“I keep a button on my desk that says ‘Life?’ Of course I have a life. It’s a life filled with books.” Those are the words of Michael Dirda, Pulitzer Price-winning book critic for the Washington Post.
In a recent Post interview, Dirda explained his decision to step back from weekly book reviews. He said “the decisive moment” was “the election of Donald Trump. Once again, our country was in the hands of someone who regularly mocked learning, science and the arts; rejected empathy and tolerance for others; and valued above all else wealth, power, and social media celebrity.”
About Dirda’s hatred for Trump, it won’t be addressed here. Smart people have strong opinions either way.
What will be addressed is Dirda’s lament that Trump values wealth “above all else.” Dirda should cheer the latter, while indifferent to Trump’s alleged disdain for learning, science and the arts.
To see why, consider Dirda’s life. It’s “filled with books” as he says. Better yet, Dirda indicates “there are no days off.” Does he realize how incredibly fortunate he is?
What most adults all over the world would give to be as passionate about their work as Dirda is. For too much of the world there are no days off because work is about survival. In Dirda’s case, there are no days off because he plainly can’t not do what he does. With Dirda, it’s evident that work is life. It’s similarly evident that Dirda has glossed over why work is life.
It’s a consequence of wealth creation. Consider The Art Thief, a non-fiction book from 2023 reviewed in the Washington Post. In it, author Matthew Finkel observes that “art is the result of facing almost no survival pressure at all.” Precisely.
Beautifying the world and writing for the world is what we’re much more able to do when survival is a given. Looking back 200 years in the U.S., those born for the most part knew what their future would entail. And it almost certainly didn’t include college, or even high school. As Post columnist David von Drehle noted in The Book of Charlie, as of 1900 only 6 percent of Americans even graduated from high school. Imagine then, 1825.
Americans born 200 years ago overwhelmingly faced a future of farming. Six days a week, and likely more. All just to survive. No doubt many of those born in the 19th century would have given anything for a “no days off” life filled with books, but no such opportunity existed. As for work as a book critic, let’s be serious. For whom would they have written?
What changed? Obviously wealth creation is what changed. Thanks to innovative minds that grew rich mass producing tractors and fertilizer (among other advances), more and more people were freed from lives of unrelenting drudgery that was a function of work that had nothing to do with their passions.
Looking back, the tractor was easily the biggest job destroyer in the history of mankind, and a compassionate one at that. Fast forward to the present, and it’s safe to say that those live minds growing extraordinarily rich via AI advances will enable exponentially more people to exit work they must do in favor of work like Dirda’s, that they can’t not do.
It’s all an effect of wealth, and it’s something for Dirda to contemplate. What he disdains in Trump’s values is what has enabled his brilliant life of work.
Those who disdain the relentless pursuit of wealth are, like Dirda, almost invariably enormously rich by any monetary or life standard. They come off as spoiled.
