Letter from the editor
By Dan Mahoney
A handful of years ago, I was pretty sure the world was going to end. All the signs were there: bugs everywhere, strange dogs, smells in the air, a low hum from behind the refrigerator. We traveled out to California to visit our families. We made it to Santa Ana, CA, and were directed to an exquisite taco truck for dinner. We heard the truck had become popular so there was usually a line, but it was worth the wait. We went and joined the 30 young and older souls waiting for food. As we waited, we noticed cars parked on the road next to the truck selling other homemade items: bread, ice cream, mixed drinks, textiles... It was like an informal artisan food and craft fair on the darkened streets of Santa Ana, 8 p.m. on a Thursday. After we got our food, we sat on the ground enjoying our meal with all the other families spread out on the cool concrete, and I remember thinking in that instant that it was all going to be OK; that this human moment—facing all these other people—outweighed the abstract fear of world destruction no matter how many dogs crossed my path.
I feel the same way about this issue of the magazine, Navigating Change. There are fewer tacos here but there is that same feeling of people coming together. Coming together is key in a world where it has become easier and easier to fly apart. The digital aspect of culture makes us sometimes feel like we are everywhere all at once, engaging with folks from far-flung corners of the galaxy... Like everything matters so much all the time. But the cost of this is that we feel ultimately powerless to do anything about the problems we encounter in the digital domain, which can lead to powerlessness in general. As Jack Giaour says in his interview for Navigating Change, "I’m trying to reconcile the feeling of not wanting to engage with it anymore, but I also feel like I'm responsible to engage with it, if only to just witness it and acknowledge that it's happening."
Which brings up the idea of responsibility. Ever since reading (failing to read?) the work of Emmanuel Levinas, I have come to see responsibility in a very Levinasian light. Levinas says the face-to-face encounter with another human—the Other—is the foundational experience for ethical responsibility. Basically, we respond to the Other and are responsible for the Other; it is through this obligation, this responsibility to the Other, that we come to know ourselves. I love the intimacy here. Knowingness begins face-to-face, responding to someone else. If you look, there are lots of faces in this issue: new faces at the college, new trustees, old friends, and faces of those who have traveled to the other side, may they rest in peace. There are face-to-face encounters with fishing communities in Maine and on Rakiura, and a lyrical essay written by a man who faced one of the darkest days in our nation’s history.
The work here is all about what happens when we face each other: we make connections, we build things, and we tell stories, which again makes me think of Levinas and what he says in Altérité et transcendance: “The very relationship with the Other is the relationship with the future.” Onward we go.
Dan
