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 •••
KAREN ARMSTRONG

IN 1981, KAR.EN ARMSTRONG published Through the Narrow Gate, a controver-

sial account of her experience as a Sister of the Society of the Holy Child Jesus,
a Roman Catholic order. Armstrong left the convent and the Church in 1972,
"wearied by religion" and "worn out by years of struggle," and then spent the
intervening years pursuing a doctorate in literature and teaching at an English
girls' school. Although her first book was a milestone, Armstrong has described
her life's real turning point as a series of trips she made to Jerusalem beginning
in 1982. Shocked by Israel's invasion of Lebanon and also by the Palestinians'
intifada, Armstrong found herself questioning just how accurately most
W estemers-herself included-understood the lives and beliefs of Muslims in
the Middle East.
Convinced that the West was "posing as a tolerant and compassionate
society and yet passing judgments from a position of extreme ignorance and irra-
tionality," Armstrong set out to help rectify cross-cultural rnisperceptions and
religious misunderstandings. She has written a number of books that explore
relations among Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, including Holy War: The
Crusades and Their Impact on Today's World (1991); Mohammed: A Biography ef
the Prophet (1992); and Islam: A Short History (2000). She has also written a bio-
graphy, Buddha (2001), and The Battle for God (2000), an account of the rise of
fundamentalism in modem societies.
The selection that follows comes from The Case for God (2009), in which
Annstrong, a self-described "freelance monotheist," responds to the writings of
New Atheists Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett, Sam Harris, Victor]. Stenger,
and Christopher Hitchens. Armstrong makes the case that their view of religion
has been shaped by the very fundamentalism they reject. Dawkins, for example,
assumes that religion rests on faith in "a superhuman; supernatural intelligence
who deliberately designed and created the universe and everything in it." Today
this view of. God is accepted by hundreds of millions of believers, yet Armstrong
argues that in earlier times, religion was understood quite diiferently---as mythos, a

Excerpt from THE CASE FOR GOD by Karen Armstrong. copyright © 2009 by Karen Armstrong. Used by pemris-
sion of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publislring Group, a division of Random House LLC, and
Curtis Brown, Ltd. All rights reserved. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prolribited.
Interested parties must apply directly to Random House LLC for permission.

Biographical information and opening quotations are taken from http://www.islamfortoday.com/karenarrnstrong.htm;

the middle quotation is from www.washlngton-report.org/backissues/0293/9302038.htm. The quotation from Richard
Dawkins appears on p. 304 of T1ie Case for G,d. The final quotation is drawn from http:/ /speakingoffirith.publicradio
.org/programs/annstrong/transcript.shtml.
 HOMO RELIGIOSUS 3
2 KAREN ARMSTRONG

h The subject matter was also governed by rules t~at

symbolic language meant to transform our consciousness and our ways of bein su.itable than ot ersd. t d The artists selected only a few of the species
As she told an interviewer in 2008, she sees religion as "poetry": g, n never O
h pe to un ers an . • tures of the reindeer on which . they re1·1ed
th ~th~~oo~ .
Now a poet spends a great deal of time listening to his unconscious, and n..· .·. to em, . t ntly paired--oxen and bison with horses, bison
? Animals are consis e 3
slowly calling up a poem word by word, phrase by phrase, until some- od.- . b. tions that would not occur in real life. Lascaux
oths-m com ma th. . f
thing beautiful is brought forth, we hope, into the world that changes m. am.m b t three hundred decorated caves in is region o
• There are a ou
people's perceptions. And we respond to a poem emotionally. And I unique. d h Spain In some the artwork is more elementary,
ern France an nort em .
th . agery and layout are basically the san1.e.
The earIiest
think we should take as great a care when we write our theology as we
i.n·· all these caverns dae =fr bout 30 000 BCE a time when Homo sapiens
would if we were writing such a poem ... because I do see religion as a •· ·.. Chauvet tes om a , ' . .
kind of art form. a.·t· Grotte d , abrupt evolutionary change in this locality. There
h e un ergone an . .al .
s.co av . . ul • hich may have resulted m soc1 tension.
' , dramatic nse m pop anon, w . d
·~'.;\ .. . believe that the cave art records a "corpus of socially cons~c:e
..so.me·hi···s·
:. ·.· _,_ tonans for co nflict control ••· pictorially encoded for storage and transnussion .
f. . .t"...., ··· . ,,4 B t the paintings also express an intensely aestheo.c appre-
h generations. u
ci:.
V!roug __ ld '·Iere we have the earliest known evi ence o f an
. "d

••• . . of the natur.u1 wor . r

on .
logical system, w 1c
e•·.r./whlc
h. h remained in place for some twenty thousan years,
. . h th caves fell into disuse in about 9000 BCE .
. It is now gene Y agree
e rail
5

d that these labyrinths were sacred places for the

•
d

·.· f kind of ritual Some historians have argued that their purpose
Homo religiosus ormance o some
rel ra
·
tic, but their upkeep alone would have requrre an m_unense
· d ·
pu y p gmad · labor Some of these sites were so deep that 1t took
unt of unpro ucuve · xh ·
When the guide switches off his flashlight in the underground caverns of Lascaux · ;rt~ermost core Visirino- the caves was dangerous, e ausung,
to reach th err "'"'" · --., · ha th
in the Dordogne, the effect is overwhelming. "The senses suddenly are wiped > .·.· .· omical and time-consuming. The general consensus IS t t . caves were
out," one visitor recalled, "the millennia drop away ... You were never in darker ·.·.·.·.·.uµec.on . d, that as ill. any temple their iconography reflected a vision that was
'. •.sanctuanes an , ' b ild I lik
darkness in your life. It was-I don't know,just a complete knockout. You don't ' •, a· 1
6
ally different from that of the outside world. We do not u temp es . e
know whether you are looking north, south, east, or west. All orientation is gone, : . ~ ·. the modern west. Our worldview is predominantly rational, and we think
and you are in a datkness that never saw the sun." Normal daylight consciousness .•.••· IS. Ill· ily . cepts than images we find it hard enough to decode the sym-
<' more eas ill con · . th Pal lithi
extinguished, you feel a "timeless dissociation from every concern and requirement ;::bohsm o a me ieval cathedral such as the one ill Chartres, so ese
·. • .· • · • f d' aeo c
of the upper world that you have left behind." 1 Before reaching the first of the \£shrines offer an almost insurmountable challenge. . .
caves decorated by our Palaeolithic ancestors in the Stone Age, seventeen thousand \, .. But there are a few clues to aid our understanding. A remarkable pictur~,
years ago, visitors have to stumble for some eighty feet down a sloping tunnel, {dated to about 12,000 BCE, in a cave at Lascaux known as ~e Crypt because it
sixty-five feet below ground level, penetrating ever more deeply into the bowels is'even deeper than the other caverns, depicts a large biso~ th~t has be~
of the earth. Then the guide suddenly turns the beam of his flashlight onto the /eviscerated by a spear thrust through its hindquarters. Lymg m :front
'.. · · · dta · far dimentary stvle than the am-
ceiling, and the painted animals seem to emerge from the depths of the rock. ( die wounded beast is a man, :wn ill a rp.ore ru ·, .
A strange beast with gravid belly and long pointed horns walks behind a line of t . mals, with arms outstretched, phallus erect, and w~g what seems to_ b: a bu:d
wild cattle, horses, deer, and bulls that seem siniultaneously in motion and at rest. mask·. his staff which lies on the ground nearby, is also topped by a birds head.
In all there are about six hundred frescoes and fifteen hundred engravings in ' .This ~eems to' be an illustration of a well-known legend and could have been the
the Lascaux labyrinth. There is a powerful bellowing black stag, a leaping cow, founding myth of the sanctuary. The same scene appears on an engraved reilldeer
and a procession of horses moving in the opposite direction. At the entrance to '.(·holl1 at nearby Villars and on a sculpted block in a clitf shelter at ~oc d; Sers near
another long passage known as the Nave, a frieze of elegant deer has been • .• .:·. .··.t
. ...
. . im.·.·.
·
oges which is five thousand years older than the Lascaux pamtmg. Fifiy-fr:e
' al lith. k dtawmgs m
painted above a rocky ledge so that they appear to be swimming. We see these similar in1ages in the other caves and three more P aeo 1c; roe
images far more clearly than the Palaeolithic artists did, since they had to work .· · a have been found, all showing men confronting animals m a state of trance
by the light of small flickering lamps, perched precariously on scaffolding that ~Vith upraised arms. 8 They are probably shamans. . th
has left holes in the surface of the wall. They often painted new pictures over ••,, We. know that shamanism developed in Africa and Europe du~g e
old images, even though there was ample space nearby. It seems that location eolithic period and that it spread to Siberia and thenc~ . to Amenca and
was crucial and that, for reasons we cannot fathom, some places were deemed 1.1stralia,. where the shaman is still the chief religious practitioner among the
4 KAREN ARMSTRONG
indigenous hunting peoples. Even though they have inevitably been influenced
by neighboring civilizations, many of the original structures of these societies,
which were arrested at a stage similar to that of the Palaeolithic, remained intact
until the late nineteenth century. 9 Today there is a remarkable continuity in the
descriptions of the shaman's ecstatic flight all the way from Siberia, through the
Americas to Tierra del Fuego: 10 he swoons during a public stance and believes
that he flies through the air to consµlt the gods about the location of game. In
these traditional societies, hunters do not feel that the species are distinc.t or per-
manent categories: men can become animals and animals human. Shamans have
bird and animal guardians and can converse with the beasts that are revered as
messengers of higher powers.11 The shaman's vision gives meaning to the hunt-
ing and killing of animals on which these societies depend.
The hunters feel profoundly uneasy about slaughtering the beasts, who are
their friends and patrons, and to assuage this anxiety, they surround the hunt
with taboos and prohibitions. They say that long ago the animals made a cove-
nant with humankind and now a god known as the Animal Master regularly
sends flocks from the lower world to be killed on the hunting plains, because the
hunters promised to perform the rites that will them posthumous life. Hunters
often abstain from sex before an expedition, hunt in a state of ritual purity, and
feel a deep empathy with their prey. In the Kalahari Desert, where wood is scarce,
the Bushmen have to rely on light weapons that can only graze the skin, so they
anoint their arrows with a lethal poison that kills the animal very slowly. A tribes-
man has to remain with his victim, crying when it cries and participating symboli-
cally in its death throes. Other tribes identify with their prey by donning animal
costumes. After stripping the meat from the bones, some reconstruct their kill by
laying out its skeleton and pelt; others bury these inedible remains, symbolically
restoring the beast to the netherworld from which it came. 12
The hunters of the Palaeolithic age may have had a similar worldview. Some
of the myths and rites they devised appear to have survived in the traditions of
later, literate cultures. Animal sacrifice, for example, the central rite of nearly
every religious system in antiquity, preserved prehistoric hunting ceremonies
and continued to honor a beast that gave its life for the sake of humankind. 13
One of the functions of ritual is to evoke an anxiety in such a way that the
community is forced to confront and control it. From the very beginning, it
seems, religious life was rooted in acknowledgment of the tragic fact that life
depends upon the destruction of other creatures.
The Palaeolithic caves may have been the scene of similar rites. Some of the
paintings include dancing men dressed as animals. The Bushmen say that their
own rock paintings depict "the world behind this one that we see with our
eyes," which the shamans visit during their mystical flights. 14 They smear the
walls of the caves with the blood, excrement, and fat of their kill in order to
restore it, symbolically, to the earth; animal blood and fat were ingredients of the
Palaeolithic paints, and the act of painting itself could have been a ritual of resto-
ration.15 The images may depict the eternal, archetypal animals that take tempo-
16
rary physical form in the upper world. All ancient religion was based on what
has been called the perennial philosophy, because it was present in some form in
HOMO RELIGIOSUS 5
so many premodem cultures. It sees every single person, object, or experience as a
replica of a reality in a sacred world that is more effective and enduring than our
own. 17 When an Australian Aborigine hunts his prey, he feels wholly at one with
First Hunter, caught up in a richer and more potent reality that makes him feel
18
fully alive and complete. Maybe the hunters ofLascaux re-enacted the archetypal
hunt in the caves amid these painrings of the eternal hunting ground before they
left their tribe to embark on the perilous quest for food. 19
We can, of course, only speculate. Some scholars believe that these caverns
were likely to have.b.een used for the initiation ceremonies that marked the ado-
lescent boy's rite of passage from childhood to maturity. This type of initiation
was crucial in ancient religion and is still practiced in traditional societies today. 20
When they reach puberty, boys are taken from their mothers and put through
frightening ordeals that transform them into men. The tribe cannot afford the
luxury of allowing an adolescent to "fud himself" W estem-style; he has to relin-
quish the dependency of infancy and assume the burdens of adulthood over-
night. To this end, boys are incarcerated in tombs, buried in the earth,
informed that they are about to be eaten by a monster, flogged, circumcised,
and tattooed. If the initiation is properly conducted, a youth will be forced to
reach for inner resources that he did not know he possessed. Psychologists tell
us that the terror of such an experience causes a regressive disorganization of
the personality that, if skillfully handled, can lead to a constructive reorganization
of the young man's powers. He has faced death, come out the other side, and is
now psychologically prepared to risk his life for his people.
But the purpose of the ritual is not simply to tum him into an efficient kill-
machine; rather, it is to train him to kill in the sacred manner. A boy is usu-
ally introduced to the more esoteric mythology of his tribe during his initiation.
He first hears about the Animal Master, the covenant, the magnanimity of the
beasts, and the rituals that will restore his life while he is undergoing these
traumatic rites. In these extraordinary circumstances, separated from everything
familiar, he is pushed into a new state of consciousness that enables him to
appreciate the profound bond that links hunter.and prey in their common strug-
gle for survival. This is not the kind of knowledge we acquire by purely logical
deliberations, but is akin to the understanding derived from art. A poem, a play,
or, indeed, a great painting has the power to change our perception in ways that
we may not be able to explain logically but that seem incontestably true. We
find that th,ings that appear distinct to the rational eye are in some way pro-
foundly connected or that a perfectly commonplace object-a chair, a sunflower,
or a pair of boots-has numinous significance. Art involves our emotions, but if
it is to be more than a superficial epiphany, this new insight must go deeper than
feelings that are, by their very nature, ephemeral.
If the historians are right about the function of the Lascaux caves, religion
and art were inseparable from the very beginning. Like art, religion is an attempt
to construct meaning in the face of the relentless pain and injustice of life. As
meaning-seeking creatures, men and women fall very easily into despair. They
have created religions and works of art to help them fud value in their lives,
despite all the dispiriting evidence to the contrary. The initiation experience
 KAREN ARMSTRONG
6
also shows that a myth, like that of the Animal Master, derives much of its
meaning from the ritualized context in which it is imparted. 21 It may not be
empirically true, it may defy the laws oflogic, but a good myth will tell us some-
thing valuable about the human predicament. Like any work of art, a myth will
make no sense unless we open ourselves to it wholeheartedly and allow it to
change us. If we hold ourselves aloof, it will remain opaque, incomprehensible,
and even ridiculous.
Religion is hard work. Its are not self-evident and have to be culti-
vated in the same way as an appreciation of art, music, or poetry must be devel-
oped. The intense effort required is especially evident in the underground
labyrinth of Trois Freres at Ariege in the Pyrenees. Doctor Herbert Kuhn, who
visited the site in 1926, twelve years after its discovery, described the frightening
experience of crawling through the tunnel--scarcely a foot high in some
places-that leads to the heart of this magnificent Palaeolithic sanctuary. "I felt
as though I were creeping through a coffin," he recalled. "My heart is pounding
and it is difficult to breathe. It is terrible to have the roof so close to one's head."
He could hear the other members of his party groaning as they struggled through
the darkness, and when they :finally arrived in the vast underground hall, it felt
"like a redemption."22 They found themselves gazing at a wall covered in spec-
tacular engravings: mammoths, bison, wild horses, wolverines, and musk oxen;
darts flying everywhere; blood spurting from the mouths of the bears; and a
human figure clad in animal skin playing a flute. Dominating the scene was a
large painted figure, half man, half beast, who fixed his huge, penetrating eyes
on the visitors. Was this the Animal Master? Or did this hybrid creature symbol-
ize the underlying unity of animal and human, natural and divine?
A boy would not be expected to "believe" in the Animal Master before he
entered the caves. But at the culmination of his ordeal, this image would have
made a powerful impression; for hours he had, perhaps, fought his way through
nearly a mile of convoluted passages to the accompaniment of "songs, cries,
noises or mysterious objects thrown from no one knows where," special effects
that would have been "easy to arrange in such a place." 23 In archaic thinking,
there is no concept of the supernatural, no huge gulf separating human and
divine. If a priest donned the sacred regalia of an animal pelt to impersonate the
Animal Master, he became a temporary manifestation of that divine power.24
These rituals were not the expression of a "belief' that had to be accepted in
blind faith. As the German scholar Walter Burkert explains, it is pointless to look
for an idea or doctrine behind a rite. In the premodern world, ritual was not the
product ofreligious ideas; on the contrary, these ideas were the product ofritual. 25
Homo religiosus is pragmatic in this sense only; if a ritual no longer evokes a pro-
found conviction of life's ultimate value, he simply abandons it. But for twenty
thousand years, the hunters of the region continued to thread their way through
the dangerous pathways of Trois fo~res in order to bring their mythology--
whatever it was--to life. They must have found the effort worthwhile or they
would, without a backward glance, have given it up.
Religion was not something tacked on to the human condition, an optional
extra imposed on people by unscrupulous priests. The desire to cultivate a sense
HOMO RELIGIOSUS 7
of the transcendent may be the defining human characteristic. In about 9000 BCE,
when human beings developed agriculture and were no longer dependent on
animal meat, the old hunting rites lost some of their appeal and people ceased
to visit the caves. But they did not discard religion altogether. Instead they devel-
oped a new set of myths and rituals based on the fecundity of the soil that filled
6
the men and women of the Neolithic age with religious awe.2 Tilling the fields
became a ritual that replaced the hunt, and the nurturing Earth took the place of
the Animal Master. Before the modem period, most men and women were nat-
urally inclined to religion and they were prepared to work at it. Today many of
us are no longer willing to make this effort, so the old myths seem arbitrary,
remote, and incredible.
Like art, the truths of religion require the disciplined cultivation of a differ-
ent mode of consciousness. The cave experience always began with the disorien-
tation of utter darkness, which annihilated normal habits of mind. Human beings
are so constituted that periodically they seek out ekstasis, a "stepping outside" the
nonn. Today people who no longer find it in a religious setting resort to other
outlets: music, dance, art, sex, drugs, or sport. We make a point of seeking out
these experiences that touch us deeply within and lift us momentarily beyond
ourselves. At such times, we feel that we inhabit our humanity more fully than
usual and experience an enhancement of being.
Lascaux may seem impossibly distant from modem religious practice, but we
cannot understand either the nature of the religious quest or our current religious
predicament unless we appreciate the spirituality that emerged quite early in the
history of Homo religiosus and continued to animate the major confessional traditions
until the early modern period, when an entirely different kind of religiosity -
emerged in the West during the seventeenth century. To do that we must examine
a number of core principles that will be of fundamental importance to our story.
The first concerns the nature of the ultimate reality-later called God,
Nirvana, Brahman, or Dao. In a rocky overhang at Laussel, near Lascaux, there
is a small stone relief that is seventeen thousand years old and was created at
about the same time as the earliest of the nearby cave paintings. It depicts a
woman holding a curved bison's horn above her head so that it immediately
suggests the rising, crescent moon; her right hand lies on her pregnancy. By
this people had begun to observe the phases of the moon for practical pur-
poses, but their religion had little or nothing to do with this protoscientific
observation .of the physical cosmos. 27 Instead, material reality was symbolic of
an unseen dimension of existence. The little Venus of Laussel already suggests
an association between the moon, the female cycle, and human reproduction.
In many parts of the world, the moon was linked symbolically with a number
of apparently unrelated phenomena: women, water, vegetation, serpents, and
fertility. What they all have in common is the regenerative power of life that is
continually able to renew itself. Everything could so easily lapse into nothingness, .
yet each year after the death of winter, trees sprout new leaves, the moon wanes
but always waxes brilliantly once more, and the serpent, a universal symbol of 28
initiation, sloughs off its old withered skin and comes forth gleaming and fresh.
The female also manifested this inexhaustible power. Ancient hunters revered a
 8 KAREN ARMSTRONG
HOMO RELIGIOSUS 9

goddess kno:'n as the Great Mother. In large stone reliefs at <;atalhiiyiik in

Turkey, she 1s shown giving birth, flanked by boars' skulls and bulls' horns-
reli~s of a successful hunt. While hunters and animals died in the grim struggle for
survival, the female was endlessly productive of new life. 29
Perhaps these ancient societies were ttying to express their sense of what the
German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1899-1976) called "Being," a fundamental
energy that supports and animates everything that exists. Being is transcendent. You
could not see, touch, or hear it but could only watch it at work in the people
objects, and natural forces around you. From the documents of later Neolithi~
an~ pastoral societies, we know that Being rather than a being was revered as the
ultnnate sa::red power. It :'as impossible to define or describe because Being is all-
enc_ompassmg and our ~ds ~e .o~y equipped to deal with particular beings,
which can merely participate m 1t m a restricted manner. But certain objects
became eloquent symbols of the power of Being, which sustained and shone
through them with particular clarity. A stone or a rock (frequent symbols of the
sacred) expressed the stability and durability of Being; the moon, its power of end-
less renewal; the sky, its towering transcendence, ubiquity, and universality.30 None
of these symbols was worshipped for and in itsel£ People did not bow dovVn and
worship a rock tout court; the rock was simply a focus that directed their attention to
the m~sterioQs essence of life. Being bound all things together; humans, animals,
plants, msects, stars, and birds all shared the divine life that sustained the entire cos-
mos. We know, for example, that the ancient Aryan tribes, who had lived on the
C~u~asian steppes since about 4500 BCE, revered an invisible, impersonal force
withi_n themselves and all other natural phenomena. Everything was a manifestation
of this all-pervading "Spirit" (Sanskrit: manya). 31
There was, therefore, no belief in a single supreme being in the ancient
w?rld. Any such creature_ could only be a being-bigger and better than any-
thing else, perhaps, but still a finite, incomplete reality. People felt it natural to
imagine a race of spiritual beings of a higher nature than themselves that they
called "gods." There were, after all, many unseen forces at work in the
world-wind, heat, emotion, and air-that were often identified with the vari-
ous deities. The Aryan god Agni, for example, was the fire that had transformed
h':111-an life, and as a personalized god symbolized the deep affinity people felt
with these _s:cred forces. The Aryans called their gods "the shining ones" (devas)
because Spmt shone through them more brightly than through mortal creatures,
but these gods had no control over the world: they were not omniscient and
were obliged, like everything else, to submit to the transcendent order that
kept everything in existence, set the stars on their courses, made the seasons fol-
low each other, and compelled the seas to remain within bounds.32
By the tenth century BCE, when some of the Aryans had settled iri the
Indian subcontinent, they gave a new name to the ultimate reality. Brahman
was the unseen principle that enabled all things to grow and flourish. It was a
?ower that was higher, deeper, and more fundaniental than the gods. Because
1t transcended the limitations of personality, it would be entirely inappropriate
to pray to Brahman or expect it to answer your prayers. Brahman was the sacred
energy that held all the disparate elements of the world together and prevented it
from falling apart. Brahman had an irifinitely greater degree of reality than mortal
creatures whose lives were limited by ignorance, sickness, pain, and death. 33
You cottld never define Brahman because language refers only to individual
beings and Brahman was "the All"; it was everything that existed, as well as the
inner meaning of all existence.
Even though human beings could not think about the Brahman, they had
intimations of it in the hymns of the Rig Veda, the most important of the Aryan
scriptures. Unlike the hunters ofLascaux, the Aryans do n_o~ seem to have thought
readily in images. One of their chief symb~ls of the divme "".as sound, whose
power and intangible quality seemed a particularly apt embodiment of ~e all-
pervasive Braliman. When the priest chanted the Vedi~ hymns, the music filled
the air and entered the consciousness of the congregation so that they felt sur-
rounded by and infused with divinity. These hymns, reveale~ to ancie~t "seers"
(rishis), did not speak of doctrines ~t th~ fai~ w~re obliged to believe, but
referred to the old myths in an allusive, nddling fashion because the truth r_hey
were trying to convey could not be contained in a neatly logical presenta~on.
Their beauty shocked the audience into a state of awe, wonder, fe~, and delight.
They had to puzzle out the underlying significance of these paradoxical poems that
yoked together apparently unrelated things, just as the hidden Braliman pulled the
disparate elements of the universe into a coherent whole. 34
During the tenth century, the Brahmin priests developed the Brahmodya com-
petition, which would become a model of authentic religious discourse.35 The_ ~on-
testants began by going on a retreat in the forest, where they perfo~ed_ spmtual
exercises, such as fusting and breath control, that concentrated therr ~ds and
induced a different type of consciousness. Then the contest could begm. _Its goal
was to find a verbal formula to define the Brahman, in the process pushing lan-
guage as fur as it could go, until it finally broke down and p~ople_ becam~ vividly
aware of the ineffable, the other. The challenger asked an emgmatic question, and
his opponent had to reply in a way that was apt but e~ually inscru'.'1ble. The win-
ner was the contestant who reduced his opponents to silence--and m that moment
of silence, when language revealed its inadequacy, the Brahman was present; it
became manifest only in the stunning realization of the impotence of speech.
The ultimate reality was not a personalized god, therefore, but a transcen-
dent mystery that could never be plumbed. The Chinese called it the Dao, ~e
fundamental "Way" of the cosmos. Because it comprised the whole of reali~,
the Dao had no qualities, no form; it could be experienced but n~~er seen; 1t
was not a god; it predated heaven and earth and was beyond ~Vlmty. You
could not say anything about the Dao, because it transcended ordin~ catego-
ries: it was more ancient than antiquity and yet it was not old; because 1t :'ent far
beyond any form of "existence" known to humans, it was neith~r bemg nor
nonbeing. 36 It contained all the myriad patterns, forms, and potential that m~de
the world the way it was and guided the endless flux of change -~d b_ecommg
that we see all around us. It existed at a point where all the distmctions that
characterize our normal modes of thought became irrelevant.
In the Middle East, the region in which the Western mon?theisms wo~d
develop, there was a similar notion of the ultimate. In Mesopotamia, the A.k.kadian
 10 KAREN ARMSTRONG
HOMO RELIGIOSUS 11

