosity and child-like fascination with the world.
Other characters in the story have lost this quality, having entered the adult world with all its concerns and conditions, of work, family, home, and wealth accumulation. His daughter, the mother of his two grandchildren, attempts to recapture that teenage sense of freedom and innocence when she elopes with her first love to the rock concert, but recoils from the rampant drug use she finds there and winds up shivering in her tent from panic attacks, worrying about her children.
Try as they might, nobody has a foolproof plan, and every action leads to new complications. Neither retreat or digging in appear to be the path to salvation. Attack only leads to bloodshed and more suffering. How can we have gone so far astray? How do we find our way back to firmer ground?
What some might call a second childhood, returning to the wilderness and erasing all traces of his family’s existence on the ground, could have marked a transition into something beyond adulthood, a sort of super-maturity. This seemed more pregnant with meaning than herding clueless golfers around the course, even if he would be ultimately unsuccessful. Instead you might interpret his choice to reenter society as arrested development.