I gently pat him on the recently operated shoulder which has started to have feeling again, and return to the chapter that made me angry. Why did it make me angry? Because Sabato didn’t call for the younger generation to rebel. No. He didn’t call us to, all together, refuse to play a part in the capitalist society that seems to deteriorate the collective’s mental health. Instead, he calls for something smaller. He calls for…
Acceptance. Or at least that’s how I interpreted it.
Really, the mother fucker said “I can't give you an answer.” In the moment I read these words, I slammed the book shut and thew it to the hospital floor. My anger made me too blind to see that he really did give us an answer. Albeit in a the way a philosophy professor or a poet might give an answer.
For the record, I don’t really think Sabato is a mother fucker. And I didn’t really hate the book. I just think, like all of humans brought up in the capitalist system, I like black and white answers. I like certainty, to a certain point. Lol. And when someone makes me think a little harder… When someone makes me look for the answer myself, it stretches me to my intellectual limits. I can get down rabbit holes. Turning over stones in my mind. Looking for any evidence that proves or disproves whatever theory I am exploring. And it’s exhausting. And unclear. And I think that’s what Sabato wanted. That we all search for the answers ourselves. That we find clarity within the ambiguity. That sly lil’ feller.
In the past, when someone asked Sabato how to live out the Resistance, he would have encouraged them to do something drastic. To refuse to work in the system. Completely rebel against it. But with his age and life experience… he concedes “Can we ask the men and women of my country who refuse to belong to this savage capitalism if they have to support their children, their parents?” He realizes that people who care about providing for their family, as much as they may disagree with the capitalist system, can’t just choose not go to work. To not exist within the system. At what cost do we resist? We certainly can’t let our children starve. “If they are responsible, how could they abandon that life?” For Sabato, full rebellion is not the answer. That’s not how we resist.
However, in my interpretation of Sabato’s work, I don’t believe he encourages us to simply accept the system, and just.. get over it. Stop complaining. You don’t realize how lucky you are, I can imagine many older people saying to me. Believe me… I do.
It’s not lost on me that it’s a privilege to have the ability to spend so much time thinking about the systems of the world and how they all work. I know that there are many people who only have time to think about how to get food on the table. Who can only think about how to get their basic needs met: food and shelter. And I’m over here analyzing books on my comfortable couch with an ocean and mountain view.
But the fact of the matter is, this is the life I have in this specific moment in time. I know it’s a good one. And because of that fact, I refuse to just come to that realization and stop thinking. And I don’t think that is what the people who don’t have the luxury of free time… would want either.