word for "divinity" was ilam, a radiant power that transcended any particular deity.
existence. Why had anything come into being at all, when there could so easily
!he gods were not the source of ilam but, like everything else, could only reflect
have been nothing? There has never been a simple or even a possible answer to
it. The chief characteristic of this "divinity" was ellu ("holiness"), a word that had
this question, but people continue to ask it, pushing ~eir minds to th~ limit of
connotations of "brightness," "purity," and "luminosity." The gods were called
what we can know. One of the earliest and most umversal of the ancient cos-
the "holy ones" because their symbolic stories, effigies, and cults evoked the radi-
mologies is particularly instructive to us today. It was thought that one of the
an~e of ellu within their worshippers. The people of Israel called their patronal
gods, known as the "High God" or "Sky God" because he dwelt in the ~rthest
deity, the "holy one" of Israel, Elohim, a Hebrew variant on ellu that summed
reaches of the heavens, had single-handedly created heaven and earth. The
up everything that the divine could mean for human beings. But holiness was
Aryans called him Dyaeus Pitr, the Chinese Tian ("Heaven"), the Arabi~s
not confined to the gods. Anything that came into contact with divinity could
become holy too: a priest, a king, or a temple--even the sacred utensils of the
Allah ("the God"), and the Syrians El Elyon ("Most High God"): But the High
God proved to be unviable deity, and his myth was jettisoned. .
~ult. In th: Middle ~ast, people would have found it fu too constricting to limit
It suffered from an internal contradiction. How could a mere bemg-even
tlam to a s~gle god; instead, they imagined a Divine Assembly, a council of gods
such a lofty one-be responsible for being itself? As if in response to this objection,
of many different ranks, who worked together to sustain the cosmos and expressed
the multifaceted complexity of the sacred. 37 people tried to elevate the High God to a special plane. _He _was considered too
exalted for an ordinary cult: no sacrifices were performed m his honor; he had no
People felt a yearning for the absolute, intuited its presence all around them,
and went to great lengths to cultivate their sense of this transcendence in creative priests, no temples, and virtually no mythology of~ o:'11. People c~ed o~ in
an emergency, but otherwise he scarcely ever nnpmged on the~· daily lives.
rituals. But they also felt estranged from it. Almost every culture has developed a
Reduced to a mere explanation-to what would later be called First Cause or
~yth of _a lost paradise from which men and women were ejected at the begin-
Prime Mover--he be=e Deus otiosus, a "useless" or "superfluous" deity, and
nmg of tune. It expressed an inchoate conviction that life was not meant to be so
gradually faded from the consciousness of his people. In most mythologies, the
fragme:1ted, hard, and full ~f pain. There must have been a time when people
High God is often depicted as a passive, helpless figure; unable to control events,
had eiljoy~d a greater share m the fullness of being and had not been subject to
he retreats to the periphery of the pantheon and :finally fades away. Today some of
~orrow, disease, bereavement, loneliness, old age, and death. This nostalgia
the indigenous peoples-Pygmies, Aboriginal Australians, and Fuegians--:150 speak
informed the cult of "sacred geography," one of the oldest and most universal
of a High God who created heaven and earth, but, they tell anthropologists, he has
religious ideas. Certain places that stood out in some way from the norm-like the
died or disappeared; he "no longer cares" and "has gone fu away from us. " 40
labyrinthine caverns of the Dordogne---seemed to speak of "something else. » 38
No god can survive unless he or she is actualized by the practical activity of
1:11: sacred place was one of the earliest and most ubiquitous symbols of the
ritual, and people often tum against gods who fail to deliver. The High ?od is
divme. It w~s. a sacred "center" that brought heaven and earth together and
where the divme potency seemed particularly effective. often mythologically deposed, sometimes violently, by a younger generatrnn of
more dynamic deities-gods of storm, grain, or war-who symbolized relevant,
A pop~ar imag~, found in many cultures, imagined this fructifying, sacred
iniportant realities. In Greek mythos, the High God Uranus ("Heaven") was b~-
energy _welling up like a spring from these focal places and flowing, in four
tally castrated by his son Kronos. Later Kronos himself was overthrown by his
sacred nvers, to the four quarters of the earth. People would settle only in sites
own son Zeus, head of the younger gods, who lived more accessibly on
where the sacred had once become manifest because they wanted to live as
Mount Olympus. In our own day, the God of the monotheistic tradition has
closely as possible to the wellsprings of being and become as whole and complete
as they had been before they were ejected from paradise. often degenerated into a High God. The rites and pract~ces that once made
him a persuasive symbol of the sacred are no longer effective, and people have
This brings_ us to the second principle of premodem religion. Religious dis-
stopped participating in them. He has therefore become otiosus, an etiolated real-
course was not mt~nded to be understood literally because it was only possible to
ity who for. all intents and purposes has indeed died or "gone away."
speak about a_ reality that transcended language in symbolic terms. The story of
In the ancient world, the High God myth was replaced by more relevant
the lost paradise was a myth, not a factual account of a historical event. People
creation stories that were never regarded as factual. As one of the later hymns of
were not ~xpected t~ "belie:7e" it in the abstract; like any mythos, it depended
the Rig Veda insists, nobod~not even the highest deva-c?uld expl~ how
upon the ntuals associated with the cult of a particular holy place to make what
it signified a reality in the lives of participants. something had issued from nothing. 41 A good creation myth did not descnbe an
event in the distant past but told people something essential about the present.
The same applies to the creation myth that was central to ancient religion
It reminded them that things often had to get worse before they got better, that
and has now become controversial in the Western world because the Genesis
creativity demanded self-sacrifice and heroic struggle, and ~at ev~rybody had to
story seems to clash with modem science. But until the early modem period,
work hard to preserve the energies of the cosmos and establish sooety on a so~d
nobody read a cosmology as a literal account of the origins of life. In the ancient
foundation. A creation story was primarily therapeutic. People wanted to tap mto
world, it was inspired by an acute sense of the contingency and frailty of
the massive implosion of energy that had--;;omehow-brought the world we
 12 KAREN ARMSTRONG
know into being, so they would recite a 'creation myth when they were in need of
an infusion of sacred potency: during a politlcal crisis, at a sickbed, or when they
were building a new house. The creation myth was often re-enacted during the
New Year ceremonies, when the old year was ebbing away. Nobody felt obliged
to "believe" in a particular cosmology; indeed, each culture usually had several cre-
ation stories, each of which had its own lesson to impart, and people thought noth-
ing of making up a new one if their circumstances changed.
Once people had abandoned the myth of the High God, there was no con-
cept of creation "out of nothing" (ex nihilo) in the ancient world. A god could
only assist a creative process that was already well under way. In the tenth century,
another Indian rishi suggested that the world had been set in motion by a primor-
dial sacri:fice--something that made sense in India, where new vegetation was
often seen to sprout from a rotting tree so that it was not unnatural to think of
death resulting in new life. The rishi imagined the Purusha (''Person"), the first,
archetypal human being, striding of his own free will to the place of sacrifice and
allowing the gods to put him to death; thence evetything--anirnals, horses, cattle,
heaven, earth, sun, moon, and even some of the gods--emerged from his
42
corpse. This mythos encapsulated an important truth: we are at our most creative
when we do not cling to our selfuood but are prepared to give ourselves away.
The cosmology was not influenced by current scientific speculation because
it was exploring the interior rather than the external world. The priests of Meso-
potamia undertook the :first successful astronomical observations, noting that the
seven celestial bodies they sighted-later known as Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus,
Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn-moved in an apparently circular path through the
constellations. But the chief inspiration behind their creation myth was their pio-
43
neering town planning. The :first cities had been established in Sumer in the
Fertile Crescent in about 3500 BCE; it was an enterprise that required enormous
courage and perseverance, as time and time again, the mud-brick buildings were
swept away by the flooding of the Tigris and the Euphrates. Constantly it
seemed that the Sumerians' fragile urban civilization would sink back into the
old rural barbarism, so the city needed a regular infusion of sacred energy. And
yet it seemed such an extraordinaty achievement that the city was extolled as a
holy place. Babylon was the "Gate of the gods" (Babi-lani), where heaven and
earth could meet; it re-created the lost paradise, and the ziggurat, or temple
tower, of Esagila replicated the cosmic mountain or the sacred tree, which the
first men and women had climbed to meet their gods. 44
It is difficult to understand the creation story in Genesis without reference to
the Mesopotamian creation hymn known from its opening words as the Enuma
Blish. This poem begins by describing the evolution of the gods from primordial
sacred matter and their subsequent creation of heaven and earth, but it is also a
meditation on contemporaty Mesopotamia. The raw material of the universe,
from which the gods emerge, is a sloppy, undefined substance-very like the
silty soil of the region. The first gods-Tiamat, the primal Ocean; Apsu, the
"Abyss"; and Mummu, "Womb" of chaos-were inseparable from the elements
and shared the inertia of aboriginal barbarism and the formlessness of chaos:
"When sweet and bitter mingled together, no reed was plaited, no rushes
HOMO RELIGIOSUS 13
muddied the water, the gods were nameless, natureless, futureless. " 45 But new
gods emerged, each pair more distinct than the last, culminating in the splendid
Marduk, the Sun God and the most developed specimen of the divine species.
But Marduk could not establish the cosmos until he had overcome the sluggish
torpor of Tiamat in a tremendous battle. Finally he stood astride Tiamat's mas-
sive carcass, split her in two to make heaven and earth, and created the :first man
by mixing the blood of one of the defeated gods with a handful of dust. After
this triumph, the gods could build the city of Babylon and establish the ritual
"from which the universe receives its structure, the hidden world is made plain,
. . dth.
and th e go ds ass1gne err p1aces. " 46
There was no ontological gulf separating these gods from the rest of the cos-
mos; everything had emerged from the same sacred stuff All beings shared the
same predicament and had to participate in a ceaseless battle against the destructive
lethargy of chaos. There were similar tales in neighboring Syria, where Baal, god
of storm and life-giving rain, had to fight the sea dragon Lotan, symbol of chaos,
Yam, the primal sea, and Mot, god of sterility, in order to establish civilized life. 47
The Israelites also told stories of their god Yahweh slaying sea monsters to order
the cosrnos.48 In Babylo~ the Enuma Blish was chanted on the fourth day of the
New Year festival in Esagila, a re-enactment that symbolically continued the pro-
cess Marduk had begun and that activated this sacred energy. There was a ritual-
ized mock battle and a saturnalia that re-created the lawlessness of chaos. In archaic
spirituality, a symbolic return to the formless "nothingness" of the beginning was
indispensable to any new creation. 49 It was possible to move forward only if you
had the courage to let go of the present, unsatisfactory state of affairs, sink back
into the potent confusion of the beginning, and begin again.
As life became more settled, people had the leisure to develop a more inte-
rior spirituality. The Indian Atyans, always in the vanguard of religious change,
pioneered this trend, achieving the groundbreaking discovery that the Brahman,
being itself, was also the ground of the human psyche. The transcendent was
neither external nor alien to humanity, but the two were inextricably connected.
This insight would become central to the religious quest in all the major tradi-
tions. In the early Upanishads, composed in the seventh century BCE, the search
for this sacred Self (atman) became central to Vedic spirituality. The Upanishadic
sages did not ask their disciples to "believe" this but put them through an initia-
tion whereby they discovered it for themselves in a series of spiritual exercises
that made them look at the world differently. This practically acquired knowl-
edge brought with it a joyous liberation from fear and anxiety.
We have a precious glimpse of the way this initiation was carried out in
the Chandogya Upanishad. Here the great sage Uddalaka Aruni slowly and
patiently brings this saving insight to birth within his son Shvetaketu and has him
perform a series of tasks. In the most famous of these experiments, Shvetaketu
had to leave a lump· of salt in a beaker of water overnight and found, of course,
that even though the salt.had dissolved, the water still tasted salty. "You, of
course, did not see it there, son,'' Uddalaka pointed out, "yet it was always
right there." So too was the invisible Brahman, essence and inner self of the
50
entire world. "And you are that, Shvetaketu." Like the salt, the Brahman
14 KAREN ARMSTRONG
could not be seen but was manifest in every single living thing. It was the subtle
essence in the tiny banyan seed, from which a giant tree would grow, yet when
Shvetaketu dissected the seed, he could not see anything at all. The Brahman
was also the sap in every part of the tree that gave it life, and yet it could
never be pinned down or analyzed. 51 All things shared the same essence, but
most people did not realize this. They imagined they were unique and special
and clung to these particularities-often with extreme anxiety and expenditure
of effort. But in reality these qualities were no more durable than rivers that
flowed into the same sea. Once they had merged, they became "just the
ocean," and no longer asserted their individuality by insisting "I am that river,"
"I am this river." "In exactly the same way, son," Uddalaka persisted, "when all
these creatures reach the Existent, they are not aware that: 'We are reaching the
Existent."' Whether they were tigers, wolves, or gnats, they all merged into
Brahman. To hold on to the mundane self, therefore, was a delusion that led
inescapably to pain, frustration, and confusion, which one could escape only by
acquiring the deep, liberating knowledge that the Brahman was their atrnan, the
truest thing about them. 52
The Upanishadic sages were among the first to articulate another of the uni-
versal principles of religion-one that had already been touched upon in the
Purusha myth. The truths of religion are accessible only when you are prepared
to get rid of the selfishness, greed, and self-preoccupation that, perhaps inevita-
bly, are ingrained in our thoughts and behavior but are also the source of so
much of our pain. The Greeks would call this process kenosis, "emptying."
Once you gave up the nervous craving to promote yourself, denigrate others,
draw attention to your unique and special qualities, and ensure that you were
first in the pecking order, you experienced an immense peace. The first Upanishads
were written at a time when the Aryan communities were in the early stages of
urbanization; logos had enabled them to master their environment. But the sages
reminded them that there were some things--old age, sickness, and death-that
they could not control; things--such as their essential self-that lay beyond their
intellectual grasp. When, as a result of carefully crafted spiritual exercises, people
learned not only to accept but to =brace this unknowing, they found that they
experienced a sense of release.
The sages began to explore the complexities of the human psyche with
remarkable sophistication; they had discovered the unconscious long before
Freud. But the atrnan, the deepest core of their personality, eluded them. Pre-
cisely because it was identical with the Brahman, it was indefinable. The atman
had nothing to do with our normal psycho----mental states and bore no resem-
blance to anything in our ordinary experience, so you could speak of it only in
negative terms. As the seventh-century sage Yajnavalkya explained: "About this
Self [atman] one can only say 'not ... not' [neti ... neti]." 53
You can't see the Seer who does the seeing. You can't hear the Hearer
who does the hearing; you can't think with the Thinker who does the
thinking; and you can't perceive the Perceiver who does the perceiving.
This Self within the All [Brahman] is this atman of yours. 54
HOMO RELIGIOSUS 15
Like the Brahmodya, any discussion of the atman in the Upanishads always
ended in silence, the numinous acknowledgment that the ultimate reality was
beyond the competence of language.
Authentic religious discourse could not lead to clear, distinct, and empirically
verified truth. Like the Brahman, the atman was "ungraspable." You could define
something only when you saw it as separate from yourself. But "when the Whole
[Brahman] has become a person's very self, then who is there for him to see and
5
by what means? Who is there for me to think of and ~y ,;"hat me~s?"~ But if
you learned to "realize" the truth that your,,most authentic Self w~ identical with
Brahman, you understood that it too was beyond hunger and thirst, sorrow and
delusion, old age and death." 56 You could not achieve this insight by rational
logic. You had to acquire the knack of thinking outside th~ ordinary ':owercase"
sel£ and like any craft or skill, this required long, hard, dedicated practice.
One of the principal technologies that enabled people to achieve this self-
forgetfulness was yoga.57 Unlike the yoga practiced in Wes~e~ ~ s today,_ it
was not an aerobic exercise but a systematic breakdown of mst1nct1ve behavior
and normal thought patterns. It was mentally demanding and, initially, physically
painful. The yogin had to do the opposite of what came natu~y. He sat so still
that he seemed more like a plant or a statue than a human being; he controlled
his respiration, one of the most automatic and essential of our physical functions,
until he acquired the ability to exist for long periods without breathing at all. He
learned to silence the thoughts that coursed through his mind and concentrate
"on one point" for hours at a time. Ifhe persevered, he found that he achieved
a dissolution of ordinary consciousness that extracted the "I" from his thinking.
To this day, yogins find that these disciplines, which have measurable physi-
cal and neurological effects, evoke a sense of calm, harmony, and equanimity
that is comparable to the effect of music. There is a feeling of expansiveness
and bliss, which yogins regard as entirely natural, possible for anybody who_ has
the talent and application. As the "I" disappears, the most humdrum objects
reveal wholly unexpected qualities since they are no longer viewed through the
distorting filter of one's own egotistic needs and desires. When she meditated on
the teachings of her guru, a yogin did not simply accept them notionally· but
experienced them. so vividly that her knowledge was, as the texts say, "direct";
bypassing the logical processes like any practically acquired skill, it had become
58
part of her inner world.
But yoga also had an ethical dimension. A beginner was not allowed to per-
form a single yogic exercise until he had completed an intensive moral program.
Top of the list of its requirements was ahimsa, "nonviolence." A yogin must not
swat a mosquito, make an irritable gesture, or speak unkin~y to othe:5 but
should maintain constant affability to all, even the most annoymg monk m the
community. Until his guru was satisfied that this had become second natur:, a
yogin could not even sit in the yogic position. A great deal of the aggress10n,
frustration, hostility, and rage that mars our peace of mind is the result of
thwarted egotism, but when the aspiring yogin became proficient in this selfless 59
equanimity, the texts tell us that he would experience "indescribable joy.''
Their experience of yoga led the sages to devise a new creation myth. In the
 16 KAREN ARMSTRONG
beginning, there was only a single Person, who looked around him and discov-
ered that he was alone. In this way, he became aware of himself and cried: "Here
I aml" Thus the "I," the ego principle, was born. Immediately the Person
became afraid, because we instinctively feel that we must protect the fragile
ego from anything that threatens it, but when the Person remembered that
because he was alone, there was no such threat, his fear left him. But he was
lonely, so he split his body in two to create a man and a woman, who together
gave birth to every single being in the cosmos "down to the very ants." And the
Person realized that even though he was no longer alone, there was still nothing
to fear. Was he not identical with Brahman, the AJl? He was one with all the
things that he had made; indeed, he was himself his own creation. 60 He had even
created the gods, who were essentially a part ofhimself. 61
Even now, if a man knows "I am brahman" in this way, he becomes this
whole world. Not even the gods are able to prevent it, for he becomes their
very self [atman). So when a man venerates another deity, thinking, "He is
one, and I am another," he does not understand. 62 This insight, Yajnavalkya
explained, brought with it a joy comparable to that of sexual intercourse when
one loses all sense of duality and is "oblivious to everything within or without."63
But you would not have this exp~rience unless you had performed the yogic
exerci~es._ Other traditions. would also find that these fundamental principles
were mdispensable: Buddhism, Jainism, Confucianism, and Daoism, as well as
the three monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Each had its
own unique genius and distinctive vision, each its peculiar flaws. But on these
central principles they would all agree. Religion was not a notional matter.
The Buddha, for example, had little time for theological speculation. One of
his monks was a philosopher manque and, instead of getting on with his yoga,
constantly pestered the Buddha about metaphysical questions: Was there a god?
Had the world been created in time or had it always existed? The Buddha told
him that he was like a man who had been shot with a poisoned arrow and
refused medical treatment until he had discovered the name of his assailant
:311-d wha: village he came from. He would die before he got this perfectly useless
information. What difference would it make to discover that a god had created
the world? Pain, hatred, grief; and sorrow would still exist. These issues were
fascinating, but the Buddha refused to discuss them because they were irrelevant:
"My disciples, they will not help you, they are not useful in the quest for holiness;
they do not lead to peace and to the direct knowledge ofNirvana."64
The Buddha always refused to define Nirvana, because it could not be under-
stood notionally and would be inexplicable to anybody who did not undertake his
practical regimen of meditation and compassion. But anybody who did commit
him- or herself to the Buddhist way of life could attain Nirvana, which was an
65
~tirely natural state. Sometimes, however, Buddhists would speak of Nirvana
us1ng the same kind of imagery as monotheists use for God: it was the "Truth,"
the "Other Shore," "Peace," the "Everlasting," and "the Beyond." Nirvana was a
still c~nter that ~ve meaning to life, an oasis of calm, and a source of strength that
you discovered m the depths of your own being. In purely mundane terms, it was
"nothing," because it corresponded to no reality that we could recognize in our
HOMO RELIGIOSUS 17
ego-dominated existence. But those who had managed to find this sacred peace
66
discovered that they lived an immeasurably richer life. There was no question
of "believing" in the existence of Nirvana or taking it "on faith." The Buddha
had no time for abstract doctrinal formulations divorced from action. Indeed, to
accept a dogma on somebody else's authority was what he called "unsk.illful" or
"unhelpful" (akusala). It could not lead to enlightenment because it amounted to
an abdication of personal responsibility. Faith meant trust that Nirvana existed and
a determination to realize it by every practical means in one's power.
Nirvana was the natural result of a life lived according to the Buddha's doc-
trine of anatta ("no ~elf'), which was not simply a metaphysical principle but, like
all his teachings, a program of action. Anatta required Buddhists to behave day by
day, hour by hour, as though the self did not exist. Thoughts of "self" not only
led to "unhelpful" (akusala) preoccupation with "me" and "mine," but also to
envy, hatred of rivals, conceit, pride, cruel:}', an~-~hen _the_ self _felt under
threat-violence. As a monk became expert m cultivating this dispassion, he no
longer interjected his ego into passing mental states but learned _to regard ~is fears
and desires as transient and remote phenomena. He was then npe for enlighten-
ment: "His greed fades away, and once his cravings disappear, he experiences the
release of the mind." 67 The texts indicate that when the Buddha's first disciples
heard about anatta, their hearts were filled with joy and they immediately expe-
rienced Nirvana. To live beyond the reach of hatred, greed, and anxieties about
our status proved to be a profound relief.
By far the best way of achieving anatta was compassion, the ability to feel with · ·
the other, which required that one dethrone the self from the center of one's
world and put another there. Compassion would become the central practice
of the religious quest. One of the first people to make it crystal clear that holiness
was inseparable from altruism was the Chinese sage Confucius (551-479 BCE).
He preferred not to speak about the divine because it lay beyond the compe-
tence of language, and theological chatter was a distraction from the real business
of religion. 68 He used to say: "My Way has one thread that runs right through it."
There were no abstruse metaphysics; e v e ~ always c~e ?ack _to the nnpor-
tance of treating others with absolute respect. It was epitomized m the Golden
Rule, which, he said, his disciples should practice "all day and every day":7°
"Never do to others what you would not like . t h em to do to you. " 71 Th ey
should look into their own hearts, discover what gave them pain, and then refuse
under any c;ircurnstance whatsoever to inflict that pain on anybody else.
Religion was a matter of doing rather than thinking. The traditional rituals
of China enabled an individual to burnish and refine his humanity so that he
became a junzi, a "mature person." A junzi was not born but crafted; he had
to work on himself as a sculptor shaped a rough stone and made it a thing of
beauty. "How can I achieve this?" asked Yan Hui, Confucius's most tale1:'ted
disciple. It was simple, Confucius replied: "Curb your ego an~ surr~nder to n1:1al
(l~." 72 Ajunzi must submit every detail of his life to the ancient ntes of conS1d-
eration and respect for others. This was the answer to China's political problems:
"If a ruler could curb his ego and submit to li for a single day, everyone under
,,73
Heaven would respond to his goo d ness.

