Spivak & the trivialization of the Humanities

The Los Angeles Review of Books, in an article published a couple of years ago, had this to say about Spivak-

... Spivak carved out what seems like several distinct careers. She became a pioneering feminist Marxist scholar and then helped launch postcolonial studies with her seminal essay “Can the Subaltern Speak.” But Spivak’s not just an ivory tower intellectual. She also set up elementary schools for illiterate students in her native India, where she’s taught for decades. Somehow, she’s managed to teach critical theory to grad students at one of the United States’s elite universities while also teaching democratic empowerment to rural children in West Bengal. Rarely has the blending of theory and praxis been so integrated with a single person.

Feminist Marxism or Feminist Neo Classical Theory is socially necessary and useful. Second wave Feminism featured painstaking and highly innovative work by superb Economists, Lawyers, Researchers, Journalists etc. It greatly improved Society for everybody. By contrast, nobody remembers those macho 'revolutionaries' who believed that 'the position of women' in the Class Struggle, was 'prone'. They achieved nothing.
Third, or (Social Media based) Fourth Wave Feminism, however, appears to have backfired completely. Its achievements appear shallow and ultimately self-defeating. Spivak's 'pioneering scholarship' is the prime example. It has deskilled its students, making them incapable of cohesive collective action to any useful end. It is a sort of perennial crying wolf which only managed to persuade grown ups that homo lupus homini- man is a wolf to man- there is no point seeking to ameliorate market or social failures arising from issues regarding gender and race and poverty. Marxism, which had attained a consistent mathematical expression and developed powerful social instruments by the late Sixties- when Nobel Prizes were awarded to Samuelson, who thought the Soviet Union might overtake the US, and Kantorovich, who showed that Marx's theory of value could be expressed by shadow prices- did face some fundamental intellectual challenges in the early Seventies to do with preference and information aggregation and complexity, concurrency and computability. However, the rise of Identitarian Marxism, though appearing to offer a diversionary respite in which these challenges could be met, ultimately destroyed the rationality and cohesiveness of the entire movement for Social Justice. Third Wave Feminism, of Spivak's sort, consisted of attacking Second Wave Feminists and castigating them as Racists or Elitists. Not surprisingly, its achievements have been negative. It has destroyed the credibility of the academic subjects where women had a comparative advantage. It has vitiated the types of discourse in which they could be most persuasive. It has gloried in its own heteronomy and supine position. The older macho Marxism may have joked that woman's position was 'prone'. Spivak's work suggested that it was not just prone but so incessantly gang raped as to have lost even the power of self expression. No doubt, a demand for 'safe spaces' could be made on this basis. But those 'safe spaces' could engender no socially useful work. They could, at best, be asylums which it were thriftier to leave the lunatics themselves to run.

If Spivak's 'pioneering Marxism' was a hegira to the mad-house, what of her contribution to the Humanities in India? Initially, older Indian savants were enthused by her. She was avenging their own inferiority complex by rising in the Western Academy's firmament. Sadly, she and her ilk were ignorant and stupid. She managed to get every India specific reference comically wrong. It was forgiveable if she made stupid errors about Europe- for example, if she misunderstood the expression 'Hic Rhodus hic salta', one could say that plenty of Europeans had misunderstood common Sanskrit expressions in the same way- but saying things like 'India is named Bharat after Rama's younger brother' or 'The Pathan King of Delhi contested the paramountcy of the Mughal Emperor' was simple ignorance. Still, to their shame, Indian savants lined up behind Spivak. The consequence was that the Left, which had entrenched itself in Humanities Departments in Indian Universities, suffered most because of the sudden and steep fall in the prestige of that branch of Academia.

Why did the Indian Left take so foolish a course? The answer has to do with a failure on the part of Indian mathematical economists like Sukhamoy Chakroborty whom Indira Gandhi appointed as Planning Commission Chief because she knew he would turn a blind eye to her camp followers corruption. At the same time, Indira appointed, the philosopher, D.P Chattopadyaya as her Commerce Minister. Naturally, savants of this calibre, raised no objection to her son's 'Maruti' project! Chakroborty is dead, but D.P still presides over something called the 'Indian Council of Philosophical Research'. His C.V makes no mention of how he attained this eminence. Clearly, the fellow is ashamed of the political role he played during Indira's 'Emergency'.

