“The generation to which I belong was born into a world devoid of certainty for anyone possessed of both an intellect and a heart. The destructive work of previous generations meant that the world into which we were born had no security to offer us as regards religion, no anchor as regards morality, no stability as regards politics. We were born into a state of anguish, both metaphysical and moral, and of political disquiet.”
The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa
The above passage was written by one of Portugal's most famous writers in about 1917. The book itself was written over the course of 22 years from 1913 -1935. It was found in a trunk after Pessoa’s death but wasn’t published in the original Portuguese until 1982. The complete English translation from which this is taken was published in 2017. The sentiment is more than a century old, yet feels eternally present. Pessoa’s book is a great read. It is neither short nor easy, and it is well worth taking time with. I want to focus on one phrase from one paragraph above - the idea of a sense of political disquiet that a lot of us are feeling.
By political disquiet I mean unsettleness. It isn’t noise - violence or riots, though both of those happen. It isn’t quite distress, though our politics can feel distressing. It’s more the uneasy calm before a storm, a creaking floor in an unfamiliar house, or dusk in an unfamiliar neighborhood. It’s a sense that the familiar moment could suddenly shift for the worse - or not - but it’s unclear why or how. Disquiet is a shadow cast by a ghost.
A question we face is what to do with our political disquiet. I use “with” disquiet rather than “in” disquiet because disquiet isn’t a place, it’s a feeling. Being in disquiet implies it is a room in which we’re trapped, or a time we have to live through. Being with disquiet implies it is something we can study, learn from, and do something both with and about.
Learning from disquiet can help reveal biases we didn’t realize we have, or identify assumptions we didn’t realize we make. It could be that the disquiet is because our familiar status quo is being disrupted. Spending time with disquiet rather than trying to escape it, allows us to consider whether or not part of the status quo may be worth moving on from, and which parts we may want to keep. Understanding our disquiet can help rid ourselves of baseless biases and lead us to rejecting unfounded assumptions.
For example, on the surface a sense of disquiet when walking through an unfamiliar neighborhood makes sense. There is an evolutionary logic to it. Those who left their caves to boldly (and blindly) go where no one had gone before sometimes got eaten by saber toothed tigers. But on the other hand, sometimes they found new sources of fresh water or food. Understanding why the neighborhood makes us feel a sense of disquiet can help us understand if it’s driven by assumptions we have about people who live in places like this, or if it’s driven by physical signs of danger. Hearing an unfamiliar language is probably not a reason to feel uneasy (unless it's being shouted at you by someone waving a stick). But lots of bars on windows and abandoned properties might be good signs to be cautious. If everyone accepted disquiet we might have never left the caves. If everyone accepts the disquiet of unfamiliar neighborhoods our communities will remain fragmented and our worlds will remain small.
Most of us like to feel secure in our ideas and our world. We work to avoid, or at least manage, uncertainty. We want that uneasy feeling in our stomach to go away. If we are in disquiet, we often want to get out of it as fast as we can. But understanding disquiet takes time. Pausing in disquiet, considering its sources and impacts, sorting through what makes sense and what a different calm might feel like, isn’t something you schedule for your seven minute walk from the library to Bullfrog Bagels.
When you feel disquiet, sit with it. Don’t try to escape it, wait it out, or solve it. Avoid the urge to reach for a political slogan, or to put the ideas that make you uneasy into a familiar category. It is easy to go from disquiet to certainty by saying “anyone possessed of both an intellect and a heart knows….” That might be prudent, you might be avoiding a hungry saber tooth tiger. But it might not be, you might be missing a new source of clean food and water.
When you feel a sense of disquiet ask yourself why the situation is unsettling. Precisely what about this neighborhood makes you uneasy? Why does that claim or policy position set you on a level of alert? Is it the person saying it? Their political party or the source of the information? What makes this squeak, in this floorboard, troubling? Not the house, or the owl that won’t shut up, or the cobweb you just walked into, but what about this squeak, in this step, in this moment, causes the disquiet? Be in it. Learn from it. Try to understand why you are responding the way you are. Then decide - don’t react, decide - to run from a clearly haunted house in which only bad things can happen, or to make a note to fix the floor and call someone about that damn owl.
Peter Loge
Director, School of Media and Public Affairs