18 KAREN ARMSTRONG
The practice of the Golden Rule "all day and every day" would bring
human beings into the state that Confucius called ren, a word that would later
be described as "benevolence" but that Confucius himself refused to define
because it could be understood only by somebody who had acquired it. He pre-
ferred to remain silent about what lay at the end of the religious journey. The
practice of ren was an end in itself; it was itself the transcendence you sought.
Yan Hui expressed this beautifully when he spoke of the endless struggle to
achieve ren "with a deep sigh."
The more I strain my gaze towards it, the higher it soars. The deeper
I bore down into it, the harder it becomes. I see it in front, but suddenly
it is behind. Step by step, the Master skil[l]fully lures one on. He has
broadened me with culture, restrained me with ritual. Even if I wanted
to stop, I could not. Just when I feel that I have exhausted every
resource, something seems to rise up, standing over me sharp and clear.
Yet though I long to pursue it, I can find no way of getting to it at all. 74
Living a compassionate, empathetic life took Yan Hui beyond himself; giv-
ing him momentary glimpses of a sacred reility that was not unlike the "God"
worshipped by monotheists. It was both immanent and transcendent: it welled
up from within but was also experienced as an external presence "standing over
me sharp and clear."
Religion as defined by the great sages of India, China, and the Middle East was
not a notional activity but a practical one; it did not require belief in a set of doc-
trines but rather hard, disciplined work, without which any religious teaching
remained opaque and incredible. The ultimate reality was not a Supreme Being--
an idea that was quite alien to the religious sensibility of antiquity; it was an
all-encompassing, wholly transcendent reality that lay beyond neat doctrinal fomm-
lations. So religious discourse should not attempt to impart clear information about
the divine but should lead to an appreciation of the limits of language and under-
standing. The ultimate was not alien to human beings but inseparable from our
humanity. It could not be accessed by rational, discursive thought but required a
carefully cultivated state of mind and the abnegation of selfishness.
NOTES
1. Joseph Campbell, Primitive Mythology: T'h£ 1'.1mks of God, rev. ed. (New York, 1988),
p. 305; Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth (New York:, 1988),
p. 79.
2. Andre Leroi-Gourhan, Treasures of Prehistoric Art (New York, n.d.), p. 112. This
rules out the suggestion that the paintings were simply a form of hunting magic.
3. Ibid., p. 118.
4. John E. Pfeiffer, The Creative Explosion (New York, 1982), p. viii.
5. Andre Leroi-Gourhan, Les religions prehistorique: PaMolithique (Paris, 1964), pp. 83-84;
Mircea Eliade, A History of Religious Ideas, 3 vols., trans. Willard R. Trask (Chicago
and London, 1978, 1982, 1985), 1:16.
HOMO RELIGIOSUS 19
6. Joseph Campbell, Historical Atlas of World Mythologies, 2 vols. (New York, 1988),
1,1:58.
7. Ibid., 1,1:65.
8. Leo Frobenius, Kulturgeschichte Afticas (Zurich, 1933), pp. 131-32; Campbell, Primitive
Mythology, p. 300.
9. Mircea Eliade, History of Religious Ideas, 1:24.
10. Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers, Power of Myth, pp. 85-87.
11. Ibid., pp. 72-79; Historical Atlas, 1,1:48-49; Mircea Eliade, History of Religious Ideas,
1:7-8.
12. Walter Burkert, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Andent Greek Sacrifidal Ritual and
Myth, t:raru. Peter Bing (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1983), pp. 16-22.
13. Walter Burkert, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (Berk.eley, Los
Angeles, and London, 1980), pp. 54-56; Walter Burkert, Homo Necans, pp. 42--45.
14. Joseph Campbell, Historical Atlas, 1, 2:xiii.
15. Ibid., 1,1:93.
16. Joseph Campbell, Primitive Mythology, p. 66.
17. Mircea Eliade, Tu Myth of the Eternal Return, or Cosmos and History, trans. Willard
R. Trask (Princeton, N.J., 1954), pp. 1-34.
18. Huston Smith, The World's Religions, rev. ed. (New York, 1991), p. 367.
19. Mircea Eliade, History of Religious Ideas, 1: 17.
20. Mircea Eliade, Birth and Rebirth; The ReligioHS lvfeanings of Initiation in Human Cultures
(New York, 1958); Mircea Eliade, Myths, Dreams and M.ysteries: The Encounter
between Contemporary Faiths and Archaic Realities, trans. Philip Mairet (London, 1960),
pp. 194-226; Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers, Power of Myth, pp. 81-85.
21. Mircea Eliade, Myths, Dreams, p. 225.
22. Herbert Kuhn, Auf den Spuren des Eiszeitmenscken (Wiesbaden, 1953), pp. 88-89;
Joseph Campbell, Primitive Mythology, pp. 307-8.
23. Abbe Henri Breuil, Four Hundred Centuries of Cave Art (Montignac, France, 1952),
pp. 170-71.
24. Joseph Campbell, Primitive Mythology, p. 311.
25. Walter Burkert, Homo Necans, pp. 27-34.
26. Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, trans. Rosemary Sheed (London,
1958), pp. 331--43.
27. Alexander Marshack, "Lunar Notations on Upper Palaeolithic Remains," Scientia
146 (19'64).
28. Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, pp. 146---85.
29. Walter Burkert, Homo Necans, pp. 78---82.
30. Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion, pp. 1-124, 216-39.
3 L Mary Boyce, Zoroastrians; Their Religious Beliefs and Practices, 2nd ed. (.I.,o~don ~d
New York, 2001), p. 2; Peter Clark, Zoroastrians: An Introduction to an Ancient Fatth
(Brighton and Portland, Ore., 1998), p. 18.
32. Mary Boyce, Zoroastrians, pp. 9-11.
33. Jan Gonda, Change and Continuity in Indian Religion (The Hague, 1965), P· 200;
Louis Renou, "Sur la notion de brahman," Journal Asiatique 237 (1949).
 20 KAREN ARMSTRONG
HOMO RELIGIOSUS 21
34. Louis Renou Reli · ,r A , . ·
W 1.tze1, "Veuas .J~ igions 'b naent India (London, 1953), pp. 10 16-18· Michael
and Upanishads" · G · ' ' 64. Samyutta Nikaya 53:31. The quotations from the Pali Canon of Buddhist scriptures
Hinduism (Ox£ d 20 m avm Flood, ed., The Blackwell Companion to are my own version of rhe texts cited.
or , 03), pp. 70-71.
35. J. C. Heestennan The Inner c ,n· t ,r a· . 65. Sutta-Nipata 43:1-44.
S . ty (Chi ' 0
11:J,ic 1/J 71ra ttion: Essays in Indian Ritual, Kingship and
oae cago and London, 1985), pp. 70-72, 126. 66. Ma.ijinla Nikaya 29.
36. Zhuangzi, The Book of Zhuangzi, 6:29-31. 67. Vinaya: Mahavagga 1.6.
37. Mark S. Smith The Ori · ,+ B'b/' l M . 68. Confucius, Analects 17.19. Unless otherwise stated, quotations from the Analects are
th Ui .. T, ' gins 'b I tea onotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and
,ganti~ exts (New York and London, 2001), pp. 41-79. taken from Arthur Waley, trans. and ed., The Analects of Cotifudus (New York,
38. 1992).
!lia,fide, P~terns in Comparative Religion, pp. 367-88; Mircea Eliade The Sacred
e o ane: . e Nature of Religion, trans. Willard R. Trask (New Yo;k 1959) 69. Analects 4.15.
6~ 1:fucea Eliade, Images and Symbols: Studies in Religious Symbolism ' 70. Analects 15.23.
• P arret (Pnnceton, NJ., 1991), pp. 37_56 _ '
39. 71. Ibid.
Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion pp 38-{53· Mircea Eliad M hs D 72. Analects 12.1. Translation suggested by Benjamin L Schwartz, The World ef Thought
qf
PP: 172-7~; Wilhelm Schmidt, The Origin the jdea ef God (New y 0 : , 1 t~2), p==_' in Andent China (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1985), p. 77.
40. Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane, pp. 120- _ ·
25 73. Ibid.
41. Rig Veda 10.129.
74. Analects 9.10.
42. Rig Veda 10.90.
43.
Gwendolyn Leick, Mesopotamia: The Invention of the City (London, 2001), p. 268.
44. Thorkild Jacobsen, "The Cosmos as State ,, In H d H A Fran'--''
I: 11 I d ' · an · · ,uort eds The QUESTIONS FOR MAKING CONNECTIONS
me. ectua A venture of Ancient Man: An Essay on the Speculative Thought in, the .,
Anaent Near East (Chicago, 1946), pp. 186--97. WITHIN THE READING
45. "The Babylonian Creation" 1.1 in N. K. Sanders trans and d p r.:r
H, llfro A · , .r.. ' · e ., oems ofueaven and
e m ru:tent ;v.=opotamia (London, 1971). 1. In "Homo religiosus," Armstrong takes us back to the roots of religion in
46. Enuma Blish 6.19, In Sanders, Poems of Heaven and Hell.
the Paleolithic era. The portrait she paints might surprise many readers. "In
47. E. 0. James, The Ancient Gods (London, 1960), pp. 87-90. archaic thinking," she argues, "there [was] no concept of the supernatural,
48. Psahns 89:10-13; 93:1-4; Isaiah 27:1; Job 7:12; 9:8; 26:12; 38:7. no huge gulf separating human and divine." There was "no belief in a single
49. Mircea FJiade, Myths, Dreams, pp. 80-81. supreme being," and indeed belief itself was beside the point because reli-
so. Chandogya Upanishad (CU) 6 13· ·tali · gion was openly understood as a myth, not a literal truth. Reread the
fr p . . · , my 1 cs. All quotatlons from the Upanishads chapter and carefully note the many differences bet\veen religion then and
are om atnck Olivelle, trans. and ed., Upanisads (Oxford and New York 1996)
51. cu 6.11-12. ' . religion now. Next, go back and look for the continuities. In spite of the
52. cu 6.10. differences, would you say that much of the Paleolithic legacy survives to
this day? Can we conclude that religion has become more mature and
53. Brhadaranyaka Upanishad (BU) 4.5.15.
sophisticated, or is it possible that we have lost touch with what religion
54. BU 3.4.
actually represents? Where does Armstrong herself seem to stand on this final
55. BU 4.5.13-15. question?
56. BU 3.5.1.
2. Whether we are looking at the Middle East, ancient China, or the culture of
57. Mircea Eliade, Yoga, Immortality and Freedom trans Willard R T k IN y k, Aryan peoples who came off the steppes and settled in India, Arm.strong
1958). ' · · ras I ew or
insists that religion was "a matter of doing rather than thinking." But what
58. Women participated in Upanishadic spirituality and later in Buddhi t . exactly does she mean by "doing"? What kinds of activities might religion
59 p • • , , s pracuce.
• atanJali, Yoga Sutra 2.42, in Eliade, Yoga, p. 52. have entailed in ancient times? Start with the ancient shamans whose
60. BU 1.4.1-5. activities are hinted at by the frescoes at Chauvet, and then follow the
61. BU 1.4.6. historical thread until you reach Heidegger. Clearly, religious activities are
62. BU 1.4.10. meant to enhance ordinary life, but at the same time they appear to involve
63. BU 4.3.21. forms of behavior that are quite distinct from everyday existence. How do
the mundane and the sacred interact in the history of religious "doing"?

22 KAREN ARMSTRONG
3. One central concern of "Homo religiosus" is the self in its connections to
the universe as a whole. Even though religion in our time is quite com-
monly understood in terms of a personal relationship with God, Armstrong
emphasizes the importance of what the ancient Greeks called ekstasis, a
"stepping outside the norm," and kenosis, the "emptying" of the sel£ In
what way does self-emptying connect the individual with the "sacred
energy" of the universe? How might the experience of "nothingness" make
people more alive and creative? What gets lost, in Armstrong's view, when
we imagine the "ultimate reality" as a "Supreme Being"?
QUESTIONS FOR WRITING
1. According to Armstrong, "All ancient religion was based on what has been
called the perennial philosophy, because it was present in some form in so
many premodem cultures." To support this claim she looks at religion among
such disparate groups as the Australian Aborigines, the ancient Aryans and
Chinese, the peoples of the Middle East, and the ancient Greeks. While their
2 . Armstrong sees re11gion as
belief systems can appear quite dissimilar today, Armstrong points to underlying
commonalities. For example, just as the Aryans thought of their gods as
devas or shining ones, so the forerunners of the Abraharnic faiths-Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam-used the world ilam, meaning "radiant power," to
describe their own deities. What are the implications of these parallels? Have
we put so great an emphasis on the differences that we have lost touch with
the greater unity? What factors might explain the emphasis on such differences?
2. One theme of Armstrong's recent work has been the distinction between
two forms of knowing that she calls logos and mythos. Logos describes a kind
of truth that strives for objectivity through the use of critical reason, while
mythos describes a truth whose purpose is to overcome our subjective sense
of separateness from the world and other living beings. Though past societies
understood the distinction between the two, Annsttong contends that in our
time both skeptics and religious people treat mythos as a set of objective
claims. After reading "Homo religiosus," would you say that mythos should
have a place in our lives today? Is it really possible for us to keep mythos
separate from logos? How might the two become confused, and what
dangers might arise from confusing them?
QUESTIONS FOR MAKING CONNECTIONS
BETWEEN READINGS
1. What might Armstrong have to say about our relationship with technology
as it is described by Sherry Turkle in Selections from Alone Together:
VVhy We Expect More from Technology and Less .from Each Other? One place
HOMO REUGIOSUS 23
to start in developing your response might be this passage from
"Homo religiosus":
Human beings are so constituted that periodically they seek out
ekstasis, a "stepping outside" the norm. Today people who 1:o longer
find (ekstasis) in a religious setting resort to other outlets: music, dance,
art, sex, drugs, or sport. We make a point of ~eeking out thes:
experiences that touch us deeply within and lift ~s mo_mentarily .
beyond ourselves. At such times, we feel that we inhabit our ~umamty
more :fully than usual and experience an enhancement ofbemg.
C ttitude toward technology be defined as religious in Armstrong's
an ou; d7 Think about the popular notion of the singularity-does
sense oalifye worli. . 7 Does our current technology "lift us ... beyond
that qu as re gious. . ,, b
l " and allow us to "inhabit our humaruty more fully ? Or, Y
ourse ves d liance on technology amount to an inversion of ekstasis,
contrast, oes our re . f
a contraction rather than an opening? Have machines ~en the p1ace o
· als that once figured in our rituals and mystenes? Ifwe are no
th eamm • ,
longer connecting to nature, what are we connectmg to.
. · "matter of doing" rather than a matter of
d full th
alle ·ance to unchanging beliefs. Reread her chapter care. Y note e
ma: different forms of "doing" she explores, fro~ :1-tual sacrifice to yoga.
In what sense :might we understand premodern religion as a form of
psychotherapy of the kind practiced today by M~a ,~tout, auth~r. of
"When I Woke Up Tuesday Morning, It Was Fnday ? Were religious _
practices possibly designed to overcome dissociated stat~s an_d ~he iathologies
that they cause? Or does religion actually encourage dissoaanon. If rl:e
answer to this last question is yes, what rrught ~e te purpose of turn!Ilg
away from the here and now, at least temporarily.

•••
, it, Coates argues that the victory should be seen as a retreat from the historic
TA-NEHISI COATES
IN 2017, JOURNALIST, BLOGGER, and fiction writer Ta-Nehisi Coates won a
MacArthur Foundation "genius" award. The MacArthur committee cited his abil-
ity to bring "personal reflection and historical scholarship to bear on America's
most contested issues." The citation singles out the qualities that make Coates's
work so powerful: his ability to combine personal stories with historical, eco-
nomic, and sociological research (often based on statistics and graphs) in a way
that grabs at the hearts and minds of readers.
He learned this skill in his first paid gig at The Washington City Paper, whose
freewheeling style was more to his taste than school. But he learned his love for
research in the library. As he writes in his bestselling book of essays Between the
World and Me, "The classroom was a jail of other people's interests. The library
was open, unending, free":
I needed more books. At Howard University, one of the greatest col-
lections of books could be found in the Moorland-Spingarn Research
Center.... Moorland held archives, papers, collections, and virtually any
book ever written by or about black people. For the most significant
portion of my time at The Mecca, I followed a simple ritual. I would
walk into the Moorland reading room and fill out three call slips for
three different works. I would take a seat at one of these long tables. I
would draw out my pen and one of my black-and-white composition
books. I would open the books and read, while filling my composition
books with notes on my reading, new vocabulary words, and sentences
of my own invention. I would arrive in the morning and request, three.
call slips at a time, the works of every writer I had heard spoken of in
classrooms or out on the Yard.
This diligent research is a habit that Coates maintains and one he explicitly hopes
to inspire in others. His longer articles are often followed up by a slew of posts or
articles about the scholarship he read in preparation; his blog is, as often as not,
an annotated exhortation to readers to look up and read his sources. Coates
equates "hard" scholarship with the ability to deal with "hard" truths. "I have,"
he writes, "great respect and love for people who dig through the archives, who
do the calculations, who do the case-studies, and perform the field research."
"The Fiist White President" by Ta-Nehisi Coates, first published in THE ATLANTIC, copyright© 2017 Ta-Nehisi
Coates. Used by permission of publisher.
24
TA-NEHISI COATES 25
The reading reprinted here, "The First White President," first appeared in
The Atlantic in October 2017, eleven months after Donald Trump's election. In
achievement of Barack Obama, the United States's first black president. But
Coates also insists that Trump and his supporters are far from unique or unprec-
edented. Instead, they represent a tradition of "political whiteness" reaching back
to our Republic's earliest moments. Crude, bullying, and impetuous, Trump is
quite capable of branding all Mexicans as "rapists" or denigrating Third World
countries as "shit holes." But Coates warns that we should not allow Trump's
Twitter feeds to di;tract us from the deeply entrenched system that has enabled
his rise.
Not everyone admires "The First White President." The libel'al journalist
George Packer acknowledges the power of the article but expresses reservations:
There's a lot to admire in Ta-Nehisi Coates's new essay. It's one of
those pieces that grabs you with its first paragraph and never lets go ....
At its heart is the undeniable truth that racism remains fundamental in
American politics.
To Packer's way of thinking, Coates oversimplifies a more complicated reality:
At the heart of American politics there is racism. But it's not alone--
there's also greed, and broken communities, and partisan hatred, and
ignorance. Any writer who wants to understand American politics has
to find a way into the minds of Trump voters. Any progressive politi-
cian who wants to gain power has to find common interests with some
of them, without waiting for the day of reckoning first to scourge white
Americans of their original sin. This effort is one of the essential tasks of
politics.
The "original sin" Packer references here is slavery, legally abolished in 1865 by
the Thirteenth Amendment. But laws are one thing; culture quite another.
Coates argues that we have to change the culture first. Packer counters that this
task will take too long. But both agree about one thing: the shadow of this "sin"
hangs over us all.
REFERENCES
"Macarthur Fellows/Meet the Class of2015." Ta-Nehisi Coates. 28 September 2015
http:/ /rwinonajohnson. weebly.com/uploads/4/5/3/2/ 45322833/ta-nahesis-
Ta-Nahasi Coates. Between the World and Me. New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2015. 46.
George Packer, "George Packer Responds to Ta-Nahasi Coates." The Atlantic: Notes,
First Drqfis, Conversations, Stories in Progress. 15 September 2017.