Post Colonial theory was a belated response to a wrong turning India took in the Fifties. This was to plead for Aid- 'free money' as B.K Nehru put it- rather than raise the productivity of its people. The Soviets didn't have any 'free money' but did provide 'project assistance' in return for the assurance that the Public sector would dominate. However, by the mid Seventies, it had become obvious that Aid was a poisoned chalice. It resulted in a negative monetary transfer. Mendicancy was not viable. Dependency theory was self fulfilling only if begging bowl diplomacy was pursued. 

Po-Co theorists didn't get the memo. They believed that whining about Whitey would cause good old Uncle Sam to hand over PL480 food so the masses might be saved from starvation. The truth was quite different. It was only after India gave up dependence on food aid, that Indian farmers started to get a fair deal and the threat of famine was contained.

It may be argued that Spivak was merely a 'knowledge worker' who did what was required of her abroad and remitted foreign currency to India where she used it to set up schools. This is her true contribution.

I was illiterate when I first entered Elementary School. I suppose, most kids are. That's why their parents send them to school.
Spivak portrays herself as having  set up elementary schools for illiterate students in her native India, where she’s taught for decades. She claims to be teaching democratic empowerment to rural kids.
Is there any evidence to support this view?
Speaking of Birbhum, where Spivak's educational charity operates, it is worth noting that Tagore's Shantiniketan is situated there. It has its own feeder primary and high Schools and, despite poor management and low academic standards, has the political clout to provide for a section of its alumni. Since it is a Central University, the Congress Party controlled it for many decades. One result is that the principal leaders of teachers and workers unions tend to be Shantiniketan alumni. By contrast, the Communists were entrenched in the local educational system. There too a corrupt political nexus has proliferated between Unions and criminalised Quarry operators, Sand or Timber Mafias, etc.  There are plenty of 'activists' claiming to be the saviours of the Tribals who, it must be said, feel forced to restrict the freedom of their own women so as to prevent the alienation of tribal land to their supposed non tribal 'husbands'.

Birbhum is a complicated place. Visitors are easily gulled. Education and I.T skills can make a difference. Young people who receive a proper education can check on the Government portal that their parents are receiving the benefits they State has disbursed against their Aadhar number.
Is this the sort of 'democratic empowerment' Spivak's elementary schools inculcate?


Sadly, after running for two decades, it must be acknowledged that Spivak's elementary schools have made no impact at all. They have created no 'empowerment' whatsoever. Nobody in Bengal pretends otherwise. No Bengali scholar has published an article describing these schools. No writer or activist or lawyer or doctor or civil servant can say- 'Thanks to Gayatri Ji's school I was able to become literate and pursue higher studies.' Spivak herself may believe this to be a good thing. She tells her students they must not become 'improvers' because...urm...Ranajit Guha said the East India Company claimed to be 'improvers', so 'improving' is just wrong, okay? Don't do it. Just say no.

In stark contrast to Spivak's schools, is the Level Field School in Birbhum. It was started by an IT professional who had attended a Government School before cracking the IIT entrance without the benefit of coaching. He also had a four year old daughter. He quit a well paid job in Chennai to return to Birbhum and set up the sort of School his own daughter could attend.
The Business Standard newspaper reports-

Located in 2.5 acres, the 500-odd students at Levelfield — four and a half hours away from Kolkata — do none of the normal stuff. There are hardly any text books, no regular notes taken from black boards, no teachers dictating stuff ad nauseam — most of what you are used to seeing in traditional schools is missing. Children in the classroom are encouraged to talk, discuss and argue and to think for themselves.
Class I and II students converse fluently in English, read and write it. This despite the fact that almost none of the parents speak the language and neither do any of their relatives or peers studying at other local schools.

