Trust-Busters
Phronesis File—Agendas of Angst
Years ago, entertainer and author Garrison Keillor (known, in part, for Prairie Home Companion) was speaking to a National Press Club luncheon in Washington. He told reporters he approached this gig with trepidation because he was addressing a room full of “people for whom my violent death would be a professional opportunity.”
Of course, it was a quip, and things went well at the event.
That remark came to mind on July 10 when my weekly viewing of Reliable Sources on CNN found Brian Stelter talking about trust—basic trust among Americans—as a major problem to be faced by journalists and others. During the program, he talked with guests about the polarization caused by a suspicion and skepticism. He correctly pointed to “a dramatic drift to a choose-your-own-reality environment” and a problem with “disinformation” that society barely knows how to talk about.
One guest noted that the public’s trust in institutions has been decaying for a few decades. Nowadays, people find it difficult to trust each other. Stelter provided a service by acknowledging that different understandings of truth and the value of information can block everyday folks from sharing facts and thoughts in the hope of solving problems.
Part of the problem is that our culture encourages us to shape our own realities, endangering any “common ground” we might identify as a goal for our fact-finding and collaboration. This arises in part from the technology we use and the materialism in which we are immersed. A rampant narcissism triggers disrespect toward the dignity of others and a lack of humble willingness to learn and reflect.
We have a self-esteem problem—mostly, having too much of it. We think we know better, or, realizing we do not, we align with advocates who seem to know better. In turn, they do not, but they have clout—some control over sound and fury, symbols and emotions, in the arena of opinions.
But there are other parts of the challenge.
As Keillor referenced, we short-circuit our candor if we are concerned that people might wish ill upon us. Or we might fear they have an opposite agenda, hidden or not, that would be advanced by something we say or do, or by something we are perceived to have signaled or implied.
Agendas seem to be the current rage, literally. Leaders seem to greet tragedies less as an opportunity to feel and express compassion or to invite deeper soul-searching, and more as an opportunity to virtue-signal. They promote the anger they feel, the finger of blame they can point, and the brilliant plan for action they have developed.
Often, perhaps at the root of these considerations, we communicate poorly because we are insecure about what we know, how we are to be viewed, and what our “gut reactions” tell us. The spirit and letter of Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking vie with more complex, traditional guidelines to shape our strategies.
We may be largely ignorant about the basis in fact for a stance we would like to take, and we do not think our audience will be patient or responsive. Our emotions may be controlling our opinions, and we suspect our interlocutors are also reliant on what they feel or how they “self-identify.” Do they really want an honest conversation, or do they simply anticipate playing a zero-sum game?
Insecurity is in the air we breathe. This may have its roots in the turbulent economic, interpersonal, and psychological state we find ourselves in. It is aggravated by the tendencies toward demonization, cancellation, the fear arising among those who feel cornered by life, and the skeptical analyses awaiting information we might otherwise share.
We do have a desperate need for greater trust—starting with faith in God’s providential love, embodied (a) in a society’s “common ground” of values like mercy, justice, fortitude, charity, respect, and solidarity, and (b) in a person’s access to knowledge, prudence, and wisdom. These are the firm grounding for, and showplace of, real self-esteem.
It is good that the discussion of polarization is digging down into the roots of our solidarity deficit. But we must not rely on a political or programmatic lens to bolster our sense of e pluribus unum. Neither trust nor truth can be found by entrusting a governmental or private-sector organization with judgments about, or controls over, the intellectual energy we want to share.
The information we know we need, beginning with a strong formation in the civic virtues, must bubble up from families, the public square, religious beliefs, and a confident sense of our principles and purpose as human beings—and as a nation. Urgent agendas, like a press club’s deadlines, can lead to quick action but erode authentic trust.
Chewing on This—A Story I Heard
A speaker aired during The Lutheran Hour (also on July 10, on a different network) pointed me toward the Bible book of Ecclesiastes. Waiting for the movie, I have not read this book in years. But as an old Irish comic used to say about his jokes, “It’s a good one—write it down!”
The book’s author, perhaps Solomon himself, addressed today’s world in which our fundamental attitude is often one of “languishing.” According to the Lutheran speaker, when asked what we think about someone or something, our response is often a shrugging “meh…” or “whatever…” or “it’s the same old stuff…”
How does that translate in the Old Testament? “Vanity of vanities, all things are vanity.” Also, “All things are wearisome.” Also, “Nothing is new under the sun.”