The First White President
It is insufficient to state the obvious of Donald Trump: that he is a white
man who would not be president were it not for this fact. With one immediate
exception, Trump's predecessors made their way to high office through the passive
power of whiteness-that bloody heirloom which cannot ensure mastery of all
events but can conjure a tailwind for most of them. Land theft and human plun-
der cleared the grounds for Trump's fo_refathers and barred others from it. Once
upon the field, these men became soldiers, statesmen, and scholars; held court in
Paris; presided at Princeton; advanced into the Wilderness and then into the White
House. Their individual triumphs made this exclusive party seem above America's
founding sins, and it was forgotten that the former was in fact bound to the latter
that all their victories had transpired on cleared grounds. No such elegant detach~
ment can be attributed to Donald Trump-a president who, more than any other,
has made the awful inheritance explicit.
His political career began in advocacy ofbirtherism, that modern recasting of
the old American precept that black people are not fit to be citizens of the coun-
try they built. But long before birtherism, Trump had made his worldview clear.
He fought to keep blacks out of his buildings, according to the U.S. government;
called for the death penalty for the eventually exonerated Central Park Five; and
railed against "lazy" black employees. "Black guys counting my money! I hate
it," Trump was once quoted as saying. "The only kind of people I want count-
ing my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day." After his cabal of
conspiracy theorists forced Barack Obama to present his birth certificate, Trump
deman~e~ t~e president's college grades (offering $5 million in exchange for
them), ms1stmg that Obama was not intelligent enough to have gone to an Ivy
League school, and that his acclaimed memoir, Dreams From My Father, had been
ghostwritten by a white man, Bill Ayers.
It is often said that Trump has no real ideology, which is not true-his ide-
?logy is white supremacy, in all its truculent and sanctimonious power. Trump
maugurated his campaign by casting himself as the defender of white maidenhood
against Mexican "rapists;' only to be later alleged by multiple accusers, and by his
own proud words, to be a sexual violator himself White supremacy has always had
a perverse sexual tint. Trump's rise was shepherded by Steve Bannon, a man who
mocks his white male critics as "cucks." The word, derived from cuckold, is specifi-
cally meant to debase by fear and fantasy-the target is so weak that he would
submit to the humiliation of having his white wife lie with black men. That the
slur cuck casts white men as victims aligns with the dicta of whiteness, which seek
to alchemize one's profligate sins into virtue. So it was with Virginia slaveholders
claiming that Britain sought to make slaves of them. So it was with marauding
Klansmen organized against alleged rapes and other outrages. So it was with a
candidate who called for a foreign power to hack his opponent's email and who
THE FIRST WHITE PRESIDENT 27
now, as president, is claiming to be the victim of"the single greatest witch hunt of
a politician in American history:'
In Trump, white supremacists see one of their own. Only grudgingly did
Trump denounce the Ku Klux Klan and David Duke, one of its former grand
wizards-and after the clashes between white supremacists and counterprotesters
in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August, Duke in turn praised Trump's contentious
claim that "both sides" were responsible for the violence.
To Trump, whiteness is neither notional nor symbolic but is the very core of his
power. In this, Trump is not singular. But whereas ~s forebears carried w~ten~ss
like an ancestral talisman, Trump cracked the glowmg amulet open, releasmg its
eldritch energies. The repercussions are striking: Trump is the first president to
have served in no public capacity before ascending to his perch. But more telling,
Trump is also the first president to have publicly affirmed that his daughter is a
"piece of ass:'The mind seizes trying to imagine a black man extolling the virtues
of sexual assault on tape ("When you're a star, they let you do it"), fending off
multiple accusations of such assaults, immersed in multiple lawsuits for allegedly
fraudulent business dealings, exhorting his followers to violence, and then stroll-
ing into the White House. But that is the point of white supremacy-to ensure
that that which all others achieve with maximal effort, white people (particularly
white men) achieve with minimal qualification. Barack Obama delivered to black
people the hoary message that if they work twice as hard as white people, anything
is possible. But Trump's counter is persuasive: Work half as hard as black people,
and even more is possible.
For Trump, it almost seems that the fact of Obama, the fact of a black presi-
dent, insulted him personally. The insult intensified when Obama and Seth Meyers
publicly humiliated him at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in 2011. But
the bloody heirloom ensures the last laugh. Replacing Obama is not enough-
Trump has made the negation ofObama's legacy the foundation of his own.And
this too is whiteness. "Race is an idea, not a fact," the historian Nell Irvin Painter
has written, and essential to the construct of a "white race" is the idea of not be-
ing a nigger. Before Barack Obama, niggers could be manufactured out of Sister
Souljahs, Willie Hortons, and Dusky Sallys. But Donald Trump arrived in the wake
of something more potent-an entire nigger presidency with nigger health care,
nigger climate accords, and nigger justice reform, all of which could be targeted
for destruct~on or redemption, thus reifying the idea of being white.Trump truly
is something new-tlfe first president whose entire political existence ~ges ~n
the fact of a black president. And so it will not suffice to say that Trump 1s a white
man like all the others who rose to become president. He must be called by his
rightful honorific-America's first white president.
The scope of Trump's commitment to whiteness is matched only by the depth of
popular disbelief in the power of whiteness. We are now being told that support
for Trump's "Muslim ban," his scapegoating of immigrants, his defenses of police
brutality are somehow the natural outgrowth of the cultural and economic gap
between Lena Dunliam's America and Jeff Foxworthy's. The collective verdict
 28 TA-NEHISI COATES
THE FIRST WHITE PRESIDENT 29

holds that the Democratic Party lost its way when it abandoned everyday eco-
making less than $50,000 by 20 points, whites makin~ $50,0~0 to $99,999 by 28
nomic issues like job creation for the softer fare of social justice. The indictment
points, and whites making $100,000 or more by 14 pomts.This shows ~atTrump
continues: To their neoliberal economics, Democrats and liberals have married
assembled a broad white coalition that ran the gamut from Joe the Dishwasher
a condescending elitist affect that sneers at blue-collar culture and mocks the
to Joe the Plumber to Joe the Banker. So when whi_te pun~ts cast the eleva-
white man as history's greatest monster and prime-time television's biggest doo-
tion ofTrump as the handiwork of an inscrutable white working class, they are
fus. In this rendition, Donald Trump is not the product of white supremacy so
being too modest, declining to claim credit for the~r own_eco~omic class.T1:1mp's
much as the product of a backlash against contempt for white working-class
people. dominance among whites across class lines is of a piece with his larger domman_ce
across nearly every white demographic. Trump won white women (+9) and white
"We so obviously despise them, we so obviously condescend to them" the
men (+31). He won white people with college degrees (+3) and white people
conservative social scientist Charles Murray, who co-wrote The Bell Curve,
without them (+37). He won whites ages 18-29 (+4), 30-44 (+17), 45-64 (+28),
recently told The_ New Yorker, speaking of the white working class. "The only slur
and 65 and older (+19).Trump won whites in midwestern Illinois (+11), whites
you ~an- use at a dinner party and get away with is to call somebody a redneck-that
wont give you any problems in Manhattan." in mid-Atlantic New Jersey (+12), and whites in the Sun Belt's New Mexico (+5).
In no state that Edison polled did Trump's white support dip below 40 percent.
. "The utter contempt with which privileged Eastern liberals such as myself
Hillary Clinton's did, in states as disparate as Florida, Utah, Indiana, and Kentucky'.
discuss red-state, gun-country; working-class America as ridiculous and morons
From the beer track to the wine track, from soccer moms to NASCAR dads, Trump s
and rubes," charged the celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain, "is largely responsible
performance among whites was dominant. According to Mother ]_ones, bas~d on
for the upswell of rage and contempt and desire to pull down the temple that
we're seeing now." preelection polling data, if you tallied the popular vote of only white America to
derive 2016 electoral votes, Trump would have defeated Clinton 389 to 81, with
That black people, who have lived for centuries under such derision and
the remaining 68 votes either a toss-up or unknown.
condescension, have not yet been driven into the arms of Trump does not
Part of Trump's dominance among whites resulted from his running as a
tro~ble the~e theoreticians. After all, in this analysis, Trump's racism and the
Republican, the party that has long cultivated white voters. !rump's share of the
rac~sm ~fhis supporters are incidental to his rise. Indeed, the alleged glee with
white vote was sinlilar to Mitt Romney's in 2012. But unlike Romney; Trump
which liberals call out Trump's bigotry is assigned even more power than the
secured this support by running against his party's leadership, against accepted
bigo~ itself. C?sten~ibly assaulted by campus protests, battered by arguments
campaign orthodo;cy., and against all notions of decency. By his sixth month in
ab~ut mter~ect10nality, and oppressed by new bathroom rights, a blameless
office embroiled in scandal after scandal, a Pew Research Center poll found
wh~te working class did the only thing any reasonable polity might: elect an
Trum'p's approval rating underwater with every single demographic group. Every
orcish reality-television star who insists on taking his intelligence briefings in
picture-book form. demographic group, that is, except one: people who identifie~ as whit~- .
The focus on one subsector ofTrump voters-the white working class-is
Asserting that Trump's rise was primarily powered by cultural resentment
puzzling, given the breadth of his white coalition. Indeed, there is a kind of
and economic :eversal has b~c~me de rigueur among white pundits and thought
theater at work in which Trump's presidency is pawned off as a product of the
leaders. But evidence for this is, at best, mixed. In a study of preelection polling
white working class as opposed to a product of an entire whiteness that includes
data, the Gallup researchers Jonathan Rothwell and Pablo Diego-Rosell found
the very authors doing the pawning.The motive is clear: escapism.To accept th~t
that "people_living in areas with diminished economic opportunity" were "some-
the bloody heirloom remains potent even now, some five decades after Martm
what more likely to support Trump:' But the researchers also found that voters in
Luther King Jr. was gunned down on a Memphis balcony--:--even a~ter a black
their study who supported Trump generally had a higher mean household income
president; indeed, strengthened by the fact of that black pr~sident-is, to a~c~pt
~!81,~98) than those who did not ($77,046).Those who approved ofTrump were
that racism remains, as it has since 177 6, at the heart of this country s political
less likely to be unemployed and less likely to be employed part-time" than those
life. The idea of acceptance frustrates the left. The left would much rather have
who did not. They also tended to be from areas that were very white: "The racial
a discussion about class struggles, which might entice the white working masses,
and ethnic isolation of whites at the zip code level is one of the strongest predic-
tors ofTrump support." instead of about the racist struggles that those same masses have historically been
the agents and beneficiaries of. Moreover, to accept that whiteness brought us
An analysis of exit polls conducted during the presidential primaries estimated
Donald Trump is to accept whiteness as an existential danger to the country and
the median household income ofTrump supporters to be about $72,000. But
the world. But if the broad and remarkable white support for Donald Trump can
even this lower number is almost double the median household income ofAfrican
be reduced to the righteous anger of a noble class of smallville fire~ghters ~nd
Americans, _and $15,_000 above the ~erican median. Trump's white support was
evangelicals, mocked by Brooklyn hipsters and womanist professors mto voting
not determmed by mcome. According to Edison Research, Trump won whites
against their interests, then the threat of racism and whiteness, the threat of the

30 TA-NEHISI COATES
heirloom, can be dismissed. Consciences can be eased; no deeper existential
reckoning is required.
This transfiguration is not novel. It is a return to form. The tightly intertwined
stories of the white working class and blackAmericans go back to the prehistory
of the United States-and the use of one as a cudgel to silence the claims of
the other goes back nearly as far. Like the black working class, the white work-
ing class originated in bondage-the former in the lifelong bondage of slavery,
the latter in the temporary bondage of indenture. In the early 17th century, these
two classes were remarkably, though not totally, free of racist enmity. But by
the 18th century, the country's master class had begun etching race into law while
phasing out indentured servitude in favor of a more enduring labor solution.
From these and other changes of law and economy, a bargain emerged: The
descendants of indenture would enjoy the full benefits of whiteness, the most
definitional benefit being that they would never sink to the level of the slave. But
if the bargain protected white workers from slavery, it did not protect them from
near-slave wages or backbreaking labor to attain them, and always there lurked a
fear of having their benefits revoked. This early white working class "·expressed
soaring desires to be rid of the age-old inequalities of Europe and of any hint of
slavery," according to David R. Roediger, a professor ofAmerican studies at the
University of Kansas. "They also expressed the rather more pedestrian goal of
simply not being mistaken for slaves, or 'negers' or 'negurs."'
Roediger relates the experience, around 1807, of a British investor who made
the mistake of asking a white maid in New England whether her "master" was
home. The maid admonished the investor, not merely for implying that she had a
"master" and thus was a "sarvant" but for his basic ignorance ofAmerican hierar-
chy. "None but negers are sarvants," the maid is reported to have said. In law and
economics and then in custom, a racist distinction not limited to the household
emerged between the "help" (or the "freemen;' or the white workers) and the
"servants" (the "negers," the slaves). The former were virtuous and just, worthy
of citizenship, progeny ofJefferson and, later, Jackson. The latter were servile and
parasitic, dim-witted and lazy, the children of African savagery. But the dignity
accorded to white labor was situational, dependent on the scorn heaped upon
black labor-much as the honor accorded a "virtuous lady" was dependent on the
derision directed at a "loose woman:' And like chivalrous gentlemen who claim to
honor the lady while raping the "whore," planters and their apologists could claim
to honor white labor while driving the enslaved.
_ And so George Fitzhugh, a prominent 19th-century Southern pro-slavery
mtellectual, could in a single stroke deplore the exploitation of free whites' labor
while defending the exploitation of enslaved blacks' labor. Fitzhugh attacked white
capitalists as "cannibals," feeding off the labor of their fellow whites. The white
workers were" 'slaves without masters;' the little fish, who were food for all the
larger." Fitzhugh inveighed against a "professional man" who'd "amassed a fortune"
by exploiting his fellow whites. But whereas Fitzhugh imagined white workers as
devoured by capital, he imagined black workers as elevated by enslavement. The
slaveholder "provided for them, with almost parental affection"-even when the
THE FIRST WHITE PRESIDENT 31
loafing slave "feigned to be unfit fo~ labor:' Fitzhugh. proved too ,~xplic~t-going so
far as to argue that white laborers rmght be better off if enslaved. ( If white slavery be
rnorally wrong;' he wrote, "the Bible cannot be true:'.) Nevertheless, the argument
·that America's original sin was not deep-seated white supremacy but rather the
exploitation of white la~or by whi~e capit~sts-"w~i~e slavery"-proved durable.
Indeed, the panic of white slavery lives on m our politJ.cs today. Black worke~s s~-
fer because it was and is our lot. But when white workers suffe:r, s~mething
nature has gone awry. And so an opioid epidemic among mostly white people_ is
greeted with calls for compassion and treatm~nt, as all ep~demics should be, while
:ack epidemic among mostly black people is greeted with scorn and mandatory
~urns. Sympathetic op-ed columns and articles are devoted to the plight of
working-class whites when their life expectancy plummets to levels that, for blacks,
society has simply accepted as normal. White slave17 is sin. Nil?:ger slave17 is natural.
This dynamic serves a very real purpose: the consistent awarding of grievance and
rnoral high ground to that class of workers which, by the bonds of whiteness, stands
closest to America's aristocratic class.
This is by design. Speaking in 1848, Senator John C. Calhoun saw slavery as
the explicit foundation for a democratic union among whites, working and not:
With us the two great divisions of society are not the rich and poor, but
white and black; and all the former, the poor as well as the rich, belong
to the upper class, and are respected and treated as equals.
On the eve of secession,Jefferson Davis, the eventual president of the Confederacy;
pushed the idea further, arguing that such equality between the white working
class and white oligarchs could not exist at all without black slavery:
I say that the lower race of human beings that constitute the substra-
tum of what is termed the slave population of the South, elevates every
white man in our community ... It is the presence of a lower caste,
those lower by their mental and physical organization, controlled by
the higher intellect of the white man, that gives this superiority to the
white laborer. Menial services are not there performed by the white
man.We have none of our brethren surik to the degradation ofbeing
menials. That belongs to the lower race-the descendants of Ham.
Southern intellectuals found a shade of agreement with Northern white reformers
who, while not agreeing on slavery, agreed on the nature of the most tragic victim
of emerging capitalism. "I was formerly like yourself, sir, a very warm ad~ocate of
the abolition of slavery;' the labor reformer George Henry Evans argued m a letter
to the abolitionist Gerrit Smith. "This was before I saw that there was white slavery:'
Evans was a putative ally of Smith and his fellow abolitionists. But still he ass~rted
that "the landless white" was worse off than the enslaved black, who at least enJoyed
"surety of support in sickness and old age:' ·
Invokers of "white slavery" held that there was nothing unique in the
enslavement of blacks when measured against the enslavement of all workers.
What evil there was in enslavement resulted from its status as a subsidiary of the
broader exploitation better seen among the country's noble laboring whites. Once

32 TA-NEHISI COATES
the larger problem of white exploitation was solved, the dependent problem of
black exploitation could be confronted or perhaps would fade away. Abolitionists
focused on slavery were dismissed as "substitutionists" who wished to trade one
form of slavery for another. "Ifl am less troubled concerning the Slavery prevalent
in Charleston or New-Orleans," wrote the reformer Horace Greeley, "it is because
I see so much Slavery in New-York, which appears to claim my first efforts."
Firsthand reports by white Union soldiers who witnessed actual slavery during
the Civil War rendered the "white slavery" argument ridiculous. But its operating
premises-white labor as noble archetype, and black labor as something else-
lived on. This was a matter of rhetoric, not fact. The noble-white-labor archetype
did not give white workers immunity from capitalism. It could not, in itself, break
monopolies, alleviate white poverty in Appalachia or the South, or bring a decent
wage to immigrant ghettos in the North. But the model for America's original
identity politics was set. Black lives literally did not matter and could be cast aside
altogether as the price of even incremental gains for the white masses. It was
this juxtaposition that allowed Theodore Bilbo to campaign for the Senate in the
1930s as someone who would "raise the same kind of hell as President Roosevelt"
and later endorse lynching black people to keep them from voting.
The juxtaposition between the valid and even virtuous interests of the "work-
ing class" and the invalid and pathological interests ofblackAmericans was not the
province merely of blatant white supremacists like Bilbo. The acclaimed scholar,
liberal hero, and future senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, in his time working for
President Richard Nixon, approvingly quoted Nixon's formulation of the
white working class: "A new voice" was beginning to make itself felt in the country,
"it is a voice that has been silent too long;' Nixon claimed, alluding to working-class
whites. "It is a voice of people who have not taken to the streets before, who have
not indulged in violence, who have not broken the law;'
It had been only 18 years since the Cicero riots; eight years since Daisy and
Bill Myers had been run out ofLevittown, Pennsylvania; three years since Martin
Luther KingJr.had been stoned while walking through Chicago's Marquett~ Park.
But as the myth of the virtuous white working class was made central to American
identity, its sins needed to be rendered invisible. The fact was, working-class whites
had been agents of racist terrorism since at least the draft riots of 1863 · terrorism
could not be neatly separated from the racist animus found in every clas; of whites.
Indeed, in the era oflynching, the daily newspapers often whipped up the fury of
the white masses by invoking the last species of property that all white men held in
common-white women.But to conceal the breadth of white racism these racist
outbursts were often disregarded or treated not as racism but as the ~nfortunate
side effect oflegitimate grievances against capital. By focusing on that sympathetic
laboring class, the sins of whiteness itself were, and are still being, evaded.
When David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, shocked the
country in 1990 by almost winning one of Louisiana's seats in the U.S. Senate, the
apologists came out once again. They elided the obvious-that Duke had appealed
to the racist instincts of a state whose schools are, at this very moment, still desegre-
gating--and instead decided that something else was afoot. "There is a tremendous
amount ofanger and frustration among working-class whites, particularly where there
THE FIRST WHITE PRESIDENT 33
is an economic downturn," a researcher told the Los Angeles Times. "These people
feel left out; they feel government is not responsive to them:' By this logic, postwar
America-with its booming economy and low unemployment--should have been
an egalitarian utopia and not the violently segregated c~untry it actually was. .
But this was the past made present. It was not important to the apologists
that a large swath of Louisiana's white population thought it was a good idea to
send a white supremacist who once fronted a terrorist organization to the nation's
capital. Nor was it important that blacks in _Louisiana had long felt le~t out.What
was important was. the fraying of an ancient bargain, and the potential degrada-
tion of white workers to the level of"negers:' "A viable left must find a way to
differentiate itself strongly from such analysis;' David Roediger, the University of
Kansas professor, has written.
That challenge of differentiation has largely been ignored. Instead, an imag-
ined white working class remains central to our politics and to our cultural under-
standing of those politics, not simply when it comes to addressing broad economic
issues but also when it comes to addressing racism. At its most sympathetic, this
belief holds that most Americans-regardless ofrace-are exploited by an unfet-
tered capitalist economy. The key, then, is to address those broader patterns that
afflict the masses of all races; the people who suffer from those patterns more than
others (blacks, for instance) will benefit disproportionately from that which ben-
efits everyone. "These days, what ails working-class and middle-class blacks and
Latinos is not fundamentally different from what ails their white counterparts;'
Senator Barack Obama wrote in 2006:
Downsizing, outsourcing, automation, wage stagnation, the dismantling
of employer-based health-care and pension plans, and schools that fail to
teach young people the skills they need to compete in a global economy.
Obama allowed that"blacks in particular have been vulnerable to these trends"-but
less because of racism than for reasons of geography and job-sector distribution.This
notion-raceless antiracism-marks the modem left, from the New Democrat Bill
Clinton to the socialist Bernie Sanders. Few national liberal politicians have shown
any recognition that there is something systemic and particular in the relationship
between black people and their country that might require specific policy solutions.
In 2016, Hillary Clinton acknowledged the existence of systemic racism more
explicitly than any of her modern Democratic predecessors. She had to-black
voters remembered too well the previous Clinton administration, as well as her
previous campaign. While her husband's administration had touted the rising-
tide theory of economic growth, it did so while slashing welfare and getting
"tough on crime," a phrase that stood for specific policies but also served as
rhetorical bait for white voters. One is tempted to excuse Hillary Clinton from
having to answer for the sins of her husband. But in her 2008 campaign, she
evoked the old dichotomy between white workers and loafing blacks, claiming
to be the representative of"hardworking Americans, white Americans." By the
end of the 2008 primary campaign against Barack Obama, her advisers were

