I have not read Mr. Vollmann's work in its entirety, but I have read excerpts and other critical observations of his work... not that that makes me an expert..hardly. But, based on this article, I have to say, Mr. Vollmann could use a good stiff dose of Darwin.

If we look around at our fellow humans (too damned many of us on this poor planet, btw, and that's part of the problem, although hardly all), it is abundantly clear that we are selected by evolution to dominate our immediate environment, and beyond that, to dominate our fellow humans, and exploit them whenever we can, reciprocal altruism notwithstanding.

In short, poor people, fucked-up people, exploited people, are just part of the natural order of things. Until human beings are willing to try to buck their own evolutionary imperatives, that's how it'll be.

I fail to understand Vollmann's fascination. This is all simply evolutionary theory made flesh. Feeling guilty about evolutionary programming is like expecting a robot to feel love. Makes no sense at all.

I can feel guilty about my personal acts of selfishness and heedlessness, but to feel guilty about the state-of-man? That's a pointless act.

Having read Vollmann in the past, I read this review with relish and was not disappointed.

What struck me most:

Vollmann writes of himself having a "positive fetish about equality" but is described by the reviewer as "make[ing] quite a show of refusing to ‘come out against’ the gender apartheid of Taliban-ruled Afghanistan because some charismatic old tribal patriarch once explained to him that Muslim men show how much they 'cherish' and 'respect' their women by keeping them locked up safe at home."

That is the hypocrisy of multiculturalism laid bare: the failure to hold certain cultural or religious traditions to the standard of critical assessment applied to other groups. Particularly in Europe that is the cancer eating away at the intellectual and political underpinnings of society (and a reason I left).

This is seen most pointedly in persons who savage Christianity both on theological and political levels and yet make endless apologetics for Islam as misunderstood, oppressed by ‘racism’, manipulated by external agents (e.g. Israel, George Bush, Wahabbis), due some innate respect (because it has lots of followers apparently?), etc. It is a trans-Atlantic phenomenon and disturbs me because it comes from the minds of otherwise educated, intelligent people.

All this occurs especially it seems when influenced by personal relationships (‘well, I have friends from Lebannon…’) or a more general, romanticized and/or politicized notions of the other (a.k.a. ‘any enemy of Western hegemony and crass materialism must be good, right?’). Vollmann succumbs to the former and it was refreshing to see Laura Miller call him out on it in the pages of Salon no less. Now if Salon only addressed the later issue more for the sake of liberalism's future.

***

But let me just get this straight, Vollmann has a young daughter and yet globe-trots from Thailand to Nairobi to Russia while often pursuing paid sex? The perversity of that combination alone probably equals anything written in his book.

Dear had_enough,

Where does Darwin discuss the inevitability of human misery? You seem to be talking about Social Darwinism, which is a quite different set of ideas.

There is indeed some degree of suffering that we cannot do anything about: our bodies decay, we all die, we all lose those we love. This is the human condition. But there is much suffering in the world that is demonstrably unneccesary. There is food enough for all to eat, yet many go hungry; ditto for basic shelter. To pretend that rampant poverty is representative of the natural order, and not the result of specific human factors (colonialism, political oppression, economic exploitation), is the height of self-deception. Though this brand of cynicism is currently very fashionable-- a reaction of ennui to resurgent progressivism-- it is intellectually shallow and morally irresponsible.

It's not merely about "feeling guilty", for that would be pointless indeed. The recognition of needless suffering is only the first step. Systematic social change is the goal.

Vollmann's earnest guilt resonates with me, and I respect him for pursuing it to the end. And to the end he does, which is to say without any kind of satisfying resolution at all.

I live in an upper middle class (read: white) suburb of Cleveland, which is btw the poorest big city in the nation these days, and I travel thrice weekly toward town to substitute teach poor kids. I truly love them, but I don't get their parents at all. They are nothing like the parents I know--my friends, my siblings, my colleagues, the parents at my kids' schools. It's just a different culture. Sometimes I feel like "Bill Clinton" in that scene from PRIMARY COLORS where he sits comfortably at an inner city bar and chats with the locals. I say this because I get along famously with everyone I meet at the school; we laugh and share nice moments about their kids. But when I told my friend once that those kindergarteners watch movies that I don't let my 16-year-old see, she wondered why that didn't depress me. It stopped me short b/c I saw a truth in her innocent question: I would indeed have been depressed had I discovered the same to be true of our own suburb's 5-year-olds, but it was not unexpected in the population I teach. "The soft bigotry of low expectations" came to mind.

Sigh.

I liked this:

"I can best conceive of poverty as a series of perceptual categories." Those categories include: invisibility, deformity, unwantedness, dependence, "accident-prone-ness," pain, numbness, estrangement..."

Makes me think of mental illness, mostly.

Which brings to mind my other major experience with the poor, one much closer to home: a couple we're friends with. They're both Ph.D.'s but have worked temp jobs all their lives. They are riddled with mental illnesses (depression, OCD, autism in their kids); their tiny home is filthy; and the chips they carry on their shoulders are more like boulders. They are firmly embedded below the poverty level and they make financial decisions that drive me crazy. But they're smart and cynical and politically savvy, and a conversation with their screwed-up kids is more interesting and stimulating than most adult conversations I'm involved in.

No answers here. But I'm smart enough to know that the work I have done in my life is not distinct enough from that of most poor people to warrant the vast difference in lifestyle.

PS: I found the part about Vollmann's refusal to condemn sexism by fundamentalist Muslims weird and disappointing.