So. I wrote this essay quite a while back and entered it into an essay contest for First Things, one of the leading magazines on faith and academia in America. It didn't win a prize, but the exercise of writing it taught me so gosh darn much. I gained a deeper respect for writers whose pieces are published: these things take SO MUCH EFFORT, you guys. After two months of brainstorming and having conversations about my topic (some of which I drove all the way to Waco to have with people there!), I was finally able to set aside nursing school studies for a weekend and hammer it out. THEN a dear professor edited the whole thing (and made it coherent). Then I sent it to a friend in Washington D.C., and he looked at it and sent back comments--and after all that time, it was finally ready to be submitted. So: mad respect for people who write publishable pieces on the daily. I'll stick with blog posts for now...and maybe crank one of these babies out once every five years or something. Point is: a whole host of friends and twelve pages of scattered incoherent Notes on my iPhone helped this thing come together. On that note, I'm not sure where any of use would be without Our People. Amiright? {Quick fun aside: I cc'd my Baylor professor on the comments I received back from my D.C. friend. She was so impressed by his comments that she asked to know more about him. So, naturally, I raved about him to her. THEN he called me after realizing that he wrote his thesis on a topic my professor has spent most of her career writing on/exploring. He asked me "how well I knew her," and I was like "ummm really well--I'm basically her fourth child *wink*." He asked me if I'd put him in touch with her, so I did. AND ALL THESE REALLY COOL THINGS HAPPENED LIKE A POSSIBLE TRIP TO ANOTHER COUNTRY TO PRESENT HIS THESIS IN FRONT OF A BUNCH OF OTHER SMART PEOPLE WHO HAVE SPENT THEIR LIVES RESEARCHING HIS TOPIC. Like WHAT?!? Life is just so insane, sometimes.} Without further ado. The Essay. Cultivating Thoughtfulness An essay for the First Things essay contest by Jordan Richerson It was just moments after the networks first aired the news of Michael Brown’s death at the hand of police officer Darren Wilson. Outraged Facebook status updates and Twitter blurbs appeared in rapid fire on my social media feeds. The conclusion nearly everyone had reached was simple: this was an act fueled by racism.
“Wow. You guys are pretty quick to arrive at such a clear understanding of what happened,” I said via group text. “Well, of course,” one of them shot back. “This is racism of the worst kind—a white police officer shooting an unarmed black teenager.” They had come to this conclusion before anyone knew much at all about the actual circumstances of Brown’s death, except that he was unarmed. Yet somehow, in a matter of minutes, thousands of people had come to hold precisely the same view with complete certainty. This isn’t a new phenomenon. Nietzsche famously termed it “herd thinking,” and the Nazi regime was well versed in its merits. Along the same lines, in A Tale of Two Cities, Dickens portrays shopkeeper Jeremiah Cruncher observing a loud procession. When Cruncher stops two men in the crowd and asks what’s going on, neither man can provide an answer. Yet both raise their hands and shout loudly in support of the cause. What does seem new to me is the speed and vehemence with which many of my contemporaries come to hold their views, due in large part to the herd-thinking promoted by social media. To put the problem metaphorically, they stand and watch as a train rolls by. They don’t know where it came from, to where it is headed, or who else may be riding. Most importantly, they don’t know the consequences of getting on and haven’t bothered to consider the different places it might go. Yet they jump on anyway. Why? Because the train is loud, and because the ride looks fun, important, even exhilarating. In jumping aboard a train filled with a multitude of people who seem to know what they think, we avoid the burden of having to examine things for ourselves. We allow the voice of a mob to become the power that fuels our lives and decisions. Our individual voices become one united shout. We enjoy a sense of camaraderie, of belonging, and we’re consoled by the idea of being part of something we consider grander and more significant than our own individual lives. We know many of our friends will be on board or, at least, the ones contributing their voices to the cacophony will be. Burdens will be shouldered collectively. On a train, or in a movement, we don’t have to stand alone. This phenomenon, as pervasive as it is destructive, is the “bandwagon effect.” It defines my own—millennial—generation. But it has also come more and more to define Americans of all ages, who increasingly appear unwilling or unable to take positions that run counter to elite, or popular, opinion. Few of us, after all, want to be “left out” or “left behind.” Most of all, we don’t want to be guilty of “intolerance.” When I asked a friend recently why he favored the legalization of gay marriage, he said it was because he didn’t want to be “on the wrong side of history.” His grandmother, he said, had been opposed to the Civil Rights Movement. “Today, we look back on that movement and are appalled at those who opposed it. We despise them.” He went on: “When I’m an old man, gay marriage will have been legal for more than half a century. Seeing gays get married will be as commonplace as seeing blacks and whites drink from the same water fountain. I don’t want my grandchildren to see me the way I see my grandmother.” But what about those of us who don’t jump on these bandwagons? In the Michael Brown case, I wanted to hear all the facts before coming to any sort of conclusion, most of all one that would attribute Wilson’s actions to racism. This is in part because I remembered what C.S. Lewis had said about progress. Of course we all want progress of a sort, Lewis explains. But real progress assumes an end; it is “getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning, then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; and in that case the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive man.” What will happen to those of us who, instead of boarding the train of popular opinions and conclusions, do an about-turn? Are there consequences for our refusal to “jump on”? The Bandwagoners believe they are progressive; what will become of those of us who decide the group is progressing in the wrong direction, and who choose to oppose them? First, there will be what I call “hate-fire.” This phrase describes the common response to anyone who opposes the dominant, elite, and