Minor Wisdom Review

February 26, 2013

Elves, Dwarves, and Humans

The New Challenges to Tolkien’s Racialized Universe

By Noah Gordon

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Fantasy fiction has often been treated as a type of escapism. In a bare sense, that’s what it is – people read The Lord of the Rings or watch Star Trek to escape the banality of day-to-day life. One must wonder how many teenagers have sifted through their mail and daydreamed about finding a wax-sealed envelope from Hogwarts. Fantasy, along with its close cousin science-fiction, provides a means to imagine living in a world of discovery and possibility, and a world that for one reason or another is preferable to our own.

What today we call “fantasy” was more or less dreamed up entirely by J.R.R. Tolkien over the course of his career, a combination of old English myth, life experience, and pure imagination. His early work The Hobbit laid down a template, and The Lord of the Rings etched it in the bedrock of literary history.  From Tolkien’s world of Middle Earth we get our familiar racial templates: the proud and haughty elves, the stubborn but brave dwarves and naturally, the humans – average and without distinct flavor. Each of these “races” has its flaws, but they are all on the side of good in the fight against evil. And of course, we have our evil races: orcs and trolls and goblins, despicable creatures which lack the capacity for independent thought and serve as cannon fodder for their dark masters.

After the massive success of The Lord of the Rings, this became the template for the vast majority of high-fantasy fiction. Tolkien created something of an understanding in the minds of his readers: when you pick up a fantasy tome, expect the humans and elves and dwarves and halflings and hobbits and pixies and fairies and what-have-you to be on the side of good. A goblin who wants to join up with the armies of the light should be viewed with suspicion; an elf who conspires with the forces of darkness has betrayed his brethren and himself.

Taking the Tolkien model further, each race has not only its assigned alignment, but also its assigned attributes. Elves are tall and pretty, with pointed ears and regal features. They are in some fictions immortal, or in others have very long life spans. Dwarves are short and stocky, with big busy or braided beards and a thick Scottish brogue. They are stubborn but friendly and make excellent warriors or craftsmen. Humans, on the other hand, are a sort of tabula rasa – they are the common race, as English is often the “common tongue.” Humans exist to ground fantasy universes and make them relatable, which is why they often serve as the central characters. A reader would far sooner identify with Luke Skywalker than Chewbacca.

Division of the world into races with distinct attributes and alignments permeates the myriad of fantasy fictions, almost to the extent that it’s a necessary ingredient in the mix. Harry Potter didn’t need it, but it’s present in greedy goblins and proud centaurs. Even most sci-fi universes adopt the trope – think the rational Vulcan or the insidious Hutt. Of course, in all cases the human remains the template – the jack-of-all-trades with no one defining characteristic, usually good (the hero is almost always human) but with the capacity for evil or moral grayness.

What about this arrangement is so appealing to we fantasy readers? Well, it’s easy. Easier than the real world, at any rate, where we learn that race is a social construct (it is) and that it’s wrong to make assumptions about any one person based on their appearance (you really shouldn’t). Especially for introverts like myself, everyday life is unbearably unpredictable. Reactions are difficult to anticipate or understand, and we find ourselves scrutinizing every word of a conversation. We overthink it, and as a result, spending too much time with other people exhausts us. It only makes sense that we would want to retreat to and recharge in a world unlike our own, in which everyone is allotted an easily-identifiable category and acts accordingly. The fantasy universe is one which is easy to understand. It is, as Spock would say, quite logical.

But as anyone who’s familiar with Star Trek knows, Spock’s logical approach is usually not the correct one. Real human beings aren’t always logical, and rightly so. The beautiful thing about the human spirit is its ability to defy logic and convention. Our world is wonderfully diverse and difficult to understand. Fantasy simplifies the equation, but perhaps too much. When we escape to Middle Earth we go for a joyride. While there’s joy in escape, we return to a world just as incomprehensible as it was before. It doesn’t teach us anything; it’s easy, but it’s also quite lazy.

