Tolstoy & History

It is, I must say, pretty strange to have a class on computers where you end up talking about the Quakers and Tolstoy. Dialogue will do that to you.

Bohm's dialogue seems to say that all of us together are more that the mere aggregate of indiviiduals. There is some kind of community experience in dialogue that can transcend mere personal experience and lead to a new way to see the world. After some reflection I could only think of Pierre.

Pierre, if you remember, is this superfluous individual who finds himself in the middle of the War and Peace and by the end of it understands something important that he didn't before. What he gets is that all of us are part of history despite ourselves. The people who think they are in charge really aren't. History is the actions of all of us, and each of us is preoccupied by our own problems and concerns and act on them in a big, random mess that only looks like it is part of some human plan. Pierre manages to find himself at the heart of the decisive Battle of Borodino, at the decisive point and yet all he experiences is chaos because that is really what is going on. While Napoleon thinks he is in charge the real decisions are out of his control. He is more in the dark than Pierre because Pierre is actually understanding the experience as it really is. Napoleon is a deluded fool, who while unleashing great violence and destruction only believes he has a plan of action and command over his men. Pierre, lost and stripped of his social status, is the wiser man.

At that battle the various officers scoff at the old Russian general Kutuzov who, rather than plan elaborate strategy instead worries about the spirit of his soldiers. He falls in prostration before the icon of the Holy Mother of God to the embarrasment of the sophisticates because he has faith in something outside of his own cleverness; he trusts the peasants, not the plans. The only thing that is real is the very human experience of the individual, which is both bigger than and subsumed in the great current of history. It is the decisions and character of many people who will make history, not those remembered by the historians. In the end Pierre understands this. He is no longer a superfluous "gentleman" but another traveller on the road away from Moscow.

War and Peace might just be the greatest book ever written, but Tolstoy's view of history is, in any case, exceptional. It's alot like dialogue. The air isn't dirty, the water polluted or a war being fought because of some damn fool plan. It's because of decisions we make fragmentally, often unrelated, based on our own poor understandings and emotions. Pierre is at least honest to admit he is lost; that he doesn't have a clue. He starts to trust in others and admire those who enjoy their scanty dinner, rub their hands when they are cold and express themselves simply and openly. Pierre and the old General Kutuzov are the towering heros of the book, not Napoleon, the Tsar or the other clever fellows who think they know everything. They are the heroes because they are humbled by and open to experience.

Did Bohm read Tolstoy? I'm sure he did. What I find interesting for us is that Tolstoy's theory of history is a refutation of most of our objections to dialogue. I think that they might just have something to say to each other about what is wrong in the world and how to solve it.