That there is something wrong with the world is obvious. It does not take much time or brilliance to notice it. Once we get the feeling that we could imagine a better world, we are tempted to fix it or, if we cannot, to escape it. For both the world-fixers and the revolutionaries, I would recommend two books by the Strugatsky brothers.
In Hard to Be a God (Rus. Трудно быть богом) Arkady and Boris Strugatsky write about a program started by Earthlings to study cultures and societies on other planets and gently assisting them in their rise to more mature stages of development. The main character is Anton who is an undercover agent of Earth. His alias is Don Rumata. According to the operational guidelines, he is not to interfere with the local course history exceedingly. Yet, he is often tempted to do precisely this, contrary to the instructions. Especially, when he observes brilliant scientists being arrested, sent to banishment, and even beheaded by a mindless mob or a tyrannical ruler. In the end, he helplessly watches the local community be taken over by fanatical forces, which is exactly what he expected and tried vainly to prevent.
In chapter VIII of the book, we find a dialogue between Rumata and Doctor Budach, a famous scientist, always on the run from despotic lords or the fanatical horde. They talk about the world and how it could be helped to become a better place. At a certain moment Rumata asks Budach:
“Well, what if you had the chance to advise God? (…) What, in your opinion, should the Almighty do, in order for you to say, ‘Now the world is good and kind’?” (…)
“All right,” he said, “if you wish. I’d tell the Almighty: ‘Creator, I don’t know your plans. Maybe you never intended to make people kind and happy. Then start wishing it! It would be so easy to achieve. Give people plenty of bread, meat, and wine, give them clothing and shelter. Let hunger and need disappear, and with them, all that divides people would be gone too.’”1
“Is that it?” Rumata asked.
“You think that is not enough?”
The conversation continues with Budach suggesting other ways to improve the world and the human race. Yet, in the end, he admits: “Yes, I see, it’s not that simple.” In his last attempt, he suggests: “Make it so that people love work and knowledge more than anything so that work and knowledge are the only meanings of their existence!” To what Rumata replies: “I could do this (…) But should we deprive mankind of its history? Should we exchange one mankind for another? Would it not be the same thing as wiping mankind off the face of the planet and creating a new mankind in its place?” At this point Budach desperately, yet with resignation, whispers: “Then, Lord, wipe us off the face of the planet and create us anew in a more perfect form … Or, even better, leave us be and let us go our own way.”
In the next chapter Rumata meets Arata, a “professional rebel.” Once he even tried to establish the Free Republic. As Anton recalls, “this undertaking ended as a bloody drunken disgrace, because Arata had been young, didn’t know how to hate, and believed that freedom alone would be enough to turn a slave into a god.” So, in his last desperate try, Arata asks Rumata for help. He suspects that Rumata has access to means that could be used to fix the country and the community. Especially, after Rumata rescued him with help of a helicopter and modern weapons. He tries to convince Rumata to act or at least to provide some assistance for the people like him to get rid of the wicked Don Reba. When Anton refuses, Arata says: “You shouldn’t have come down from the sky (…) You inspire groundless hopes.” And that is when Rumata thinks the title words: “It’s hard to be a god.” Yes, he could have summoned all the accessible means to fight Don Reba and defeat him, yet he was not the main problem of the country. The problem was the people who had not become a society yet.
The Strugatsky brothers did not believe in any quick fix for the problems people encounter in life, neither on a big nor on small scale. But how often we believe that we could run the world in a much better way than God does? We try to advise God how to do it, how to speed things up, how to improve the world by a stroke of a brush. And if God does not seem to listen, we get angry at Him. If He can but He does not, then He must lack good intentions. So, perhaps He should better just leave us alone. Yet even a brief but honest discussion of the matter might help us realize that perhaps we are not smarter than God Himself. After all, we cannot always tell the good from the bad; trying to fix one element we break several others; attempting to turn the clock back, we force several people to be crucified again, as the band Aquarium sings about it in their song titled 25 к 10. Anybody who claims otherwise is a selfish fraud or a hubristic moron. Or both. It is hard to be a god. The best intentions divorced from understanding result in a rush towards changes that ends in a disaster. Perhaps, we need to come to terms with the world not being a perfect place, where some brokenness cannot be undone, where some childishness cannot be remedied, where some sprouting cannot be sped up.
Roadside Picnic (Rus. Пикник на обочине), published eight years after Hard to Be a God, is probably the most famous novel by the Strugatsky brothers. Aliens left debris on Earth. One theory says that it was like the title picnic with aliens taking a pit stop and humans watching them like animals watch people taking a break in the forest parking lot and later searching for any eatable leftovers. Scientists explore the place of landing, called Zones, but there are also so-called stalkers who try to salvage any artifacts, mostly for sale. In one of the Zones, there is an item that people believe magically fulfills the wish of a person who can find it. It is called the Golden Sphere and, of course, resembles the Golden Fish.