34 TA-NEHISI COATES
hoping someone would uncover an apocryphal "whitey tape," in which an
angry Michelle Obama was alleged to have used the slur. During Bill Clinton's
presidential-reelection campaign in the mid-1990s, Hillary Clinton herself had
endorsed the "super-predator" theory of William]. Bennett,John P.Walters, and
John J. Diiulio Jr. This theory cast "inner-city" children of that era as "almost
completely unmoralized" and the font of"a new generation ofstreet criminals ...
the youngest, biggest and baddest generation any society has ever known."
The "baddest generation" did not become super-predators. But by 2016,
they were young adults, many of whom judged Hillary Clinton's newfound
consciousness to be lacking.
It's worth asking why the country has not been treated to a raft of sympa-
thetic portraits of this "forgotten" young black electorate, forsaken by a Washington
bought off by Davos elites and special interests. The unemployment rate for young
blacks (20.6 percent) in July 2016 was double that of young whites (9.9 percent).
And since the late 1970s,WilliamJulius Wilson and other social scientists following
in his wake have noted the disproportionate effect that the decline in manufactur-
ing jobs has had on African American communities. If anyone should be angered
by the devastation wreaked by the financial sector and a government that declined
to prosecute the perpetrators, it is African Americans-the housing crisis was one
of the primary drivers in the past 20 years of the wealth gap between black families
and the rest of the country. But the cultural condescension toward and economic
anxiety of black people is not news. Toiling blacks are in their proper state; toiling
whites raise the specter of white slavery.
Moreover, a narrative oflong-neglected working-class black voters, injured by
globalization and the financial crisis, forsaken by out-of-touch politicians, and right-
fully suspicious of a return of Clintonism, does not serve to cleanse the conscience
of white people for having elected Donald Trump. Only the idea of a long-suffering
white working class can do that. And though much has been written about the
distance between elites and "Real America;' the existence of a class-transcending,
mutually dependent tribe of white people is evident.
Joe Biden, then the vice president, last year:
"They're all the people I grew up with ... And they're not racist. They're
not sexist."
Bernie Sanders, senator and former candidate for president, last year:
"I come from the white working class, and I am deeply humiliated that
the Democratic Party cannot talk to the people where I came from:'
Nicholas Kristof, the New York Times columnist, in February of this year:
My hometown,Yamhill, Ore., a farming community; is Trump country,
and I have many friends who voted for Trump. I think they're pro-
foundly wrong, but please don't dismiss them as hateful bigots.
These claims of origin and fidelity are not merely elite defenses of an aggrieved
class but also a sweeping dismissal of the concerns of those who don't share kinship
with white men. "You can't eat equality;' asserts Joe Biden-a statement worthy of
THE FIRST WHITE PRESIDENT 35
someone unthreatened by the loss of wages brought on by an unwanted pregnancy,
a background-check box at the bottom of a job application, or the deportation of
a breadwinner. Within a week of Sanders lambasting Democrats for not speaking to
"the people" where he "came from;' he was making an example of a woman who
dreamed of representing the people where she came from. Confronted with a young
woman who hoped to become the second Latina senator in American history, Sand-
ers responded with a parody of the Clinton campaign: "It is not good enough for
someone to say, Tm a woman! Vote for me!' No, that's not good enough ... One of
the struggles that you're going to be seeing in the Democratic Party is whether we
go beyond identity politics:'The upshot-attacking one specimen of identity politics
after having invoked another-was unfortunate.
Other Sanders appearances proved even more alarming. On MSNBC, he
attributed Trump's success, in part, to his willingness to "not be politically
correct." Sanders admitted that Trump had "said some outrageous and painful
things, but I think people are tired of the same old, same old political rheto-
ric." Pressed on the definition of political correctness, Sanders gave an answer
Trump surely would have approved of. "What it means is you have a set of
talking points which have been poll-tested and focus-group-tested," Sanders
explained. "And that's what you say rather than what's really going on. And
often, what you are not allowed to say are things which offend very, very
powerful people."
This definition of political correctness was shocking coming from a politician
of the left. But it matched a broader defense of Trump voters. "Some people think
that the people who voted for Trump are racists and sexists and homophobes and
just deplorable folks," Sanders said later. "I don't agree." This is not exculpatory.
Certainly not every Trump voter is a white supremacist, just as not every white
person in the Jim Crow South was a white supremacist. But every Trump voter
felt it acceptable to hand the fate of the country over to one.
One can, to some extent, understand politicians' embracing a self-serving
identity politics. Candidates for high office, such as Sanders, have to cobble
together a coalition. The white working class is seen, understandably, as a large
cache of potential votes, and capturing these votes requires eliding uncomfort-
able truths. But journalists have no such excuse. Again and again in the past year,
Nicholas Kristof could be found pleading with his fellow liberals not to dismiss his
old comrades in the white working class as bigots-even when their bigotry was
evidenced iIJ. his own reporting.A visit to Tulsa, Oklahoma, finds Kristof wonder-
ing why Trump voters support a president who threatens to cut the programs they
depend on. But the problem, according to Kristof's interviewees, isn't Trump's
attack on benefits so much as an attack on their benefits. "There's a lot of waste-
ful spending, so cut other places;' one man tells Kristof. When Kristof pushes his
subjects to identify that wasteful spending, a fascinating target is revealed:"Obarna
phones;' the products of a fevered conspiracy theory that turned a long-standing
government program into a scheme through which the then-president gave away
free cellphones to undeserving blacks. Kristof doesn't shift his analysis based on
this comment and, aside from a one-sentence fact-check tucked between paren-
theses, continues on as though it were never said.
 36 TA-NEHISI COATES
Observing a Trump supporter in the act of deploying racism does not much
perturb Kristof. -r:hat is because his defenses of the innate goodness of Trump
voters and of the innate goodness of the white working class are in fact defenses
of neither. On _the contrary, the white working class functions rhetorically not as
a real commuruty of people so much as a tool to quiet the demands of those who
want a more inclusive America.
Mark Lilla's New York Times essay "The End of Identity Liberalism;' published
n?t long after last year's election, is perhaps the most profound example of this genre.
Lilla denounces the perversion of liberalism into "a kind of moral panic about racial,
gender and ~exual id:n~ty;' which distorted liberalism's message "and prevented it
from be~ommg _a unifying force capable of governing:' Liberals have turned away
from_ the": working-class base, he says, and must look to the "pre-identity liberalism"
of Bill_ Cli11:ton and Franklin D. Roosevelt. You would never know from this essay
that Bill Clinton was one of the most skillful identity politicians of his era-flying
home ~o Arkansas to see a black man, the lobotomized Ricky Ray Rector, executed;
upstagmg Jesse Jackson at his own conference; signing the Defense of Marriage Act.
Nor wo~ld you know _that the "pre-identity" liberal champion Roosevelt depended
on the literally lethal identity politics of the white-supremacist "solid South:' The
name Barack Obama d?es not appear in Lilla's essay; and he never attempts to grapple,
one way or another, with the fact that it was identity politics-the possibility of the
~st black pre~ident-that brought a record number of black voters to the polls, win-
rung the elect10n for the Democratic Party; and thus enabling the deliverance of the
ancient liberal goal ofnational health care, "identity politics ... is largely expressive, not
persuasive;' Lilla claims. "Which is why it never wins elections-but can lose them:'
That Trump ran and won on identity politics is beyond Lilla's powers of conception.
What appeals to the white working class is ennobled.What appeals to black workers,
an~ others outside t1:~ tribe, is dastardly identitarianism. A] politics are identity
politics-except the politics of white people, the politics of the bloody heirloom.
White tribalism haunts even more-nuanced writers. George Packer's New
Yorker essay "The Unconnected" is a lengthy plea for liberals to focus more on
the white working class, a population that "has succumbed to the ills that used to
be associated with the black urban 'underclass."' Packer believes that these ills, and
the Democratic Party's failure to respond to them, explain much ofTrurnp's rise.
Packer offers no opinion polls to weigh white workers' views on "elites," much less
their views ?n racism. He offers no sense of how their views and their relationship
to Trump differ from other workers' and other whites'.
That is likely because any empirical evaluation of the relationship between
!'ru~p and the white working class would reveal that one adjective in that phrase
:s doing more work than the other. In 2016, Trump enjoyed majority or plural-
ity support among every econ01nic branch of whites. It is true that his strongest
support among whites came from those making $50,000 to $99,999. This would
be so:11ething more than working-class in many nonwhite neighborhoods, but
even if one accepts that branch as the working class, the difference between how
var~ous_ gro~~~ in t1:is inco~e bracket voted is revealing. Sixty-one percent of
whites m this working ~lass supported Trump. Only 24 percent of Hispanics and
11 percent of blacks did. Indeed, the plurality of all voters making less than
THE FIRST WHITE PRESIDENT 37
$100 000 and the majority making less than $50,000 voted for the Democratic
didate. So when Packer laments the fact that "Democrats can no longer really
can hi ,, h .
laim to be the party of working people-not w te ones, anyway, e comm1ts
c kind of category error. The real problem is that Democrats aren't the party of
:hite people-working or otherwise. White workers are not divided by the fact
oflabor from other white demographics; they are divided from all other laborers
by the fact of their whiteness. .
Packer's essay was published before the election, and so the vote tally was not
available. But it should not be surprising that a Republican candidate making a
direct appeal to racism would drive up the numbers am?ng _white vot~~s, ~iven
that racism has been a dividing line for the national parties smce the civil-nghts
era. Packer finds inspiration for his thesis in West Virginia-a state that remained
Democratic through the 1990s before turning decisively Republican, at least at the
level of presidential politics. This relatively recent rightward movement evinces, to
Packer, a shift "that couldn't be attributed just to the politics of race:'This is likely
true-the politics of race are, theinselves, never attributable "just to the politics of
race:' The history of slavery is also about the growth of international capitalism;
the history of lynching must be seen in light of anxiety over the growing inde-
pendence of women;, the civil-rights movement c~'t be disentangled from_ the
Cold War. Thus, to say that the rise of Donald Trump is about more than race is_ to
make an empty statement, one that is small comfort to the people-black, Muslim,
immigrant-who live under racism's boot.
The dent of racism is not hard to detect in West Virginia. In the 2008 Dem-
ocratic primary there, 95 percent of the voters were white. Twenty percent of
those-one in five-openly admitted that race was influencing their vote, and
more than 80 percent voted for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama. Four ye~rs
later, the incumbent Obama lost the primary in 10 counties to Keith Judd, a white
felon incarcerated in a federal prison;Judd racked up more than 40 percent of the
Democratic-primary vote in the state. A simple thought experiment: Can one
imagine a black felon in a federal prison running in a primary against an incum-
bent white president doing so well?
But racism occupies a mostly passive place in Packer's essay.There's no attempt
to understand why black and brown workers, victimized by the same new economy
and cosmopolitan elite that Packer lambastes, did not join the Trump revolution.
Like Kristof Packer is gentle with his subjects.When a woman "exploded" and told
Packer, "I w:mt to eat what I want to eat, and for them to tell me I can't eat French
fries or Coca-Cola-no way;' he sees this as a rebellion against "the moral superior-
ity of elites:' In fact, this elite conspiracy dates back to 1894, when th~ government
first began advising Americans on their diets.As recently as 2002, Preside~t George
W Bush launched the HealthierUS initiative, urging Americans to exercise and eat
healthy food. But Packer never allows himself to wonder whether the explosion he
witnessed had anything to do with the fact that siinilar advice now came from the
country's first black first lady. Packer concludes that Obama was leaving the country
"more divided and angrier than most Americans can remember;' a statement that
is likely true only because most Americans identify as white. Cer~ainly the ~en
and women forced to live in the wake of the beating of John Lewis, the lynching
38
TA-NEHISI COATES
of Emmett Till, the firebombing of Percy Julian's home, and the assassinations of
Martin Luther KingJr. and Medgar Evers would disagree.
The triumph of Trump's campaign ofbigotry presented the problematic spectacle
of an American president succeeding at best in spite of his racism and possibly
because of it. Trump moved racism from the euphemistic and plausibly deniable
to the overt and freely claimed. This presented the country's thinking class with
a dilemma. Hillary Clinton simply could not be correct when she asserted that
a large group of Americans was endorsing a candidate because of bigotry. The
implications -that systemic bigotry is still central to our politics; that the coun-
try is susceptible to such bigotry; that the salt-of-the-earth Americans whom we
lionize in our culture and politics are not so different from those same Americans
who grin back at us in lynching photos; that Calhoun's aim of a pan-Caucasian
embrace between workers and capitalists still endures-were just too dark. Left-
ists would have to cope with the failure, yet again, of class unity in the face of
racism. Incorporating all of this into an analysis of America and the path forward
proved too much to ask. Instead, the response has largely been an argument aimed
at emotion-the summoning of the white working class, emblem of America's
hardscrabble roots, inheritor ofits pioneer spirit, as a shield against the horrific and
empirical evidence of trenchant bigotry.
Packer dismisses the Democratic Party as a coalition of "rising professionals
and diversity." The dismissal is derived from, of all people, Lawrence Summers,
the former Harvard president and White House economist, who last year labeled
the Democratic Party "a coalition of the cosmopolitan elite and diversity." The
inference is that the party has forgotten how to speak on hard economic issues
and prefers discussing presumably softer cultural issues such as "diversity." It'.s
worth unpacking what, precisely, falls under this rubric of "diversity"-resis-
tance to the monstrous incarceration oflegions of black men, resistance to the
destruction of health providers for poor women, resistance to the effort to de-
port parents, resistance to a policing whose sole legitimacy is rooted in brute
force, resistance to a theory of education that preaches "no excuses" to black
and brown children, even as excuses are proffered for mendacious corporate
executives "too big to jail." That this suite of concerns, taken together, can be
dismissed by both an elite economist like Summers and a brilliant journalist like
Packer as "diversity" simply reveals the safe space they enjoy. Because of their
identity.
When Barack Obama came into office, in 2009, he believed that he could
work with "sensible" conservatives by embracing aspects of their policy as his
own. Instead he found that his very imprimatur made that impossible. Senate
Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced that the GOP's primary goal
was not to find common ground but to make Obama a "one-terin president."
A health-care plan inspired by Romneycare was, when proposed by Obama,
suddenly considered socialist and, not coincidentally, a form of reparations. The
first black president found that he was personally toxic to the GOP base. An
entire political party was organized around the explicit aim of negating one
THE FIRST WHITE PRESIDENT 39
man. It was thought by Obama and some of his allies that this toxicity was
the result of a relentless assault waged by Fox News and right-wing talk radio.
Trump's genius was to see that it was something more, that it was a hunger for
revanche so strong that a political novice and accused rapist could topple the
leadership of one major party and throttle the heavily favored nominee of the
other.
"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot someb9dy and
I wouldn't lose any voters," Trump bragged in January 20i6. This statement should
be met with only a modicum of skepticism. Trump has mocked the disabled,
withstood multiple accusations of sexual violence (all of which he has denied), fired
an FBI director, sent his minions to mislead the public about his motives, person-
ally exposed those lies by boldly stating his aim to scuttle an investigation into _his
possible collusion with a foreign power, then bragged about that same obstructJ.on
to representatives of that same foreign power. It is utterly impossible to conjure a
black facsimile of Donald Trump---to imagine Obama, say, implicating an oppo-
nent's father in the assassination of an American president or comparing his physi-
cal endowment with that of another candidate and then successfully capturing the
presidency. Trump, more than any other politician, understood the valence of the
bloody heirloom and the great power in not being a nigger.
But the power is ultimately suicidal. Trump evinces this, too. In a recent New
Yorker article, a former Russian military officer pointed out that interference in an
election could succeed only where "necessary conditions" and an "existing back-
ground" were present. In America, that "existing background" was a persistent rac-
ism, and the "necessary condition" was a black president. The two related factors
hobbled America's ability to safeguard its electoral system. As late as July 2016, a
majority of Republican voters doubted that Barack Obama had been born in the
United States, which is to say they did not view him as a legitimate president.
Republican politicians acted accordingly, infamously denying his final Supreme
Court nominee a hearing and then, fatefully, refusing to work with the administra-
tion to defend the country against the Russian attack. Before the election, Obama
found no takers among Republicans for a bipartisan response, and Obama himself,
underestimating Trump and thus underestimating the power of whiteness, believed
the Republican nominee too objectionable to actually win. In this Obama was,
tragically, wrong. And so the most powerful country in the world has handed over
all its affairs-the prosperity of its entire economy; the security of its 300 million
citizens; the. purity of its water, the viability of its air, the safety of its food; the
future of its vast system of education; the soundness of its national highways, airways,
and railways; the apocalyptic potential of its nuclear arsenal-to a carnival barker
who introduced the phrase grab 'em by the pussy into the national lexicon. It is as if
the white tribe united in demonstration to say, "If a black man can be president, then
any white man-no matter how fallen-can be president:' And in that perverse
way, the democratic dreams ofJefferson and Jackson were ful:filled.
The American tragedy now being wrought is larger than most imagine and
will not end with Trump. In recent times, whiteness as an overt political tactic has
been restrained by a kind of cordiality that held that its overt invocation would
scare off "moderate" whites. This has proved to be only half true at best. Trump's

40 TA-NEHISI COATES
legacy will be exposing the patina of decency for what it is and revealing just how
much a demagogue can get away with. It does not take much to imagine another
politician, wiser in the ways ofWashington and better schooled in the methodol-
ogy of governance-and now liberated from the pretense of antiracist civility-
doing a much more effective job than Trump.
It has long been an axiom among certain black writers and thinkers that
while whiteness endangers the bodies of black people in the immediate sense,
the larger threat is to white people themselves, the shared country, and even the
whole world.
There is an impulse to blanch at this sort of grandiosity. When W E. B.
Du Bois claims that slavery was "singularly disastrous for modern civilization"
or James Baldwin claims that whites "have brought humanity to the edge of
oblivion: because they think they are white," the instinct is to cry exaggera-
tion. But there really is no other way to read the presidency of Donald Trump.
The first white president in American history is also the most dangerous presi-
dent-and he is made more dangerous still by the fact that those charged
with analyzing him cannot name his essential nature, because they too are
implicated in it.
QUESTIONS FOR MAKING CONNECTIONS
WITHIN THE READING
1. Coates writes about a contemporary event-the election of Donald
Trump-but he does it in a way many readers might not appreciate.
Responding to the barrage of the President's lies (more than five a day,
according to the New York Times), many journalists have chosen to put their
energies into countering the lies with facts-objective evidence. But in
"The First White President," Coates takes a strikingly different approach by
historidzing the present. "Historicizing" means that he provides an historical
or "diachronic" context missing from responses that focus on the contem-
porary moment exclusively. Fighting lies with facts is essential work that
journalists should never abandon, but facts by themselves cannot explain
why some facts escape attention while others crowd out everything else.
Reread Coates's essay, looking at the moments when he injects history into
the discussion. What effect do these moments have on your experience as a
reader? How do they change the way you understand contemporary events?
2. The most important term in Coates's essay is, of course, "whiteness." Underline
or highlight all the places where the word appears. What is "whiteness,"
according to Coates? Does he view it as a biological category or does he see as a
cultural and historical construct? What does it mean to say that whiteness is a
"cultural construct"? In other words, how did it get constructed, by whom and
THE FIRST WHITE PRESIDENT 41
for what purposes? Be sure to consider the relationship between race and class.
In what ways, according to Coates, did the invention of "whiteness" distract
working people of European descent from making common cause with other
working people? How did whiteness help to bolster the distinction between a
"worker" and a "slave"? What are the differences?
3. On the basis of your reading of the essay, would you define .Coates as a
liberal or a Democrat? Would you define him as a conservative or a.
Republican? To what degree does he fit within any of these ca~ego~es?
What specifically does Coates have to say about lib_erals and :heir attitude~
towards black Americans? Describe the nature of his reservations about Bill
and Hillary Clinton. What seems to be his attitude towar~ liberal r~formers
like Senator Bernie Sanders, the political scientist Mark Lilla or the Journal-
ists Nicholas Kristof and George Packer? Do you think that Coates sees both
parties as complicit in the perpetuation of whiteness? Would h~ see them as
equally complicit or complicit in_ the wa,:s? Why does whiteness play
such an important role in Amencan political life?
QUESTIONS FOR WRITING
1. Drawing from the information that Coates provides, explain th~ m~_alof d
"whiteness." As you develop your explanation, be sure to consider its soe1 an
cultural roles. What kinds of distinctions and divisions does "whiteness" create,
and how do those distinctions and divisions function in our society today? Who
benefits from the persistence of whiteness and who is disadvantaged? Why :iave
so many observers, progressive as well as conservative, attributed Trump's victory
to working-class resentment instead of a racism that can be found ~ong all
classes, including the wealthiest and best educated? To what degree 1s the system
as a whole dependent on the existence of a racialized "other"?
2. Starting in 2015, the United States ceased t~ b~ classifi~d as a ":full dthemocra1'
by the Economist magazine's respected Intelligence Urut (EIU). At e top o
the top of the EIU's list of :full democracies were Norw~y, Icela~d, Sweden,
New Zealand and Denmark, with Ireland and Canada tied for sixth place.
The writers of the report explicitly say that Donald Trump is not t~
blame because he was a symptom, rather than the cause, of the country s
decline. The cause, they conclude, was a loss of trust in government:
By tapping a deep strain of political disaffection with the function-
ing of democracy, Mr. Trump became a beneficiary of the low
esteem in which US voters hold their government, elected repre-
sentatives, and political parties, but he was not responsible for a
problem that has had a long gestation.
 THE FIRST WHITE PRESIDENT 43
42 TA-NEHISI COATES

To what degree does whiteness qualify as a horizontal identity, and to what

What role might whiteness play in discrediting our political institutions? To
what degree is whiteness at odds with democracy itself? To what is it
degree is it vertical? To what extei:t do :Whiteness and its correl~te, ~lackness,
an expression of democracy? Does the problem of whiteness force us to complicate Solomon's account of identity? Generally, people ~ent a
vertical identity whereas they chose a horizontal identity. Is this true of
choose between different definitions of democracy: democracy as equality
and democracy as majority rule? whiteness? Is it true of blackness?

QUESTIONS FOR MAKING CONNECTIONS

BETWEEN READINGS

1. In "Biographies of Hegemony," anthropologist Karen Ho describes the

process of socialization that naturalizes inequality-that makes it seem "nat-
ural" and normal. People learn to accept that special privileges rightfully
belong to those endowed with "smartness":
The "culture of smartness" is central to understanding Wall Street's
financial agency, how investment bankers are personally and
institutionally empowered to enact their worldviews, export their
practices, and serve as models for far-reaching socioeconomic
change. On Wall Street, "smartness" means much more than indi-
vidual intelligence; it conveys a naturalized and sense of
"impressiveness," of elite, pinnacle status and expertise which is
used to signify, even prove, investment bankers' worthiness.
To what does the whiteness described by Coates also support a form
of "hegemony"? Explore the parallels between smartness and whiteness, but
also the ways they might differ. Is smartness also racialized? Does whiteness
rely on competition and merit to justify the advantages it conveys? Does
smartness do the same---or does it only appear to?
2. In his chapter, "Son," Andrew Solomon introduces readers to two different
kinds of identity:
Because of the transmission of identity from one ie:ene1rao,on to the
next, most children share at least some traits with their parents.
These are vertical identities. Attributes and values are passed down
from parent to child across the generations not only through strands
of DNA but also through shared cultural norms. Ethnicity, for
example, is a vertical identity.... Often, however, someone has an
inherent or acquired trait that is foreign to his or her parents and
must therefore acquire identity from a peer group. This is a hori-
zontal identity .... Being gay is a horizontal identity.
 PROJECT CLASSROOM MAKEOVER 45

••• Duke s g
r lnterdisciplinor<r Studies at Duke University and helped to create ISIS,
Provost LOr - '
d .
. -
. h h
_,c

While a vice provost at Duke she create qUlte a stir _w en_ er umve
· s di s
, hi hly successful program in Infonnauon Soence and Imoi::rna~on . tu e ·
rnty m part-
, .
· ershi with Apple, In.c., distributed :free iPods to all mcomm~ students. In spite of
CATHY DAVIDSON n p dal or perhaps because of it, President Obama norrunated Davi:I5on to a
t~e scant rm' on the National Council on the Humanities. The followmg selec-
SJX-year e
.
dB · s·
from Davidson's book Now You See It: How Technology an rain cience
uoncomes
Will Traniform Schools and Business for the 21st Century (2011).
REMARKABLY, CATHY N. DAVIDSON occupies two distinguished faculty chairs at
Duke University, but reputation never stands in her way when it comes to tak-
ing controversial positions. Over the last decade she has become one of the most
impassioned advocates of the electronic media-which, she argues, have the
potential to transform our ways of thinking more radically than any invention
since the printing press. At a time when many observers mourn the demise of
the book, Davidson argues that we need to embrace the possibilities of the
Web: an explosive growth of new knowledge, nearly immediate access, and an
•••
unprecedented freedom in the shaping of information itse1£ She urges that this Project Classroom Makeover
spirit of creativity should extend beyond the screen to the schools, which she
sees as backward looking at a time when educators finally have the tools to end
The Newsweek cover story pr?daimed,. "iPod, There~ore II'~·"
a spirit-crushing uniformity. Far from pushing the arts and humanities into
obsolescence, the new technologies could provide the means for all of us to
o MTV News it was 'Dude, I JUSt got a free iPod.
P:erJennings s~ked at the ABC-TV news audience, "Shakespeare on the
participate in the making of culture.
Not everyone agrees, however, with Davidson about the new media. In a iPod? Calculus on the iPod!" .
The online academic publication Inside Higher Ed wo~ed for our reputa-
review for the online journal Slate, Annie Paul Murphy accuses her of capitulat- . H uld Duke University "deal with the perception that one of the
ing to the hype about the wonders of the Web: non. ow wo . . 11 d
try's finest institutions-with selective admissions, a robust enro ment, an
coun bli . 1 "?
[Davidson] is easily moved to rapture and to dismay, propelled by an a lush endowment-would stoop to a pu c~;Y P oy · _ _ .
enthusiasm for anything new and digital and by an almost allergic aver- P And The Duke Chronicle was apoplectic: The Uru~ersity seems intent on
sion to any practices or artifucts from the pre-Internet era. Nor does she tranSforming the iPod into an academic device, when the s~ple fact o~ the ~ : :
have much use for people born before 1980. The inhabitants and the is that iPods are made to listen to music. It is an unnecessarily ~xpensive toy ,,1
knowledge of the past are merely obstacles to be trampled in the head- does not become an academic tool simply because it is thrown mto a classroom.
long rush toward an interactive, connected, collaborative future. This What had these pundits so riled up? In 2003.' ;'e at Duke w:;re• approached
future, as Davidson imagines it, is one in which games replace books, b A le about becoming one of six "Apple Digital Campuses. Each campus
online collaboration replaces individual effort, and "crowdsourced" .:oul~pchoose a technology that Apple was then developing and would pro~ose
verdicts replace expertise. ·d r ·t It would be a partnership of business and educauon,
a campus w1 e use LOr 1 • d d ·h
exploratory in all ways. One university selected Apple PowerBooks loa e "':t
Other critics of the Web, if not of Davidson herself, argue that it has undermined iLife digital audio and video production software. An~ther_ chose_ e-portfolios,
our ability to read carefully by teaching us to "skim" instead of pausing to reflect. online workspaces where students could develop multimedia proJec~ toget:r
0
Whatever readers might ultimately decide about these criticisms, Davidson has had and then archive them. Another selected audio software for creaung au
the integrity to put her ideas into practice. From 1998 to 2006 she served as Vice ,_£..... ·trncture What landed us in hot water was that, at
archives and o ther nil.la:> • . 1is · d t
Duke, instead of any of these, we chose a flashy n~w music- tenlllg ga ge
From NOW YOU SEE IT: HOW THE BRAIN SCIENCE OF ATTEl.'.'TI0N Will TRANSFORM SCHOOLS
that young people loved but that baffled most adults: iPods._ did it
AND BUSINESS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY by Cathy N. Davidson, copyright© 2011 by Cathy N. Davidson. Used I 2003 the iPod did not have a single known educational app, nor
by permission of Viking Penguin, a division of Penguin Group (US/\) IJ..C. seem~o fall into that staid, stolid, overpriced, and top-down category know;: as
Quotation from Annie Paul Murphy is taken from "Who's Afrud of Digital Natives?" Slate, August 22, 2011. IT, or instructional technology. Giga~tic_ billboards h_ad spru;! :~:~ri;~~
Biographical infonnation is from http://www.cathydavidson.com/about/ and http://www.cathydavidson.com showing young people dancing, their silhouettes wild aga
/wp--coutent/uploads/2011/07 /VlTA--full-July-26-2012.pdt:

