Jack Pelham

In 2018 I was summoned for jury duty and witnessed the most amazing display of human beings operating outside of their natural habitat. Here’s what I saw, lightly edited from my original Facebook post.

I was summoned for jury duty today. They didn’t get far enough down the list to get to my name, but I noticed something—several things, actually—that seems worth the time to point out. When a regular guy gets up in the morning, he’s just a regular joe. He’s not a philospoher. He’s not a jurist or a statesman or a logician or a writer or a theologian or an ethicist. No, he’s just a regular joe. And then he gets to the jury pool, where suddenly, a few people are keenly interested in his thoughts on some particular subjects.

Suddenly, the man having never before been asked about such things, is asked in front of many people to share his views. It’s as if the curtains were raised, the spotlight were on, and the audience were waiting with bated breath to hear his views. But if he’s an average guy, he has no formal philosophy. He’s never developed an exhaustive method of thinking things through. He has no particular set of rules for his outlook on the world, other than the simple rule of thinking whatever seems best at any given time. And with that, there’s little chance he can see where his own answers are headed before they get there. He just starts talking in reply to the questions—likely having little idea what will come out of his mouth.

It’s not like he’s ever rehearsed such things. In fact, by the time he finishes his first sentence, he may well have reached a conclusion that he didn’t have in mind when he began that sentence. He’s just not a sophisticated being. He’s shooting from the hip. It’s reflex; best-guess material.

No one among them says, “Oh, I’ve thought about this a lot over the years, and here is my answer.” No one says, “Well, I know that great minds have disagreed on this question throughout history, but here’s my take on it.” No, they just say what comes to mind, and that’s that. They’re not talking as if their words were going on the record to be made into an epic film someday, or as if a Shakespeare were taking them down to turn them into a classic play. They don’t know if their thoughts are worthy of such esteem or not; they’re just talking off the cuff. And that’s very interesting to me. About us, that is. About what kind of people we are—generally, so casually considered. So unmethodical and inattentive to our own philosophies. So unprepared for the quiz. So far from being ready to be quoted in the newspaper.

Most simply think what seems best to them to think in the moment, with little idea how good that thinking is. And that’s very interesting to me. It seems to be what most of our culture is generally like. It’s not so much, “Is this going to be on the test?” as it is, “Oh, I didn’t *know* there was a test!” Or “I didn’t know anybody was paying attention!” Or, “I didn’t really think that what a person thinks matters very much.”

Well, some certainly don’t think it does. But I’ve been thinking about that for many years now, and I think it matters much. In fact, I think that the way we think is one of the most important things about us. So, to me, it’s very interesting when people are put on the spot with these jury-selection questions. It’s a rare experience to see so many people talking about such things in one meeting. I wonder, though: What if we as people talked about such things every week? Would we be better at it? Would we be more streamlined? More consistent in our judgments? More methodical? More principles-based? More deliberate? What if we were the sort to give careful thought to our ways? How would the world be different then?

EDITED TO ADD: Kay points out in retrospect that at the time in history when trial by jury became a thing, Americans were being philosophers at home and at the market and at the city gates. And I am reminded by her thoughts of Alexis De Tocqueville’s observations about what Early Americans were like:

I have lived a great deal with the people in the United
States, and I cannot express how much I admire their experience and their good sense. An American should never be allowed to speak of Europe; for he will then probably display a vast deal of presumption and very foolish pride. He will take up with those crude and vague notions which are so useful to the ignorant all over the world. But if you question him respecting his own
country, the cloud which dimmed his intelligence will immediately disperse; his language will become as clear and as precise as his thoughts. He will inform you what his rights are, and by what means he exercises them; he will be able to point out the customs which obtain in the political world. You will find that he is well acquainted with the rules of the administration, and that he is familiar with the mechanism of the laws. The citizen of the United States does not acquire his practical science and his
positive notions from books; the instruction he has acquired may 376 have prepared him for receiving those ideas, but it did not furnish them. The American learns to know the laws by participating in the act of legislation; and he takes a lesson in the forms of government from governing. The great work of society is ever going on beneath his eyes, and, as it were, under his hands.
In the United States politics are the end and aim of
education; in Europe its principal object is to fit men for
private life. The interference of the citizens in public affairs
is too rare an occurrence for it to be anticipated beforehand.
Upon casting a glance over society in the two hemispheres, these
differences are indicated even by its external aspect.
In Europe we frequently introduce the ideas and the habits
of private life into public affairs; and as we pass at once from
the domestic circle to the government of the State, we may
frequently be heard to discuss the great interests of society in the same manner in which we converse with our friends. The Americans, on the other hand, transfuse the habits of public life into their manners in private; and in their country the jury is introduced into the games of schoolboys, and parliamentary forms
are observed in the order of a feast.

democracy in america. Alexis de tocqueville. 1835-1840

I think, then, that times are not now as good as they were then, in this respect. I think that America has lost something valuable. I don’t mean to exaggerate my point, as if Americans were all philosophical giants once upon a time. But if the American consciousness can be lowered since 1835, surely it could be heightened again.

