“All I can do is to do the least harm possible, and maybe, even a little good.” These were words spoken by my son in a conversation we had recently about the state of the world, he a young man trying to figure out the best way to live decently in the world in these difficult times. I was surprised, touched, and delighted to hear my son speaking the same words Albert Camus had penned in his novel The Plague, even though he had never read it – words that inspired me when I first read them decades ago, words that inspired me listening to my son a couple weeks ago. In The Plague, Camus depicts a plague-stricken town, with hundreds of innocent people dying and others giving their lives to battle the plague. Speaking through the character Tarrou, like my son, Camus said: “We can’t stir a finger in this world without the risk of bringing death to somebody. . . . I have realized that we all have plague, and I have lost my peace. . . . I only know that one must do what one can to cease being plague-stricken, . . . This, and only this, can bring relief to men and, if not save them, at least do them the least harm possible and even, sometimes, a little good” (228).

I was incredibly moved by my son’s wisdom, and that he had come to this code of ethical behavior on his own, without ever having read Camus. His words also were sobering in the recognition that we are in a similar state of siege in this country and the world that Camus had lived through while exiled in France during the Nazi occupation. The rhetoric of hate; the plague of gun violence; a Supreme Court determined to strip away the rights and liberties that were only so recently affirmed; the climate crisis; the resurgence of authoritarianism and war; the rising cost of the basics of food, shelter, and health care; the ongoing oppression of women, BIPOC, and LGBTQ peoples; and quite literally an ongoing plague – these are troubling times indeed.

In 1984, I was teaching a course on utopias and dystopias in which the students read 1984. At the time, I felt relieved and reassured that here we were in 1984, and none of what George Orwell predicted had come to pass – Big Brother watching our every move, the rewriting of history, doublespeak, doublethink, Newspeak, the Thought Police, the Hate. We had learned the lessons of World War II, and would never let such fascist hatred rise again. We were better and wiser now. I lived in a naïve confidence that our future was bright.

Yet recently I have often heard the term “Orwellian” to describe the state of the country. George Orwell – a champion of the downtrodden, of the “down and out,” who spent his life resisting tyranny. It seems a disservice to call these times “Orwellian,” yet I understand the reference to the world he depicted in his dystopia1984. Ironically, as Rebecca Solnit noted in her Orwell’s Roses, 1984 was the last good year (71). By this she meant for the climate -- the last year in which the levels of atmospheric carbon were below the 350 parts per million climate scientist James Hansen set as the upper limit for a stable earth. By 2021, they were 416 ppm, foreboding a different kind of dystopic future.

In the novel, The Plague, Tarrou reflects, “What’s natural is the microbe. All the rest – health, integrity, purity (if you like) – is a product of the human will, of a vigilance that must never falter. The good man, the man who infects hardly anyone, is the man who has the fewest lapses of attention. And it needs tremendous will power, a never-ending tension of the mind, to avoid such lapses. Yes, Rieux, it’s a wearying business, being plague-stricken. But it’s still more wearying to refuse to be it “ (229).

It has been wearying. The struggles for justice and the earth have been many, and have often seemed relentless. Yet, coming of age politically as I did in the peace, feminist, and environmental movements, it seemed to me that we were moving in an ever more progressive arc of freedom, equality, and justice. The Civil Rights Act; the Voting Rights Act; the Clean Air Act and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency; Medicare and Medicaid; Roe v. Wade and the Equal Pay Act; gay marriage; Women’s Studies, American Indian Studies, African American Studies, LatinX Studies, and Environmental Studies in the academy, the election of the first Black president – despite ongoing wars, racism, patriarchy, and environmental disasters, it was easy to think we were moving in a direction that was unstoppable, and to let the vigilance falter. As Adrienne Rich wrote, “. . . many of us would be grateful for some rest in that struggle.” Perhaps that is why at least some of us let our attention lapse, while the forces arrayed against the full dignity and health of all beings on this planet gained significant ground. But Rich continued, “The politics worth having, the relationships worth having, demand that we delve still deeper” (193). And so, the often-wearying vigilance against the plague must continue.

Yet Camus also reminded us, “Really, it’s too damn silly living only in and for the plague. Of course, one should fight for the victims, but if one ceases caring for anything outside that, what’s the use of fighting” (229). So in the novel, the resistance workers Tarrou and Rieux decide to go for a swim, “a harmless pleasure,” for friendship’s sake. For that’s ultimately what the struggle is for – for love, for friendship, for beauty, for the good life. And in the midst of, or perhaps as part of his resistance to tyranny, Orwell continued to plant roses.

Many of the writers who have most inspired me came from that World War II generation – Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, Simone Weil, Hannah Arendt, George Orwell, Albert Memmi, Anne Frank. All of them managed to retain a commitment to the dignity of all and respect for others and the common good, and also to find beauty amidst the rubble, roses in the ruins. Sometimes the worst of the world brings out the best in people.

I have often bemoaned the world we are bequeathing to the younger generations. Yet, my son’s words give me hope that from this sea of possible despair he and so many others, on a daily basis, continue to try to do the least harm possible, and maybe, even a little good. He reminded me of the basic goodness of people – those who continue to resist injustice, who regularly act with kindness and commitment to life on this planet, who offer gifts of friendship and generosity. I suspect his generation will become the next Camus’s and Arendts and Orwells. They already are.

Solnit concludes her study of George Orwell’s life and work by saying that in the things Orwell valued, his commitment to liberty and human rights and to pleasure and joy, he recognized “ . . . that these can be forces of opposition to the authoritarian state and its soul-destroying intrusions.” She ends by saying, “The work he did is everyone’s job now. It always was” (268). I am inspired by so many of the young people I know who know this, and will continue to do the work. May they also enjoy the simple pleasure of going for a swim, the gift of friendship, and the beauty of a hillside of flowers, and may they be assured that they are, more often than they know, doing a little good.