The Heart of Darkness
125 years ago, William Conrad wrote The Heart of Darkness about a voyage up the Congo River (not named, but assumed) to meet up with a trader, Kurtz, who had gone native. It is the story of colonial rule in the darkest sense. The story was adapted during the Vietnam War and made into a movie by Francis Ford Coppola into the quintessential war movie called Apocalypse Now. What made these stories so special was that in addition to the drama of a war as a backdrop, they are about the struggles of the human heart with regard to how we humans treat one another and then how we feel about ourselves after all of that. In that sense, the heart of darkness is a metaphor for our conscience and how we rationalize our actions to keep ourselves feeling OK about ourselves. I would argue that the rationalization process is something we all go through to some extent or another and that as hard as we try to be perfect, kind and generous, we all fall short. As the Bible says, who amongst us does not sin?
I am apparently somewhat unreconciled as of yet with my conscience about trying so hard to avoid the draft when I was of age. I know that I feel it when I encounter someone who spent time in the military. I am forever thanking those people for their service, and that is especially so with regard to Vietnam veterans because I feel that is the theater of war that they served sort of on my behalf. I didn’t believe in the Vietnam War, but I am not so certain that I fully understood the basis for that feeling other than that war is bad and peace is good. It is not lost on me that Hanoi calls itself “The City of Peace”. That may be because it was the center of two extended wars in a row, much like Kabul suffered the same fate (Russia followed by America et.al.). Vietnam wants to tell its people and the world that they have had enough of war. I sense that they are also a bit into revisionist history in terms of how they comported themselves during those wars. I am expecting to see that come through in whatever war museums we see today or the old Hanoi Hilton POW camp we are supposed to see tomorrow. I am trying to build up some sympathy for them, not because I believe they were so very kind as captors or that they didn’t fight tooth and nail to the death when presented with the need to defend their lands, but because we all need some amount of room for redemption and it has been long enough and my personal pain distant enough for me to allow that sentiment. I particularly like the scene in the WWII movie Unbroken when Louis Zamperini goes back to his old POW camp in Japan and confronts Watanabe, his captor, who beat him cruelly. It is clear that happiness is easier to achieve through forgiveness than through guilt and resistance to redemption.
In addition to my war guilt, I am also racked with wealth guilt. I am not so very wealthy by today’s U.S. standards, but by global standards I am well above the 1% level. I see no reason to just benchmark against people of the U.S., but rather think we need to consider the means of all 8 billion souls on earth. It is how my mother trained me to think. That said, my wish is that the global disparities of wealth, which will never be completely equalized and perhaps shouldn’t be by external means, must at least reach sustainability for all humans before massive disparities can be tolerated and justified. That strikes me as the best of both worlds. There is collective care while still encouraging individual ambition. There seems a proper balance in that in which we could all find a reinforcement of our conscience. But then, I seem to have limited ability to make any of that happen. I have tried my best to convince friends who live on the conservative spectrum and only seem to be able to alienate them. Such is the strength of their conviction in the righteousness of libertarian self-interest. But I digress.
I am finding my time in Hanoi a double-barrel dose of conscience testing. This town is truly my heart of darkness. Nature must be testing me because while it has stopped raining, the skies are still grey all day and the air is still and chill, which seems decidedly unlike the rest of SE Asia that we have experienced. Every stereotype I have about the developing world striving to too rapidly catch up with the developed world is evident on the streets of Hanoi. The chaos of the construction and traffic have made the place seem economically frantic, and yet the people are not yet really like us. They understand the textbook version of capitalism, but they are lacking something that makes them seem naive. When we were at Ha Long Bay yesterday, there was an entire village of see-through houses, condos and hotels, just decaying in the moist sea air. Someone forgot to tell the developers about the business cycle and the fact that you have to have demand to prop up supply and that supply alone tends to fall on its face.
Here in town it looks to be a different story. What I see are earnest, hard-working people who find ways to enjoy their lives through simple pleasure, ones that we have evolved way beyond accepting. They will sit on the sidewalk on 9” high plastic stools and drink tea and smoke long tube pipes (presumably filled with tobacco since I smell no marijuana). When we bought $215 of nice handicrafts in a shop, those people allowed me to use their rest room and tried to refuse taking extra money from me for the favor (and believe me, it was a big favor given that I have a touch of Delhi-Belly). When Mike wanted to walk to the Train Street (a curious local interest site), I took a pedicab, which is nothing but a modern rickshaw. The man taking me was not only thrilled with the $10 I gave him (the same would have been $40 in NYC), but he wanted to take a selfie with me. I’m sure I was just so huge to him, that he wanted to show his friends and family the big guy he carried across town. He was genuinely warm and friendly to me. The guileless and honest ways of these innocent people who suffered so long at our hands gave me pangs of conscience, both about the war and about our American ease of lifestyle. I did not fight in the war, but I am an American. I came and stayed in a nice hotel and was happy to be the guy in the rickshaw buying souvenirs to take back to my over-privileged life on my hilltop.
I have not gone native like Kurtz, but I have stood by and accepted the comfort and largess of my privileged heritage. My grandfather came from poverty and never lost his simple old country ways. My mother bootstrapped herself an education and spent 40 years giving back to the world. And here I am, too young to have served my country by decree, too spoiled to have served by choice, having spent my life in the pursuit of success that served only me and my family. I studied to follow my mother’s footsteps, but took another path. I have been relatively more generous than many others, but not so it ever hurt. I could have done worse and yet I should have done better. Vietnam has reminded me that we all have to eventually travel up the river of our conscience and into our own heart of darkness. Thank you, Hanoi.