To be unpredictable may be the last thing the fool has to protect.

I have done my best
To make the difference
I had hoped to make.

I did not succeed as I had hoped,
And not enough to justify going on,
But I have most certainly found out
What time it is.

And now I know things that many others may never know,
Including the pain of trying to help the prickly
And the joy of knowing those who were ready to be loved.

I knew a good man
And if I’m right about that,
And accounting for the fact that
Most of us are rather messy and prickly
And inconsistent in various ways,
He was a good man indeed.

And you could tell it by the way he
Treated people.

And it strikes me now as odd to have so little further
To say about him,
Except that it seems to me I have
Already said that very greatest thing
That could be said about him.
Haven’t I?

So it hardly seemed worth mentioning
That he was funny
And that he cooked the best breakfasts ever
And took me fishing.

He was a good man
And that did something
To my fledgling years
To get me started in a certain direction myself,
Valuing such things
And finding a treasure
In a life many others
Might count as of little merit
In the grand scheme of things.

But I wonder if I have not noticed
The most important thing of all
And cherished it in my heart,
Where it can really matter the most
For the best reasons.

She poses and postures
And prances about
As if on grand parade
For the very purpose of making
Her acrimonious case against you —
The point of it all being in
Convincing a certain audience
That she is in the right
And you are in the wrong
And that that’s all there is to it.

It’s that simple in her mind.
She’s sure she’s right;
That is not in question.
And she has a dozen points,
Any of which will surely do
To unhinge you —
She is sure.
So it matters very little whichever
She should choose to employ.
It is not a matter of proofs, after all—
Though she may carry on as if it is—
But it is actually a matter of predetermined conclusions—
Of axioms that are beyond questioning in her mind,
Even though she pretends to be the questioning sort,
For whom it makes a moral difference how aptly a matter is reasoned out.

But she doesn’t care about the details.
Indeed, that’s how she got to where she is in the first place,
With her predetermined conclusions
And her ineptitude in knowing how to tell what is true and false about any matter.

She is a liar,
Hoping that there is no God
To find her out,
And in a rage
To trample whatever truth is necessary
To have her pouting way in this
Lie-tolerant world.

She will hate you for pushing back
As to the truth.
She considers herself entitled to have her way
With this world without the likes of you raising questions
Of Fact, Logic, and Sourcing.

She will pretend to know something about
Rights and Principles and Freedom and Justice.

She will be snuffed out in time.
Silenced.
Done.
Discontinued.

And in that quiet, holy place,
Her commotion will have no place.
Nor will any other such person be there.
And the silence of it will be glorious
In that regard.

And there will be peace,
And the liar heard no more.

But until then,
She dances her dance,
Buck naked,
Though pretending herself clothed
With reason and truth and honor,
And prancing her shame for all to see,
As if there are none in this world who
Know a naked woman when they see one.

And she thinks you need her company,
When, in fact, she cannot devise a good way
To be rid of it herself.

I’ve recently decided to leave Facebook as I’m plenty tired of Zuckerberg’s corruption and cannot support it in good conscience, and as participation in the social network is simply not the best use of my time.

And like so many millions of others, I’m met on the first day of my retreat with the immediate regret that arises from no longer having the ready access to a ranting platform during the next day of corruption and foolishness in this world. It’s just so easy to pop off a post on Facebook about whatever I’m seeing in the world—and how it ought to be fixed—about how people really should know better. But if I’m not doing that anymore, then what shall I do instead?

While that’s a fine question, there’s an earlier one that’s still compelling, and that’s the question about what good it did to have been venting on Facebook in the first place. The respondents are almost always the same handful of Facebook friends, with an occasional stray like or share here and there. And that’s about it. Indeed, I don’t recall the last time I saw someone change his mind as the result of a Facebook discussion. It seems quite the rare occurrence.

And to me, this is quite an important statement since the question “What kind of people are we?” is an important one to me—as is the question of whether we humans can change—of whether we can improve ourselves. My view is that we can change. Why, then, do we tend to do so little of it? Even in the face of overwhelming and solid evidence, far too many seem to view fact, logic, and sourcing as of advisory-only value, and don’t seem to think it has any particular belief-changing authority.

And why is that?

Has the human race forgotten in the last generation or two how to correct itself? Has it forgotten how to give an account for itself, and to make sure its convictions jibe with reality?

Maybe it has. And I was there to watch it happen.

Well, I’d like to see about turning that around—about providing an alternative philosophy to the world, wherein truth and reality and honesty and rationality and responsibility are supreme axioms, and wherein people adjust themselves to fit reality, and not the other way around. But this is no new philosophical idea. No, these ideas have been cooking in the Bible for eons. Indeed, they were also cooking in the classic cultures of Rome and Greece (to name just a couple), before there was any modern Bible collection to be bought in stores. These are old ideas; not new ones. And there’s not much room for improvement upon them, either—as simple and practical as they are.

