Predicament of Human Incompetence 3
fresh from open pastures, learning to work in harness. And
yet the whole American tradition has been an experiment
in community.
It is essential for well-meaning people generally to recog-
nize that all development occurs in concrete situations when
we meet people who confront us with a contrast or contra-
diction or challenge. We settle no important matters in
some ivory tower where nothing disturbing happens to any-
one. It is a vain thought that we can stay in seclusion and
formulate a neat plan which others, who live in the thick
of things, will put into effect for us.
The best-laid plans of mice and men, which so often go
astray, must be made and remade and made over again
where there is actual conflict of wills and opinions. Every
discovery of what can be done is made when something
happens to us to which we must make a response, not by
discussion alone, but by a decision that commits us to ac-
tion.
After such decisive action in the midst of our relation-
ships, the consequences are taken out of our hands and
transformed into a new situation which demands another
response. This dialogue of challenge and answer, meeting
and being met, is the way we live, as contrasted with the
ideal life which none of us live except in thought.
Rabelais has a story of a poor French peasant who had
been reduced to a single crust of bread and one small coin.
As he passed a certain rôtisserie, he sat down to eat his
crust in the appetizing smell of a roast cooking before the
fire. Thereupon the canny proprietor said a charge would be
made for the odor which so improved the taste of the bread.
The equally canny peasant, throwing his last coin upon the
concrete until it rang, replied that he would pay for the
smell of the meat with the sound of the coin. That is like
idealism segregated from living transactions.
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