the long defeat
This weekend in D.C. — where I actually got to meet some of my fellow TASers in the flesh, which was awesome — I finished reading Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder’s portrait of the doctor and anthropologist Paul Farmer. I don’t suppose there’s a more astonishing person in the world than Farmer, and there can’t be many (any?) who have saved and improved as many lives. And he has spent much of his life among the most profoundly poor and miserable people in the world, especially in Haiti, where the organization he founded, Partners in Health, did its first work and where it still maintains its flagship project, the hospital called Zanmi Lasante.
Late in the book, when Kidder begins — and very skillfully too — to draw together the threads of his narrative and to sum up (as best he can) his understanding of Farmer, he notes Farmer’s fondness for a particular phrase: “the long defeat.” At one point Farmer says to Kidder,
“I have fought the long defeat and brought other people on to fight the long defeat, and I’m not going to stop because we keep losing. Now I actually think sometimes we may win. I don’t dislike victory. . . . You know, people from our background — like you, like most PIH-ers, like me — we’re used to being on a victory team, and actually what we’re really trying to do in PIH is to make common cause with the losers. Those are two very different things. We want to be on the winning team, but at the risk of turning our backs on the losers, no, it’s not worth it. So you fight the long defeat.”
In an interview Kidder gave earlier this year about the book, he commented on the phrase, and says that Farmer “probably picked [it] up from reading Camus.” But that’s not right: he got it from what we learn in Mountains Beyond Mountains is his favorite book: The Lord of the Rings. Galadriel says it: “Through the ages of the world we have fought the long defeat.” And Tolkien himself, in letters, adopted and endorsed the phrase: “I am a Christian, and indeed a Roman Catholic, so that I do not expect ‘history’ to be anything but a ‘long defeat’ — though it contains (and in a legend may contain more clearly and movingly) some samples or glimpses of final victory.”
It seems to me that this philosophy of history, if we may call it that, is the ideal one for anyone who has exceptionally difficult, frustrating, even agonizing, but nevertheless vitally important work to do. For such people, the expectation of victory can be a terrible thing — it can raise hopes in (relatively) good times only to shatter them when the inevitable downturn comes. Conversely, the one who fights the long defeat can be all the more thankful for victories, even small ones, precisely because (as St. Augustine said about ecstatic religious experiences) he or she does not expect them and is prepared to live without them.
Paul Farmer’s politics, in most senses of the term, are anything but conservative; but his devotion to the long defeat strikes me as a model of what a healthy conservatism ought to be, in every sphere of life. The failure to hold this sober, realistic, but curiously sustaining view of things has brought many well-formed and well-meaning plans to a dark end.
Paul Farmer and the people he has trained have seen children die, communities fail, exciting initiatives crumble in the dust; but they’re still at work. They’re not leaving the side of the poor. God bless them all.
UPDATE: Since writing this I’ve discovered that there’s a Wikipedia entry on the phrase the long defeat, which refers both to Tolkien and to Paul Farmer. Wikipedia is amazing sometimes.
MORE IMPORTANT UPDATE: Read Russell Arben Fox on the implications of Farmer’s work. It’s important.
His politics are, as you say, abominable, and when he spoke at the Princeton graduation last spring he was absolutely atrocious, spending most of his time taking shots at Bush, Conservatism, and the world in general. I was not impressed.
— KET · Oct 13, 02:59 AM · #
Well, there is Norman Borlaug (sp?), the Green Revolution crop scientist as cheerful competition for “saving the most lives — ever” title.
— Jeff · Oct 13, 12:32 PM · #
You know, I thought about Borlaug but I thought he was dead. He isn’t. He’s 94.
— Alan Jacobs · Oct 13, 01:10 PM · #
Two things immediately jump to mind (and great post by the way, Alan).
One, Robert D. Kaplan, and his warning that we must “cultivate a sense of the tragic.”
Two, the bookended “argument” of No Country for Old Men:
[. . .]
In the scene with Ellis, Sheriff Bell says, “I always figured when I got older, God would sorta come into my life somehow. And he didn’t.” Farmer’s frame of the long defeat is the same sentiment, I think.
— JA · Oct 13, 01:26 PM · #
Helping Haitians to live longer and therefore breed more is the furthest thing from conservatism. It’s moral insanity. The man is a monster.
— Will S · Oct 13, 02:29 PM · #
I wonder from KET’s bitterness how many of the beatitudes form the framework of KET’s life.
Knowing Alan to be a conscientious conservative Christian, what he says makes sense. Not knowing KET, what he or she says doesn’t. Though I imagine he or she heading home to Wall Street from the Temple, unjustified.
It’s lovely to see you, Alan, writing about Farmer. He seems as close to a grand human and humane ideal as I’m (and apparently you’re) aware of. Certainly Aragorn is a suitable fictional counterpart.
— felix culpa · Oct 13, 02:32 PM · #
Woof.
I know, DNFTT; but that shake-a-spear kid is a masterpiece of toxicity. A veritable walking snakepit.
God bless you, child.
— felix culpa · Oct 13, 02:40 PM · #
JA: I think you’re right to bring up McCarthy. I feel like a lot of the “pessimism” of his work is simply the effect of a belief that, over the long-term, and victory is going to be temporary and fleeting. I have friends who admire his prose but can’t read his work because they see it as too bleak and fatalistic — but I’d say the bleakness is just an intense skepticism that something “good” will be lasting.
Which is all to say, the advantage of this view of the world is that what little victories one lets oneself see become all the more grand. The background of Blood Meridian is so bloody that the moments of mere ordinariness and calm become almost serene, and have their own beauty.
— JL Wall · Oct 13, 03:09 PM · #
Bush has presided over the degradation of the conservative movement so I would expect more conservatives to be taking potshots at him. The notion of the long defeat is a noble one. At least Farmer is sacrificing his life for his ideals. That notion of sacrifice, as Tolkien pointed out, is decidely Christian. There are tens of thousands of American physicians and missionaries serving overseas. My exposure to them leads me to believe that they are very conservative. The political problem with conservatism in the US today is that it not idealistic. It is Rovian realpolitik. It is not compelling and it has lost its way. While I may not agree with Farmer, he walks his talk. Conservatives would be better served living their ideals, walking their talk and losing elections. Winning them has not looked that good.
— Peter · Oct 13, 03:17 PM · #
Great quotes from McCarthy, JA.
— Alan Jacobs · Oct 13, 11:42 PM · #
Thank you for this.
— Julana · Oct 14, 08:19 PM · #
I think it’s possible that Tolkien’s “Long Defeat” is also partly inspired by the Ragnarok of Norse mythology. I know C.S. Lewis found that part of Norse mythology inspiring (c.f. his poem in praise of the virtues he wishes were meant when modern people discuss returning to “paganism”).
— Michael Straight · Oct 16, 07:18 PM · #
That’s certainly true, Michael, and both Tolkien and Lewis comment on how striking a stance that is — to be, and to remain, on the side of the gods even when you know that they will be defeated, and everything beautiful that they built destroyed, by the giants.
— Alan Jacobs · Oct 16, 07:54 PM · #