Why, then, should Jack see a need to start a new philosophical movement in promotion of such things?

It’s because the original has been twisted out of shape—misappropriated for twisted use in the name of any of a number of compromised versions of Christianity, where so many make fast and loose with fact, logic, and sourcing in order to suit themselves—as if there were not ultimately any God to be answered to after all. I would like to promote the actual words of the Bible as some sort of Exhibit A in a grand case against the popular corruptions of Christianity—except that no one seems interested in trying that case. It doesn’t seem to be a question of natural interest for hardly anyone–whether their religion has got its facts straight or not. And how curious is that? How curious is it that we should be involved at all in something that seems to keenly-focused on whether a certain set of facts is true—and then to have no real concern about dealing with the particulars of those facts after all?

Indeed, I have ranted about it weekly on Facebook for years, and can hardly find a taker. It’s the same with politics; almost nobody cares to wrestle the details with a view toward actually settling anything. Instead, there seems almost a universal sense of entitlement to sit back quietly, and to disagree to some extent or other with whatever Jack thinks, with not the slightest compulsion to let on as much. There’s no palpable sense of honor in all this—as if it would be the right thing to state one’s disagreement, even if only for the record. No, almost no one does that. Occasionally, one might say he disagrees generally, and he might even promise to come back and say why—the if the former happens at all, the latter is almost unheard of. They never seem to make it back to the details they swore to provide.

Jack has pounded away, year after year, but almost nobody has ever dared to disagree in writing to any substantial extent beyond the mere promises I mentioned just above—and fewer yet to mount a case in reply—and far fewer yet to hash out a case until it’s all been heard and settled, which is the way Jack would prefer to do things. Indeed, I know very few people who seem to be in such cognitive practice that they could handle an expansive debate or examination of anything. That’s what I do still, but I don’t find anybody in our society looking for fellow examiners to hash things out.

It’s as if we just don’t do that here anymore–if we ever did.

But mine is no new complaint. Twain was fussing about this 115 years ago:

“In religion and politics people’s beliefs and convictions are in almost every case gotten at second-hand, and without examination, from authorities who have not themselves examined the questions at issue but have taken them at second-hand from other non-examiners, whose opinions about them were not worth a brass farthing.”

Mark twain, autobiography, 1907

And Twain was himself not onto anything new. Indeed, Aristotle was differentiating between the examiner and non-examiner types some 2,400 years before Twain did it.

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

aristotle

And it was a couple of centuries before Aristotle that Socrates was making a target of the unexamining type of person:

“The unexamining life is not worth living.”

socrates

And then there was Jesus, of course–my favorite philosopher–who came along examining a great many things, getting himself most famously killed over it in that greatest show of irony: The one who cared the most about the quality of people being murdered on account of it by those who cared the least about the quality of themselves.

And this seems to have been the main theme of my ranting on Facebook all these years: That people ought to cut it out and do what’s right. Meanwhile, however, what people really seem to want is for other people to cut it out and do what’s right, while leaving them alone to do as they please. Most of them don’t have any grand schemes of evil in mind; they want something much more mundane: to be left alone to be sloppy in their thoughts, decisions, and beliefs if they want to be sloppy. They just don’t want to be challenged.

And that seems to be where Facebook culture thrives: laissez faire. That seems to be the sweet spot. That seems to be the target behavior upon which the whole platform has been engineered–and the primary activity upon which the ad impressions are designed. It is a colossal exercise in my-side bias, where self is excused in various ways, even while pointing a finger at others for their misdeeds. It is a straining against the reality of cause-and-effect, under the chimerical notion that the things thought and said and believed and done by one’s own self don’t really count nearly as much as those thought, said, believed, and done by others.

It is a lie.

It is a colossally-popular lie—that we are somehow getting something useful done while protecting our own personal statuses quo.

And that’s my beef with it.

Indeed, what have we achieved with all our vying all these years? Has one of us changed himself? Are we now better humans than we were in 2008 or 2009–whenever Facebook was getting cranked up?

Yes, perhaps some very small number of us are better than we were then, but is this a substantial trend? No, I think most of us can readily recognize that self-correction is not the primary activity of Facebook—even when so much fault-finding is going on.

If not on Facebook, then where?

Is there some other locus on which people are more apt to practice self-correction?

Is it at some church I have never heard of? Or in some university?

If not there, where?

Or, is it rather that such habits are so seldom practiced as to have no commonly-known home?—that they are so rare as not to be readily associated with any group or place? What a pity that even in the religion called by his title, the Christ can’t have his own cognitive example enthroned safely in the lore of the people.

Indeed, where are the Christians who’ve had enough of the spin, and who are ready for the real deal?