I need to insert a small disclaimer here, because so far I’ve been a bit unfair to our friend John Ronald Reuel. To his credit, Tolkien’s characters were complex and his stories often did look at racial difference in interesting ways. He is the grandfather of the genres that I’ve loved as a child and cherished as a boyish adult. What I contend here is that the model that he’s established – that of the racially-split fantasy universe – can be conducive to simplification and doesn’t necessarily help us learn more about ourselves and the world we live in. Nonetheless a new tendency has emerged in the last decade which uses the majestic foundation Tolkien has built for us and created something altogether more wonderful.

The company Bioware, which once specialized in medieval fantasy role-playing games with interactive storytelling, provides a good example of how the role of race has changed in a short time in the medium of video games. At a glance, their interactive RPGs appear quite suited to the Tolkien mold; you begin by choosing a character and picking for him not only a name, appearance and role, but also a race. Each race, of course, comes with different attributes – humans are jacks-of-all-trades, elves make good rangers, half-orcs are dumb but strong, and so on. Aside from some interesting gameplay innovations, there’s nothing revolutionary here in terms of storytelling.

But recently these games have started putting a twist on the worlds we’re used to. There’s a new trend in fantasy which builds on the race-world tradition of Tolkien but twists it by introducing themes of inequality, oppression and the bridging of differences. Bioware has led the charge. In their 2009 release Dragon Age: Origins, you begin the game by picking not only a race, but also a socioeconomic class for the protagonist whose shoes you’ll inhabit. You can opt to play as a human noble or commoner; a dwarven prince or untouchable; a city-elf or a tribal elf. No longer is the human the necessary template; the player is free to choose whichever character he/she identifies with, and that character’s background will color the world he/she interacts with.

This trend was solidified with the tremendous success of Bioware’s 2007-2012 Mass Effect trilogy. The games take place in the not-so-distant future, when the discovery of alien relics on Mars has propelled mankind centuries into the technological future and put it in contact with a myriad of alien races. Though not Tolkien-esque in the purest sense, it retains that essential fantasy component – the racialization of Others. But in interacting with these Others, the player as the human Commander Shepard must learn how to bridge differences and acknowledge commonalities. Ultimately the choices the player makes with respect to his/her crew members and the racial homeworlds they represent will determine the fate of the galaxy.

Polish developer CD Projekt RED took it one step further with 2009’s The Witcher; rather than adopting Mass Effect’s “big tent” approach, it facilitates thought about racial oppression and bigotry, creating an impressive analogy for the world we live in. In The Witcher’s universe mankind is on the top of the pecking order, with a number of human kings ruling over different parts of the land. The elves and dwarves, who once had impressive empires all their own to call home, have come to be dispersed and for the most part confined to “non-human” ghettos in cities and towns. Those who remain on the outside are hunted down and driven to desperation, and as a result some resort to terrorism as a means of political expression. In playing the game, it’s hard not to draw parallels.

In the game’s finale the player acts as a mediator and eventually must make a choice: side with the human faction, saving the lives of innocent civilians but upholding the status quo; side with the Elven terrorists, advocating for racial justice but at the same time condoning bloodshed; or remain neutral, and let the oppressors and the oppressed tear one another to bits. It’s a difficult choice to make and is certainly a far cry from the often clearly-defined poles of Middle Earth.

Gary Whitta, a video game writer, was recently quoted in an issue of Game Informer magazine: “We are just now at The Jazz Singer in video games. We are starting to figure out that there are things we can do beyond the conventions of cinema and there are ways to tell stories that help the gameplay along and not just ape the experience of film or television.” Player interactivity is key. In a video game like Mass Effect or The Witcher, the gameplay decisions you make have an effect on the story you receive. The sole source of conflict resolution is no longer a bullet or a sword; choices you make in conversation or actions you take can change the outcome of a situation. In this kind of game it no longer makes sense to rely on predictability and familiarity. Part of the fun is in the dramatic tension of not knowing with certainty how your actions will impact the world.