44

46 CATHY DAVIDSON
backgrow1ds. What could possibly be educational about iPods? No one was
thinking about their learning potential because they were so dearly about
young users, not about IT administrators. That's why they intrigued us.
Our thinking was that educators had to begin taking seriously the fact that
incoming students were born after the information age was in full swing. They
were the last entering class who, as a group, would remember the before and
after of the Internet. If they were born roughly in 1985 or so, they would have
been entering grade school around the time that Tim Bemers-Lee was inventing
the protocols for the World Wide Web. These kids had grown up searching for
information online. They had grown up socializing online, too, playing games
with their friends online and, of course, sharing :music files online. Categories
and distinctions that an earlier generation of students would have observed in
school and at home, between knowledge making and play, came bundled in a
new way for this first generation of kids who, in their infolllal learning, were
blurring that boundary. Their schools hadn't changed :much, but at home,
online, they were already information searchers. They had lea.med by googling.
What if instead of telling them what they should know, we asked them? What if
we continued the lesson of the Internet itself and let them lead us into a new
exploratory way of learning in order to see if this self-directed way might mea~
something when it came to education? What if we assumed that their experi-
ences online had already patterned their brains to a different kind of intellectual
experimentation--and what if we let them show us where the pedagogical
results of such an experiment might lead? · ment) person, and I was among those responsible for cooking up the iPod
From the way most schools operated in 200:3--4i:om preschool to graduate
schools-you wouldn't have had much of an idea that the Internet had ever
been invented. It was as if young people were still going to the library to look
in the Encyclopedia Britannica for knowledge, under the watchful eye of the fiiendly
local librarian. Schools of education were still training teachers without regard fur
the opportunities and potential of a generation of kids who, from preschool on,
had been transfixed by digital media.
The opportunity seemed to be staring us in the face. At home, five-year olds
were playing Pokemon every chance they could, exchanging the cards at pre-
school with their pals, and then designing tools online to customize their char-
acters and even writing elementary code to streamline their game play. They
were memorizing hundreds of character names and roles and mastering a nine-
year-old reading level just to play, but teacher training on every level was still
text-based. It was as if schools were based on a kind of"hunt-and-peck" literacy,
whereas kids were learning through searching, surfing, and browsing the Web.
They were playing games in 3-D multimedia, learning to read and write not
through schoolbooks but as they played games online and then traded their
Pokemon cards with their mends.
When Duke announced that we would be giving a :free iPod to every mem-
ber of the entering first-year class, there were no conditions. We simply asked
students to dream up learning applications for this cool little white device with
the adorable earbuds, and we invited them to pitch their ideas to the faculty. If
one of their profs decided to use iPods in a course, the pro£; too, would receive a
PROJECT CLASSROOM MAKEOVER 47
free Dulce-branded iPod and so would ill the students in the class (whether they
were first-years or not). We would not control the result. This was an edu~-
tional experiment without a syllabus. No lesson plan. No assessment matnx
rigged to show that our inves~ent had .been a wi~e o~e.... After all, as we
knew from the science of attentton, to direct attentton m one way precluded
all the other ways. So we asked our basic questions in as broad and open-
ended a way possible: Are there interesting learning applications for this device that is
taking over young America as a source ef entertainment? And then the _mo~t
revolutionary question of ill: vVhat do you students have to tell us about learning tn
a digital age? . . .
If it were a reality show, you rmght call 1t Pro3ect Classroom Makeover. It
was a little wild, a little wicked, exactly what you have to do to create a calcu-
lated exercise in disruption, distraction, and difference: a lesson in institutional
unlearning, in breaking our own patterns and trying to understand more of the
intellectual habits of a new generation of students and providing a unique space
where those new talents might flourish. Instead of teaching, we hoped to learn.
We wanted to tap into a wellspring of knowledge young people brought to col-
lege from their own informal learning outside of school. We didn't ~ow what
would happen, but we had faith that the students would come up with some-
thing interesting. Or not. We couldn't deny that failure was also a possibility..
At the time, I was vice provost for interdisciplinary studies at Duke, a posi-
tion equivalent to what in industry would be the R & D (research and develop-
experiment and fi,,oming out how it could work in the most interesting ways.2
We wanted to stir up some of the assumptions in traditional higher education.
We didn't count on causing the uproar that we did. We assumed some of our
fellow educators would raise an eyebrow, but we didn't imagine an educational
innovation would land us on the cover of Newsweek. Usually, if education is on
the cover, it's another grim national report on how we are falling behind in the
global brain race. Come to think of it, that is what the Newsweek cover story was
about! Like Socrates before us, Dulce was leading youth astray, tugging them
down the slippery slope to perdition by thin, white vinyl iPod cords.
We were inverting the traditional roles of teacher and learner, the funda-
mental principle in education: hierarchy based on credentials. The authority
principle, based on top-down expertise, is the foundation of formal e~ucation,
from kindei;garten playgroups to advanced graduate courses. At least smce the
GI Bill that followed World War II, and the rapid expansion at that time of
the public university system, a college degree has been the entry card to
middle-class, white-collar achievement. Not graduating :from high school and
lacking a college degree has constituted failure, and education has constructed
its objectives backward :from that (negative) goal, in some cities ill the way
down to competition for the right private nursery school.
What this :means for young people who come to an elite private university is
that they have taken one of a number of specific routes to get there. One way is
to test to get into the best preschools so you can go to the best private grammar
schools so you can be admitted to the most elite boarding schools so you can be
48 CATHY DAVIDSON
competitive at the Ivies or an elite school outside the Ivies like Stanford or Duke.
Another way is through public schools, a lifetime of determined and focused
study, getting A's and even A+ grades in every class, always taking the most
difficult courses, earning perfect scores on tests, and doing lots of extracurricular
work, too. These students have been focused toward educational achievement
3
their entire lives. We wondered what these astonishing yourlg overachievers
would do if given the chance not to follow the rules but to make them.
In the world of technology, crowdsourdng means inviting a group to collaborate
on a solution to a problem, but that term didn't yet exist in 2003 when we con-
ducted the iPod experiment. It was coined by Jeff Howe of Wired magazine in
2006 to refer to the widespread Internet practice of posting an open call request-
ing help in completing some task, ranging from writing code (that's how the
open source code that powers the Mozilla browser was written) to creating a
winning logo (such as the "Birdie" design of Twitter, which cost a total of six
4
buck:s). Crowdsourcing is "outsourcing" to the "crowd," and it works best
when you observe three nonhierarchical principles. First, the fundamental prin-
ciple of all crowdsourcing is that difference and diversity-not expertise and
uniformity--solves problems. Second, if you predict the result in any way, if
you try to force a solution, you limit the participation and therefore the likeli-
hood of success. And third, the community most served by the solution should
be chiefly involved in the process of finding it.
In the iPod experiment, we were crowdsourcing educational innovation for
a digital age to our incoming students. We were walking the walk. Crowd-
sourced thinking is very different from credentialing, or relying on top-down
expertise. If anything, crowdsourcing is suspicious of expertise, because the
more expert we are, the more likely we are to be limited in what we even con-
ceive to be the problem, let alone the answer. While formal education typically
teaches hierarchies of what's worth paying attention to, crowdsourcing works dif-
ferently, in that it assumes that no one of us individually is smarter than all of us
collectively. No matter how expert we are, no matter how brilliant, we can
improve, we can learn, by sharing insights and working together collectively.
Once the pieces were in place, we decided to take our educational experi-
ment one step further. By giving the iPods to the first-year students, we ended
up with a lot of angry sophomores, juniors, and seniors. They'd paid hefty
private-university tuitions too! So we relented and said any student could have
a free iPod-just so long as she convinced a prof to require one for a course and
came up with a learning app in that course.
Does that sound sneaky? Far be it from me to say that we planned this, but
once the upperclassmen coveted the iPods, once they'd begun to protest envi-
ously and vehemently, those iP~ds suddenly tripled and quadrupled in perceived
value: Everyone wanted one.
If "Shakespeare on the iPod" is the smirking setup, here's the punch line:
Within one year, we had distributed more free iPods to students in forty-eight
separate "iPod courses" than we had given without strings to the 1,650 entering
first-year students.
PROJECT CLASSROOM MAKEOVER 49
That was vindicating enough, but it wasn't all. The real treasure trove was to
be found in the students' innovations. Working together, and often alongside
their profs, they came up with far more learning apps for their iPods than
anyone-even at Apple-had dreamed possible. No one has ever accused Steve
Jobs of not being cagey, and Apple's Digital Campus strategy was an R & D
winner. The company's flagship technology now had an active lab of students
creating new apps for it. There was also plenty of publicity for the iPod as a
potential learning tool-the teenagers of America should all thank us for making
it easier to pitch the purchase to their parents. In the first year of the iPod exper-
iment, Duke students came up with dozens of stunning new ways to learn. Most
predictable were uses whereby students dowuloaded audio archives relevant to
their courses-Nobel Prize acceptance speeches by physicists and poets, the
McCarthy heatings, famous trials, congressional debates, or readings by T. S. Eliot
or Toni Morrison, or Thomas Edison's famous recitation of"Mary Had a Little
Lamb"-one of the first sound recordings ever made. Almost instantly students
figured out that they could also record lectures on their iPods and listen at their
leisure. Classes from Spanish 101 to Introduction to Jazz to organic chemistry
could be taped and listened to anywhere. You didn't have to go to the library
or the language lab to study. You could listen to assignments on the bus, at the
gym, while out on a run--and everyone did. Because everyone had the device,
sound suddenly had a new educational role in our text- and visuals-dominated
classroom culture.
Some version of this convenient form of listening was possible with that rad-
ical eighties technology, the Sony Walkman. But the Walkman connected to
radio and to tapes, not to the World Wide Web, with its infinite amount of
information ready for dowuloading.
Interconnection was the part the students grasped before any of us did.
Students who had grown up connected digitally gravitated to ways that the
iPod could be used for collective learning. They turned the iPods into social
media and networked their learning in ways we did not anticipate. In the School
of the Environment, with the encouragement of Professor Marie Lynn Miranda,
one class interviewed fumilies in a North Carolina community concerned with
lead paint in their homes and schools. Each student would upload the day's
interviews to a course Web site, and any other student could dowuload and
comment on the interviews. At the end of the course, they combined their
interviews, ,edited them digitally, and created an audio documentary that aired
5
on local and regional radio stations and all over the Web.
Some med students realized that there was an audio library of all the possible
heart arrhythmias, but no way to access it in a real-time health exam. They came
up with a way to put a stethoscope in one ear, using very simple signal-tracking
technology to match what they were hearing in the patient's chest to the cata-
loged conditions. The implications of this original use .were obvious, and soon
students studying to be doctors and nurses were "operationalizing" such techni-
ques for the diagnostic use of doctors in rural North Carolina and Africa.
Dr. Martha Adams, a senior administrator at the Duke School of Medicine,
grasped how revolutionary it was to be able to make state-of-the-art medical

