What a thing to put your hands together for, but that is what we did, as I suppose it would have been even stranger for us not to have done—but now I’m getting ahead of myself.
Before the applause, before the end of the talk, the man brought up something that did in fact cause a ripple on that smooth surface. A murmur passed through the audience (which the man ignored), people shifted in their seats, and I noticed a few headshakes, and, from a row somewhere behind me, a woman’s nervous laugh.
It was over, he said. It was too late, we had dithered too long. Our society had already become too fragmented and dysfunctional for us to fix, in time, the calamitous mistakes we had made. And, in any case, people’s attention remained elusive. Neither season after season of extreme weather events nor the risk of extinction for a million animal species around the world could push environmental destruction to the top of our country’s list of concerns. And how sad, he said, to see so many among the most creative and best-educated classes, those from whom we might have hoped for inventive solutions, instead embracing personal therapies and pseudo-religious practices that promoted detachment, a focus on the moment, acceptance of one’s surroundings as they were, equanimity in the face of worldly cares. (This world is but a shadow, it is a carcass, it is nothing, this world is not real, do not mistake this hallucination for the real world.) Self-care, relieving one’s own everyday anxieties, avoiding stress: these had become some of our society’s highest goals, he said—higher, apparently, than the salvation of society itself. The mindfulness rage was just another distraction, he said. Of course we should be stressed, he said. We should be utterly consumed with dread. Mindful meditation might help a person face drowning with equanimity, but it would do absolutely nothing to right the Titanic, he said. It wasn’t individual efforts to achieve inner peace, it wasn’t a compassionate attitude toward others that might have led to timely preventative action, but rather a collective, fanatical, over-the-top obsession with impending doom.
It was useless, the man said, to deny that suffering of immense magnitude lay ahead, or that there’d be any escaping it.
How, then, should we live?
One thing we should start asking ourselves was whether or not we should go on having children.
(Here, the discomposure I mentioned earlier: murmurs and shifting among the audience, that woman’s nervous laugh. Also, this part was new. The subject of children had not been raised in the magazine article.)
To be clear, he was not saying that every woman expecting a child should consider having an abortion, the man said. Of course he was not saying that. What he was saying was that perhaps the idea of planning families in the way that people had been doing for generations needed to be rethought. He was saying that perhaps it was a mistake to bring human beings into a world that had such a strong possibility of becoming, in their lifetimes, a bleak and terrifying if not wholly unlivable place. He was asking whether to go ahead blindly and behave as if there was little or no such possibility might not be selfish, and perhaps even immoral, and cruel.
And, after all, he said, weren’t there already countless children in the world desperate for protection from already existing threats? Weren’t there millions upon millions of people suffering from various humanitarian crises that millions upon millions of other people simply chose to forget? Why could we not turn our attention to the teeming sufferers already in our midst?
And here, perhaps, was a last chance for us to redeem ourselves, the man raised his voice to say. The only moral, meaningful course for a civilization facing its own end: To learn how to ask forgiveness and to atone in some tiny measure for the devastating harm we had done to our human family and to our fellow creatures and to the beautiful earth. To love and forgive one another as best we could. And to learn how to say goodbye.
The man took his iPad from the lectern and walked swiftly backstage. You could hear from the rhythm of the clapping that people were confused. Was that it? Was he coming back? But it was the woman who had introduced him who now reappeared on the podium, thanked everyone for coming, and wished us all good night.
And then we were on our feet and moving herdishly out of the auditorium, spilling out of the building, into the crisp night air. Which, in spite of it being so far one of the warmest years on record, was, just now, the perfect seasonable temperature for that month in that part of the world.
I need a drink, a voice near me said. To which: Me too!
There was a subdued aura about the departing crowd. Some people looked dazed and were silent. Others remarked on the lack of a Q&A. That’s so arrogant, said one. Maybe he was miffed because it wasn’t a full house, said another.
I heard: What a bore.
And: It was your idea to come to this thing, not mine.
An elderly man at the center of a knot of other elderly people was making them all laugh. Oy! It’s over, it’s over, it’s ohhhh-ver. I thought it was Roy Orbison up there.
I heard: Melodramatic . . . Irresponsible.
And: Totally right, every word.
And (furiously): Will you please tell me, what was the fucking point?
I quickened my pace, leaving the crowd behind, but walking almost in step with me was a man I recognized from the audience. He was wearing a dark suit, running shoes, and a baseball cap. He was alone, and as he walked he was whistling, of all tunes, “My Favorite Things.”
I need a drink. To be honest, I’d been thinking the same thing well before I heard someone say it. I wanted a drink before going back to the apartment, before going to bed. I had decided to walk back from the campus, as I had walked there (it was less than a mile), and I knew that along the way I’d be passing several places where a drink—a glass of wine was what I wanted—could be had. But I was a stranger in that town and unsure where, if anywhere, I’d be comfortable having a drink by myself.
Every place I looked was too crowded or too noisy or seemed, for some other reason, uninviting. A feeling of loneliness and disappointment came over me. It was a familiar feeling. I thought of a woman I knew who had started carrying her own flask. I was ready to give up when I remembered that there was a café on the corner of my host’s street that had been empty when I passed it earlier and where, I had noticed, wine was served.
Now, of course, the café was not empty. But from the street I could see that, though all the tables seemed to be taken, there were places to sit at the bar.
I went in and sat down. I had a moment’s panic because the bartender, a young man with the kind of ornate tattoos and facial hair that make me think of a conversation piece, ignored me, even though he was not just then attending to anyone else. I took out my phone, that reliable prop, and spent a few moments tickling it.
Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens.
At last the bartender sauntered over (so I had not become see-through) and took my order. At last I had my drink. Red wine: one of my favorite things. It would be easier, with a glass, to gather my thoughts, after a long hard day that had given me much to think about. But immediately I was distracted by a conversation taking place at a table right behind me. Two people whom, unless I turned around, I couldn’t see. I did not turn around. But I soon got the gist of their story.