Well, again, they’re obsessed with what’s wrong with everybody else. They’re ignoring dealing with their own errors, because it’s just to fascinating focusing on the errors of others. And whether they ever would have told you that they’d have thought this would be a good use of their time on Facebook all these years, this is what it has turned out to be for them. It’s a place to rant–or to read the rants of others–while neglecting the due diligence of self-correction. It’s a place in which to distract oneself from doing one’s own rightful business. And more than that, it’s a place to pretend one is doing something other than the very thing I’m talking about.

I’m sure that if some society of highly honest, rational, and responsible people were to chance upon Facebook for some reason, they’d use it for honest, rational, and responsible ends–because that’s what kind of people they are. But what would be the effect of a sudden onslaught of honest, rational, and responsible posts from this new society?

I’m afraid that Facebook would absorb that spike in high morals rather quickly—perhaps with some lip service here and there, followed with the standard excuses and distractions, and then back to business as usual. That’s how it would behave on the whole—in the aggregate. This is how things work.

And that brings me to my current season of recession, where I’m reconsidering what I do and how I do it–and how well it’s working. Just what is the point of ranting and venting on Facebook, and pleading my case for a better world? There’s certainly no career in it, nor any fame or fortune. There’s rarely even good discussion in it; this culture can’t seem to bring itself to have a good discussion—even if it might have found pause enough in some idea to say to itself, “Hmmm, interesting point.” But that would be about it; just a brief blip on someone’s mental radar—a vestige that something happened once upon a time—that some new thought registered for a second before fading away into irretrievability.

When I stand back and observe, I can see that for many at Facebook, things like fact and evidence and logic and sourcing seem to be important. And how do I know this? It’s because so many of us still frame our statements in this sort of language. We still set things up this way—as if these things are still important things—as if it were still important in this world to get one’s facts right, to be be consistent in one’s logic. But we so often do a terrible job of following through on it. We’re just going through the motions in so many cases, not even clear enough of mind to realize that we have failed in upholding these sorts of axioms that we brought to the table in the first place.

Simply put, so many of us are terrible observers of self. And this comes as no surprise to me, as I weekly teach courses on a number of topics that involve the need for people to monitor their own performance. (Singing, public speaking, acting, reasoning, etc.) I can attest that, for whatever reason(s), most of us are terrible at this sort of self-monitoring. We have no real idea if we’re speaking louder or not, or if we’re truly hit the target vowel sound or not—or in this present case, whether we’ve really made the slam-dunk logical argument we set out to make when we sat down to post on Facebook.

This seems to be what time it is in our culture. And I’m trying to decide what to do about it. Suddenly, however, dumping more ranting and venting into the abyss of Facebook, no longer seems like a reasonable use of my time.

Perhaps I can discover some way to get people to pay attention to themselves at a higher standard of care, but I would have no idea where to start with that. It doesn’t seem to do much good to point out that the Bible has lots of standards and best practices in this regard that the churches haven’t adopted well. Nor does it seem to do much good to point out that Cognitive Science has, in recent years, made some good strides at understanding these same points from their own scientific observation and experimentation. The collective response to both seems to be, “So?” and “Why should I care about that?”

And this is where I think I have failed to get my point across. The Bible lore about Jesus seems practically unusable to promote such axioms because it’s too tied up in a massive tradition that’s concerned with other things. As soon as you’re talking Jesus, they already think they understand you, and they anticipate whatever points they’d expect you to make. They are not listening. They are not processing. They are not able to hear anything new this time around—even if you present some new fact in your study that they’ve never heard mentioned before. They’re just not any good at learning new things—considering new things—pondering new things—testing new things. Never mind that the Bible teaches they should be good at all this and more; the sad fact of the matter is that very few Christians are the sort to be concerned with these inner qualities of themselves. Their religion isn’t about that—even if Jesus’ religion was.

And I cannot seem to find the words to get anyone’s attention.

So, what’s the point?

I’ve certainly given it a good go. I think it’s been about about 13 years that I’ve been on Facebook. And you should see my daily memories. There are several years’ worth of thoughtful entries on most days. I’ve been thinking and venting and ranting and questioning for a long time now.

But what good has it done? Where’s the payoff? Where’s the return on whatever investment this has been?

Even in the course of writing this lengthy post in my spare time over the last couple of days, I’ve had the urge many times to post some brief statement on Facebook about the regrettable behaviors I’ve been seeing go on around me. And it still carries some promise—however false it probably is—that if only I’d post, there’d be some payoff to it. But what’s the most I can hope for? An attaboy or two, and maybe three or four shares in the case of some particularly hot topic? And then what have we done?

So I don’t get it. I don’t see how all that adds up into something that’s worth doing. And that’s very sad to me, because it could, I can reason. But it doesn’t.

