Linda Hunt’s character, Billy Kwan, in the 1982 film, “The Year of Living Dangerously,” is the ethical compass. Kwan has long admired Indonesia’s President Sukarno as a leader who cares for his people.
As Major General Suharto is embarking on a coup d’etat in 1965, Sukarno’s failures and hypocrisies are made transparent. Kwan is despondent as hundreds of thousands of Indonesians are at risk (and eventually massacred), and he unravels as he types over and over again, “What then must we do?” It is the one scene in the film that has remained in my psyche for 40 years.
The question is loosely interpreted from Tolstoy as he was distraught by the abject poverty of Russians. It prompted him to go into the poorest section of Moscow one night to give away all of his money. While I am not prone to quoting the Bible since it is so often used to justify bigotry, Luke 3:10 has a crowd asking John, “what should we do then?” John responds that goods and fortune should be shared fairly. It is not OK to be a bystander to others’ suffering.
While I have asked this question many times throughout my adult life, I find myself asking it more fervently in recent weeks, and in some form, since the 2016 presidential election as destruction, chaos and hyperfascism are openly undermining our democracy.
When we gathered at Pulaski Park on June 24 after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, we spoke about the despair, fear and anger we all felt on that day. Despite expecting the ruling, when I received the breaking news, my heart stopped, my mouth got dry, and I sat in shock.
Many speakers asked and answered the question in one way or another. What then must we do? In summary, we must do all we can to help women to make their own reproductive health care choices. We must not accept despotic laws. We must understand misogyny as endemic in American culture. Guest columnist Rob Okun has written about this many times: Men need to get active personally and politically to dismantle toxic patriarchy.
The outrageous undoing of gun control measures, overturning the Environmental Protection Agency’s efforts to combat climate change and taking away women’s fundamental rights are the hat trick of a diabolical Supreme Court majority. These are justices who have no concept of justice and who must not care about their own children and grandchildren as they make the world far less safe.
Anyone not upset about the direction of our country is in denial, living under a rock, or participating in the madness of insistent white supremacy, misogyny, and a host of additional societal destructive practices. When I reflect on the brutal systems of white Europeans who conquered all on this land and who affected propaganda to justify such aims, today’s United States feels like a reckoning. The kind of dysfunctional accounting that occurs when a country has not owned and reconciled its wrongdoings. Chickens coming home to roost.
In recent decades, historians and sociologists have uncovered and written about our country’s truths with balance and integrity. The oppressors do not want it taught as they erroneously believe that our democracy will be better with the halcyon historical fiction they have been teaching for centuries; yet in reality, our democracy is in serious jeopardy as we persist in an unhealthy trajectory born of greed and delusion. What then must we do?
Earlier in the film, Billy Kwan says, “You don’t think about the major issues. You do what you can about the misery in front of you. You add your light to the sum of all light.” We do what we can to help others. Elissa Ely recently wrote about an experience where a hospital aide went above and beyond to help her, saying, “I always feel better when I feel kind.” (Boston Globe).
What then must we do? We vote. We help women from states where they have lost legal control over their own bodies. We engage in conscious environmental harm reduction. We work with statewide elected officials to stand for continued gun control measures.
We take care of our hearts, our bodies and our minds. We check out from time to time immersed in a good book or on holiday if we are able. We feel through our feelings, and we share our anger as we strategize how to turn it into productive action. We offer kindness to others and ourselves as frequently as possible as a must-do tactic to survive and — dare I say — thrive.
J.M. Sorrell is a social justice activist/trainer and a feminist at her core.