Resistance Is Not Futile
I watched Star Trek and Dr. Who on TV, in the 60s. That’s when I first heard the phrase “Resistance is futile.” In my mind’s ear, the words are spoken robotically by an Evil Alien (The Borg), who must be defeated by plucky human heroes. These collectivized aliens have superior firepower but lack individuality. Whereas we humans have inferior weapons, but we’re uniquely tricky. We humans outwit the aliens with our individually unpredictable actions. Our side proves wrong the Aliens’ warning “Resistance is futile.” Instead, our quirky resistance wins.
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I was in college when I read Without Stopping, the autobiography of one of my favorite American writers, Paul Bowles. He created novels where modern, cultured, self-assured Americans travel to exotic lands, where things go wrong when “the primitive natives” are taken for granted. The Sheltering Sky (drugs and kidnapping in Morocco), A Distant Episode (kidnapping in Sub-Saharan Africa), The Spider’s House (drugs in Guatemala) all have this structure.
Paul Bowles himself lived for decades in Ceylon and then Morocco (1940s through 90s). He certainly preferred such places to his native USA. Paul Bowles also traveled extensively submitting essays to American magazines—being a travel writer was a big part of how he made a living.
Paul Bowles never took airplanes. In Without Stopping, he explains his love of trains, developed in childhood. Later, he loved traveling the world by ship. He felt that airplanes are unnaturally fast. They don’t take long enough to get from Country A to Country B, so you don’t have the experience of transitioning properly. Bowles felt that this interstitial transition was an essential aspect of traveling. The modern cult of speedy travel destroyed something he loved.
As for the convenience: that never converted him. Paul Bowles really did not fly.
Paul Bowles was married—nominally—to another writer whose work I adore: Jane Bowles. Paul was gay—barely bisexual—and though they didn’t divorce, Paul and Jane lived apart for decades: she in the States, he in Tangier.
In 1972, Paul was on assignment in Thailand, doing a travel essay, when he got word Jane was dying, in New York. In Without Stopping, Paul describes the moment he heard the news. He immediately left Thailand, to go to Jane, in New York.
He took ship.
Two weeks later, Paul was at Jane’s side.
When I read this passage, in college, I was stunned. I remember how baffled I felt. Surely, on this occasion, Paul Bowles should have broken down and taken a damn airplane!
But: Paul Bowles objected to air transport on principle. His resistance was not futile, because, this mattered to him, and he was the one freely making the decision.
Waves of technological innovation have swept humanity, age upon age, for a hundred thousand years. Resistance has never been futile. Rather, it’s a hallmark. That’s why humans still pass on techniques of doing so many things “by hand,” the “low-tech” way.
Ways that have been totally superseded.
So I’m inspired by Paul Bowles’ decision to return to New York by ship. For that trip to take two weeks added meaning to his and Jane’s lives.
I do puzzle: what if Jane had died when Paul was on the ship? But I know the answer: if he had come by plane, this act would have altered his and Jane’s history. Since they lived their beliefs—committed to their idiosyncratic visions—and since they were thoroughly opposed to “standard modern conveniences” of American life—since they’d lived lives of resistance—Jane would have wanted Paul to take a ship.
Paul Bowles’ quirky act of resistance was not futile: it affirmed his commitment to living a fully individual life. Because he and Jane shared this commitment, taking ship was an act of love.