Even with math, the approach is not to focus on only standard word problems but also Japanese puzzles, Sudoku and so on — a lot of this is done through apps developed especially for the students (not downloaded but developed). Tablets are provided in school itself that students used/

The first year or so — after he bought land and started building the school using his own savings — was spent developing unique content that simplifies even the most complex stories and thoughts to be understood by four to seven year olds. As the children read a novel, they also filled in blanks, the focus always being on the why, what, how, where and when of things — not on cramming and rote.
But by the time the students reach Class VII-VIII, they are no longer absorbing simplified texts as their reading skills are advanced enough to proceed to original texts. So students in Class VIII don’t think that Orwell’s Animal Farm is a book aimed at cultivating a love for animals, they know when and why and how Gulliver went on his travel and what it led to, they read and discuss books like Shawshank Redemption, Macbeth and Teacher Man. Films are shown through the year and discussed at length. Grade VIII students watch Gandhi, Judgement at Nuremberg, Hotel Rwanda, the Pianist and Inherit the Wind. History and movements like genocide are introduced through them. “The idea is to bring alive stuff and to do it in an engaging manner,” explains Banerjee, saying that almost none of his students aspire to become doctors or engineers. It is the arts and social sciences that typically draw them due to the focus on reading, literature and history. Grade IX students are studying “Sapiens” a book many adults would struggle with.
The school has created it own graded-reading softwares, graded-math software (Delta), and as many as 12 Android apps so that the teaching methods are uniform and can be deployed elsewhere as well, “by other idealistic entrepreneurs interested in true learning,” says Banerjee.

Older people, like me, may want to do what Bannerjee has done but can't. Education has moved on. We don't know how to create 'apps'- or, in my case,- what they are and how to use them. Schools in a rapidly growing economy need to be reinvented every twenty years. An educational mode that worked in the Nineties is now obsolete.
Bannerjee's school can turn out kids who, twenty years from now, will be able to repeat his own achievement. They won't have to leave Birbhum to earn money. Their skills will enable them to engage directly with a global market. Bannerjee is tackling the problem of Dependency at its root. What he is doing is scalable and incentive compatible.

This sort of initiative is especially necessary in small towns and rural areas because Doctors and Engineers and Agricultural Scientists and so on flee from such places because of the lack of quality education for their young kids.  This Human Capital erosion leads directly to the further erosion of Social Capital. The corrupt and criminalised get a free hand.

Speaking of the corrupt and criminalised, Spivak sits on a committee of the soi disant World Economic Forum. She says it is 'her field-work.' Has she published a critique of 'Davos man'? Nope. She thinks Davos is 'well meaning' rather than a tool of Managerial Capitalism, wholly financed by MNCS, and graced by the likes of President Xi and Prime Minister Modi.

What do you make of the common criticism that we have all these university intellectuals doing very theoretical work who think they’re radicals but they’re just in their ivory towers, having no impact on real world issues? Does that critique carry any weight for you?I’m just as critical of them as the picket line type of activist. I really do think they need a reality check. In fact, that’s not just ivory tower. I’m also on the global agenda committee on values at the World Economic Forum. I go there because it’s my fieldwork. I’m not listened to, but I’m extremely careful in always intervening.

So Spivak is critical of theorists. Yet she is nothing else. Why does she mention Davos? Does she really believe the 'friendly' colleagues she meets there are 'well meaning'? Why?

And certainly my colleagues there are friendly. Below a certain radar, the world is unknown to these well-meaning people. So yes, I’m very critical of people who come forward to help without any idea of what it requires to be able to understand.

Does Spivak have 'what it requires to be able to understand?'  How could she have acquired it? She spent her working life as a theoretician in an Academic Ivory Tower. The Educational Trust she set up is just 'well meaning' dilletantism. It is Charity at its most smug.

At the bottom, the first right is the right to refuse. This is something I say to my students in the villages. I say, “I’m your enemy. I’m good and my parents were good but two generations do not undo thousands of years.”
Why do you say you are their enemy?Because I’m a caste Hindu. I’m the top caste.

 Spivak is not from the top caste. Some Brahman lineages are 'top caste'- but the cooks and clerks they employ, though ritually 'clean', are economically weak and pathetically dependent- many starved to death during the two great Democracy created Famines the region experienced during Spivak's own lifetime.

 It is true that a Brahman- like a person of any other caste, or no caste at all- who establishes a Princedom may over time gain Divine Honours as 'Naresh'- Man God, or King. However, the Priests who bow before him bare chested gain no similar ascendancy. They merely serve.

We are the ones who have made these people untouchable.

Kings, not Brahmans, had the right to change a 'jati's' (endogamous social entity) varma (ritual status). A particular Brahmin jati might convene a 'Smarta Vicharam' to strip a particular caste-fellow of his Varna status. But, if the King expresses displeasure, they had to back down or risk being 'outcasted' themselves. History records many instances of jatis which were degraded because the incurred the displeasure of the King.

