James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown is a striking film. Centered on a young Bob Dylan (Timothée Chalamet), the biopic chronicles the folk music community that bounced in and around 1960s New York City, offering stellar musical and acting performances in the process. But its wisest scene takes place off stage in an intimate conversation between Dylan and Pete Seeger (Edward Norton).
Mangold portrays Seeger as a stalwart in the folk music community, banjo and kind heart in tow. Throughout the film we witness Dylan wrestling with his ever-growing popularity — a trajectory that Seeger helped set him on. Seeger’s a peaceful figure in the film. He lives a humble life and acts almost as a minister of folk music. His music remains steadily but quietly successful in comparison to the bright flame of Dylan’s career.
The film ends on the last day of the infamous 1965 Newport Folk Festival, where Dylan grapples with his desire to electrify his set, while the festival’s planning committee — which Seeger is part of — presses him to keep folk music pure and acoustic.
Early in the morning, Seeger brings coffee to Dylan, and shares with Dylan what Seeger calls his “teaspoon parable.” It goes something like this:
Imagine a seesaw. On one end of the seesaw is a heavy basket full of rocks. The burden of the basket keeps that side of the seesaw weighed down. On the other side is a basket full of sand, sticking high into the air, unable to compete with the weight of the rocks.
Individuals will make their way to the basket of sand and fill it with one teaspoon of their own sand. Each person has only one teaspoon to contribute. All the while, sand is pouring out of the basket just as fast as the teaspoons can put in their fill. Regardless of how fast the sand is pouring out, the work of filling the basket must continue. It’s slow but necessary work.
Occasionally, many people show up with their spoons at once, and the basket makes some progress. Then someone comes along and brings a shovel, and an avalanche of progress happens in an instant. Suddenly the immovable basket of rocks trades places with the basket of sand.
In the context of this scene, Dylan wields the shovel, and Seeger, like many others, wields a teaspoon. As musicians, Seeger suggests that they have work to do, to inspire others who are striving for a more just future. Seeger is reminding Dylan why their work matters and why Dylan should remain in harmony with the folk community.
But Seeger's parable can have many applications, just like Jesus’ parables in the Bible. Watching the film in 2025, as the Trump administration dismantles many of the social services that make our nation more equitable, I think of Seeger's parable as a message on the slow but important work of justice set before us.
Lately it’s felt like more sand is leaking out of our basket than we can replace with our teaspoons. But as the real-life Seeger said, “We're getting more people with teaspoons all the time. One of these days, you’re gonna see that whole basket with sand so full that this seesaw is going to go zoooom-up in the other direction.”
In the gospels, Jesus uses parables over and over as a tool to teach lessons to his disciples. Throughout his career, Seeger shared his teaspoon parable many times to inspire people to strive for good. He shared the story in interviews and in conversations with weary activists, like Ben Cohen, co-founder of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream. This parable lends itself to the work of justice over and over again.
We make deliberate progress simply by showing up every day, even when it seems like the work we’re doing isn’t making much of a difference. Sometimes it feels like we’re not making any difference at all. But Seeger reminds us of the transformative power of simply showing up.
And for decades, Pete Seeger showed up for justice. As “America’s tuning fork,” he’s remembered as a tireless social activist who helped to craft the soundtrack for protest movements for decades. He wrote songs like “Turn! Turn! Turn!” and “If I Had a Hammer,” and helped reshape the modern rendition of “We Shall Overcome.” Seeger, who died in 2014 at the age of 94, cared deeply about civil and worker rights, peace, and the planet.
In 2009, at Seeger’s 90th birthday celebration held at Madison Square Garden, Bruce Springsteen lauded the folk musician as a “living archive of America’'s music and conscience, a testament of the power of song and culture to nudge history along, to push American events towards more humane and justified ends. He would have the audacity and the courage to sing in the voice of the people.”
Woody Guthrie, one of Pete Seeger’s closest friends, had a message written on his guitar: “This machine kills fascists.” Seeger etched a gentler version of that message on his own banjo: “This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender.”
According to Seeger, we are all instruments of progress. Some of us carry a shovel, but most of us carry a teaspoon. We can take a page from Seeger’s songbook and pick up our tools.
Olivia Bardo is a writer, artist, and baker from northern New Jersey and is a former editorial assistant for sojo.net.
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