The popularity of interactive fantasy can be summarized in one word: depth. Players are no longer seeking to escape to a world wherein everything is prefigured and tailored to them. The Witcher isn’t simply a blast to play, but it’s also constructive. It mobilizes the imagery we’ve all become so familiar with to help us understand this complicated world we live in and these complex people we live with. It’s a healthy and altogether wonderful trend that, I hope, will only continue to strengthen into the future.

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February 20, 2013

Recent Posts

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Ryan Drost: Why do we give gifts?

James Barnabas: How green was my valley in America.

Jared Crum: The mortal danger and civic promise of helping strangers.

Annika Christensen: Cuba’s learned new tricks. Can it keep its old ethos?

Hannah Gais: In Russia, there’s a new Putin in town. Or is there?


 

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February 18, 2013

The Gifted

Why do we give gifts?

By Ryan Drost

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Modern systems of exchange seem completely different from the ancient, and seemingly more primitive, systems of exchange that Marcel Mauss discusses in his classic book, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies.  Especially in the capitalist societies that dominate the current world, the system of exchange no longer appears to have the social, individual, and personal aspects it once had.  Whether through trade or gift-giving, these forms of exchange were based on reputation and relationships much more than the unconnected exchanges of capitalist society.  Whatever form they take, however, systems of exchanges are present in every society and culture.

These ancient systems of exchange appeared to be non-economical, and, in a modern economic sense, a lot of the exchange that occurred appeared irrational and thus inexplicable.  In fact, Mauss asked: “What rule of legality and self-interest, in societies of a backward or archaic type, compels the gift that has been received to be obligatorily reciprocated?  What power resides in the object given that causes its recipient to pay it back?”  The difference, however, is that trade, and more important, gift-giving, had a meaning beyond the value of the items, and many times services, exchanged.  They may appear voluntary, and thus irrational, but the necessary social connections, and the loss of them that non-adherence would cause, made gift-giving sustainable as a system of exchange.  As Mauss explained: “These total services and counter-services are committed to in a somewhat voluntary form by presents or gifts, although in the final analysis they are strictly compulsory, on pain of private or public warfare.”  Giving gifts in these societies was voluntary in the same way that paying for a commodity is voluntary in capitalism: the rest of society would hold that person in contempt for that action, and punish them appropriately.

In this manner, the giving of gifts as a system of exchange signified more than simply the products exchanged, and even was more than the people involved.  Each transaction was a socialized ritual that the entire society had an incentive to uphold.  If the giving of a gift did not occur when it should have, or a gift was not received when it should have been, that would signal to others in the society that it was acceptable to engage in that behavior.  This type of behavior, while largely absent in capitalism, can still be observed in particular instances today.  One such time is Christmas, as anthropologist James Carrier examined in depth in his article “Christmas and the Ceremony of the Gift”.  Carrier’s analysis shows ways in which modernity and, more precisely, capitalism have both altered and affirmed Mauss’s theory of gift-giving.

Mauss’s theory of gifts can best be summarized with his statement, “A gift that does nothing to enhance solidarity is a contradiction.”  In other words, a gift that does not enhance relationships cannot be a gift.  Exchanges can happen in this manner, but that exchange is not a gift.  Gifts do more than just transfer the value of the good from the owner to the recipient—they establish social roles as well.  And that is still true in capitalist society, even if gift-giving does not play as large of a role in the economy.  As Mauss said of the modern economy: “The unreciprocated gift still makes the person who accepted it inferior, particularly when it has been accepted with no thought of returning it.”  While these exchanges were much more designed and central to the system of exchange as a whole in the ancient societies that form Mauss’s focus, they still have a similar effect when they occur in capitalist societies.

Gifts do not occur in modern capitalist economies nearly as often.  Christmas, as mentioned above, is a large exception.  Just as the exchange of gifts in those ancient societies appeared irrational in an economic sense, Christmas may appear irrational.  Why give gifts to another person if one does not have to?  As Carrier pointed out, “The rules of Christmas are nowhere written, and yet the degree of conformity to them is remarkable.”  Moreover, at Christmas people are not especially concerned with receiving an equally valuable gift in return.  This, as Carrier explained, is a central idea in the difference between commodity and gift relations: “[People in gift relations] are relatively unconcerned with direct reciprocity, because their transactions are part of a durable relationship between people rather than activities that define or express equivalence between things.”  The same principles that made the system of gift exchange sustainable in the traditional economies that Mauss studied are at work in the modern design of Christmas.