This view is self-destructive—a stance Solomon adopted in later verses. We must not try to impose, or even conjure up, our own definitive understanding of the world. Nothing may seem to excite us, or even to make sense. But, with faith, we can find sources of meaning and enthusiasm in the passing days.
To everything there is a season! (Hear the Byrds sing here!) There is a time for mourning and weeping, speaking and remaining silent, embracing and refraining from embraces. “God has made everything appropriate to its time but has put the timeless into their hearts so they cannot find out, from beginning to end, the work which God has done.”
This repeats the message from the truth-and-trust missive presented above, and it speaks to the need for a humility of learning and reflecting—not passively, but constructively. There is always something new to see! Ecclesiastes then presents the most hopeful foreshadowing: “I recognized that there is nothing better than to rejoice and to do well during life.”
The book, in 8:15, even tells us “there is nothing better for mortals under the sun than to eat and to drink and to be joyful.” (It may be the translation of “joyful” into “merry” that led us astray in our hermeneutics for this verse.)
The Lutheran speaker explained that this spirit derives from making Jesus Christ part of our everyday experiences, whether “good” or “bad.” We are living with, in, and through Him, and we can find a happiness in Him which we can and must share with others. Jesus can make all things new. Otherwise, languishing can slip into depression, and disillusionment can lead to self-destruction.
Pandevotional Prayer/Reflection
It may be time to pick up the magazine called Dappled Things, a term taken from “Pied Beauty” by Gerard Manley Hopkins. This Catholic journal of “ideas, art, and faith” has returned to my radar screen. Like the poem, the journal appreciates the need for beauty in all its forms—as an instrument for making Christ part of our everyday experience.
Before you subscribe, you can enjoy the article on imagination written by Dale Ahlquist, who heads the Society of G.K. Chesterton. I would introduce it this way, based on remarks you already have read: Imagination, especially when fed by beauty, is crucial for finding the “common ground”—and seeking “what’s new”— to help us seek and celebrate trust and truth. And the “wow” of imagination is far more enlivening than the “meh” of languor. (These last four words sound like the subtitle for a “Mighty Thor” movie.)
“The purpose of the imagination is to make us more like God,” writes Ahlquist. This should appeal to many people today who do want to become more like God, although they might misconstrue the message.
“There is almost nothing that we cannot do within the infinity of our minds.” Participation in our Creator’s creativity is both re-creation and recreation. “It is a gift that we have abused, but perhaps even worse, it is a gift we have left unused.”
Read the poem by Hopkins here.
Word’s Worth
The phrase “precautionary principle” fascinated me when I was a senior editor at Chemical Week magazine. Executives at chemical companies—and advocates for greater safety and environmental consciousness in government and elsewhere—talked a lot about it during my journalistic tenure around the turn of the century. (That makes me sound quite old.)
The principle is an approach to policy-making that prescribes preventive measures to limit potential risks from industrial operations and other activities. It is important still today because it established a groundwork, implicitly or explicitly, for viewing many high-profile issues. Those issues include global climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic. Also, the principle, formalized about 50 years ago, is now embedded in various documents of international law.
Oddly, I never hear the term mentioned. I surmise it is much more common in the political discourse of Western Europe. But the bigger mystery, by my lights, is that the term—and the exercise of the principle itself—seem to be distanced from fields other than governance and law. Even though politics and rulemaking are now hard-wired into almost every interest and activity of everyday life!
Albert Camus applied the precautionary principle to religion in the 20th century. He said he would rather live as if there is a God and later learn he was wrong than live as if there is no God and later learn that He exists.
The application of this principle deserves further research. It goes to the heart of a major paradox in modern society—our tendency to be precautionary and preventative in matters of “policy,” alongside our tendency toward sloppy and careless thinking about aspects of everyday life entailing high risk to individuals and the world. We have seen this in leaders’ behaviors during the Covid crisis which later were deemed hypocritical.
There is another paradox. We publicly embrace precaution about some matters, to the point where we sound risk-averse or even conservative, but we proclaim “liberal” thought in other cases of “tolerance” where imagination and self-centered creativity (not re-creation) are being abused, leading toward human entrapment.
Just Kidding—Wit Waiting in the Wings
“How are you feeling?” “I’m glad to be alive! Most folks in history can’t say that anymore!”
New York City recently launched a public service announcement telling people what to do in case of nuclear attack. (This is true.) Comic Jamie Lissow says too many fearsome messages are making the public panicky. He expects the next PSA to be only one word: “Boo!”
Image from ClipSafari collection of Creative Commons designs.