Cultural Interpretations

"Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have."

- James Baldwin, "The Fire Next Time."

This passage stuck out to me out of the many great passages in this book due to its relevance throughout human history as the root of negative human actions. This passage states that human trouble starts when humans become lazy and do not want to take responsibility for the uncomfortable sensation of figuring out their own lives, resting instead on narrow minded ideologies that act both as a sort of cushion in the face of the chaos of life and as a machete that clears away anything in life that is unsettling. The passage implies that human troubles and evils result from laziness, fear of the unsettling and unknown, and a sort of denial of forces that reign supreme over humanity, and that a meaningful human life is to be had by taking initiative of ones own life, accepting the responsibility of self actualized freedom, and getting out of ones comfort zone.

The context James Baldwin was writing this was a postwar capitalist America, convinced of its invincibility and everlastingness. This was and still is an America that sacrificed humanity and meaning in life for comfort and stability. This is the America of distraction and illusion. In the book from which this excerpt was taken, Baldwin discusses white America as succumbing to self imprisonment in restrictive ideologies that distract from the harshness of reality, and brings up an interesting point: that blacks in America symbolize that which white America does not want to face, which is the reality of life as hardship and struggle.

Berenger Tan