The main character of the novel is Redrick “Red” Schuhart. His daughter has a genetic defect caused by the influence of the Zone on Red. The girl at first was almost normal, yet her body was covered with hair, and with time passing by, she becomes less human and more animal-like to the point of losing the ability to speak. Red decides to enter the Zone one more time to get to the Golden Sphere and make a wish to make his daughter whole again. He is accompanied by another man, Arthur, who does not know that to get to the Golden Sphere, one of them will have to neutralize a so-called “meatgrinder.” Red does not tell him about this because he expects Arthur to die while encountering the meatgrinder and neutralizing it. It is not that he does not care about Arthur, but he does not see any other way out of his misery. And so, it happens. The sacrifice is made. Arthur atones for Red’s sins. To fix Red’s daughter’s condition, someone must die. There is no other way.
Red may finally say his wish. Yet he cannot. Arthur died shouting out naive and utopian wishes for a peaceful world and common happiness, proving to be another version of Prince Myshkin. Red’s original wish looks now to him like a selfish and unfitting one. In the end, he utters to the Sphere:
“I’m an animal, you can see that I’m an animal. I have no words, they haven’t taught me the words; I don’t know how to think, those bastards didn’t let me learn how to think. But if you really are—all-powerful, all-knowing, all-understanding—figure it out! Look into my soul, I know—everything you need is in there. It has to be. Because I’ve never sold my soul to anyone! It’s mine, it’s human! Figure out yourself what I want—because I know it can’t be bad! The hell with it all, I just can’t think of a thing other than those words of his—HAPPINESS, FREE, FOR EVERYONE, AND LET NO ONE BE FORGOTTEN!”2
Which is exactly what Arthur wished for.
It is another Dostoevsky-like moment in the novel. Is Red willing to sacrifice one innocent child to save the whole world? His child? We can have no doubts that Red loves his daughter. He also knows that her condition is caused by his past choices. And to fix the problem he sacrificed a naïve, yet innocent man. He tried to persuade himself that it was for the greater good, but now he has serious doubts whether he was right. He wants to atone for his failures but he just adds one to the other.
As Fredric Jameson in Archaeologies of the Future suggested, Red started exploring the Zone looking for survival, yet in the end, he is looking for salvation. Artifacts from the Zone provided decent income and illegal incursions into the Zone also granted a sense of self-worth. But there is a price attached which becomes obvious only after some time. And the price is not only the time he spent in prison away from his family but particularly the wellbeing of the daughter he loves, his only daughter. Standing in front of the Golden Sphere, Red claims that he never sold his soul, yet he is on the brink of doing exactly this. So, the question is: Can he save his daughter by selling his soul? And what profit would that be for him and her? Is it better for her to have a whole body or to have a noble father? For sure, it is best to have both. But what if that is not possible? What at first seemed like a good plan to fix what was broken, does not look like that anymore since it keeps breaking things.
When Red finally utters his wish, it is no longer a particular wish (the wellbeing of his daughter) but a universal one (the wellbeing of all humans). And then, all he can wish for is so general and abstract that it becomes almost meaningless. Has he become a humanitarian philanthropist? One could say, as naïve as Arthur. He wants everybody to be happy, without restrictions. Is this an abstract wish in the tradition of Rousseau, one that absolves from any specific personal responsibility for any particular people? Or perhaps it is a Machiavellian wish since in its generality it also includes Red and his daughter? Is Red trying to absolve himself from guilt or is he trying to outsmart the Sphere? Or maybe he wants to honor Arthur?
The Strugatsky brothers suggest that perhaps from time to time, we need to admit that some problems of the world have been caused by us: by our failures, negligence, selfishness, impatience, haughtiness. And of course, by our naivete. So, maybe, if we want the world to become a better place, we should start with improving ourselves. Before we can fix other people and the world in general, we must start with fixing ourselves, which we actually can do. In the end, it looks like this was what Red did when he decided to go with Arthur’s wish. The encounter with the Golden Sphere, which represents not only magical but also metaphysical forces to the point of not only granting wishes but also of searching the soul of a man, made Red realize that he was a part of the world he barely understood and that he was a part of the problem that afflicted the world, including his daughter. So, in the end, his universal wish does not look so much like a barren bromide meant to calm his conscience but more like a sign of his sprouting decorum. And with Red becoming a better man, the world also has become a better place. Not by much, but still.
Bogumil Jarmulak is pastor of Evangelical Reformed Church (CREC) in Poznan, Poland. His PhD is from Christian Theological Academy in Warsaw, Poland.