popular opinion—no matter the reasons for the opposition. Such responses are often seen in reaction to outspoken conservative Christian families like the Duggars and the Robertsons. Hate-fire words appear on public websites and on the comment threads of popular articles whenever someone dares to oppose the new orthodoxies of progressivism. And, of course, one sees these sorts of words in response to unpopular Facebook status posts. As Kirsten Powers has recently pointed out in her book, The Silencing, the purpose of this hate-fire is simply to shut people down. If one side can be loud enough and mean enough to force the other side into being quiet, then the loud side will win, whether it possesses the truth or not. People can only withstand the pain of personal character attacks for so long before they lose the will to continue speaking out. Continuing to be vocal means inviting emotional duress. Standing apart from the Bandwagon, then, means keeping quiet. But there is also practical discrimination. A not-yet-tenured professor must, in this day and age, be incredibly careful about the sorts of statements he or she makes publicly. Yet if this person remains silent, the bandwagon has won again. Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich and the furor over Indiana’s RFRA are only the most public instances of such discrimination. But millions more of us self-censor, afraid of disagreeing with those who can easily make us look foolish, backward and parochial. So, what can be done? How can we move toward a more civilized public discourse, where the marketplace of ideas is real and people engage in thoughtful and reasonable discussion about society at large—not simply their own faction or agenda? We must cultivate thoughtfulness. But the real question for my generation is how the virtue of thoughtfulness can be encouraged. As an initial answer, I’d suggest that liberal education must play some part. Reading Plato and Aristotle, C.S. Lewis, Dante, and Thomas Aquinas, and discussing important ideas with peers and professors keeps our minds engaged. It also reminds us that we’re capable of discussing controversial issues without defensiveness and hate. Gaining knowledge across a broad area of subjects and disciplines is important. In doing so, one is better equipped to think critically about issues, in light of a wide scope of knowledge and a deeply rooted history of thoughtful scholarship. But the average American is hardly, if at all, versed in the knowledge of the great thinkers who came before us. These books and their authors have largely disappeared from public life and public discussion. This is disastrous. We have forgotten our history, our roots, and therefore are no longer grounded in anything. Thus, we sway like the wind. Today’s Bandwagon is a gay rights parade; tomorrow’s might be a race riot. Yet liberal education cannot be the whole answer, for often it doesn’t produce a charitable or thoughtful person. It is all too easy to accumulate knowledge but lack wisdom. T.S. Eliot wrote that “endless invention . . . brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness. . . knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.” “Where is the life we have lost in living?” he asked. “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?” In lacking wisdom, we lack thoughtfulness. It is also true that extraordinarily thoughtful people often live in countries where liberal education is simply unavailable. I have spent considerable time in some of the world’s poorest, most illiterate countries. Yet it is in those places that I have encountered some of the most thoughtful people I know. They are willing to listen to one another and to engage in peaceful discussion. These are people who, instead of raising banners and shouting, sit across from each other with eyes full of wonder, thirsting to hear the thoughts of someone else—thoughts and opinions often very different from their own. Given experiences like this, I think a better answer to how we might encourage thoughtfulness lies in cultivating the virtue of charity. The word comes from the Latin caritas, from carus, meaning “dear.” For Christians, it means something like “love of one’s fellows.” Practically speaking, it is the art of listening long enough to understand an opponent’s arguments and views and, by the same token, having logical and well thought-out arguments of your own. Early in college, I took a graduate-level political science class, the syllabus of which was filled with books written by long-dead political philosophers. I have forgotten much of what I read and learned, but one thing I have never forgotten is what our professor told us at the end of every class as we were packing up our belongings: “Remember, read charitably.” He asked us to fill our margins not with opposing arguments or critical comments but instead with “sentences of clarity and understanding” to prove that we thoroughly understood the text before us. His point was that we would not be able to provide opposing arguments unless we first understood the argument that was right in front of us. He was, in fact, teaching us the virtue of charity. Thoughtfulness, then, requires charity. In order to be profoundly thoughtful we must be charitable toward others, because only by listening to people’s ideas and arguments do we come to know them as they want to be known. We exhibit “care” for them. We try to see the world through their eyes. To the extent that we succeed at this, we might actually overcome some of our natural self-centeredness. It is only once we have listened well to the views of others—asked meaningful questions and waited patiently for thorough answers—that we can think holistically about our own arguments and opinions. At the same time, charity doesn’t mean that we must abandon our own views. What I’m advocating doesn’t require moral relativism or the kind of “tolerance as complete acceptance” in which all views are held to be equally valid. But one thing is certain: we must stop jumping on bandwagons and screaming with fists raised. My generation must start doing the hard work of soul searching, deep thinking, good listening, and real learning. We must become engaged, in the right way: not against each other but with each other. It takes real character—the quiet kind that doesn’t have to yell—to sit back and first do the research, do the reading. We want to be wise instantly, and in this culture of instant gratification, it’s no wonder. What we have forgotten is that wisdom and thoughtfulness are not intrinsic. As Aristotle recognized, we must “habituate” ourselves into this way of being. And the virtue of charity is a prerequisite for all of it.