And is this a problem with this world? Probably. But is it not also a problem with Jack? Probably—or maybe, at least. I do not think it’s wrong of me to want to live in a world where honesty, rationality, and responsibility hold a bigger place in the collective consciousness than they do. And I certainly don’t think it’s wrong of me to keep noticing when people and institutions give lip service to such things, while making serious errors in their practice of them. My question is whether I’m supposed to get used to all this—to become jaded by it—to settle—to give in—to lower my own personal barre to make life in this world easier for myself.

Many have done exactly that, to be sure. But I don’t think I’d be happy with myself if I were to do that. To me, it’s not about me. It’s not some internal question, but an external one. To me, it’s about what’s the right thing to do and to behave, and not about what’s the optimal way to feel about oneself or one’s circumstances. It’s not about reworking one’s worldview in order to find the most palatable disposition, but about reworking one’s disposition as needed to accommodate the things one knows, or should know, to be real in this world.

And I think that typifies the strife of my 13-year relationship with Facebook. It’s Jack trying to analyze his way through this real world on a platform on which the vast majority are probably more interested in trying to make the world seem more palatable to them, by any of a number of means, not all of which are honest, rational, and responsible. And it’s not hard to see why Jack doesn’t feel like he’s getting anywhere on Facebook. It is not there to help me, but to sell ad impressions and to influence my worldview by dishonest means.

And I wonder what is the cost to me of living daily in that cognitive environment, where nothing is ever settled, and everything is constantly being churned anew. And I don’t see how it could be worth it to live that way for so little in return.

I suppose the moment at which we realized
That we would be walking together
Was that day on the farm
When you giddily picked me the
Black-eyed Susan and presented it
Like a doe-eyed school girl, singing me:
“I’ll bring you a daisy a day, dear.”

After that, I don’t think there was ever a moment when it wasn’t plain
That we were no longer people who walk alone.
We had found our match — or it had found us —
And the rest was nothing more than the ongoing discovery
Of how it would play out.

There was nothing to be worked out.
Nothing to be solved.
Nothing to be negotiated.
We just were.
And that would do just fine.

And we made our vows and kept them—
These twenty years now —
And still we walk together,
Discussing most everything, eventually.

And having since multiplied ourselves
Into a threesome that is so much fuller
Than the pair could ever have understood
Ahead of time,
We are now so much more than before,
And I do think that surprises us still
From time to time as we realize
Our generations playing out their beginnings before us.

And still we discover,
As now aging and death and whatever lies beyond
Draw ever closer, reminding us of
What is important
And what is not,
And driving those humbly-helpless good hopes for James’ watch —
Hopes for a future that we know will be properly out of our hands.

And we see this ugly-beautiful world
Ever more for what it is, it seems.
And we bear up under its tests, we think,
Striving to be ever better people
As we navigate the tides of those who do not
And enjoy the company of those few who do.

And we understand “for richer, or poorer”,
Having seen both sides for ourselves,
Though it still doesn’t seem the point of it all,
As it does for many.

And in all this lies the question
Of whether everything is as we have supposed it to be —
Of whether we have got it right in our minds,
And whether we shall discover that what lies beyond
Is as we have read and figured —
And whether what has seemed worth doing
Was really worth doing.

And the promise of regeneration in it all is astounding —
That we should fly
And discover
And see the vindication
Of what is right and just and true in its every facet —
That this book should come to its close
And another should be opened.

And then, it seems, we shall have run our course
And the fatigue shall give way
To new energies unbounded
And to a new sense of things
We would not understand even if we were told,
Except that we should see it for ourselves.

And we shall cross that hill
Into that new morning,
Its endlessness clear from the beginning,
And it’s Champion on his throne
And all right being with his world.

And we will see that we were right to believe —
That goodness is not just a dream —
That truth does exist
That we have not been insane —
And that people can change —
And that we have done it ourselves,
However clumsily, we shall see.

And I believe we’ll see a certain beauty in how it will come back to that moment
When we began to walk together —
When it just seemed right that that’s how it should be —
And it was right.

And how could this not have been a gift for us,
That I should find you, and you should find me,
And that we might —
Both being headed in the same direction anyway —
Have chanced to walk here together?

What you want to know about says a great deal about it.
So does what you do not want to know about.
And so does what you’ve been urged to look into by others, but haven’t yet done.

Somebody somewhere can see you for who you are. Somebody can see your negligence, your hesitance, your procrastination and excuse-making. Somebody can see that you’re not really serious about everything you say you believe.

And what’s at risk is whether in some other world, such things are counted important or not.

There are rumors that they are.

Let us observe some things about ourselves in how various people among us might answer an overarching question about how to fix a society that most would agree is seriously ailing.

QUESTION

“What should be done about the mess we’re in?”