so CATHY DAVIDSON
research available to those fur outside major research centers, and to also make it
possible for doctors elsewhere to report on health problems and patterns they
were observing in their own communities, thus advancing medical research in
both directions. Soon she was working with the National Institutes of Health
and leading a national outreach iPod initiative. Once again, attention was being
focused m multiple directions at once, not just on outcomes but on process and
o~ ~teraction, the mirroring happening (as it must, definitionally) in both
directions.
In the music department, composing students uploaded compositions to
their iPods so their fellow students could listen and critique. Music performance
students inserted their voices or their instruments into duets or choruses or
orchestras. You could listen to how you sounded as first chair in the flute section
of a fumous philharmonic orchestra. Students in Duke's engineering department
had a field day mangling and dissecting their iPods to study (hack, some would
say) everything from Apple's ultrasecret computer code to the physical properties
of the famous white plastic exterior of the original iPods.
And they began exploring apps, developing applications that could be added
to the iPod's repertoire of abilities without Apple having to give away its propri-
etary code. In other words, the iPod could still remain an iPod with its own
distinctive characteristics, but it could change and morph as new features were
added and new capabilities emerged, including some developed by users. To
me, this was a conceptual breakthrough; that a commercial product might also
be susceptible to consumer customization, a way of extending the infinitely
changeable open-source properties of the Internet itself to a product with a fur
more fixed, finite identity. It was a hybrid of old and new thinking. If that isn't a
metaphor for attention in the digital age, I don't know what is.
By the end of our first experimental year, Duke was part of a new move-
ment to transform the iPod from a listening device into an interactive broad-
casting device. We were proud to host the world's first-ever academic "podcasting"
conference early in 2005. I recently found one of our announcements for the
conference and was :unused to see those quotation marks around podcasting. No
one was quite sure even what to call this new phenomenon, in which you could
record a lecrure, upload it to a Web site, and then anyone anywhere in the world
could download it. Shakespeare on an iPod? Absolutely. And that lecture on
Shakespeare delivered in the Allen Building at Duke could later be listened to
by a stud_ent riding a bus in Bangkok or Brasilia. That may not seem revolutionary
now. It JS hard to remember way back then, in the distant past of the Internet,
before iPhones and netbooks, before MySpace and Facebook, and a full two
years before YouTube was invented with its motto to "Broadcast Yoursel£"
The first podcasting conference drew standing-room-only attendance. It was
sponsored by one of the first. programs I'd spearheaded at Duke, something
(another hybrid) called Information Science + Information Studies, or ISIS for
short--artists and computer scientists, social scientists and engineers, and every-
one in between in a new configuration. Lots of news media crowded into the
auditorium at the Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering, Medicine, and
Applied Science to witness the event. In a short span, the message had changed
PROJECT CLASSROOM MAKEOVER 51
fr "How could anyone possibly think this device could be used for learning?"
o;his device facilitates sophisticated academic research and has the potential to
toake
m that learning instantly available to anyone in the world-for free." .
The conceptual breakthrough of podcasting was access. It was expensive
buying all those iPods, but the result was a breakthrough in education far
beyond Duke, one whose purpose was to make a wor~d of information cheaper
to access than it ever had been before. With very little outlay, you had the
potential of transmitting anything you heard, anywhere: You could download
anything you heard worldwide. Not prerecorded programs made by p~ofes-
sionals but content created and uploaded by anyone, ready fo~ downloa~-
and for remixing and uploading again. When we launched the iPod expenment,
0
one expected that someday there would be an iTunes U (formed in 2007)
~th over 350,000 lectures and other educational audio and video files compiled
by universities, libraries, and museums all around the world and available for
download.
Duke took a lot of heat for being a "rich, privileged institution" that could
afford this frivolity, but a revolution in the democratization of knowledge is not
frivolous, especially considering that, once customized, an individual mob~e
device is actually an inexpensive computer. Several years after the Duke expen-
ment, in the full of 2008, Culbreth Middle School, a public school in nearby
Chapel Hill, North Carolina, created its own iPod program for an expe~:ntal
group of staff and students. They chose the iPod mstead of a ~o:e traditional
laptop because of "the mobility of the device in one's pocket with mstant access
to information and apps.'' 6 In January 2010, seventh graders were encouraged to
explore the different ways their iPods could be used to keep_ them inf~r.med in
the wake of the disastrous earthquake that brought destructlon to Haltl. They
used iPods to gather measurements of earthquake magnitude and related infor-
mation, including demographic data, humanitarian assistance updates, local
Haitian news podcasts, and historical information on Haitian culture and politics.
The device also performed Creole-language cranslation. Students were even
able to maintain up-to-date communication with a local graduate student
who was in Haiti at the time and was badly injured in the earthquake. They
used their iPods to educate themselves about a terrible disaster far away and
produced their own podcasts from the information they gleaned. The e-xperiment
left little doubt that in the event of an emergency closer to home, students would
be able to .contribute their new knowledge to disaster-relief and fund-raising
efforts locally.
The iPod experiment was not an investment in technology. It was an invest-
ment in a new form of attention, one that didn't require the student to always
face forward, learn from on high, memorize what was already a given, or accept
knowledge as something predetermined and passively absorbed. It was. also an
investment in student-led curiosity, whose object was not a hunk of white plas-
tic, but the very nature of interactivity, crowdsourcing, customizing, and inspired
inquiry-driven problem solving. At our most ambitious, we hoped t~ change the
one-<lirectional model of attention that has formed the twentieth-century
classroom. 7
 52 CATHY DAVIDSON
THIS rPon EXPERIMENT WAS A Start at finding a new learning paradigm of formal
education for the digital era. As we have [learned}, an infant's neural pathways
. are being sheared and shaped along "With his values and his behavior in constant
interaction "With the people around him who exert influence over his life. The
iPod experiment was an acknowledgment that the brain is, above all, interactive,
that it selects, repeats, and mirrors, always, constantly, in complex interactions
"With the world. The experiment was also an acknowledgment that the chief
mode of informal learning for a new generation of students had been changed
by the World Wide Web. It was an attempt to put the new science of attention
together ,vith the new digital technology that both demanded and, in some
ways, helped produce it.
I'm not going to argue that the interactive task of surfing is better or worse
than the reception model that dominated mass education in the twentieth cen-
tury. "Better" and "worse" don't make a lot of sense to me. But there's a differ-
ence and, as we have seen, difference is what we pay attention to. Said another
way, we concentrate in a different way when we are making the connections,
when we are clicking and browsing, than when we are watching (as in a TV
show or movie) or listening or even reading a book. Indisputably, the imagina-
tion is engaged in making connections in all of those forms, as it is in anything
we experience. It is engaged in a different way when we ourselves are making
the connections, when we're browsing from one to another link that interests us
and draws our attention. We don't need a "better or worse" because we have
both, and both are potentially rich and fascinating cognitive activities. But the
relative newness of the surfing/searching experience drove our interest in the
potential of the iPod experiment; in 2003, educators already knew how to
mine traditional media, but we had not yet figured out how to harness the
new forms of attention students who had grown up surfing the Web were
mastering. The Web does not prescribe a clear, linear pathway through the con-
tent. There is no one way to move along a straight-and-narrow road from
beginning to end.
The formal education most of us experienced-and which we now often
think of when we picture a classroom-is based on giving premium value to
expertise, specialization, and hierarchy. It prepared us for success in the twenti-
eth century, when those things mattered above all. Yet what form of education
is required in the information age, when what matters has grown very different?
What form of education is required in a world of social networking, crowd-
sourcing, customizing, and user-generated content; a world of searching and
browsing, where the largest-ever encyclopedia is created not by experts but by
volunteers around the world--as is the world's second most popular Web
browser (Mozilla's Firefox), the world's most massive online multiplayer game
(World of Warcraft, "With over 11 million subscribers a month), and all the
social networking and communication sites, from MySpace and Facebook to
Twitter?
Another way of asking the question is: How do we make over the
twentieth-century classroom to take advantage of all the remarkable digital ben-
efits of the twenty-first century?
PROJECT CLASSROOM MAKEOVER 53
The iPod experiment was a start, but to get a sense ofjust how big a task we
face, it's useful to have a sense of how schools came to be the way they are,
shaped by the values of a very different world.
Do you remember the classic story by Washington Irving, "The Legend of
Sleepy Hollow"? It was written in 1820 and features a parody of the po~pous
schoolmaster in the form of Ichabod Crane, a homely, gawky, and self-sat1sfied
edant who is confident in his role as a dispenser of knowledge. He knows what
~oes and does not .constitute knowledge worth having and is equally sure that
students must be drilled in that knowledge and tested to make sure they measure
up. If you blindfolded Ichabod Crane, spun him around, and set him down in a
twenty-first-century classroom, he would be bafiled by electricity, dumbfounded
by moving images, confused by the computers and cell phones, but he'd know
exactly where to stand, and he'd know exactly where he stood.
It's shocking to think of how much the world has changed since the horse-
and-buggy days of Sleepy Hollow and how little has changed "Within the tradi-
tional classroom in America. On March 10, 2010, the National Governors
Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers even called for
"sweeping new school standards that could lead to students across the country
using the same math and English textbooks and taking the same tests, replacing
a patchwork of state and local systems in an attempt to raise student achievement
nationwide." 8 Ichabod Crane lives!
What in the world is going on? In the past in America, times of enormous
innovation in the rest of society, including in technology and in industry, have
also been times of tremendous innovation in education. What has happened to
us? Rather than thinking of ways we can be preparing our students for their
future, we seem determined to prepare them for our past.
Literally. The current passion for national standards is reminiscent of the
conversations on education at our country's beginnings, back in 1787, the year
the U.S. Constitution was adopted. Technology was changing the world then,
too. At the time of the signing of the Constitution, the new invention of steam-
powered presses, coupled with the invention of machine-made ink and paper,
made for mass printing of cheap books and newspapers, putting print into the
hands of middle-class readers for the first time in human history. The new insti-
tution of the circulating library made books available even to the working poor.
Books proliferated; newspapers sprang up everywhere. And that's when a cry for
standards and public education was born in America, in response to a new dem-
ocratic government that needed informed citizens and new technologies of print
that made books and newspapers "Widely available.
Thomas Jefferson himself advocated that America had to launch a "crusade
against ignorance" if the nation was to survive as an independent representa~ve
democracy.9 By 1791, when the Bill of Rights was added to the U.S. Constitu-
tion, seven states were making provisions for public education. There was
not yet anything like an "educational system" in the United States, though.
Education was attended to tmevenly by local, regional, state, and private institu-
tions, some secular, some sectarian, an inheritance that continues to this day in
54 CATHY DAVIDSON
the form of state-controlled educational policy, local and regional school boards,
and other decentralized means of oversight.
Horace Mann, whose name can be found over the entrance of many public
schools in America, was the first gteac champion of national educational reform.
The son of a :fu.nner of limited means, Mann clawed his way to an education,
earning money by braiding straw to pay the local tuitions for the elementary
schools he attended for only six weeks at a time, leaving the rest of his time
free to help with family farming operations. He enrolled at Brown University
at age twenty, gtaduated in three years as valedictorian of the class of 1819, and
dedicated himself to the creation of the "common schools," which after around
1840 became the predecessor of a free, publicly supported education system.
The common schools were scheduled around the agriculture year so :fu.nn
kids could attend too. The schools were open to both boys and girls, regardless
of class, although several states explicitly forbade the attendance of nonwhite
children. The schools were locally controlled, with the kind of local politics gov-
curriculum and textbook assignments then that we see now in the state-
by-state regulation of education, even after our "national educational policy" has
been adopted.
Mandatory, compulsory public schooling developed over the course of the
last half of the nineteenth century and got its full wind at the turn into the twen-
tieth century as part of America's process of industrialization. Public education
was seen as the most efficient way to train potential workers for labor in the
urbanized factories. Teaching them control, socializing them for the
mechanized, routinized labor of the factory was all part of the educational imper-
ative of the day. Whether meant to calm the supposedly unruly immigrant pop-
ulace coming to American shores or to urbanize :fu.nners freshly arriving in the
city, education was designed to train unskilled workers to new tasks that required
a special, dedicated form of attention. School was thought to be the right train-
ing gtound for discipline and uniformity. Kids started attending school at the
san1e age, passed through a carefully graduated system, and were tested systemat-
ically on a standardized curriculum, with subjects that were taught in time blocks
throughout the day. In ways large and small, the process mimicked the forms of
specialized labor on the assembly as well as the divisions of labor (from the
CEO down to the manual laborers) in the factory itself.
Many features now common in twenty-first-century public education began
as an accommodation to the new industrial model of the world ushered in during
the last part of the nineteenth century. With machines that needed to run on
schedule and an assembly line that required human precision and efficiency,
schools began to place a gteat emphasis on time and timeliness. Curriculum, too,
was directed toward focusing on a task, including the mastery of a specified sylla-
bus of required learning. "Efficiency" was the byword of the day, in the world of
work and in the world of school. Learning to pay attention as directed-through
rote memorization and mastery of facts-was important, and schools even devel-
oped forms of rapid-fire question-and-answer, such as the spelling bee or the math
bee. This was a new skill, different from the elite models of question-and-answer
based on the Socratic method; the agtarian model of problem solving, in which
PROJECT CLASSROOM MAKEOVER 55
one is responsible for spotting a problem and solving it (whether a wilted com
rassel or an injured horse); and the apprenticeship model of the guild wherein
one learned a craft by imitating the skills of a master. An assembly line is far
rnore regular and regulated. One person's tardiness, no matter how the
excuse, can destroy everyone else's productivity on the line. Mandatory and com-
pulsory schoo~ for childten was seen as a ~ay of !eaching basic knowledge-
including the basic knowledge of tasks, obedience, hierarchy, and schedules. The
10
school bell became a symbol of public education in the industrial era.
So did specialization. With the advent of the assembly line, work became
segmented. A worker didn't perform a whole job but one discrete task and
then pa.~sed the job on to the next person and the next and so forth down the
assembly line. The ideal of labor efficiency displaced the ideal of artisanship, with
increased attention paid to the speed and accuracy of one kind of contribution to
a larger industrial process. Focused attention to a task became the ideal form of
attention, so different from, for example, the farmer on his horse scanning his
land for anything that migbt look out of place or simply in need of care.
By 1900, state and regional schools were becoming the norm, replacing
locally managed ones, and by 1918, every state had passed laws mandating chil-
dren to attend elementary school or more. A concession was made to Catholics
in that they could create a separate, parochial school system that would also meet
these state regulations, another legacy that comes down to the present in the
form of "faith-based schools."
During the first six decades of the twentieth century, as America ascended to
the position of a world power, the rhetoric of education followed suit, with an
increasing emphasis on producing leaders. While the nineteenth-century com-
mon schools had focused on elementary education, the twentieth-century focus
was increasingly on the institution of high school, including improving gradua-
tion rates. In 1900, approximately 15 percent of the U.S. population received a
high school diploma, a number that increased to around 50 percent by 1950.
After World War II, there was a rap_id expansion of both high schools and
higher education, invigorated after 1957 when the Russians surprised the world
by launching Sputnik, the first man-made object ever to orbit the earth. As
America competed against Russian science in the Cold War, policy makers
placed more and more emphasis on educational attainment. Many economists
argue that America's economic gtowth through the 1960s was fueled by this
educational. expansion.
Robert Schwartz dean of the Harvard. Graduate School of Education, notes
that since the last qu'arter of the twentieth century, the pattern of educational
expansion that has characterized the United States from the Revolutionary War
forward has changed. 11 Since 1975, American educational attainment has leveled
off or even dtopped while there has been a dramatic increase in the number of
jobs requiring exploratory, creative problem solving typically encouraged by
postsecondary education. We are seeing the first signs that our education system
is slipping in comparison to our needs.
The current high school graduation rate is roughly the same as it was in
1975, approximately 75 percent. Our gtaduation rate from four-year colleges is
 56 CATHY DAVIDSON
28 percent, also roughly the same as it was thirty-five years ago. That this
has even remained consistent in the face of all that has changed in the last
thirty-five years is remarkable enough, a credit to both the drive and quality of
American students and the patchwork, piecemeal reforms we've used to hold the
system together. Yet while we've been holding steady, other countries have
made rapid gains. Whereas in the 1960s we ranked first in the proportion of
adults with high school degrees, we now rank thirteenth on the list of the thirty
countries surveyed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Devel-
opment (OECD), an organization that coordinates statistics from market-based
democracies to promote growth. By contrast, South Korea has moved from
twenty-seventh place on that list to our old number one spot.
Most troubling is what happened from 1995 to 2005. During this one
decade, the United States dropped from second to fifteenth place in college
completion rates among OECD nations. For the wealthiest and most powerful
nation on earth to rank fifteenth is nothing short of a national disgrace. This is
especially the case, given that our system of education presumes college prepara-
tion is the ideal, even in environments where most kids are not going on to
college. By that standard, we are failing.
It's not that we cared about education before 1975 but don't today. Our
heart is not the problem. Look at the numbers. The Swiss are the only people
on earth who spend more per child on public education than Americans.
According to OECD, we spend over $11,000 per year per child on public edu-
cation. That's more than double the rate of South Korea. Education spending
accounts for more than 7 percent of our GDP. 12 However, the OECD statistics
show that our graduation rates now are roughly on a par with those of Turkey
and Mexico, not nations to which we like to compare ourselves by other indi-
cators of our power or success. 13
It is little wonder that educators and parents are constantly reacting to the
comparative, global numbers with ever more strident calls for standards. The
problem, however, is the confusion of "high standards" with "standardization."
Our national educational policy depends on standardized tests, but it is not at all
clear that preparing students to achieve high test scores is equivalent to setting a
high standard for what and how kids should know and learn.
The real issue isn't that our schools are too challenging. It's the opposite.
Among the top quartile of high school students, the most frequent complaint
and cause of disaffection from schooling is boredom and lack of rigor. That also
happens to be true among the lowest group, for whom low expectations lead to
14
low motivation. Kids aren't failing because school is too hard but because it
doesn't interest them. It doesn't capture their attention.
Relevance has been proved to be a crucial factor for keeping students in
high school, especially mid- and lower-level students. Tie what kids learn in
school to what they can use in their homes, their families, and their
neighborhood---and vice versa--and not surprisingly, that relevance kicks their
likelihood of staying in school up a few notches. Because in the United States
(but not in many countries with higher college attendance), going to college
requires money for tuition, our emphasis on college as the grail of secondary
PROJECT CLASSROOM MAKEOVER 57
education only rubs in its inaccessibility (its irrelevance) to lower-income kids--a
fact that contributes to high school dropouts. Finally, for all groups, and espe-
cially for students in the lowest-achieving group, relationships with teachers and
counselors who believe in them and support them (often against peer, familial, or
cultural pressure) is a determining factor in remaining in school. These key fac-
tors for educational success--r:igor, relevance, and relationships-have been
dubbed the new three R.s, with student-teacher ratio being particularly impor-
tant. Small class size has been proved to be one of the single most significant
factors in kids' staying in and succeeding in school. Twenty seems to be the
magic number. 15 Even on a neurological level, brain researchers have shown
that kids improve with directed, special attention to their own skills and interests,
the opposite of our move toward standardizat1on. · 16
The biggest problem we face now is the increasing mismatch between tradi-
tional curricular standards of content-based instruction and the new forms of
thinking required by our digital, distributed workplace. At any level--blue collar
or white collar-those jobs requiring "routine thinking skills" are increasingly
performed by machine or outsourced to nations with a lower s:andard of ~vin?
than the United States. Yet virtually all of contemporary Amencan education 1s
still based on the outmoded model of college 'prep that prepares students for
middle management and factory jobs that, because of global rearrangements in
labor markets, in large part no longer exist.
We've all seen industrial jobs for manual laborers dwindle in the United
States and other First World economies, either taken over by machin,es or out-
sourced abroad to workers who are unprotected by unions or fair labor laws.
The same is now the case for routinized white-collar office jobs. In exploitative
"digital sweatshops" all around the world, workers at minimal wages can do
everything from preparing your tax return .to playing your online strategy
games for you, so your avatar can be staging raids while you are on the trading
floor or in your executive office on Wall Street.
To be prepared for jobs that have a real future in the digital economy, one
needs an emphasis on creative thinking, at all levels. By this I mean the kind of
thinking that cannot be computerized and automated. This creative thinking
requires attention to surprise, anomaly, difference, and disruption, and an ability
to switch focus, depending on what individual, unpredictable problems might
arise. Perhaps surprisingly, these noncomputational jobs, impervious to auto-
mation occur at all levels across the blue-collar and white-collar spectrum.
Many ~f these jobs require highly specialized and dexterous problem-solving
abilities or interpersonal skills-but do not require a college degree.
We were criticized for the iPod experiment. Many treated it as if it were an
extravagance, superfluous to real learning and real education. But the iPod
experiment exemplifies a form of inquiry-based problem solving wherein solu-
tions are not known in advance and cannot be more successfully outsourced to
either a computer or to a Third World laborer who performs repetitive tasks
over and over in horrific conditions at minimal wages. The new global econom-
ics of work (whatever one thinks about it politically) is not likely to change, and
so we must. And that change begins with schooling. Learning to think in
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doute que la Tour en sentît rien. Je me mis sur-le-champ dans la
couchette du jeune Bannister et dormis à poings fermés. Je
m’éveillai avec une faim dévorante. Une belle houle courait sur la
mer, le Kite filait ses quatre milles à l’heure, et le Grotkau plaquait
son nez dans les lames, tout en déviant et embardant à discrétion. Il
se laissait remorquer de bien mauvaise grâce. Mais le plus honteux
ce fut la nourriture. En râflant les tiroirs de la cuisine et des offices
ainsi que les placards du carré, je me composai un repas que je
n’aurais pas osé offrir au second d’un charbonnier de Cardiff ; et on
dit pourtant, vous le savez, qu’un second de Cardiff mangerait du
mâchefer pour épargner l’étoupe. Je vous affirme que c’était tout
bonnement ignoble ! Les matelots, eux, avaient écrit ce qu’ils en
pensaient sur la peinture fraîche du gaillard d’avant, mais je n’avais
personne de convenable à qui me plaindre. Je n’avais rien d’autre à
faire que de surveiller les aussières et le derrière du Kite qui
s’épatait dans l’écume quand le bateau s’enlevait à la lame ; aussi je
donnai de la vapeur à la servo-pompe arrière, et vidai la chambre de
la machine. Il est inutile de laisser de l’eau en liberté sur un bateau.
Quand elle fut asséchée, je descendis dans le tunnel de l’arbre
d’hélice et découvris qu’il y avait une petite voie d’eau à travers le
presse-étoupe, mais rien qui pût faire de la besogne. Selon mes
prévisions l’hélice s’était détachée et Calder avait attendu
l’événement la main sur son régulateur. Il me l’a raconté quand je l’ai
revu à terre. A part cela il n’y avait rien de dérangé ni de cassé. Elle
avait juste glissé au fond de l’Atlantique, aussi tranquillement qu’un
homme qui meurt en étant prévenu… chose très providentielle pour
tous ceux qu’elle concernait. Puis je passai en revue les œuvres
mortes du Grotkau. Les canots avaient été broyés sur leurs
portemanteaux, la lisse manquait par endroits, une manche à air ou
deux avaient fichu le camp, et la rambarde de la passerelle était
tordue par les lames ; mais les écoutilles restaient étanches, et le
bâtiment n’avait aucun mal. Pardieu, j’en vins à le haïr comme un
être humain, car je passai à son bord huit jours à me morfondre,
crevant la faim… oui, littéralement… à une encâblure de
l’abondance. Du matin au soir je restai dans la couchette à lire le
Misogyne, le plus beau livre qu’ait jamais écrit Charlie Reade, et à
me curer les dents. C’était assommant au suprême degré. Huit jours,
mon cher, que je passai à bord du Grotkau, et je n’y mangeai pas
une seule fois à ma faim. Rien d’étonnant si son équipage ne voulait
plus y rester. Mon auxiliaire ? Oh ! je le faisais turbiner pour le
maintenir en forme. Je le faisais turbiner pour deux.
« Cela se mit à souffler quand nous arrivâmes sur les sondes, ce
qui me força de rester auprès des aussières, amarré au cabestan et
respirant entre les coups de mer. Je faillis mourir de froid et de faim,
car le Grotkau remorquait tel un chaland, et Bell le halait à travers
tout. Il y avait beaucoup de brume dans la Manche, d’ailleurs. Nous
avions le cap à terre pour nous guider sur un phare ou l’autre, et
nous faillîmes passer sur deux ou trois bateaux pêcheurs, qui nous
crièrent que nous étions tout près de Falmouth. Alors nous fûmes
quasi coupés en deux par un ivrogne de transport de fruits étranger
qui se fourvoyait entre nous et la côte, et la brume s’épaissit de plus
en plus cette nuit-là, et je m’apercevais à la remorque que Bell ne
savait plus où il était. Fichtre, nous le sûmes au matin, car le vent
souffla le brouillard comme une chandelle, et le soleil se dégagea, et
aussi sûr que MacRimmon m’a donné mon chèque, l’ombre du
phare d’Eddystone se projetait en travers de notre grelin de
remorque ! Nous étions près… ah ! ce que nous étions près ! Bell fit
virer le Kite avec une secousse qui faillit emporter les bittes du
Grotkau, et je me souviens d’avoir remercié mon Créateur dans la
cabine du jeune Bannister quand nous fûmes en dedans du brise-
lames de Plymouth.
« Le premier à monter à bord fut MacRimmon avec Dandie. Vous
ai-je dit que nos ordres étaient de ramener à Plymouth tout ce que
nous trouverions ? Le vieux diable venait juste d’arriver la veille au
soir, en tirant ses déductions de ce que Calder lui avait dit lorsque le
courrier eut débarqué les gens du Grotkau. Il avait exactement
calculé notre horaire. Je venais de héler Bell pour avoir quelque
chose à manger, et quand le vieux vint nous rendre visite il m’envoya
ça dans le même canot que MacRimmon. Il riait et se tapait sur les
cuisses et faisait jouer ses sourcils pendant que je mangeais. Il me
dit :
 « — Comment nourrissent-ils leurs hommes, Holdock, Steiner et
Chase ?
« — Vous le voyez, dis-je, en faisant sauter le bouchon de ma
seconde bouteille de bière. Je n’ai pas pris goût à être affamé,
MacRimmon.
« — Ni à nager, dit-il, car Bell lui avait conté comment j’avais
porté la ligne à bord. Bah ! je pense que vous n’y perdrez pas. Quel
fret aurions-nous pu mettre dans le Lammerguyer qui eût égalé un
sauvetage de quatre cent mille livres… bâtiment et cargaison ? hein,
MacPhee ? Ceci tranche dans le vif à Holdock, Steiner et Chase et
Cie Limited, hein, MacPhee ? Et je souffre encore de démence
sénile, hein, MacPhee ? Et je ne suis pas fou, dites, avant de
commencer à peindre le Lammerguyer, hein, MacPhee ? Tu peux
bien lever la patte, Dandie ! C’est moi qui ris d’eux tous… Vous avez
trouvé de l’eau dans la chambre de la machine ?
« — Pour parler sans ambages, répliquai-je, il y avait de l’eau.
« — Quand l’hélice est partie, ils ont cru que le bâtiment coulait.
Il s’emplissait avec une rapidité extraordinaire. Calder a dit que ça le
chagrinait comme Bannister de l’abandonner.
« Je songeai au dîner de chez Radley, et au genre de nourriture
que j’avais mangé pendant huit jours. Je repris :
« — Ça devait joliment le chagriner.
« — Mais l’équipage ne voulait pas entendre parler de rester et
de courir la chance. Ils ont dit qu’ils auraient préféré crever de faim,
et sont partis du premier au dernier.
« — C’est en restant qu’ils auraient crevé de faim, dis-je.
« — Je suppose, d’après le récit de Calder, qu’il y a eu quasi une
révolte.
« — Vous en savez plus que moi, MacRimmon, dis-je. Pour
parler sans ambages, car nous sommes tous du même bateau, qui
donc a ouvert les prises d’eau à la cale ?
« — Oh ! vraiment… pas possible ? fit le vieux, indéniablement
étonné. Une prise d’eau à la cale, dites-vous ?
 « — Je suppose que c’était une prise d’eau. Elles étaient toutes
fermées quand je suis monté à bord, mais quelqu’un a inondé la
machine sur une hauteur de deux mètres cinquante et a refermé
ensuite par la commande à roue striée du second panneau.
« — Fichtre ! dit MacRimmon. Cet homme est d’une incroyable
iniquité. Mais ce serait terriblement déshonorant pour Holdock,
Steiner et Chase, si cela venait à se savoir au procès.
« — Voilà bien ma curiosité, repris-je.
« — Ah oui, Dandie est affligé de la même maladie. Dandie, lutte
donc contre la curiosité, car elle fait tomber les petits chiens dans les
pièges et autres choses semblables. Où était le Kite quand ce
courrier peinturluré a emmené les gens du Grotkau ?
« — Dans les mêmes parages, dis-je.
« — Et lequel de vous deux a songé à masquer vos feux ? dit-il
en clignant de l’œil.
« — Dandie, fis-je en m’adressant au chien, nous devons tous
les deux lutter contre la curiosité. C’est une chose qui ne profite pas.
Quelle est notre part de sauvetage, Dandie ?
« MacRimmon riait à s’étouffer. Il reprit :
« — Prenez ce que je vous donnerai, MacPhee, et contentez-
vous-en. Seigneur, comme on perd du temps quand on devient
vieux ! Allez à bord du Kite, mon ami, le plus tôt possible. J’oubliais
complètement qu’il y a un affrètement de Baltique qui vous attend à
Londres. Ce sera votre dernier voyage, je pense, sauf pour votre
plaisir.
« Les hommes de Steiner arrivaient à bord pour prendre la
manœuvre du bateau et l’emmener à quai. En me rendant au Kite je
dépassai un canot où était le jeune Steiner. Il baissa le nez ; mais
MacRimmon me lance :
« — Voici celui à qui vous devez le Grotkau… à bon compte,
Steiner… à bon compte. Permettez-moi de vous présenter M.
MacPhee. Vous l’avez peut-être déjà rencontré ; mais vous n’avez
pas de veine en ce qui est de garder vos gens… à terre ou sur mer.
 « A voir la colère du jeune Steiner, on aurait cru qu’il allait
manger MacRimmon, lequel ricanait et sifflait de son vieux gosier
aride.
« — Vous ne tenez pas encore votre prime ! dit Steiner.
« — Non, non, dit le vieux avec un glapissement qu’on aurait pu
entendre du Hoe, mais j’ai deux millions sterling et pas d’enfants, si
vous voulez vous mesurer avec moi, espèce de youpin ; et je mise
livre pour livre jusqu’à ma dernière livre. Vous me connaissez,
Steiner ? Je suis MacRimmon de la maison MacNaughton et
MacRimmon !
« — Pardieu, ajouta-t-il entre ses dents, une fois rassis dans le
canot, j’ai attendu quatorze ans pour abattre cette firme de Juifs, et
Dieu soit loué, j’y suis parvenu.
« Le Kite se trouvait dans la Baltique tandis que le vieux opérait ;
mais je sais que les experts estimèrent le Grotkau, tout compte fait,
à trois cent soixante mille livres — son manifeste était un coup de
fortune — et que MacRimmon en reçut un tiers, pour sauvetage d’un
navire abandonné. Voyez-vous, il y a une énorme différence entre
remorquer un bateau avec un équipage et recueillir un navire
abandonné… une énorme différence… en livres sterling. De plus,
deux ou trois hommes de l’équipage du Grotkau brûlaient de
déposer au sujet de la nourriture, et il existait une note de Calder à
la compagnie, concernant l’arbre d’hélice, qui aurait été fort gênante
pour eux si on l’avait produite aux débats. Ils ne s’avisèrent pas de
lutter.
« Puis le Kite revint et MacRimmon nous régla lui-même, moi,
Bell et le reste de l’équipage, au prorata, je crois que ça s’appelle.
Ma part… notre part, pour mieux dire… fut juste de vingt-cinq mille
livres.
A ce moment Janet se leva d’un bond et courut l’embrasser.
— Vingt-cinq mille livres. Or je suis un homme du Nord, et je ne
suis pas de ceux qui jettent l’argent par les fenêtres, mais je
donnerais bien quand même six mois de ma solde… cent vingt
livres… pour savoir qui a inondé la chambre de la machine du
Grotkau. Je connais trop le caractère de MacRimmon, et il n’a pas
eu de part là dedans. Ce n’est pas Calder, car je lui ai posé la
question et il a voulu me boxer. Ç’aurait été chez Calder un trop
grand manque de conscience professionnelle… pas de boxer, mais
d’ouvrir les prises d’eau à la cale… malgré cela j’ai cru un moment
que c’était lui. Oui, je pensais que c’était lui… sous le coup de la
tentation.
— Quelle est votre hypothèse ? demandai-je.
— Eh bien, je croirais volontiers que ce fut là une de ces
interventions de la Providence qui nous rappellent que nous
sommes entre les mains des Puissances supérieures.
— La prise d’eau ne pouvait pas s’ouvrir et se refermer toute
seule ?
— Ce n’est pas ce que je veux dire ; mais un graisseur à demi
affamé, ou peut-être un homme de renfort, a dû l’ouvrir un moment
pour être sûr de quitter le Grotkau. C’est démoralisant de voir une
salle de machine s’inonder après un accident à l’hélice…
démoralisant et trompeur à la fois. Eh bien ! l’homme a obtenu ce
qu’il voulait, car ils sont partis à bord du courrier en s’écriant que le
Grotkau sombrait. Mais il est curieux de songer aux conséquences.
En toute vraisemblance humaine, il est à l’heure actuelle maudit
avec ensemble à bord d’un autre cargo ; et me voilà ici, moi, avec
vingt-cinq mille livres placées, résolu à ne plus naviguer…
providentiel, c’est le mot exact… sauf comme passager, tu
comprends, Janet.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

MacPhee tint parole. Avec Janet, il s’en alla faire un voyage en

qualité de passager dans le salon de première classe. Ils payèrent
leur place soixante-dix livres ; mais Janet trouva une femme très
malade dans le salon de seconde classe, si bien que durant seize
jours elle vécut en bas, à bavarder avec la femme de chambre au
pied de l’escalier des secondes, tandis que sa malade dormait.
MacPhee resta passager tout juste vingt-quatre heures. Puis le
mess des mécaniciens — où sont les tables à toile cirée — le reçut
joyeusement dans son sein, et durant le reste du voyage cette
compagnie-là bénéficia des services bénévoles d’un mécanicien des
plus qualifiés.
 L’HONNEUR DU SOLDAT ORTHERIS

La fournée d’automne de recrues destinées au Vieux Régiment

venait de débarquer. Comme d’habitude on disait que c’était la pire
classe qui fût jamais venue du dépôt. Mulvaney jeta un coup d’œil
sur les dites recrues, poussa un grognement de mépris, et se fit
porter aussitôt très malade.
— C’est la fièvre d’automne coutumière ? lui dit le major,
familiarisé avec les façons de Térence. Votre température est
normale.
— Ce sont ces cent trente-sept bleus de malheur, monsieur le
major. Je ne suis pas encore très malade, mais je serai mort si l’on
me jette ces gars à la tête dans mon état de faiblesse actuelle. Mon
Dieu, monsieur le major, supposez que vous ayez à soigner trois
camps de cholériques…
— Allez donc à l’hôpital, vieux farceur, lui dit le major, en riant.
Térence s’affubla d’une robe de chambre bleue — Dinah
Shadd [25] était au loin, à soigner la femme d’un major qui préférait
Dinah sans un diplôme à toute autre avec cent — et, la pipe au bec,
se pavana sur le balcon de l’hôpital, en exhortant Ortheris à se
montrer un père pour les nouvelles recrues. Il lui dit avec un
ricanement :
[25] L’épouse de Mulvaney.
 — Ils sont pour la plupart de ton espèce, petit homme : la fine
fleur de Whitechapel. Je les interrogerai quand ils ressembleront un
peu plus à ce qu’ils ne seront jamais… je veux dire un bon et
honnête soldat comme moi.
Ortheris poussa un jappement d’indignation. Il savait aussi bien
que Térence ce que signifiait la besogne à venir, et il estimait abjecte
la conduite de Térence. Puis il s’en alla jeter un coup d’œil au
nouveau bétail, qui ouvrait de grands yeux ébahis devant le paysage
exotique, et demandait si les vautours étaient des aigles et les
chiens pariahs des chacals.
— Vrai, vous m’avez tout l’air de fameux lascars, vous autres, dit-
il avec rondeur à un petit groupe de « bleus », dans la cour de la
caserne. (Puis, les passant en revue :) Andouilles et mollusques,
voilà à peu près votre genre. Dieu me bénisse, ne nous a-t-on pas
envoyé aussi des Juifs aux yeux roses, Moïse, toi le type à la tête de
lard, c’était un Salomon, ton père ?
— Je me nomme Anderson, répondit une voix intimidée.
— Ah oui, Samuelson ! Parfait, Samuelson ! Et combien de tes
pareils de youpins sont venus gâter la compagnie B ?
Il n’y a pas de mépris plus complet que celui de l’ancien soldat
pour le nouveau. Il est juste qu’il en soit ainsi. Une recrue doit
apprendre d’abord qu’elle n’est pas un homme mais une chose,
laquelle, en son temps, et par la grâce du Ciel, deviendra un soldat
de la Reine si elle prend soin d’obéir aux bons avis. Ortheris avait sa
tunique déboutonnée, son calot incliné sur un œil, et il marchait les
mains derrière le dos, se faisant plus dédaigneux à chaque pas. Les
bleus n’osaient pas répliquer, car eux qui s’étaient appelés soldats
au dépôt dans la confortable Angleterre, n’étaient plus ici que de
nouveaux élèves dans une école étrangère.
— Pas une seule paire d’épaules dans tout le tas. J’ai déjà vu de
mauvaises classes… de fichument mauvaises classes ; mais celle-ci
dame le pion à toutes. Jock, viens voir ces espèces d’empotés de
pieds-bots.
 Learoyd traversait la cour. Il arriva lentement, décrivit un cercle
autour du rassemblement, telle une baleine autour d’un banc de
menu fretin, ne dit rien, et s’en alla en sifflant.
— Oui, vous pouvez bien prendre un air piteux, grinçait Ortheris
aux gars. Ce sont des gens comme vous qui brisent le cœur des
gens comme nous. Il nous faut vous lécher jusqu’à vous donner
forme, sans jamais recevoir un sou de supplément pour ça, et vous
n’êtes jamais contents non plus. N’allez pas vous figurer que c’est le
colonel ni même l’officier de compagnie qui vous fait. C’est nous, tas
de bleusards… tas de fichus bleusards !
Vers la fin de ce discours, un officier de compagnie, qui était
arrivé sans bruit derrière Ortheris, lui dit tranquillement :
— Vous avez peut-être raison, Ortheris, mais à votre place je ne
le crierais pas si haut.
Les recrues ricanèrent, tandis qu’Ortheris saluait, tout penaud.
Quelques jours plus tard, j’eus le privilège de jeter un coup d’œil
sur les nouvelles recrues. Elles étaient encore au-dessous des
prévisions d’Ortheris. Quarante ou cinquante d’entre elles
déshonoraient la compagnie B, et la façon dont celle-ci manœuvrait
à l’exercice était un spectacle à faire frémir. Ortheris leur demanda
affectueusement si on ne les avait pas envoyés par erreur outre-mer,
et s’ils ne feraient pas bien d’aller retrouver leurs amis. Learoyd les
étrillait méthodiquement l’un après l’autre, sans hâte mais sans
rémission, et les autres soldats prenaient les restes de Learoyd et
s’exerçaient sur eux de leur mieux. Mulvaney restait à l’hôpital, et
grimaçait du haut du balcon lorsque Ortheris le traitait de lâcheur et
autres noms pires.
— Par la grâce de Dieu, nous finirons par en faire des hommes,
dit un jour Térence. Sois vertueux et persévère, mon fils. Il y a de
quoi faire des colonels dans cette racaille si nous allons assez à
fond… à coups de ceinturon.
— Nous ! répliqua Ortheris, trépignant de rage. Tu en as de
bonnes avec tes « nous ». La compagnie B manœuvre à cette heure
comme un régiment de miliciens saouls.
 — On m’en a déjà avisé officiellement, répondit-on d’en haut ;
mais je suis trop malade ce coup-ci pour m’en assurer par moi-
même.
— Dis donc, gros Irlandais, qui fais le fainéant là-haut à
t’empiffrer d’arrow-root et de sagou…
— Et de porto… tu oublies le porto, Ortheris, ce n’est pas le plus
mauvais.
Et Térence de se lécher les babines d’un air narquois.
— Alors que nous nous esquintons tous avec ces… kangourous.
Sors donc de là, et gagne ta solde. Descends de là, et fais quelque
chose, au lieu de grimacer là-haut comme un singe juif, espèce de
sale tête de fenian [26] .
[26] Membre du sinn-fein, société secrète irlandaise.

