“You’d think that people would’ve had enough of silly love songs
I look around me and I see it isn’t so
Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs
And what’s wrong with that?”
–“Silly Love Songs,” Linda and Paul McCartney–
In his 2002 book The Culture of Make Believe, Derrick Jensen asks a lot of questions about hate; about how we distinguish between hate crimes (or hate groups) as compared to the sometimes tragic results of “civilization.” Jensen provides a long series of examples, but when we look around, examples aren’t hard to find. For good reason, we call a crime a hate crime if it is motivated by – according to the FBI web site at the time I write this – race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity. Why, then, do we accept systemic gender discrimination, such as a private healthcare system that not only heals women at lower rates than men, but sometimes inflicts further pain and suffering? Why do we accept systemic racial discrimination, such as a national law enforcement and judicial system that incarcerates, and kills, Black and Hispanic Americans at significantly higher rates than white Americans? And what about corporate pollution that increases rates of cancer throughout the world? In the final analysis, don’t apathy, economics, and hatred all produce the same results? Jensen asks, “What is the precise relationship between our economic system and hate?”
I’ve entered the final third of my year-long re-read of Victor Hugo‘s 1862 novel Les Miserables. (See “Uncertain Grace,” “Shaped by Time and Trouble,” and “We Live in Times of Terrible Confusion” for my previous updates.) Throughout the novel, Hugo called out the France that he loved by exploring variations of the same questions Jensen asked. Are les miserables, the wretched, really bad people, or are they components of a harsh society that dares call itself civilized? Jean Valjean is a criminal because he stole bread, but we accept the economic system that imposed starvation on his relatives. Fantine is driven to prostitution and illness as a single mother, but we accept a culture that judges her and not Cosette’s father, the wayward Tholomyès, who goes on to a prosperous career. And in the mud-filled cellar where convicts are chained at the neck while they await the galley, Hugo saw the same hatred that Derrick Jensen saw.
“Hold on,” you might say, “I didn’t accept those circumstances. I care about people.” Are you sure about that? Look around. We all accept those circumstances every day. Throughout his novel, Hugo presents ethical dilemmas that alter our perceptions of who exactly constitutes the wretched, how they became that way, and how the rest of us should respond: Marius and his grandfather divided by politics while Marius lives in voluntary poverty; Eponine, the Thenardier daughter who is lawless because she was raised by thieves; the abandoned Thenardier boys who, for a brief time, are better off with their false mother than their real one. For that matter, what are we to make of the Thenardiers, who are equally among the wretched yet express no desire for redemption. The situation then, as it does today, seemed hopeless. There’s little we, as individuals, can do in the shadow of a soulless machine.
As Les Miserables approaches the beginning of the end, Hugo clarifies a response that was foreshadowed in the very first chapter, with the introduction of the saintly Bishop Myriel. Myriel loves his fellow humans unconditionally and allows Jean Valjean to escape the darkness in his soul. Valjean love Cosette unconditionally and saves her from a tortured life with the Thenardiers, redeeming his own existence in the process. Gavroche gives selflessly to the two homeless boys who are his brothers, both literally and metaphorically. The Friends of the ABC love France such that they seem prepared to risk their lives to wrest it from the monarchy. And of course, we see the love that, in a way, the entire story has been building toward: Marius and Cosette meet and declare their love for each other. The couples’ long “courtship” via hopeful glances in the Luxembourg Garden begins to weave together the novel’s many threads. It seems love may be the answer to every question the novel asks.
It seems laughably simplistic, yet it’s exactly the guidance offered in Christians’ own text which they claim to accept as the literal truth. We could also say that love equals charity, as 1 John 4:8 has been alternately translated as “God is love” or “God is charity.” And if our greed-obsessed society has cast negative connotations on “charity,” try any word that can reasonably pass as the opposite of hate: kindness, compassion, empathy. As an atheist, Hugo’s Christian symbology is the aspect of Les Miserables I have the most difficulty connecting with, yet I fully endorse the premise of charity toward our fellow humans. We might look at the troublesome Thenardiers as the deal-breaking example: Valjean extends them kindness and they try to rob him. But the swindling couple wasn’t born that way. What if they had been raised with such selfless love? Digging even deeper, how many of us would have the fortitude to follow Myriel’s example? Given the choice of redeeming some of the wretched, or losing them all, which path will we take? Like the sharp double edge of a free society – freedom is well and good until it’s exploited by people we don’t like – love and charity given universally will certainly not be universally returned.
We still have far to go on this journey. Will the love between Cosette and Marius endure the traumas of the world beyond the garden? Will Valjean’s fear of abandonment overwhelm his charitable nature? And is love really all we need? Victor Hugo will give us his answers one chapter at a time.
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