ANSWERS

SAM: “Pray about it.”
TED: “Throw the bums out of office!”
RALPH: “We need a good man in the White House.”
THOMAS: “We need more unity.”
ROBERT: “Put prayer back in the schools.”
ART: “Vote Republican.”
NED: “We have to get serious about protecting the environment.”
MIKE: “We need stricter regulations to keep big business in check.”
ANTON: “Back the Blue.”
ANSLEY: “Vote Democrat.”
ZANE: “Nothing. Just be at peace.”
WILLIAM: “Lower taxes.”
SAMUEL: “Raise taxes.”
PAUL: “More government programs.”
NATE: “Smaller government.”
FRANK: “Homeschooling.”
DAVE: “Increase spending on Education.”
CHARLIE: “Overthrow the government.”
FRED: “What this country needs is Jesus.”
GARRISON: “Promote diversity.”
HOWARD: “Term limits.”
IRWIN: “People need to get more informed.”
JAMES: “Less talk; more action.”
KERRY: “We need to bring back the great American work ethic.
LARSON: “Restore respect.”
MANNY: “Get rid of religion.”
NILES: “Start prosecuting people in office who break the law.”
OREN: “Put Fox News out of business.”
PAT: “More hate speech laws.”
KELLY: “Get rid of CNN.”
LAWSON: “Put Zuckerberg in jail.”
MARTY: “Break up Amazon.”
MOE: “Bring manufacturing back home to America.”
MUNSON: “Gun control.”
GEORGE: “Stricter health laws.”
CARSON: “Bring back $1 gas.”
KARL: “Free college tuition.”
WALLY: “Defund the police.”
XAVIER: “End racism.”
ALEXANDER: “Make it easier to vote.”
ALLEN: “Voter ID.”
BARRY: “Tort reform.”
DANIEL: “End the Fed.”
FREDDY: “Get rid of internal combustion engines.”
HARRISON: “Get back to the Constitution.”
LENNY: “Get rid of the Constitution.”
ANDY: “A one-world government.”
BRADY: “Anarchy.”
KELVIN: “Diet and exercise.”
MALVIN: “Yoga/Meditation.”
MAURIE: “STEM.”
OLLIE: “Can’t we just get along?”
…
This could go on and on, but I think this is a good enough sampling to get a feel for how varied might be the responses.

Surely, some of these are great ideas. And surely, some of these are terrible ideas. Almost all of these, however, are grossly over-simplified and/or over-generalized ideas, and this speaks to what I had mentioned above, regarding what we could learn about ourselves (either as a society, or as individuals) by observing how we tend to handle such questions. And surely, we’d learn just as much by observing how we tend to handle the more fundamental question: “Just what is the biggest problem in our society?” Indeed, I would expect a lot of people to answer the first question without first exercising the cognitive due diligence of defining just what mess we’re trying to fix in the first place. Yes, we can be that sloppy in our approach to thinking through such things!

I’ve been wanting to write this post for a few days, just to highlight how we’re “all over the board”—like what you’d see if you were to throw a dozen darts at a dart board (unless you’re excellent at darts). I don’t want to get off into the weeds of the details, but I will say this much. Let’s look at Sam’s answer at the top of the list: “Pray about it.” And then let’s ask Sam, and everybody who agrees with him, “OK, and what result should we expect to see from that?” And in response to that, I would expect that group’s answers to be “all over the board”. Is this me saying that prayer is bad? No, this is me wanting more than just a pat answer.

Or with Ted’s answer (“Throw the bums out of office”), suppose we were to ask this question to everyone who agrees with Ted’s go-to solution: “After throwing the bums out of office, what would be the next step necessary to produce a substantial improvement in things?” And while we might get some simple answer like, “Put good candidates in their places”, we’d find on follow-up questions that Ted’s group might be “all over the board”. For example, let’s ask them “OK, what makes a good candidate”, or “How can you actually get a good candidate elected in this day and age?”

This is what I mean by over-simplification. So many of these answers are just something to say. They’re not well-considered strategies; they’re just something to say—something to tell ourselves—something to tell others—something, perhaps, by which to pretend that we’re not as clueless about what goes on as we actually are?

So I thought that in this post, I’d put myself on the spot, as it were, and take my best stab at answering the question briefly—with no particular plan having been conceived in advance. So, here goes:

QUESTION (restated)

“What should be done about the mess we’re in?”

JACK’S ANSWER

Well, the mess we’re in is actually an aggregate of a lot of messes running at once–and that mess certainly includes the trouble caused by all our different ways of identifying causes and effects, and of differentiating between what is true and false, and between what is effective and ineffective. If there is some sort of fundamental cause underlying the overall mess of things, wouldn’t it have to lie in what the typical human does in his or her mind? So, shouldn’t the remedy have something to do with improving how we think, decide, and believe—with how we manage what goes on in our minds?

