The Individual Conscience

I finally finished Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee's follow-up to one of the greatest books ever written To Kill a Mockingbird. I got it the day it came out in Alabama last July and left it there to read when I came home. I finally took it back with me to LA and picked it up again and finished a few days ago.

It's no Mockingbird. But we knew that before we opened the book. Flashbacks, some filler, switches between first and third person, dialogue immediately followed by a change in location in the next paragraph... You have to follow Jean Louise (Scout) Finch's stream of thought carefully. And we know all about the Harper Lee conspiracy theories.

But it has traces of beautiful passages. Conversations that happen between Jean Louise, Atticus, and her family that are as thought-provoking now, as they were in 1960 when TKAM came out. The main theme is disillusionment and coming into your own conscience (not a collective one) about the world. At first glance, people would be disappointed in this book, but there are things to consider here for our time.

One of these beautiful passages was Jean Louise in her head at a Southern dinner party with family, neighbors, and a few racist folk mouthing off. They want to know how New York is, which is where she lives now, and she thinks in her head:

"New York. New York? I'll tell you how New York is. New York has all the answers. People go to the YMHA, the English-Speaking Union, Carnegie Hall, the New School for Social Research, and find the answers. The city lives by slogans, isms, and fast sure answers. New York is saying to me right now: you, Jean Louise Finch, are not reacting according to our doctrines regarding your kind, therefore you do not exist. The best minds in the country have told us who you are. You can't escape it, and we don't blame you for it, but we do ask you to conduct yourself within the rules that those who know have laid down for your behavior, and don't try to be anything else.

She answered: please believe me, what has happened in my family is not what you think. I can only say this- that everything I learned about human decency I learned here. I learned nothing from you except how to be suspicious. I didn't know what hate was until I lived among you and saw you hating every day. They even had to pass laws to keep you from hating. I despise your quick answers, your slogans in the subways, and most of all I despise your lack of good manners: you'll never have 'em as long as you exist."

This. A wonderful example of the culture war that is happening in our heads by anybody, em, that moves from a sleepy town to the big city.

Who hasn't attacked the new society where they live, in their head where things are safe to work out? You're not right or wrong. There is no collective conscience.

We are so quick to jump on people today. I think we could recognize more that we all have a conscience we're trying to work out in this increasingly complicated world. Go easier on people. Odds are they're trying to work it out honestly. Your behavior and belief system, informed by your own conscience, is what being an individual is all about.