Update #5.4 - The Historian

Next was the Indianapolis Public Library, because people who go to the library are people who are interested in being intellectually engaged, right? Wrong. We discovered very quickly that the public library was not a hang out for the city's thoughtful, but rather for the city's homeless or just generally bored. Books seemed to be a very secondary consideration to the draw of the library's many computer labs, all of which were full.

So Alan and I went scouring the isles, looking for somebody who didn't have headphones on head. After thirty minutes, things were looking bleak, for anyone who wasn't listening to music was actually engaged in serious study for school or some other such activity. Eventually we split up, hoping that we might have better luck engaging people solo, and indeed we did. He found a high school girl studying AP English in the library's new lobby, and I found a War Memorial worker with a keen interest in history and a good knowledge of the South.

"What are you reading?" I asked casually. He lifted up the book to show me the title, almost like he was trying to remember himself. It was a history of Tennessee.

"Ah! Tennessee! I was actually there just a couple of days ago in Chattanooga."

"Oh, I've been there a few times myself. I really enjoy Southern history and so I've been in the South quite a few times. I really like Chattanooga." About this time we introduced ourselves; his name was Andrew.

We were off to the races from there, as I told him that I myself was a Southern boy on a road trip to Chicago and had only stopped in Indianapolis for the day. "The South is an interesting place to study, as I'm sure you know, because it still retains alot of its historical identity where other areas of the United States have since lost that. I don't really know why that is; maybe it's because of heavy immigration into other areas or something, but it generally seems to be true."

"Why yes, I'm actually from the North East, so my family believes all of the stereotypes about the South and the Mid-West and I've tried to do alot to dispel those notions. I haven't convinced any of them to move out of this way yet, but maybe they have a better understanding after hearing some of these things from me." Ding! I had found my connection:

"Are you at all familiar with Christopher Hitchens?" He was. "Well my friend and I run an organization at Samford University called the Socratic Club, and we actually invited him down from Washington D.C. for a debate on the existence of God. You see, the Socratic Club is an openly Christian organization dedicated to engaging other worldviews on meaningful issues. It's kind of like Christianity with a 'we dare you' attitude, because the idea is that if Christianity is just an antiquated belief, it needs to be done away with, but we believe it can take it's stand in the marketplace intellectually, and we're willing for people to come and openly challenge that."

"Anyway, the point is that Hitchens said something just like what you did in the opening remarks of the debate. He said that the hardest thing he had to do when he got back to D.C. is convince his friends that there was a Socratic Club in Birmingham, Alabama at all! Stereotypes continue to abound, it seems." The hook was more than out there at this point, and the bite was modest.

"Yeah, Hitchens is one of those guys that both sides kind of hate and love at the same time; on the one hand, he used to be very liberal politically and is an atheist, which generally appeals to the Left, but on the other hand, he's come out as something of a War Hawk since 9-11, which generally appeals to the Right. I suppose that no one really knows what to do with him."

"There's some truth to that," I said. "I can really enjoy reading Hitchens' journalism in other areas besides religion, but that's primarily the part of his writing that interests me, and I disagree with him there quite profoundly" - another hook. The conversation continued, but he kept focusing on the political aspects of Hitchens' writing, so I tried a different tactic, since I just happened to be carrying around some of Professor Lennox's talks on "Hope and Politics" that day; I could certainly discuss politics, though it wasn't really my forte.

"Well, I don't know where you stand politically, and you needn't worry about offending me since I'm not very political, but what's your opinion of Obama?"

"Well, I don't really like him," Andrew said, "but I don't keep up with politics quite the way that I used to. In graduate school, I was very political, but politics is so divisive that there were times where I would get in arguments with friends where it would nearly destroy the friendship. Usually I was able to say, 'hey, I don't want this to destroy our friendship,' and they would agree and we would go on being friends, but not all times. That's when I began getting more interested in history; it's safer and just about as interesting."

"I completely agree with you there," I said. "I'm a Classics major, so I know something about ancient history, and people are far less combative over Rome's ancient history," I laughed.

"Yeah, and if you can use history to support your political opinions, people are alot more willing to swallow them and not make a huge fight out of it."

I tried steering the conversation back into modern politics to see how desperate he thought times were politically, but I couldn't make it stick. About now, Alan showed up after his conversation and so the conversation turned lighter again. It was probably time for us to leave. Before we left, though, I had one last card:

"Here, before we go I want to go ahead and give you this DVD. You might be interested in it given our discussion about Christopher Hitchens earlier; this is the debate he had at Samford this last year, and I think it's a good laying out of the issues on both sides. Obviously, I believe the Christian argument, but it lays both out so that intelligent people like yourself can make the decision for themselves." He thanked me for it, said he would look at it, and then we all three walked out together while he told us about the city.

He walked us over to the War Memorial where we worked, let us inside the lobby area to look around even though the memorial was closed for the day (spiffy), and went on his way. As one of our longest conversations to date, I hope it was a productive one. It certainly was nice to finally speak with someone of Andrew's demographic - well-educated, white, male - the sorts of people we began the trip expecting to see the most of and have actually spent the least amount of time with. "It will be harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle." This passage is beginning to make more and more sense, for the well-off of American society, and even those who have the potential of being well-off, simply don't seem interested in spiritual questions. They remind me of Jack from the movie Family Man: "I have all I need," each businessman who passes us by seems to say silently.

Andrew was different in this respect, and that was nice. In a day where we saw many "potentials" laid, Andrew stands out as one of the biggest "potentials."

--Michael Taunton