These two styles of gift-giving are not identical twins, however.  The modern capitalist system has dampened the effect of gift-giving, and also the consequences of not participating appropriately in the exchange of gifts.  While in ancient economies that were structured around gift-giving, the whole society ensured that the system of exchange was followed appropriately, gift-giving at Christmas is only relevant to a core family group.  Even giving gifts to extended relatives has become less common, and when they are given it is becoming more common for the people to have “active concern that the gifts exchanged be of approximately equal value.”  Even within the core family group, if people do not adhere to the system of exchanging gifts, it is only within that core group that they can or will be punished.  Regardless of their transgressions in this exchange, they will be able to engage in the capitalist economy and have lost no purchasing power or selling ability there.

Within the core group that does exchange presents at Christmas without regard to reciprocity, though, there are many more similarities to the gift exchange systems that Mauss discusses.  In order to make the transition from the commodity relationship that is the norm in capitalism, Christmas gift-givers make a concerted effort to bestow meaningful and personal gifts.  It is important that the objects being given are transformed from commodities to gifts in order to show that they have a value above their commodity value.  In this way, they become more personal, and advance relationships and enhance solidarity – both necessary conditions for a gift.  It is for this reason that money cannot truly be a gift at Christmas, since as Carrier notes, it “appears to be indifferent to the social relationships with which it is implicated… [It] is kind of cold.  It’s usually spent on nothing in particular, and when it’s gone the memory’s gone.”  Appropriate Christmas gifts are both durable, to serve as a reminder of the relationship that they represent, and de-commoditized, by making their commodity value difficult to learn from the gift itself.

What do people do to achieve this de-commoditization, and why do they do it?  Carrier: “The objects people acquire to give in these relationships carry an inappropriate identity as commodities, and… people attempt to deal with that awkward identity through various beliefs and acts that deny the material significance of objects and that transform them into possessions.”   For this reason, price tags are removed, gifts are wrapped, and significant time is spent shopping for meaningful gifts.  The goal of all of these actions is to transform the object from a commodity with a specific and apparent value in the capitalist economy, which would make the gift more similar to monetary gift, to a gift that has a nebulous value that is determined by an evaluation of the thought and effort that the giver put into it.

A quick aside: some gifts that are non-durable are acceptable as gifts, and in fact are often used as gifts.  The most notable of these is food, of which home-baked items are considered especially nice when given as gifts.  While they are ephemeral, Carrier notes that they “have the personal identity that commodities do not,” because the link between the time and effort spent on the gift and the gift itself is evident to the recipient.  The same analysis can be applied to homemade gifts, in that the very act of them being made has transformed them into a gift; there is no need to go through the process of de-commoditizing them in order to transform them into gifts.

In ancient socities, there was no need to remove initial conceptions about the monetary cost of physical goods, since capitalism was an unknown system.  But people in these cultures still gave gifts that had less innate benefits.  Mauss writes that ancient cultures often exchanged as gifts “banquets, rituals, military services, women, children, dances, festivals, and fairs” and not “things economically useful.”  The reason was that these were most easily recognizable as gifts, because they both formed a lasting memory that signified the relationship and proved the lack of necessity, in an economic sense, of the gift.

The giving of gifts at Christmastime represents a larger theme of capitalism.  While capitalism has largely replaced the need for gift exchange and other non-monetary exchanges, the innate feelings and emotions that sustained this system persist.  As Mauss wrote: “The system in which individuals and groups exchange everything with one another… constitutes the most ancient system of economy and law that we can find or of which we can conceive… No longer are we talking in legal terms: we are speaking of men and groups of men, because it is they, it is society, it is the feelings of men, in their minds and in flesh and blood that at all times spring into action and that have acted everywhere.”  These same economically irrational thoughts continue to hold in limited areas of capitalist society today, such as in Carrier’s analysis of Christmas gift-giving.

