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How to change attitude
By RUSSELL BAKER
_ I wish intellectuals and scientists would stop revising my mind for a few
years. They revised it so completely during the last 10 years that I can't
find my way around in all the new mental furniture. And still they won't stop.
I read in The New York Times the other day that feminist intellectuals want
me to revise my thinking about the Renaissance. They want me to stop thinking
of the Renaissance as a ``progressive'' era in Western civilization.
Apparently women were better off in the age of feudalism. When the Renaissance
came along women were burned as witches and pointed down the road to modern
housewifery.
I don't want to get into the question of whether being a housewife is as bad
as being burned for a witch. The point is that a lot of feminists who think
it's pretty bad blame the Renaissance for it and want me to stop thinking of
the Renaissance as progressive.
I guess I could learn to do this. I like to get along with feminists.
Ceasing to think of the Renaissance as a ``progressive'' era shouldn't be too
hard. I don't think about the Renaissance very often anyhow.
Until now, though, whenever I did think about the Renaissance, I thought
about it as an improvement on the age of feudalism, which is probably the same
thing as thinking it was progressive. I always thought of feudalism as a time
when a man had to go around wearing several hundred pounds of armor, whereas
when the Renaissance came along he could get by with an artist's smock and a
few paintbrushes.
That always seemed like progress to me. But of course it's a very masculine
view, limited to the wardrobe problem, and probably proves that I've been a
sexist all along.
But my complaint isn't against feminists. It's more extensive. It seems to
me that the second half of my life has been spent learning that every-thing
taught me during the first half was wrong.
Would you believe I was almost 35 years old before I realized that it was
Truman and not Stalin who started the cold war? I might still blame Stalin if
the history revisionists hadn't got into my mind 10 years ago and changed the
wallpaper on my skull.
I used to think that a nice glass of milk and a big plate of bacon and eggs
was good for me at breakfast. No kidding. I really thought that. Everybody
thought that when I was a kid.
Then the scientific revisionists broke into the mental library and cleared
out the nutrition shelf. They also revised my thinking about sunshine. ``Get
plenty of sunshine,'' the old-timers used to tell me. Then the revisionists
came along and peeled the scales from my eyes. ``Sunshine will kill you,
boy,'' they said, and drew the blinds.
For years and years I thought Abraham Lincoln was a great man. Possibly even
a saint. He freed the slaves. Then came the revision. I had to take
Lincoln's picture down from over the mantel in the front of the brain and stow
it in the attic, and learn to say, ``Of course you know Lincoln was a racist.''
So was Thomas Jefferson. He exploited one of his female slaves most
abominably with his sexual attentions, according to the latest revised
Jefferson history. Which made him a sexist too, I guess.
I had always thought of Jefferson as America's only authentic Renaissance
man. Now I have to adjust to the idea that I should have thought of him as the
only authentic feudal-age man if I didn't want to be wrongheaded.
Until Ronald Reagan came along and revised my thinking, I thought the sure
way to go broke was to reduce your income and then order $39 billion worth of
airplanes. Then Mr. Reagan tore down the old economic charts on the back wall
of my brain and hung up the Laffer Curve.
I could go on reciting the mistaken lessons of my youth that have been
unlearned in the nick of time. It seems like everybody is working overtime to
persuade me I've been an idiot all my life.
I don't want any revisers to think I'm not grateful. I'd just like them to
ease up and take a sabbatical while I try to live comfortably with all the new
mental furniture they loaded on me.
It takes a long time for a person to get comfortable with the fact that he's
been a boob most of his life. If they keep throwing new proof at me I could
end up resenting it. Worse yet, I sometimes wake in the night with this awful
fear that a new batch of revisionists is about to burst into my skull and
revise all the material just installed by last week's revisionists.
Suppose it turns out that sunshine really is good for you, and milk and bacon
and eggs make for eternal life, and Abraham Lincoln really was as good as they
make them. But I can't let that nightmare overtake me now. I've got my work
cut out right now remembering something about the Renaissance. What was it?
Ah yes, not progressive like us.
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