— Quand je serai guéri de mes diverses maladies, j’aurai un petit

entretien particulier avec toi. En attendant… gare !
Térence lança une fiole pharmaceutique vide à la tête d’Ortheris,
et se laissa retomber dans une chaise longue, et Ortheris vint
m’exposer par trois fois son opinion sur Mulvaney… chaque fois en
des termes entièrement inédits.
— Il y aura de la casse un de ces jours, conclut-il. Bah ! ce n’est
pas de ma faute, mais c’est dur pour la compagnie B.
C’était très dur pour la compagnie B, car vingt vétérans ne
peuvent mettre au pas deux fois ce nombre de niguedouilles et se
maintenir eux-mêmes au pas. On aurait dû distribuer les recrues
dans le régiment avec plus d’équité, mais le colonel trouvait bon de
les masser en une compagnie où il y avait une bonne proportion
d’anciens soldats. Il en fut récompensé un matin, de bonne heure,
où le bataillon s’avançait par échelons de compagnie en partant de
la droite. L’ordre fut donné de former les carrés de compagnie, qui
sont des petits blocs d’hommes compacts, auxquels une ligne de
cavalerie qui charge n’aime pas du tout de se frotter. La compagnie
B était sur le flanc gauche et avait tout le temps de savoir ce qui se
passait. Pour cette raison, probablement, elle s’amalgama en
quelque chose d’analogue à un buisson d’aloès flétri, dont les
baïonnettes pointaient dans toutes les directions possibles et
imaginables, et elle garda cette forme de buisson, ou de bastion
informe, jusqu’au moment où la poussière se fut abattue et où le
colonel put voir et parler. Il fit les deux, et la partie oratoire fut
reconnue par le régiment comme le plus beau chef-d’œuvre où le
vieux eût jamais atteint depuis ce jour exquis où, à un combat
simulé, une division de cavalerie trouva moyen de passer sur le
ventre à sa ligne d’éclaireurs. Il déclara, quasi en pleurant, qu’il
n’avait pas donné l’ordre de former des groupes, et qu’il aimait voir
un peu d’alignement çà et là parmi les hommes. Il s’excusa ensuite
d’avoir pris par erreur la compagnie B pour des hommes. Elle n’était,
dit-il, composée que de frêles petits enfants, et comme il ne pouvait
leur offrir à chacun une petite voiture et une nourrice (ceci peut
sembler comique à lire, mais la compagnie B l’entendit de ses
oreilles et sursauta), ils n’avaient apparemment rien de mieux à faire
que de retourner à l’école de section. Dans ce but il se proposait de
les envoyer, en dehors de leur tour, en garnison au fort Amara, à huit
kilomètres de distance — la compagnie D, qui était la prochaine
désignée pour ce service odieux, faillit acclamer le colonel. Il
espérait sincèrement qu’une fois là, leurs gradés viendraient à bout
de les dresser jusqu’à la mort, puisqu’ils ne servaient à rien dans
leur vie actuelle.
Ce fut une scène excessivement pénible. Quand l’exercice fut
terminé et les hommes libres de s’entretenir, je me hâtai de
m’approcher du quartier de la compagnie B. Il n’y eut tout d’abord
pas d’entretien, car chaque ancien soldat prit un bleu et le rossa très
solidement. Les sous-offs n’eurent pour ces incidents ni yeux ni
oreilles. Ils laissèrent les casernes à elles-mêmes, et Ortheris
améliora la situation par un laïus. Je n’entendis pas ce laïus, mais on
en citait encore des bribes plusieurs semaines plus tard. Il
concernait l’origine, la parenté et l’éducation de chaque homme de la
compagnie désigné nominalement ; il donnait une description
complète du fort Amara, du double point de vue hygiénique et
social ; et il se terminait par un extrait des devoirs généraux du
soldat : quel est le rôle des bleus dans la vie, et le point de vue
d’Ortheris sur le rôle et le sort des recrues de la compagnie B.
— Vous ne savez pas manœuvrer, vous ne savez pas marcher,
vous ne savez pas tirer… bande de bleusards ! A quoi servez-vous
donc ? Vous mangez et vous dormez, et puis vous remangez et vous
allez trouver le major pour avoir des médicaments quand vos boyaux
sont détraqués, tout comme si vous étiez, n. d. D., des généraux. Et
maintenant vous avez mis le comble à tout, tas de bougres aux yeux
de chauves-souris, en nous faisant partir pour cette ordure de fort
Amara. Nous vous fortifierons quand nous serons là-bas ; oui, et
solidement encore. Ne croyez pas que vous êtes venus à l’armée
pour boire de l’eau purgative, encombrer la compagnie et rester
couchés sur vos lits à gratter vos têtes de lard. Vous pouviez faire ça
chez vous en vendant des allumettes, ce qui est tout ce dont vous
êtes capables, tas d’ouvreurs de portières, marchands de jouets
d’un sou et de lacets de bottines, rabatteurs louches, hommes-
sandwiches ! Je vous ai parlé aussi bien que je sache, et vous
donne bon avis, parce que si Mulvaney cesse de tirer au flanc… s’il
sort de l’hôpital… quand vous serez au fort, je gage que vous
regretterez de vivre.
Telle fut la péroraison d’Ortheris, et elle fit donner à la compagnie
B le nom de Brigade des Cireurs de Bottes. Leurs piètres épaules
chargées de cette honte, ils se rendirent au fort Amara en service de
garnison, avec leurs officiers, qui avaient reçu l’ordre de leur serrer
la vis. Le métier militaire, à la différence de toute autre profession,
ne peut s’enseigner au moyen de manuels à un shilling. D’abord on
doit souffrir, puis on doit apprendre et son métier, et le sentiment de
dignité que procure cette connaissance. La leçon est dure, dans un
pays où le militaire n’est pas un personnage en rouge, qui arpente la
rue pour se faire regarder, mais une réalité vivante et cheminante,
dont on peut avoir besoin dans le plus bref délai, alors qu’on n’a pas
le temps de dire : « Ne vaudrait-il pas mieux ? » et « Voudriez-vous,
je vous prie ? »
 Les trois officiers de la compagnie exerçaient à tour de rôle.
Quand le capitaine Brander était fatigué, il passait le
commandement à Maydew, et quand celui-ci était enroué il
transmettait au sous-lieutenant Ouless la tâche de seriner aux
hommes l’école de section et celle de compagnie jusqu’à ce que
Brander pût reprendre. En dehors des heures d’exercice les anciens
soldats parlaient aux recrues comme il convient à des vétérans, et
sous l’action des quatre forces à l’œuvre sur eux, les hommes de la
nouvelle classe commençaient à se tenir sur leurs pieds et à sentir
qu’ils appartenaient à une arme honorable. Ceci fut démontré par ce
qu’une ou deux fois ils se regimbèrent contre les conférences
techniques d’Ortheris.
— Laisse tomber ça, mon gars, lui dit Learoyd en venant à la
rescousse. Les loupiots se rebecquent. Ils ne sont pas aussi
mauvais que nous le pensions.
— Ah ! oui. Vous vous croyez maintenant des soldats, parce que
vous ne tombez plus l’un sur l’autre à l’exercice, n’est-ce pas ? Vous
croyez que parce que la poussière ne vous encrasse pas d’un bout
de la semaine à l’autre, vous êtes des gens propres. Vous croyez
que parce que vous savez tirer votre flingot sans fermer les deux
yeux, vous êtes capable de vous battre, n’est-ce pas ? Vous verrez
ça plus tard, dit Ortheris à la chambrée en général. Non que vous ne
valiez pas un peu mieux qu’au début, ajouta-t-il avec un geste
aimable de son brûle-gueule.
Ce fut durant cette période de transition que je rencontrai une
fois de plus la nouvelle classe. Les officiers, oubliant, dans le zèle de
la jeunesse, que les anciens soldats qui encadraient les sections
devaient souffrir également d’avoir ce matériel brut à forger, les
avaient rendus tous un peu aplatis et mal en train, à force de les
exercer sans cesse dans la cour, au lieu de faire marcher les
hommes en plein champ et de leur faire faire du service en
campagne. Le mois de service de garnison au fort était presque
terminé, et la compagnie B était tout à fait capable de manœuvrer
avec un régiment qui se respectait à moitié. Ils manquaient encore
d’élégance et de souplesse — cela viendrait en son temps — mais
dès à présent ils étaient passables. Un jour je rencontrai Maydew et
m’informai de leur santé. Il me dit que le jeune Ouless était cet
après-midi-là en train de donner le coup de fion à une demi-
compagnie d’entre eux dans la grande cour près du bastion est du
fort. Comme il était samedi je sortis pour savourer la beauté plénière
de l’oisiveté en regardant d’autres hommes peiner dur.
Sur le bastion est, les canons trapus de quarante livres se
chargeant par la culasse faisaient un lit de repos très convenable.
On pouvait s’étaler de tout son long sur le fer échauffé à la
température du sang par le soleil d’après-midi et découvrir une
bonne vue du terrain d’exercice qui s’étendait entre la poudrière et la
courtine du bastion.
Je vis arriver une demi-compagnie commandée pour l’exercice,
puis Ouless sortit de son quartier en achevant d’ajuster ses gants, et
j’entendis le premier « … tion ! » qui stabilise les rangs et montre que
le travail a commencé. Alors je m’évadai en mes propres pensées :
le grincement des bottes et le claquement des fusils leur faisait un
bon accompagnement, et la ligne de vestes rouges et de pantalons
noirs un arrière-plan convenable. Je songeais à la formation d’une
armée territoriale pour l’Inde… une armée d’hommes à solde
spéciale, enrôlés pour vingt ans de service dans les possessions
indiennes de Sa Majesté, avec faculté de s’appuyer sur des
certificats médicaux pour obtenir une prolongation de cinq ans, et
une pension assurée au bout. Cela ferait une armée comme on n’en
avait jamais vu… cent mille hommes entraînés recevant d’Angleterre
chaque année cinq, non, quinze mille hommes, faisant de l’Inde leur
patrie, et autorisés, bien entendu, à se marier. Oui, pensais-je, en
regardant la ligne d’infanterie évoluer çà et là, se scinder et se
reformer, nous rachèterions Cachemir à l’ivrogne imbécile qui en fait
un enfer, et nous y établirions nos régiments des plus mariés — les
hommes qui auraient servi dix ans de leur temps — et là ils
procréeraient des soldats blancs, et peut-être une réserve de
combattants Eurasiens [27] . Cachemir en tout cas était le seul pays
de l’Inde que les Anglais pussent coloniser, et, si nous prenions pied
là, nous pourrions…
 [27] Métis d’Européen et d’Asiatique.

Oh ! c’était un beau rêve ! Je laissai loin derrière moi cette armée

territoriale forte d’un quart de million d’hommes, poussai de l’avant
jusqu’à une Inde autonome, louant des cuirassés à la mère-patrie,
gardant Aden d’une part et Singapour de l’autre, payant l’intérêt de
ses emprunts avec une régularité admirable, mais n’empruntant pas
d’hommes d’au delà de ses frontières propres… une Inde colonisée,
manufacturière, avec un budget toujours en excédent et son pavillon
à elle. Je venais de m’introniser moi-même comme vice-roi, et, en
vertu de ma fonction, venais d’embarquer quatre millions de
vigoureux et entreprenants indigènes, à destination de l’archipel
malais où l’on demande toujours de la main-d’œuvre et où les
Chinois se répandent trop vite, quand je m’aperçus que les choses
n’allaient pas tout droit pour la demi-compagnie. Il y avait beaucoup
trop de traînement de pieds, d’évolutions et de « au temps ». Les
sous-offs harcelaient leurs hommes, et je crus entendre Ouless
appuyer un de ses ordres d’un juron. Il n’était pas autorisé à le faire,
vu que c’était un cadet qui n’avait pas encore appris à émettre deux
fois de suite ses commandements sur le même diapason. Tantôt il
glapissait, et tantôt il grondait ; et une voix claire et sonore, douée
d’un accent mâle, a plus d’influence sur la manœuvre qu’on ne le
pense. Il était nerveux aussi bien à l’exercice qu’au mess, parce qu’il
avait conscience de n’avoir pas encore fait ses preuves. L’un de ses
chefs de bataillon avait dit en sa présence :
— Ouless a encore à faire peau neuve une fois ou deux et il n’a
pas l’intelligence de s’en apercevoir.
Cette remarque était restée dans l’esprit d’Ouless, et elle le
faisait réfléchir sur lui-même dans les petites choses, ce qui n’est
pas le meilleur entraînement pour un jeune homme. Au mess il
s’efforçait d’être cordial, et devenait trop expansif. Alors il s’efforçait
de s’enfermer dans sa dignité, et se montrait morne et bourru. Il ne
faisait que chercher le juste milieu et la note exacte, et n’avait trouvé
ni l’un ni l’autre, parce qu’il ne s’était jamais vu en face d’une grande
circonstance. Avec ses hommes il était aussi mal à l’aise qu’avec
ses collègues du mess, et sa voix le trahissait. Je l’entendis lancer
deux ordres, et ajouter :
— Sergent, que fait donc cet homme du dernier rang, n. d. D. ?
C’était passablement mauvais. Un officier de compagnie ne doit
jamais demander de renseignement aux sergents. Il commande, et
les commandements ne sont pas confiés à des syndicats.
Il y avait trop de poussière pour distinguer nettement la
manœuvre, mais je pouvais entendre la grêle voix irritée du sous-
lieutenant s’élever d’une octave à l’autre, et le frisson de
mécontentement des files excédées ou de mauvaise humeur courir
le long des rangs. Ouless était venu à l’exercice aussi dégoûté de
son métier que les hommes l’étaient du leur. Le soleil ardent avait
influé sur l’humeur de tous, mais surtout sur celle du plus jeune. Il
avait d’évidence perdu la maîtrise de lui-même, et comme il ne
possédait pas l’énergie ou l’art de s’abstenir jusqu’à ce qu’il l’eût
recouvrée, il faisait de mal en pis par ses gros mots.
Les hommes se déplacèrent sur le terrain et arrivèrent plus près
sous le canon qui me servait de canapé. Ils exécutaient un quart de
conversion à droite, et ils l’exécutaient fort mal, dans l’espoir naturel
d’entendre Ouless jurer à nouveau. Il ne pouvait rien leur apprendre
de neuf, mais sa colère les amusait. Au lieu de jurer Ouless perdit
tout à fait la tête, et d’un geste impulsif lança au serre-file de la
conversion un coup de la petite cravache en jonc de Malacca qu’il
tenait à la main en guise de baguette. Cette cravache avait sur sa
laque un pommeau d’argent mince, et l’argent par suite de l’usure
s’était déchiré en un endroit, laissant dépasser une languette
triangulaire. J’avais à peine eu le temps de comprendre qu’en
frappant un soldat Ouless venait de se dépouiller de son grade,
lorsque j’entendis la déchirure du drap et vis sur l’épaule de l’homme
un bout de chemise grise apparaître sous l’écarlate déchirée. Le
coup n’avait été que le simple réflexe nerveux d’un gamin exaspéré,
mais il suffisait amplement à compromettre le grade du sous-
lieutenant, puisqu’il avait été porté, dans une minute de colère, à un
homme qui, d’après les règlements de l’armée, ne pouvait lui
répliquer. L’effet du geste, grâce à la perversité naturelle des choses,
était le même que si Ouless eût arraché l’habit du dos de cet
homme. Connaissant de réputation la nouvelle classe, j’étais bien
certain que tous jusqu’au dernier jureraient leurs grands dieux
qu’Ouless avait positivement rossé l’homme. Auquel cas Ouless
n’aurait plus qu’à faire ses malles. Sa carrière de serviteur de la
Reine sous un grade quelconque avait pris fin. La conversion
s’acheva, et les hommes firent halte et s’alignèrent aussitôt devant
mon canapé. Le visage d’Ouless était entièrement livide. Le serre-
file était pourpre, et je vis ses lèvres mâchonner des gros mots.
C’était Ortheris ! Avec sept ans de service et trois médailles, avoir
été frappé par un gamin plus jeune que lui ! En outre c’était mon ami
et un homme de bien, un homme éprouvé, et un Anglais. La honte
de cet incident me donnait chaud comme elle donnait froid à Ouless,
et si Ortheris avait glissé une cartouche dans son arme et réglé le
compte aussitôt, je m’en serais réjoui. Le fait qu’Ortheris, entre tous,
avait été frappé, démontrait que le gamin ne s’était pas rendu
compte de la personnalité de celui qu’il frappait ; mais il aurait dû se
souvenir qu’il n’était plus un gamin. Je fus alors fâché pour lui, et
puis la colère me reprit de nouveau, tandis qu’Ortheris regardait
fixement devant lui et devenait de plus en plus rouge.
La manœuvre cessa provisoirement. Personne ne sut pourquoi,
car l’insulte n’avait même pu être vue de trois hommes : la
conversion tournait le dos à Ouless tout le temps. Alors, amené, je
pense, par la main de la Fatalité, le capitaine Brander traversa le
terrain de manœuvre, et son regard fut attiré par un bon pied carré
de chemise grise apparaissant sur une omoplate qui eût dû être
recouverte d’une tunique bien ajustée.
— Ciel et terre ! fit-il, traversant en trois enjambées. Laissez-vous
vos hommes venir à l’exercice en haillons, lieutenant ? Que fait ici
cet épouvantail à moineaux ? Sortez des rangs, le serre-file. Qu’est-
ce que ça signifie… Vous, Ortheris, entre tous ! Que diable avez-
vous fait ?
— ’Mande pardon, mon capitaine, dit Ortheris. Je me suis éraflé
contre la grille du corps de garde en accourant à l’exercice.
 — Vous vous êtes éraflé ! Arraché, voulez-vous dire. Le morceau
vous pend jusqu’au milieu du dos.
— Ce n’était d’abord qu’une petite déchirure, mon capitaine, et…
et je ne peux pas voir derrière moi. Je l’ai sentie s’agrandir, mon
capitaine.
— Hum ! fit Brander. Je pense bien que vous l’avez sentie
s’agrandir. Je pensais que c’était quelqu’un de la nouvelle classe.
Vous avez une belle paire d’épaules. Suffit.
Le capitaine alla pour s’éloigner. Ouless le suivit, très pâle, et lui
dit quelques mots à voix basse.
— Hein, quoi ? Quoi ? Ortheris…
Il baissa la voix. Je vis Ortheris saluer, dire quelque chose, et
rester au port d’armes.
— Rompez les rangs, dit Brander, brièvement.
Les hommes se dispersèrent.
— Je n’y comprends rien. Vous dites que…?
Et il adressa un signe de tête à Ouless, qui lui dit de nouveau
quelque chose. Ortheris restait immobile : le lambeau de sa tunique
lui retombait presque jusqu’à son ceinturon. Il avait, comme disait
Brander, une belle paire d’épaules, et s’enorgueillissait de sa tunique
bien collante. Je l’entendis dire :
— ’Mande pardon, mon capitaine, mais je pense que mon
lieutenant est resté trop longtemps au soleil. Il ne se rappelle plus
bien les choses, mon capitaine. Je suis venu à l’exercice avec un
bout de déchirure, et elle s’est agrandie, mon capitaine, à force de
porter armes, comme je vous l’ai dit, mon capitaine.
Brander regardait alternativement les deux visages, et je pense
que son opinion fut faite, car il dit à Ortheris de rejoindre les autres
hommes qui refluaient vers les casernes. Puis il parla à Ouless et
s’en alla, laissant le gamin au milieu du terrain d’exercices, tiraillant
le nœud de son épée.
Le sous-lieutenant leva les yeux, me vit étendu sur le canon, et
vint à moi en mordillant le bout de son index ganté, si complètement
démoralisé qu’il n’eut même pas l’intelligence de garder son trouble
pour lui.
— Dites, vous avez vu ça, je suppose ?
D’un signe de tête en arrière il désigna la cour, où la poussière
laissée par les hommes qui s’éloignaient se déposait en cercles
blanchâtres.
— J’ai vu, répondis-je, car je me sentais peu enclin à la politesse.
— Que diable dois-je faire ? (Il se mordit le doigt de nouveau.)
J’ai dit à Brander ce que j’avais fait. J’ai frappé cet homme.
— Je le sais parfaitement, dis-je, et je ne pense pas qu’Ortheris
l’ait déjà oublié.
— Ou… i. Mais que je crève si je sais ce que je dois faire.
Changer de compagnie, je suppose. Je ne puis demander à cet
homme de permuter, je suppose. Hein ?
L’idée offrait des rudiments de bon sens, mais il n’aurait pas dû
venir à moi ni à personne d’autre pour demander de l’aide. C’était
son affaire à lui, et je le lui déclarai. Il ne semblait pas convaincu, et
se mit à parler des chances qu’il avait d’être cassé. Alors, en
considération d’Ortheris non vengé, il me prit fantaisie de lui faire un
beau tableau de son insignifiance dans le plan de la création. Il avait
à douze mille kilomètres de là un papa et une maman, et peut-être
des amis. Ils compatiraient à son malheur, mais personne d’autre ne
s’en soucierait pour un sou. Il ne serait pour tout le monde ni plus ni
moins que le lieutenant Ouless du Vieux Régiment, renvoyé du
service de la Reine pour conduite indigne d’un officier et d’un
homme d’honneur. Le général en chef, qui ratifierait les décisions du
conseil de guerre, ne saurait pas qui il était ; son mess ne parlerait
plus de lui ; il s’en retournerait à Bombay, s’il avait de quoi regagner
l’Europe, plus seul que quand il l’avait quittée. Finalement — car je
complétai le tableau avec soin — il n’était rien qu’une minime touche
de rouge dans la vaste étendue de l’Empire des Indes. Il devait
surmonter cette crise à lui seul, et personne ne pourrait l’aider, et
personne ne se souciait (ce n’était pas vrai, car je m’en souciais
énormément : il avait dit la vérité sur-le-champ au capitaine Brander)