While it is most easily identified at Christmas, this idea persists in other places, too.  To some extent, this feeling is present even in the most capitalistic aspects of society.  Mauss discussed its impact on a producer: “The producer who carriers on exchange feels once more—he has always felt it, but this time he does so acutely—that he is exchanging more than a product of hours of working time, but that he is giving something of himself—his time, his life.  Thus he wishes to be rewarded, even if only moderately, for this gift.”  The producer still does not consider his time and his effort and his sacrificing of other opportunities to be entirely economical, and he feels like he has given a gift by providing these services.  In this way the emotions and feelings that allowed gift exchange to work in ancient societies are still alive in today’s modern capitalist society, even if they have largely been hidden by capitalism.

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February 11, 2013

The Junk We Leave Behind

What You Miss When You’re Away

By James Barnabas

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Last Friday I went to a birthday celebration here in Romania. This being Eastern Europe there was beer in two and a half liter bottles, sweet white wine and coke bottles that had been emptied and refilled with the opaque homemade brandy of the country, tuica. There were six of us in one person’s cramped apartment, which her roommate had helpfully vacated for the duration of the party. That made the room two beds and a mini fridge in a room the size of a large bathroom, a room with lighting that made it look very much like a bathroom but for the clouds of cigarette smoke that settled down into the carpet and sheets and the beds. We drank tuica and I attempted to understand some rapid Romanian conversations until about four in the morning, at which point I took a cab home to my apartment. On arriving I staggered through the door and up the stairs to my bed and collapsed into it, holding my stomach and thinking that, of all the things I could want in the world in that moment, I would have chosen for my city in Eastern Europe to have a Dominos, and for it to be open at that hour. Despite enviable amount of cultural experience that I had been able to have that evening, the one thing that I wanted to cap off the night was a medium pepperoni pizza to devour by myself on my bed, half of which would be discarded and left to rest by my bedside and consumed in the morning.

It’s the very little things about home that needle you the most when you’re away from it, and sometimes the things that are not really that great by themselves. They are the ones that kind of catch you like brambles on cotton clothing- when you’re at home you never think about them being gone, so when they are it’s a new surprise.  Falling in love with a place is like falling in love with a person- before you fall in love the little and sometimes pretty objectionable parts seem useless or negative, but after the fact they seem like the most essential ones, the ones that you could never let go of. The McDonalds, the cheap beer, the boxed wine, the pizzas that come 45 minutes late and cold but you eat anyway and it tastes like the best thing ever because you are super drunk and among friends, these are the little items from America that you miss when you’re abroad. Of course you wish that you had potable water and trash collection and reliable electricity and those kind of mundane things that you take for granted in any American city, but most of all you want the junk.

Following is a partial list of my junk:

Colt 45, which you buy to get a buzz on before going out, most correctly while sitting out on the stairs in front of your apartment with cigarettes close by and three or four friends. You and each of your friends have one and after you finish it you feel ready to go to the bar and not have to buy more than two or three drinks and you already feel like talking to strangers. You can watch the sun set from the stairs and feel the air cool and one of you will have forgotten to buy cigarettes and smoke all of yours but you never mind because nothing can annoy you at that moment on the stairs. You’ll stumble down the sidewalk two by two to the bar and get weird looks from the passers by but will not notice or care.

American Spirit cigarettes are for bumming of off someone you may be trying to hit on outside a party or a show while leaning against either a brick wall or the arm rail of a staircase. You probably have your own pack but you’re doing it because this is a good half of the reason you’re a smoker, so that you can talk to other smokers and bitch together about the places you can’t smoke and the prices of cigarettes in major cities. You only buy them for yourself when you’re trying to impress someone but the yellow pack feels special, and not only because they are so ridiculously expensive.