In short, we need some way to become better at being humans—better at how we manage ourselves and our relationships with others, and our habits of dealing with one another, whether in friendships, businesses, or government. I have seen people who believe any of the particular answers given on the long list above, yet who do not seem to think it’s very important to be learning how to be a better human themselves. But think of the irony that Ted should be adamant about throwing the “bums” out of office, but not about avoiding being a “bum” himself—or that Pat is adamant about “hate speech”, but is not concerned with the fact that he he himself says hateful things about people he thinks are immorally intolerant of others.

If we can’t find a solution for our own selves—for what goes on inside—then is there really any reasonable hope for fixing things on a grand, societal scale? And can you really fix anything overall without having to improve the behavior of individuals? Why, then, would we reach any other conclusion than that each of us should fix him- or herself?

And we tend to have more problems than just one. Cognitive miserliness and moral miserliness are two huge ones—the result of which is often observed in hypocrisy, which is a plague upon our culture. If we were to improve just 50% in these things, it would make a tremendous difference in our society.

The way I see it, this is our work, whether we do it or not. It is so easy to fall into the trap of fussing about what’s so wrong with everyone else, or, perhaps, quietly stewing over it, rather than fixing what we could manage to fix in ourselves. And surely, many fall into the trap of wishing that someone else would come fix their hearts and mind for them—doing for them what they could do themselves if they thought it were worth the effort to learn how and to do it. This is why so many over-invest in the hypothesis that man is an utterly-helpless worm that has no ability to do or think or want anything good, but must have all goodness divinely instilled into him by God.

But here’s something ironic: Even the people who buy into that notion—who claim that any good that resides in them must be the fruit of God’s own doing—seem to settle for so very little of that fruit, when, to hear them talk about it, God is this ever-flowing font of goodness, freely giving of himself and his riches of virtue to all who ask. Why, then, do they not to get themselves some more of that? Must God also make them ask for more—them being unable to desire and request more on their own?

Well, it that were the case, then how would we escape the conclusion that whatever is wrong with us—whatever is not yet fixed in us—is ultimately God’s fault, and that we ourselves must be blameless?

And I know a lot of people that seem to operate quite like that—even though I could not imagine them admitting it in words even in a thousand years of operating that way. They just don’t seem to want to be accountable for themselves. And yet even so, they are quick to stew or to fuss (or both) about how other people ought to be doing a better job in their thinking, deciding, believing, and doing. So, it would seem that the folks I’m talking about really do believe in personal accountability after all, except in their own cases. And what could be a more quintessential exercise in hypocrisy than that?

When I read the Bible, I see God holding a lot of people accountable for their choices. And I suppose I have taken the same view—that it is right to hold us accountable for what we choose, and to judge us by the same standards by which we judge others. Indeed, if that were unfair—if our standards for others were unjust—then why are we using those standards ourselves? If it is good for the goose, then why not for the gander?

But that’s an examiner’s question, and not the question of the cognitive/moral miser. And that brings us back to the problem I’ve been getting at—that not enough of us are duly concerned with how we manage things inside. We get upset for how other people’s mismanagement of themselves hurts or inconveniences us, for sure, but we give ourselves a pass far too often for causing similar troubles to this world ourselves.

There are a lot of front porches in town that need sweeping. Shall I sit in the dust on mine, and complain about the neighbor’s laziness?

If there is some answer that’s more fundamental than this one, I have yet to learn it. And there’s a great gradient—both in politics and religion—spanning between those who care nothing about principle, and those who care about it with great diligence. The masses, however, rest in the middle of that gradient, and sort themselves out left-and-right, with none of their camps being very accommodating to the ones who care the most about getting things right. They all cheat. They all cut corners. They all deny, from time to time, the principles they otherwise seem to be interested in promoting. And yet they all expect their members to be more loyal to the group than to their own continuing maturation in principle and practice. The most diligent of people don’t seem to do very well in those groups.

And these are the groups who, generally speaking, run the country and the churches and the schools and the companies and the media. And most of these things are designed to thrive within the status quo, and are not interested in meaningful reform. They are a lousy hope in the hunt for a cure to what ails us, then. Generally speaking, they are deeply committed to mediocrity, and not to excellence—to what is popularly acceptable, and not to what is true. They are not the answer that they hold themselves out to be, and that so many wish they were.

I think the answer lies in the question, “What kind of people are we?” and its sister, “What kind of people are we willing to become?”

I could say without reservation that Fred’s statement (above) is right: “What this country needs is Jesus.” But the catch is this: Which Jesus is Fred talking about? Is he talking about the one in the Bible, who held people to account and expected much from them, or the one that’s so popular in the churches today, who gives people a pass for their choices and slathers them with a “grace” that basically says “Your choices don’t matter, as long as you choose to maintain a minimal belief in the fact that, ‘Jesus is Lord’.”?

Who among us can be flawless? No one. But the question that drives me is this: Who among us can be better than he is?

This, we could do. This, we should do. And this, widely-adopted, would change the world.

I am wearied by this world,
Its endless waves washing ashore
Day after weary day,
And filled as they are with the rubbish
Of what might have been fixed already—
Each filthy rush a testimony
To how few really care to make things right—
Or know how.