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I was writing a birthday letter to a friend this morning, and after I signed off with a heart and JJ and xoxo I noticed the Blank Space on the back of the insert. Blank Space calls for the help of the little Book of Quotes that lives on the nightstand, next to my bed. I remember the day I found it or, rather, the day it found me. It was a dreary day in Carnforth, England, and the skies were drizzly. My friends and I had left The Castle and taken the little shuttle into town, and we passed by a small bookstore whose windows were all glowy and inviting. Naturally, we popped inside. It was a quaint and cozy place that smelled of old books and the English countryside, so we stayed a while. The only of its kind, I saw this brown suede-bound journal on a table and thumbed through its pages. "What is your purpose, little book?" I wanted to ask it. A Lifetime of Words. Yes. Just, yes. I paid the grey-haired man at the counter and tucked it into my purse. Back at the castle, I flipped to the inside of the back cover and scrawled "Est. Fall 2011 @ Capernwray."
So here we are, four years later, and the little thing is still alive and well. If you've ever found a letter from me to you in your mailbox and there happened to be a quote somewhere in the Blank Space at the end of the words, you can be assured the little Book of Quotes made the contribution.
This morning, I was flipping through its pages searching for the right words to fill the Spaces, and I landed on something Oscar Wilde once said: It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it.
Nature Valley recently published an ad wherein they asked some parents and grandparents a simple question: "what did you do for fun, when you were a kid?" The answers were things like "built forts! rode bikes! played outside with friends!" Then, they asked a handful of kids the same question. The music turned forlorn, as the kids said things like "I play video games at least 6 hours a day." "I text." "I would DIE without my tablet." The parents and grandparents were then shown video clips of their kids' answers to the question. Tears welled up in eyes. "Nature is a part of childhood," the ad-man says. He's talking to...us.
You know what else is a part of childhood? BOOKS. Words. Reading. They're a part of childhood, and they're a part of life-hood. Books shape our lives. They give us a window into the mind and creativity of another person; transport us into the worlds of characters we'd never know, friends we'd never meet.
Dear ones: we get to choose what our minds learn. Words pass our eyes, get computed by our brains and then embed themselves into our souls. Our psyches are compilations of All The Things we've seen and heard and read and written. Our actions, then, do not exist inside a vacuum. The things we DO and the way we see the world directly correlate to the worldviews we've allowed ourselves to ingest. If we're reading garbage, we'll treat people like garbage. If we're reading about people who do their best to be kind; who learn lessons; who take time to hear the stories of their friends, we will do the same. We learn How to Do Life and How the World Works from the characters in our books and from the authors who create them. Our knee-jerk reactions, "what we are when we can't help it," are syntheses of the habits we've cultivated--of the words we've read and written and spoken over and over and over again. WE HAVE A CHOICE IN THIS MATTER. Let's make an effort to keep Good Books on our shelves. More than that, let's keep them in our heads and hearts. Most of us don't have to read. We're out of school, and teachers aren't assigning chapters, and life is freaking busy. Too busy for books, probably. But is it? I don't think so. Here's what I think: I think there is exactly enough time for the Important Things in our lives. And I submit that Books Are Important. There will always and forever be moments where we can't help what we will be, and we should prepare our reactions for those moments like it's our JOB. If we practice being kind and nuanced and compassionate...and if we read about characters who are practicing to be that way, too, then most of the time we'll react accordingly. Since we don't have to read, let's choose to do so anyway. Let's be the ones clinging to words that have shaped society and culture and hearts and reactions for hundreds of, thousands of, years. The World is getting too busy for books. And if you watch the news at all, you've probably concluded its getting too busy for Kindness, too. I bet the two go hand-in-hand. Let's read the Good Stuff when we don't have to so that we can be the Good Stuff when we can't help it. |
hey, i'm jordan.wife to one, mama to four, bible-believing christian. Archives
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