Pad Thai is, for whatever reason, for brunches. You wake up too late and take too long getting ready to go to a real breakfast place and by early afternoon the only thing anyone can agree on is Thai food, so you go to whatever place is closest and look at the menu for a second before realizing that you are kidding yourself about ordering anything other than chicken pad thai. Your friends recommend a bunch of other things that they’ve heard are great but everyone orders the same thing, and they admit that they only wanted you to order the peanut chicken because they wanted to try it.

Hardee’s is for the Megabus route between Chicago and the Twin Cities. You stop at Wendy’s on the way back but it’s Hardee’s on the way there for your half hour lunch/cigarette break. You get way too much food because the one dollar ticket you bought makes it easy to rationalize spending way too much money on shitty truck stop food, and after you consume the huge pile of beef and onion rings and bread and all the other shit you stand and look out over the corn fields abutting the gas station and, if you’re lucky enough to be there on a late summer day and it is near sunset, you feel like Jack Kerouac and that the country is still new and strip malls have not been invented and truck drivers are the great Greek mariner heroes of the highway and we’ve just won a war. You feel, like Sal Paradise, that you are racing towards something important and great in Chicago and while you cannot wait to be there you want to look at the cornfields for a bit longer and are a little sad when people line up again to get back on the bus. You will not be able to sleep on the bus but will not care.

Lost Lake Ice is for discovering on a road trip with your brother in Northern Wisconsin. You buy a thirty rack because it is only ten dollars and at that price it seems like a crime not to and the graphic on the can is kind of cool. The clerk at the store jokes with you because you are his only customer that day and he can tell you’re from the cities. You stuff as many as you can into your backpack for the ferry ride from Bayfield to Madeline Island and both of you have four cans of it before going hiking even though it is only 3 in the afternoon. You take a cigarette break on a wooden platform overlooking a marsh that is some kind of state park and each drink one while you wonder what the first people to discover this island thought about it. You wonder where the “lost lake” is and listen to songs of the birds of the marsh, just buzzed enough to appreciate them.

Pizza flavored combos and Pall Malls are what you buy on the Peter Pan bus to New York City because you’re hungry and you know that you don’t want to buy cigarettes in the city. Combos seem like the most meal-like item at the gas station where the bus stops, maybe because they’re flavored like pizza and maybe just because you need an excuse to buy Combos and the bus trip to New York is as good as any you’re likely to get. You open the pack of Pall Malls outside the Port Authority and smoke one while watching the streams of people pass you by and try to make up your mind whether you love New York or hate it. You don’t know if it’s legal to be smoking there but you’ve been on a bus all day and your throat itches a little bit so you do. When you see a cop coming you put it out because you only have a hundred dollars on you for the weekend and can’t afford the fine.

So these are the things that I scan the shelves for unconsciously in the stores here or ask expats about getting or ask for people to send from home.  I do hold out a possibility that these items will not retain their significance when I return to the US, but I do know that my first meal back will be Colt 45 and pad thai, and from here I cannot see how that would fail because that is America for me.

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February 4, 2013

Locked Together

By Jared Crum

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I walk past the same three-story apartment building, underneath the same metal fire escape balconies, every weekday.  The building is flat fronted, covered in a dull yellow siding, and has a modest, dingy awning over the two short steps that lead to its front door.  I would guess it houses six units.  It is on 47th Avenue in Long Island City, Queens.

Long Island City is the last neighborhood in Queens before you hit the East River and then Manhattan.  LIC is partially industrial and full of low-rise warehouses, dust devils, grit, broken sidewalks, and loading bays.  I work there, and my office is next to a metal scrap yard.  Big scrapping machines that resemble the backhoes and cranes of construction sites work the yard.  It’s a field of twisted metal and mud, which is to say, a childhood fantasy play land for passersby and neighbors who don’t actually work there.

LIC is post-industrial, too, as evidenced by the yellow apartment building’s varied neighbors.  In the same block is a trendy knowledge-worker café.  A couple streets north is the even trendier PS-1, a branch of the Museum of Modern Art.  In the next block west is a fancy medium-rise black apartment building.  A couple blocks beyond that are high-rise condos marching ever upward and matching Manhattan prices thanks to their spectacular views of midtown and the UN.  Each month their shadows are cast a little longer over the neighborhood.

