Whatever Greatness We Like to Imagine
There’s nothing terribly profound about the things I have to say below, nothing too deep or unfamiliar, but I’ve been thinking quite a lot this year about the way we talk of people, of groups, of all the things we let ourselves believe about those we don’t know, never will, and shouldn’t need to.
Our entire lives, or at least most of the lives we can remember, we’ve been driving through green lights and yellow lights, openly trusting the work of invisible traffic engineers, certain that whatever they did, somewhere, was sufficient to keep the other drivers at bay, waiting on red. We sit in every chair we’re given because we trust the arms and the legs of someone else’s design will sustain our weight. We close our doors, our windows, and our garages trusting that the latches, the screws, the hinges, and the pulleys will almost always hold, even though we had nothing to do with their installation. The floors below us don’t usually crack or crumble, nor do the trees go slack or tumble, despite the work of those who set them in place long before we stood upon or walked beside them. We trust in these things because we must, because no one has ever given us reason or cause to make them controversial, to make them the fodder of our daily discussion and disagreement. We accept a score of other mechanical, man-made familiarities for granted, the ceiling fans that don’t burst apart when spinning, the wheels that don’t slip off their axles as we roll them at higher and higher speeds, the bulbs that don’t shatter when we send them a burst of electricity with touch of a switch.
This isn’t to suggest that traffic lights never break, that chairs never topple, that the nuts and bolts of the things we trust never falter. But rather, that we rely upon, build upon, and expand upon these things because more often than not, they’ve proven themselves, helping to sustain our daily existence, ensuring we can operate and function in a world that’s based on trust. Our entire lives, we’ve only had enough time to really invest our minds, our hearts, our professions in a very few things. And that’s actually okay. It’s part of what makes a community, as far back as Aristotle’s ideology, that not everyone can make shoes, prepare food, pave roads, stock groceries, build stairs, or design tables. We all have to carry our portion, lift our load, pull our weight, best we can, even going so far as to carry, lift, and pull a little extra for those who lack the means or the strength to manage their own affairs. This is the basis of a civil society.
Having said that, we must also concede that there are countless, nefarious members of our society whose primary objective is not to improve upon the above mentioned civility, not to ensure our continued trust in trustworthy things, but, for varying reasons, seek solely to disrupt our civility and our trust for personal gain and/or collective fame. These are the charlatans and the villains, the ones either masquerading as civil, hoping not to be caught, or openly fraudulent, fearless of the consequences. And I only mention these nefarious members, these charlatans and these villains, because of late, we seem awfully confused about what is or is not truly nefarious.
Let me give you a couple of examples.
While it is certainly plausible that a member of the scientific community, even several members, perhaps, may spend their entire careers studying diseases and remedies, climates and dangers, health and hazards, and still seek to disrupt our civility and our trust, this is unlikely to be the case for the greater community. Nor, then, would it make sense to castigate and denigrate the work of that community, talking about science, vaccines, climate change, health care as if they were all a fiction, open to our casual, passive, and largely ignorant interpretations. On the off chance that they indicate a constructive concern, like the risk of a damaged atmosphere or a potential cure, since our world is in constant, imperfect flux, perhaps they know something we do not. Sure doesn’t hurt to trust a group that prides itself on extensive, exhaustive research. They and their work is not and never has been nefarious.
Again, while it is certainly plausible that a member of the educational community, even several members, perhaps, may spend their entire careers teaching children, nurturing families, growing in knowledge, and still seek to disrupt our civility and our trust, this is unlikely to be the case for the greater community. Nor, then, would it make any sense to castigate and denigrate the work of that community, insisting that schools, that classrooms, that teachers have all been established for the dangerous, almost singular purpose of misinformed, misguided indoctrination. On the off chance that they’ve created a lesson or offered a degree of counsel, helping someone to work through a series of challenges relating to such layered and complicated topics as gender bias, homophobia, or, God forbid, racism, perhaps they know something we do not. Sure doesn’t hurt to trust a group that prides itself on generations of critical thinking. They and their work is not and never has been nefarious.
Still, even if we set aside all the salacious talk of science and education, even if we give those two communities their rightful place without harm or injury, the problem is that a small, yet overwhelmingly vocal part of our current society now marches to the beat of the unbelievable, that shooting victims are crisis actors, that our government institutions are run by secret organizations, that the normally mundane act of counting of ballots is a massive conspiracy. I’m certainly not immune to asking questions, to wondering, at times, whether 9/11 was an inside job, if there were multiple shooters in Dallas back in 1963, if the moon landing was staged in order to satiate the space race. But the reason I don’t ponder and puddle through these questions very long, outside of occasional curiosity, is because conspiracy is rooted in regular, sustained, and never ending distrust. It isn’t that I doubt the existence of those potentially nefarious members, as already mentioned, or that it’s impossible for lies and misdeeds to be covered up, but that I believe, that all of us need to believe, that the systems and the institutions we’ve built over generations can’t continue to work if we believe they are wholly nefarious. At that point, we cease to be civil, to be anything more than suspicious and emotional creatures, incapable of moving to and from one place or another without the endless garbage of fear and doubt.
Our entire lives, we’ve allowed ourselves to trust in things we barely understand and people we’ve never met. It’s essential that we do this on a daily basis. By the same token, there’s nothing wrong with keeping our senses keen, noting the occasional things and people that beg us to ask important questions. We can make crucial, important, individual observations all on our own. But if the things you talk about, the world you live in, the programs you listen to and watch, the people you spend time with foster your never ending distrust, it’s time to admit that you’re only keeping company with charlatans and villains.
A truly great society, a truly great nation depends more on civility than suspicion. If we can see how much we already trust each other, perhaps we can increase that trust and become whatever greatness we like to imagine of ourselves.
