Those were the good days when a man had friends in distant clans. Your generations does not know that. You stay at home, afraid of your next-door neighbor. Even a man’s motherland is strange to him nowadays.
—Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart
On Wednesday I wrote about Chinua Achebe’s book Things Fall Apart, and its relevance to modern-day struggles between old and new — specifically, the recently renewed debate over evolution, which pits religious doctrine against scientific knowledge.
I should be clear about one thing: By humanizing deeply flawed men like Okonkwo, Achebe is not telling us that we should wax nostalgic about the old ways. It would be foolish to forget the cruelties of that past society. But it would be foolish, too, to forget why Okonkwo clings so desperately to his culture’s disappearing traditions — or, for that matter, why men and women of a similar mindset today persist in certain beliefs about the origins and history of life in spite of scientific evidence to the contrary.
When I used to cover religious issues as a reporter, I saw these reasons firsthand. The church is, above all, a community, and tradition is the bedrock of that community, the shared language, imagery, and philosophy that make communication, and communion, possible. It is not surprising that today’s most fervent defenders of the old doctrines — evangelical Christians in this country — have some of the most tightly knit communities of faith and the fastest-growing congregations. Especially in regions of the country (or world) that have yet to hear the good news of this new era of global markets, the good news of scripture adds real, undeniable value to people’s lives.
Perhaps the clash of cultures in Things Fall Apart could have turned out less tragically, and we may hope the same for the current battle over evolution. (There have been some recent attempts to reconcile faith with science — take, for example, the Dalai Lama’s recent book, The Universe in a Single Atom, which attempts a dialogue between Buddhism and modern science, especially physics and genetics.) That said, the lack of understanding on either side does not bode well. We see the terrible consequences of such ignorance in Achebe’s novel. The British overlords do not understand why the Igbo persist in their “primitive” customs, and their intransigence forces a confrontation that ends in death.
Particularly illuminating is the description of one zealous missionary, the Rev. James Smith, who insists there is no reason to compromise with or accommodate the heathens. “He saw the world as a battlefield in which the children of light were locked in mortal conflict with the sons of darkness,” Achebe writes. It is not hard to see a similar kind of combativeness on both sides in the recent debate over teaching evolution. On one side are those who disdain science; on the other are those who see the religiously devout as “primitives” of another sort. What lies between them is shared misunderstanding. When Okonkwo and his fellow villagers confront the missionary, one of the men offers an apt description of their predicament: “We say he is foolish because he does not know our ways, and perhaps he says we are foolish because we do not know his.”
Near the end of Things Fall Apart, Achebe gives us more clues of what the old ways mean to men like Okonkwo. Giving thanks before a feast at Okonkwo’s home, his uncle Uchendu prays to the ancestors for health and children. “We do not ask for wealth because he that has health and children will also have wealth. We do not pray to have more money but to have more kinsmen. We are better than animals because we have kinsmen. An animal rubs its itching flank against a tree, a man asks his kinsman to scratch him.”
With all our modern technology and sophistication, humanity still hungers for connection and kinship. The old ways die, the new ways take root, but what happens to the community? That is the tragedy of Achebe’s book, and the challenge we face now, on the precipice of another transformation.
—Victor Tan Chen
Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen
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