Spivak is indulging in a 'Family Romance' such that her emaciated ancestors were powerful and hegemonic. During her own life, she has seen people of her own class raped, starved, and ethnically cleansed on a massive scale- not once but twice. True, Mamta Bannerjee- who comes from a poor Brahman family even worse off than Spivak's- was able to defeat the wealthy Kayasths and Kulins who ran the Communist led Left Front Government using goon squads.  Mamta herself was repeatedly beaten and threatened with rape. She alleges that a senior police-man actually bit her! She later dismissed this top-cop, not for biting her, but because he objected to her goons killing some of his cops.

We’re the ones who have refused them rights to intellectual labor so they could serve us, so they could be trained for manual labor.

What 'intellectual labor' did Spivak's ancestors perform? Chanting mantras to cure snake bite is not intellectual labor. It is gross superstition. No doubt, some Brahmin males- not females- were employed as clerks or even as tax-farmers. But they were scarcely 'brain workers'. They could prevent 'Shudras' chanting the magical mantras that were their own hereditary intellectual property. So what? Shudras had their own rituals and liturgies.

In ancient Iran and in some ante bellum Southern States, there were restrictions on access to literacy. There has never been anything similar in India precisely because most Brahmans were illiterate.  Godmen and Godwomen appeared from every section of society. In general, their lack of literacy was considered a sign of Divine Inspiration. Literacy simply isn't very prestigious because people who read books tend to be stupider than those who don't.

Consider what Spivak is saying here-

This thing is not something where you just say, “Look, good parents, I’m good.” I also asked them these kinds of questions because I do some ecological agriculture with them,

OMG! Spivak is doing 'ecological agriculture' with people who have been doing nothing else for thousands of years! What precisely can she teach them?

so I’m sitting under this banyan tree with lots and lots of poor landless farmers. So I say to them, “How many castes are there?” And they know I don’t believe in castes, so they don’t know what to say. I never tell them answers and I don’t give answers in my Columbia classes either. And a small voice pipes up and says, “Two.” So I say, “Well, what are they?” So this person says the rich and the poor. And I say, “Good, come forward here. Now look at me.” Of course compared to them I’m unbelievably rich, right? So I said, “Just don’t forget I’m rich and you’re poor. So we are not in the same group at all.”

Consider what Spivak is doing. Indians know that 'caste' means the notion that your socio-economic position is determined at birth. It is a false notion. Everybody can see that some very poor, 'low caste' people have become very rich within a short space of time. So, even a child knows that there are actually only two castes- the wealthy who want to monopolise all economic gains for their own kids, and the poor who want economic gains to be divided equitably.

Spivak is saying- I'm rich. You are poor. We belong to different castes. You can't become rich like me because I got rich by being a famous American professor. Even if you study my worthless shit you can't reach my position precisely because my shite is worthless.

Suppose Sam Pitorda was addressing the same group of people. He became rich in America because he was very good at Science and Technology. A kid from Birbhum who has the same aptitude will find it much easier than Pitorda did to quickly rise up and become wealthy because Science and Technology is not worthless shite. Indeed, such a kid would not even have to leave Bengal. He could become a billionaire by inventing a new app or algorithm.

So this is the reality check that one must have, rather than this kind of silly philanthropy where one gives a lot of money, but one never teaches how to use money.

Spivak's educational philanthropy is silly. Teaching 'democratic empowerment' is a waste of time. Teaching Maths and I.T and Life Sciences is not a waste of time.

Spivak set up her charity with a bequest from a Holocaust survivor. She herself has contributed to it. But even if people gave it a lot of money, it would not how to use that money. Why? Because this Educational Charity is Ignorant and Stupid. The R.S.S, by contrast, is rapidly expanding its School network in Birbhum. Why? It is because students at its Schools get improved Life Chances. The Nation State will pay for Nationalists to join its Security and other Services. No matter how much money the Naxals or other anti Nationals squeeze out of their extortion or gun running businesses they will never be able to provide the same job security, housing and medical benefits, pensions etc. No doubt, Naxal leaders do get good embezzlement opportunities but their counterparts in Government Service do  better in the long run.