And who, seeing this, could not wish
For a better world?

And don’t we all,
In this way or that?

Yet no one can make it better for the wishing—
Nor even for the trying—
Except for that tiny part of the mess
That is his own—
That one part of it in eight billion
That he has created himself
By way of his own errors
In thought and decision
And belief and deed.

These he could set out to fix—
To do his part at ridding the world
Of the evils he himself has thrust upon it
In his days so far—
And in sparing the world of those he might have
Otherwise thrust upon it tomorrow—
To tidy up after himself
And to make amends
And to speak up for what is right
By having done what is right himself.

But who would choose such a course
When it is so much easier to fuss at the waves
As if he had no part in their filth himself?

Indeed! Who would be so just
As to refuse to discount
His own role in the mess
While raging at the wearisome whole of it?

Who would be so brilliant of heart
As to see what he owes to the cure—
And to make it so—
Even if the cluttered beach
Should look quite the same with his share
Of the trash removed?

Such a one would know that
He had done right,
Whether the others did likewise or not—
Whether they noticed or not.

And he would be the one most worthy
Of that better world for which we all wish
In some form or another—
And the one most apt to know how to build it,
If it had not been built already—
That great world in which everyone else is
Upright and kind and untwisted.

And upon going there,
He would surely witness
Among its myriad glories
That most somber occasion
Upon which the ordinary man
Would be sternly turned away,
Though having expected to be
Welcomed with open arms,
Yet never having figured out that
In a great world in which everyone else is
Upright and kind and untwisted,
There would naturally be no room for
One who was not.

And so they stand even now on this beach,
Bemoaning the rot of this world
As it pours in each day,
And wishing it removed by hands not their own—
Whether God’s or man’s, they do not really care—
And wishing for a world in which
The sad state of their own souls did not matter,
Just as they assume it does not really matter here.

And this is their idea of heaven.
And standing in this present filth,
They marvel at it and revel in the hope of their heaven,
While the one odd soul in the distance
Picks up his own trash.

And being one of the relatively few aspiring
To pollute this world no further
With what goes on in my mind,
It is hard not to be grow weary of the surf
From time to time, at least,
And to be disappointed
That so many seem so slow to catch on—
That so few projects bear the fruit it seems they could.

And I wonder whether I really understand myself—
Though I think I do—
That the key to fixing this world completely
Is not one key in the hand of a grand hero,
But eight billion keys in the hands of
Eight billion people who could
Learn this one-person lesson for themselves
If they wanted—
Each of their lives having been set here,
As was mine,
For their chance at learning the lesson
And moving on to the world
That was made for those who
Cared to find their keys
And give them a go.

This surf is the fruit of each of us
Making his go at the world,
With his mistakes and successes—
His victories and losses—
His rights and his wrongs.
And here we all stand with it lapping at our feet,
Sprinkled so much more with bad than good.

But do I begrudge my fellow man
The chance to make his errors
And to have his go at it
While on his own watch?
Do I resent the cost to me
Of his deficit in learning?—
As if I myself were not still
Making errors and learning as I go?
Do I resent him stepping on my toes
As he learns to walk straight?

Indeed, I am not yet done myself,
Though having got a good deal of it figured out,
Even still, I so quickly lose sight of my own remaining imperfection,
And assume the bulk of what ails me to be
The error of others.
And yes, they are still wrong in so many ways,
And life would indeed be better if they’d cut it out,
But am I not in this same crucible, too,
Set right alongside them and
Committing errors of the same general sort,
Having not yet become flawless myself?

It is tempting to think that if only
I were to become perfect in forgiveness,
I would no longer be wearied by this beach,
But I’m not so sure that’s true.
I think it’s supposed to be hard here, and that
The Heaven’s a haven of rest from it—
And of reward for having used the key we were given,
To do our best at doing right
And to wrestle with ourselves over it all
And to see where we fall short
And to learn the humility needed
To keep trying, rather than simply
To fold our arms and pout about it all.

And my, do we ever fall short, it seems!
But no, that’s not true, either,
For we do not always fail.
No, we do learn and overcome sometimes.
So there’s no rule to be found in our failure, either,
However tempting it may be to believe it—
And especially in such a great company with those who do
Believe that notion.

So it tires me to keep on this straight and narrow—
To turn away neither to the left, nor to the right—
Though there are so many opportunities
For such error.

And I wonder that there should be
Some plan in all this after all—
Some purpose for it, being worked
By the one who set us here for a time
So that we could see whether we would
Want to live in that Holy City
In his second world of two—
Or not—
And whether we should be fit for it—
Both of which questions may well be one and the same.

And in my wearier moments here,
I can take hope in the idea
That life doesn’t grow weary there,
And that this shall all have been
Well worth the trouble of learning and enduring
And overcoming.

These things I have read.