Tag: Culture

Burn your silo; find a home

As Walter Lippmann said:

“When everybody thinks the same, nobody thinks very much.”

I love that statement, but it’s also convicting.

The gist is simple: There is profound danger in surrounding yourself with voices that sound strangely like your own. It’s called the “echo chamber,” and the result is the assisted suicide of critical thinking.

As I heard a wise man say:

“If you only read the books you write, your ‘truth’ will always be slanted.”

These days, the slant goes by many names:

  • confirmation bias,
  • the herd mentality,
  • tribalism, and
  • a silo culture.

 

In a silo culture, homogenous items are kept safely together, and safely separate from all else. There is little meaningful communication between silos, and few doors or windows. And as the Cold War taught us, “silos” now have a further purpose. They are for launching missiles in the direction of opposing silos.

bwsilos
Photo by Patrick Feller

Both meanings are fitting. Silos are symbols of separation, and of mutually assured destruction.

And whatever your position on particular social or political issues, you have to admit one thing: Our culture has embraced its silos.

Take, for instance, the way we get our “news”:

In prior eras, there were a few respected voices: Cronkite, Murrow, Brokaw. They were biased, of course (for everyone is biased), but we mostly drank from the same wells.

Not today. Now, we have our “silo-sources.” They have been carefully designed by market research to suit our preferences and our prejudices. Not too hot. Not too cold. They’re “just right”—with a steaming side of confirmation bias.

Are you a raging liberal who thinks George W. Bush would have been a Bond villain if only his IQ was higher than a Texas hunting dog? Enjoy the echo chamber of MSNBC.

Or maybe you think Obama is a secret Muslim who simultaneously loves gays and beer and Sharia law (think about that…). Good news. You too have Cable News corroboration. It’s fair and balanced. No tribalism here.

Unfortunately, we are now discovering where silo-sources leave us (see the current presidential frontrunners).

My point, however, is not about our news or politics.

It’s about community, friendship, and the kind of relationships that actually help us think.

Here’s my big idea:

While tribalism can be deadly, there is great value in belonging to a tribe.

While silos separate us, we still need homes.

Humans need community, and some of that community should be like-minded. That’s not a bad thing. To accomplish anything, we need shared vision. We need spouses and friends who see the same truth we do, just as we need voices to challenge our assumptions. To deny the value of all like-minded groupings is to cast oneself adrift on a sea of loneliness and isolation. That way lies cynical inaction.

There is value in belonging to a tribe, and I certainly have mine.

As a follower of Jesus from a particular segment of the Christian family, I am part of an admittedly peculiar (and imperfect) people. It is a bounded set, which means that it has fences, unique problems, and beliefs that we hold in common. That is as it should be.

In one sense, to have a tribe is to have a home, and homes are good.

Homes have doors and windows, and perhaps a welcome mat. In good homes, outsiders are welcomed with hospitality, and family members are bound together by more than shared opinions. In homes, there are lines of communication with the outside world, and not just the “Red Phone” for launching missile strikes! In a home, insiders leave and return, preferably on a daily basis, in order to embrace the outside world.

Because while we should have homes, we were never meant to hole-up there. Agoraphobia is a disorder—and a fear-based way of living.

Here’s my point: When tribes become tribal, homes become silos, and fences become unwelcoming walls (“y-uge beautiful walls”…perhaps paid for by Mexico). And that is bad for everyone.

It is killing civil discourse, and it is the assisted suicide of critical thought.

“When everybody thinks alike, nobody thinks very much.”

It’s time to burn our silos, while also finding homes.

Why We Can’t Have Nice Things: On Democracy, Deservedness, and Donald Trump

The problem with democracy, according to the old adage, is that “you get the leaders you deserve” (Joseph de Maistre).

Which raises the question: What are we doing to deserve someone like Donald Trump?

Trump
Photo by Gage Skidmore.

For many of us, the fact that someone like him has made it this far is enough to trigger acid reflux.

It is an indictment of our culture, and it raises questions.

Questions like: Is this really happening?

Are Americans really nominating a reality TV star with a penchant for misogyny that is matched only by his love of spray tans, xenophobia, narcissism, and a braggadocios meanness?

Yep.

In fairness, my suspicion is that there is enough blame to go around for the rise of Trump, and it extends to both sides of the aisle. Both parties have failed working class Americans, and there is justifiable frustration with certain currents of political correctness. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. And so the pendulum swings, until it puts an eye out.

Still, such moments are useful for some soul searching. And as a theology professor, that’s the part I’m interested in.

Consider the following:

Not long ago, when the optimism of the Arab Spring turned to the eternal winter of sectarian violence, I recall hearing something like the following applied to places like Egypt, as well as elsewhere:

Some cultures (read: Muslims) can’t handle democracy, because if given the chance, their angry and ignored constituencies will choose violent and abusive leaders—immoral opportunists—who will stoke the pent up passions of the mob and smash dissenting voices in a wave of sanctioned violence.

Such arguments carry more than hint of cultural superiority, if not outright racism.

Yet as I watched a U.S. presidential frontrunner openly, and on more than one occasion, incite supporters to violence in exchange for legal fees(!), I wondered if there was perhaps a grain of truth to the above contention. Not in Egypt, mind you—with the Muslim Brotherhood—but here.

At the risk of repetition, I’m not saying that the angrier-than-thou supporters of “the great orange-haired unintended consequence” don’t have reasons for their outrage. As Marilynn Robinson phrased it:

“The public is exasperated by the political system to the point that it is enjoying a kind of catharsis, the indiscriminate smashing of things as performance art.”

That sounds accurate.

And when you’re angry, it feels good to smash things.

Yet when the demolition is directed against the very house you live in, the catharsis comes at quite a cost. If the political fire you set is in your living room, then you stand to lose some things in this bonfire of inanities.

So what’s the takeaway?

Despite everything, my assumption is that democracy–that worst of all forms of human governance, except for all the others–is a gift of inestimable value. And like all gifts, not least of all God’s grace, we can’t deserve it.

Yet as any parent might say to a child engaged in such gleefully destructive Christmas present smashing:

“This is why we can’t have nice things.”

And if it continues, we won’t.

 

 

NB: This post should not be taken as a tacit endorsement of any other political candidate or party. And if you are a Donald Trump supporter, I still love you, so please don’t sucker punch me.