Liz Lemon and Tony Soprano are nearby, too.  “30 Rock,” “Smash,” “Person of Interest,” and “The Sopranos” are currently or were recently filmed in LIC.  They take advantage of the neighborhood’s mix of gritty urban warehouses alongside brownstones and parks.  Large TV production trucks and dressing room trailers, with their cables strung across streets, equipment bins occupying sidewalks, and notice-of-filming flyers tacked up on posts are frequent neighborhood sights.

Less frequently seen are people shouting at you from balconies.  A man did this to me as I walked in front of the apartment on 47th Avenue recently.  The sun had set and the temperature was below freezing.  As I left my office in the dark and cold, I burrowed my chin into my coat and stuffed my hands in my giant gloves and quickly made for the subway.  I passed by the scrap yard and over the crevices and valleys of the shattered sidewalk, passed an empty lot under construction, passed an air conditioning business and the black apartment building, passed the information economy café, passed a plastic design company, and finally passed beneath the fire escape balcony of the yellow apartment building.  A man cried out,

“Excuse me!  Hello!”

I immediately came to a stop and swung my head up.  I saw a tan, middle-aged man in a white shirt on the second-floor balcony.

“I’m locked in my apartment,” he explained.  He asked for my help.

I let him do all the talking for about 10 or 15 seconds.  I probably seemed stumped, though I wasn’t.  In fact, the possibilities seemed perfectly clear to me.  In an instant I saw myself getting yanked into his apartment building or his unit, frisked and robbed or worse, and never reappearing among the living.  On the other hand, I pictured myself freeing a dude trapped in his apartment.

“I’ll toss you the keys, and if you could come upstairs – it’s on the second floor – and open the door, that would do it,” he said.  He brandished the keys.  The keys assuaged some of my fears.  Who tosses a stranger their keys?  Only the honestly desperate.  Still, it could be a ruse, the keys a trap.  At this moment I pictured my friends telling me not to do it, not to go into a strange building to help a strange man with an unlikely story.  Locked inside his apartment?  A sucker would fall for that one right before getting mugged.  This is New York.  People are taken advantage of and lied to and tricked and robbed by common criminals all the time.

But this, indeed, is New York.  If people lived in constant, absolute suspicion of each other all the time, the city would collapse.  Trusting strangers with your life on a crowded subway platform or a madcap street corner or a dark corner of the park or in a club without visible exits is essential.  It makes the city run.

Therefore, I walked inside the apartment building on 47th Avenue, trusting that this man was probably genuinely in need, while taking no chances.  Finding the second entrance foyer door locked to those inside, I unlocked it, and propped it and the first door open.  Then I walked up the stairs quietly, announced myself at the unit, unlocked the door, and finally beheld the man in a regular fashion.  He thanked me.

“My name’s Steve,” he said, and stuck out his hand.  It totally enveloped mine as we shook.

I answered with my name.  He was a little stunned and amused at his predicament.  We exchanged wishes for a good evening, and then I retreated back down the stairs and back out on 47th Avenue, into safety once again.

I stepped into a city brimming and roiling with motion and flight, passing and dashing, rising and falling, a great urban mass heaving and shuddering with the accumulated stress of daily risks taken over and over again.  They are taken because the commuters and conductors of the city decide it’s the most efficient way to get done what needs doing.  They are taken, too, however, because of a shared moral trust.  It’s a trust that assumes that in the many daily and weekly situations of moral significance, from small matters like stepping courteously to the middle of the subway car or helping a man locked in his home, citizens of the city will probably do the right thing.  Many will not, but in ordinary times, most will.  It is, beneath the urban grit, a soft and optimistic view of other people, a view that underpins all progress ever made in this city and in the life humans share together.  It’s these small acts of kindness that make the city tick and make its moral life good.

Jared Crum is co-editor at Minor Wisdom Review.

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