Inspiration from Montaigne in Turbulent Times

We live in turbulent times. As David Brooks recently wrote, “I had forgotten how exhausting it is to live in Donald Trump’s world.” These days the news is a daily onslaught, and it’s hard to know how to respond.

But amidst the tumult, I’ve found a few comforts, and among them is reading history and philosophy. By turning to the distant past, I’m reminded that others have weathered storms worse than ours. The world always continued afterwards, sometimes even better than before.

One of my inspirations has been a book by Sarah Bakewell about Michel de Montaigne, a French nobleman from the late 1500s. Montaigne famously pioneered the essay as a literary form, coining the term “essay” to describe what he was writing. (The word comes from the French essayer and means “a trial” or “an attempt.”) In his lengthy collection of musings, which he simply entitled Essays, Montaigne wrote about life in general and his own life specifically. He was like the first-ever blogger! His writings were rambling and introspective, covering hefty topics like war and religion and trivialities like thumbs and napping.

Montaigne was writing in times worse than ours. Much worse—the Reformation was in full swing, and in the latter half of the sixteenth century, a series of brutal civil wars broke out between French Catholics and Protestants. Mobs killed civilians, often in horrific ways, including burning, torture, and burying people alive. Women and children were not spared. Noblemen weren’t either, and Montaigne, a practicing Catholic, knew people who were killed. He had to make difficult decisions about how to protect his own life and estate, and the lives of all those who depended on him.

And yet, despite all that, an easygoing tranquility shines through in his writing and makes it a timeless pleasure to read. Montaigne admired the ancient Stoics and strove to emulate them. He believed in moderation, balance, and human connection.

His emotional intelligence is exemplified in the way he decided to protect his estate. Many neighboring estates hired guards, trying to preempt the bands of marauders that sometimes invaded. But Montaigne chose a different approach, deciding to keep his doors open—even to people he thought might be inspecting his grounds for a possible attack. The open-door policy was a gamble, but it was born of experience. Montaigne had met groups of thieves on the road at times, and he had been accosted and threatened. He had discovered that if he connected with them as fellow humans, they were much less likely to harm him. 

This phenomenon fascinated him. In his essays, he devoted many pages to speculations about how best to survive an attack—whether to surrender and cower or show dignity and a fighting spirit. He concluded that often, the dignity route was the way to go. It showed the attacker you were a person like them.

Sure enough, throughout the years of civil war, Montaigne’s estate was spared from attack. His open-door, relationship-building policy seemed to have paid off.

As the wars flared up, simmered down, and flared up again, many people in Montaigne’s France believed the end was nigh. By “the end,” I mean the absolute end—religious extremists believed the Apocalypse was imminent. Montaigne did not subscribe to this belief at all. Although he was Catholic, his voluminous writings contain very little about his own spiritual beliefs. He seems to have been far more interested in this world than the next one.

As a nobleman, he was involved in politics and was for several years the mayor of Bordeaux. It was a position he didn’t seek, and one he only accepted reluctantly. He was happiest living on his estate, drinking his wine, and writing his essays. But in politics, he was temperate and diplomatic, and that was probably why he was essentially drafted to be mayor. 

He belonged to a class of people the religious extremists derisively called politiques. Hatred of politiques was just about the only thing the various extremists agreed about. Politiques believed the kingdom’s problems were fundamentally political, not related to the End Times. They thus thought the solutions should be political, not religious.

Describing the politiques, Bakewell’s book about Montaigne has a passage I’ve been reflecting on:

They…promoted the Stoic sense of continuity: the belief that the world would probably continue to cycle through episodes of decay and rejuvenation, rather than accelerating into a one-directional rush toward the End. While the religious parties imagined the armies of Armageddon assembling in the sky, politiques suspected that sooner or later everything would calm down and people would come back to their senses. In millenarian times, they were the only people…to shift their perspective and think ahead to a time when the “troubles” would have become history—and to plan exactly how to build this future world.

This passage gives me comfort and hope.

It’s easy to see parallels between Montaigne’s day and ours. Today’s American society feels deeply divided and sometimes violent, though thankfully not nearly as violent as sixteenth-century France. There is an apocalyptic undertone in many present-day people’s thinking. Even among secular people, our collective imagination is filled with dark images of nuclear annihilation and the slow-moving global disaster of climate change, which often erupts into imminent disasters like fires and floods. Although we’re not in a civil war, extremists on both sides seem increasingly willing to scrap norms and democratic values. At times they even tolerate violence when it comes from their own camp.

So I love the idea of Montaigne and other politiques looking toward the future, past the tumult around them. I love the reminder that although the end may feel near, our country and world will most likely endure, though possibly different from before. We need to keep going, keep working to shape what’s ahead.

I think despair comes partly from thinking, wrongly, that our own era of history is uniquely important. For Americans this feeling is doubly true. Like people of all eras, we think we are somehow exempt from history, as if it ends with us; and we also feel that our country is extra-special and unique. Our present despair is thus linked to a subtle form of American exceptionalism.

But this Trump administration shows that in certain fundamental ways, we are no different from other nations. We, too, might succumb to autocracy. Our once-mighty nation might slide into decay like others before it. Oceans rise, empires fall. We are not as special as we thought, although our demise would be quite consequential.

This thought is strangely comforting to me too. We are discovering ourselves to be part of the great, cyclical sweep of history. It has no end point. History marches on, and it’s always up to citizens of the present to shape the future. That is no different now.

Perhaps the world really will end this time. Perhaps nuclear war or climate change or some giant asteroid will do us in. Perhaps our country as we know it will end, descending into totalitarianism from which there is no escape. But there’s still a very good chance none of that will happen, at least not yet. And it’s best to imagine that it won’t—and plan accordingly.

There are many ways to help build our future country and world. For many people, the contribution may simply be living a good and caring life. I believe that is often enough, and it’s all many people can do. Those who are working and raising children, or who are caring for loved ones or their own frail health, often have their hands quite full. But being a good person in the world is a contribution. Society is woven out of all of us and our daily interactions. Being part of the good fabric of humanity makes everything stronger, woven from caring and compassionate threads. It will help shape the country and world we want to see.

Others feel compelled to take to the streets, protesting and making their voices heard for causes they care about. That contribution, too, is important, a vital part of participating in democracy. 

Then there are those who do service through their jobs. The public servants who show up, despite being vilified, and work for the greater good. The helpers and first responders and educators who do hard work every day. The many others who keep society running, through food service and construction and myriad other unseen critical jobs.

There is also the good work of conversations across difference. By now, the civility movement has galloped on ahead of me, and there are many inspiring organizations and people working for a better public discourse. Bravo!

All of this will help.

I’m hoping my blog can once again become one of my own contributions. I have many things to say, although I can’t say them all at once—I will chip away at them in small pieces. Over time, I hope to form a clearer picture of my worldview in this new Trump era, for myself as much as for anyone else.

My views are complex, but let me state a couple overarching themes. First, although I am greatly distressed by the second Trump administration, I do not think all is lost. And second, I abhor black-and-white, “us vs. them” thinking about it—I reject many of the narratives I’ve been hearing, especially narratives coming from either extreme. Like Montaigne, my instinct is toward moderation. That is true even now, and perhaps especially now.

I’ll say more over time. Till then, be well, and thanks for reading.