Scott Fitzgerald thought the wealthy were different from you and me. Hemingway was not convinced. The only difference between Daisy Buchanan and Myrtle Wilson is that Daisy has much more money.
Spivak is on the side of Fitzgerald when it comes to 'low caste' people in Birbhum-

Money for you and me is very different than for someone who’s never seen money. So the reality check is not just needed for leftists teaching at universities. The reality check is needed much more broadly.

There was a point in Bill Gates's life when he'd never seen money. This was because he was a baby. The reality check Spivak needs involves the catachresis of the invagination of the destruktion of the neo Gramscian Sublime as mediated by Captain Underpants which, as I've fully explained in my next book, calls the entire episteme of the Ben-gollywog into question by an act of effective self-sabotage.

I have one final question. There is a lot of hand-wringing about the state of the humanities these days. We often hear that the humanities are in crisis. Do you think that’s true?Yes. The humanities have been trivialized. They are not a cash cow.

Actually, the humanities were trivialized because that is the only way they could be made to yield a Credential people would buy for signalling purposes.  They were indeed a 'cash cow' which cross-subsidised expensive courses in Medicine and other STEM subjects.

One reason the humanities have declined is because they are failing their signalling function. In  the old days, if your law firm hired a History or Literature graduate, they could hit the ground running- summarising recondite information in a readable and reliable manner and, with experience, writing persuasive briefs.

One reason for this failure is the sort of shite Spivak has been spouting. It has no logical structure and consists of a superstitious reverence for 'canonical' texts which, however, it interprets in a manner which renders them absurd.

As I wrote to the vice chancellor at the University of Toronto, when they were closing the Comparative Literature department, I said, “Look, we are the health care system of cultures.

Wow! Did Spivak get this Nazi argument from Paul de Mann? No. It was just what happened to pop into her head. Medicine is the health care system of a Culture. Good Medicine enables a Culture to flourish. Bad Medicine leads to demographic and cultural collapse.

You cannot do moral metrics by knowledge management techniques.

Teaching Comparative Literature- as opposed to writing great poetry or prose- is a 'knowledge management technique'. It can't do 'moral metrics'. Moral Philosophy can.

You have to cook the soul slow.”

So Research Degrees in Literature are useless. 'Cooking the soul slow' means devoting a lifetime to a particular literary tradition. It's not something you can attain after x number of semesters.

That’s the humanities. We are the personal trainers in the gym of the mind'

Personal trainers make us do the hard stuff we would otherwise avoid. In my case, this involves abdominal crunches and lifting free weights. Left to myself I'd just sit around shooting the breeze in the steam room.
The humanities, nowadays, is just kvetching while shvitzing. One is welcome to vent one's spleen and indulge in a little paranoia. Soon enough, you'll have your cold shower and get dressed and go back to work.
Maths, on the other hand, is difficult. Most of us do need a 'personal trainer for the mind' just to figure out if we are using our profession's quantitative tools correctly. Failure to do so could result in a breach of fiduciary duty and a macro disaster like the sub-prime crash.

You know, you can’t exercise your body by going somewhere fast — speed of learning, easy learning.

Nonsense! My personal trainer says I have to end my road work with a sprint. I may not like it- and I know I look ridiculous doing it- but, if I want to avoid heart disease, I've got to get used to it.

Is 'speed of learning' related to 'easy learning'? Yes. Either you learn the elements of calculus by sweating the thing out over one semester or you will never learn it even if you spend the remainder of your life studying the biographies of Newton and Liebniz and Cauchy and so forth. This does not mean Calculus is 'easy learning' for most people. But the easiest way of learning it is also the speediest. Furthermore, you realize that every 'slow learning' you have done wasn't learning at all. It was just mystification.

In the same way, you can’t really make good minds by only doing speed of learning.

Consider the case of a poor girl from Birbhum who is selected by the UPSC and posted as an ADC to Tamil Nadu. To have 'a good mind' relative to her new duties, she needs to know Tamil. The IAS provides her learning facilities and stipulates that she must pass an exam in Tamil within a specific period. Her learning has to be speedy. Experience shows that, once it is completed, she can indeed exercise a 'good mind' and make a difference in the lives of ordinary people.

By contrast, if she spent a life time deconstructing gender in the Sillapadikaram, her mind would not be good. It would be full of shit.

And so we ourselves have actually allowed ourselves to be trivialized.

