Small Town

VI: The Mind of Roxborough

Public opinion polls contrive to give the impression that as a nation we are in a constant state of agitation over all sorts of domestic and foreign problems. Eighty or ninety or sometimes ninety-nine per cent of the people interviewed are able to say that they are for or against a particular man or a particular measure, and that is what the investigators want. Some experts, however, have begun to admit that people often have opinions on subjects about which they are less than adequately informed. The man in the street, they confess, may strongly support or bitterly oppose a bill that is before Congress without being able to describe one of its provisions. This admission is healthy, but the experts need to take another step. A man may turn up an opinion on demand, even a fairly well-informed opinion, and yet have only the slightest interest in the subject about which he is being interviewed. How much does the individual in question think about the subject ? Does he feel that it has any real relevance to his own life? How do his thoughts and emotions on this subject compare with his thoughts and emotions on other subjects? The problem that I wish the experts would investigate is not what people think about this or that but what they think about. Both psychologists and novelists suggest that people think mostly about themselves. The stream of ideas—call it interior monologue or what you will—that passes through the average human mind is concerned with me: my health, my state of mind, what people think about me and what I think about them, my problems , my children, my job, what I said to Joe and what he said to me, mostly what I said to him. Even the most public-minded Th e M i n d o f Ro x b o r o u g h vi citizen, I suspect, devotes only a fraction of his attention to the affairs of city, state, and nation, and any conception of democracy that postulates the constant and alert interest of the citizenry is purely romantic. If, then, we are to be concerned with the ideas that circulate in Roxborough, we had better keep in mind that these ideas are not constantly seething about in the consciousness of the people. Not being a psychoanalyst, I cannot say exactly what ideas and feelings do seethe about. I am limited to the material that finds expression in ordinary conversation, and I am not even sure that the conversations I have engaged in or listened to are fully representative . Even a casual listener, however, knows that the opinions that can be formally organized and set down have their existence in a vast and chaotic world of thought and emotion. To help us to keep the point in mind, we might begin by examining the ideas that are directly derived from Roxborough itself , before we turn to outside influences. Farming, for instance, though it has become a marginal activity, provides much of the material of conversation. Among the old-timers there is endless talk about crops and the weather, and I can imagine a period when these topics were of first importance, though today, they seem a little off-center. Where farming is more profitable, interest in agriculture often leads to an interest in science, but Roxborough ’s farmers pay little attention to the mass of scientific information that reaches them through bulletins, farm magazines , and radio programs. There is not even much interest shown in the handful of scientifically managed farms to be found in neighboring towns. Talk about farming is divisible into two parts: practical lore and superstition. Listening to such talk, one may not learn much about agriculture , but one can learn something about the role of conversation . The constant repetition of the same facts or theories suggests at the very outset that communication in the ordinary sense of the term cannot be the major purpose of these exchanges. An old-timer makes a statement about the soil of Roxborough, t h e m i n d o f r o x b o r o u g h 93 for instance, a statement he has made a hundred times to the same listeners, and the listeners respond with the comments they have invariably offered. The old-timer, it seems to me, is talking for...