Series:
Essay #5:
Synopsis:
It and Thou
Lost in It
At any given time, I choose to relate to you as It or Thou, and this, my choice of stance, determines both of us
We spend most of our time in Caesar’s world doing our best to get by. We’re utilitarian and we take our stance in I-and-It, running cost/benefit calculations and making polite use of the people around us. The trains must run on time, on budget.
“And in all the seriousness of truth, hear this: without It man cannot live. But he who lives with It alone is not a man.” By this, Martin Buber means that the I-and-It stance is necessary but not sufficient. The I-and-It stance is necessary like money: I gotta have it to survive but it makes for a bad god. I need more. I need to relate to you and to other beings in this world, and to God, as Thou.
I-and-Thou is a different stance in the world. Both the It and Thou stances are available to me, and at any given time, I choose to relate to you as one or the other. I choose to call you It or Thou, and this, my choice of stance, determines the you that I see: It or Thou. Imagine the military general who must send his soldiers into harm's way; his job falls on the side of Caesar, and on that side, each soldier is a number, one of a thousand. Yet each boy has a mom and dad, and our general knows it and it pains him. If our general calls the soldier Thou, he changes his stance in relation to the soldier. Each of the It or Thou stances is right under the right circumstances. At times, our general’s proper role within Caesar’s military will require a stance toward the soldier as It; he will order the military to take action and the soldier might die. At other times, the general must recognize Thou if he would be a full human being.
We live in mass society, so we habitually stand in the relationship of I-and-It. We get lost in It until we believe there’s nothing else: utility is the measure of all things and life is meaningless. This happened to Guy Crouchback, the British protagonist of Evelyn Waugh’s trilogy, Sword of Honor.
In the beginning of the trilogy, Guy lives lonely and apathetic in Italy, after having been divorced by his wife. He is happy when World War II breaks out because it gives him a purpose in life, to fight for good against evil in a great political cause. He joins a British military unit and enjoys for a while the activity of preparing for war. But after two years in the military, including Britain’s debacle in Crete, Guy sees the return of his old companions, loneliness and apathy. Hustle and bustle and a good cause are not sufficient.
Guy’s father, Gervase Crouchback, is the true hero of the trilogy. Mr. Crouchback is a committed Catholic of quiet decency and integrity. The father lives in a seaside hotel which is running out of rooms as Londoners flee the war to the countryside. The father gives up his rooms to the newcomers from London. The father doubles-up with another person, which is inconceivable but welcome to the hotel proprietors, who were trying to get rid of the father anyway so that they could re-rent his rooms for more money. Of Mr. Crouchback they say, “Somehow his mind seems to work different than yours and mine.” Which is true. Mr. Crouchback’s default stance is Thou; the hotel proprietors stand on It.
Guy’s years in the military had started with purpose and ended with emptiness. In the military, which is mass society par excellence, Guy saw the worst of the modern administrative State. Guy visits his father, who tells son it’s natural for son to be happy with Britain’s recent victories. Guy, lost in apathy, replies, “I don’t think I’m interested in victory now.” Father responds, “Then you’ve no business being a soldier.”
Later, father sends a letter to son. The letter is the heart of the trilogy. Guy earlier had taken a Realpolitik stance on the Lateran Treaty, whereby the papacy gave up its papal lands and recognized the state of Italy with Rome as its capital. In the letter, the father responds that perhaps the Treaty entailed a loss of political power for the Church, that perhaps it was a concession born of weakness. Yet, the father continues, “Quantitative judgements don’t apply. If only one soul was saved that is full compensation for any amount of loss of ‘face.’”
For the father, quantities of numbers mean nothing against one, single soul. Yes, we must live in Caesar’s world of utility maximization, but no, Caesar’s world has no meaning when faced with one, single soul. We live two different stances: the first we render to Caesar, the second to God. The first we approach in rational calculations of quantities and use value. The second we experience in the Thou of another being.
This essay should’ve ended with the prior sentence, but I can’t leave Sword of Honor without telling of Guy Crouchback’s redemption. In the letter, father says to son, “I write like this because I am worried about you….It was not a good thing living alone and abroad….” The father worried that his son was lost in the world of It, blinded to Thou. Guy had been too long in Caesar’s world, drifting unconnected to loved ones and to God. If I may paraphrase Guy’s attitude toward God, it was, “I ask nothing of God; maybe God wants something from me, probably not; He knows my phone number.” In the end, Guy understands what he was missing. Guy approaches God personally, and prays to Him personally, in Guy’s words: “Show me what to do and help me to do it.”