So, Spivak says she 'allowed' someone or some group of people to 'trivialize' her. Who were these people? Her Professors and Supervisiors? Plausibly. Paul de Mann was a charlatan. But he died long ago. Who else? Her colleagues? Again this is plausible. Every single one of them is now known to have been a waste of space. But, lots of Professors rebel against the tyranny of their peers. Why couldn't Spivak? The answer must be that the people who trivialize her, year after year, decade after decade, generation after generation, are her students. But then pedagogues teaching worthless shite have always been trivialized by their students. Indeed, the crazier and more anachronistic a Professor, they more he will be loved of his students. Though these students will quote their worthless Professors, the truth is, as Nietzche said,  'That for which we find words is something already dead in our hearts. There is always a kind of contempt in the act of speaking." 

I spend my life trying to make people understand that we should claim how useful we are and not just give in to the definitions of how to make ourselves useful by complete digitizing and all that stuff.

'Complete digitizing and all that stuff'. There speaks a Professor of Literature. I don't know what 'complete digitizing' means or what other stuff goes with it. Spivak does. It is the subject she has specialised in. She says that subject is the 'health care system' for our culture. No doubt, Spivak believes that what the heart surgeon says to the anaesthesiologist in the operating theatre is 'make yourself useful by like completely soporising the whatdjacallit and all that kind of stuff. Nurse! Hand me the, you know, cutty cutty thing and all that stuff. Monitor the patient's vital...urm...you know them things like Saussure was into right? well the patient's vital Saussure type things and all that stuff should be you know like a table or tabilized and all that stuff.  We should not allowed medicine to be trivialised. So just you know don't like digitize me or turn me into a hologram and all that stuff.'

We should not allow the humanities to be trivialized.

Too late. Still, getting rid of tenure, marking for attendance. and making State funded Universities autonomous is one way forward/

If you don’t train the soul, the global/digital cannot be used right.

Tagore, in Shantiniketan, spoke of sadhana as 'training the heart to tenderness.' Numerous others through out the ages have spoken of 'training the soul'. But none of them produced the digital computer. Why? It was unnecessary for their own project. If you never use something, you are in no position to say how it should or should not be used.
Suppose a great chef uses a brush to give his roasts a proper glaze. Such a chef may be able to tell a painter something useful about brush strokes. Imagine a King who says- 'Paintings are food for the eyes. The Royal Chef makes excellent food for my tummy. By appointing my Chef, Professor of Art and head instructor at the Royal Atelier, I will be sure to have the best paintings.' Would we praise this King as a patron of art or condemn him as a nincompoop?

I recall, some thirty years ago, speaking to a Agronomist from an ST background. His Hindi was poor and his technical publications far beyond my ken. Still he tried to educate me a little.

The School he attended had been set up by a Botanist who held a Chair in a Prestigious University. The Botanist regularly visited his schools and encouraged the kids to bring back samples of different plants and minerals. At the time, I took a cynical view- no doubt this high caste man would profit by the hard work and indigenous knowledge base of the tribal kids! Still, the kids were learning something useful which directly increased the amount of nutritious food available to their families.

But food by itself is not enough. Kids need cash and so they branched out to supplying naturopaths with 'jari-bhooti' and religious orders with ammonites and so on. Some of them went in for formal studies and worked under demoralizing circumstances in Indian Research Institutes. But, overall, they were doing well and their children would do even better. Even if some senile Professor turned up and lectured the people in their village in a patronizing manner, they could not be fooled. Power and Wealth are nobody's hereditary monopoly. Professors might think poor people should stay poor because they don't know how to use money and that they must remain powerless so as to give ear to some worthless pedagogy which claims to inculcate 'democratic empowerment'. But, Professors are full of shit. They may say they are rich and that big people listen to them, but they aren't Aziz Premji/ Narayan Murthy rich. Davos Man doesn't really listen to stupid Professors. They are there only as window dressing.

The Humanities turned into sub-humanities by accepting a foolish Structuralist availability cascade in Linguistics. What was once nourished by Language turned into a squalid sort of bulimia. Perhaps, it was always thus and ordinary people need to learn that the Academy is always at the root of the problem of Social Injustice. Achieving autonomy depends on disintermediating it- if only in the Humanities. That it has already trivialised itself is in no small part thanks to Spivak and her ilk. Thus, is she redeemed, though her disciples howl in a wilderness.