Why is it that we’ve been intimidated, as a society, into false living? Rather than live authentically we’ve allowed ourselves to be strong-armed through political correctness, pseudo-selective tolerance, and manufactured consensus–the “press” of the social media crowd–to conform to a culture that, in many ways, seems foreign to us? A culture that has blurred the lines between sensitivity to one’s feelings and acknowledgment of what is right and what is wrong.
“Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking,” counseled the Apostle Paul whose influence arguably has been more significant than any other New Testament author.
A culture ready to roll out a new batch of television programs that acknowledge “there is something about our relationship with the world around us that seems frayed.” The dramatizations seek to “explore the issues unsettling society today–the questioning of truth–with characters who struggle to maintain a grip on reality,” as John Jurgensen characterized in his October 28th article, “The Surreal World: TV Delves Into Paranoia, Anxiety and Misinformation.”
It’s becoming increasingly indisputable… living honestly is wearisome in such an unsettled world.
Honesty is, in and of itself, a feature of moral character that implies positive and virtuous attributes such as integrity, truthfulness, straightforwardness– including straightforwardness of conduct–being trustworthy, loyal, fair, and sincere. Honesty is evidenced by the absence of lying, deceiving, cheating, thieving and the like.
William Shakespeare famously describes honesty as an attribute people leave behind when he wrote these words, “no legacy is so rich as honesty.” They appeared in one of his lesser-known plays–“All’s Well that Ends Well”–about a callow youth learning valuable lessons about values.
What are the valuable lessons we are learning in today’s world?
Consider the Greek philosopher Diogenes, a controversial figure from way back…400 years before the birth of Christ. Diogenes criticized many cultural conventions in his day.
Ambitiously modeling himself after the example of Heracles–a divine hero in Geek mythology–he believed virtue was better revealed in action than in theory. He would use his simple lifestyle and behavior to challenge the social values and institutions as to what he perceived as a corrupt, confused society (sounds a lot like unsettled). Diogenes became notorious for carrying a lamp during the day, claiming he was looking for an honest man.
His philosophical stunts aside, Diogenes believed human beings live artificially and hypocritically. This attitude was grounded in a disdain for what he regarded as the folly, pretense, vanity, self-deception, and artificiality of human conduct; proclaiming, “Humans have complicated every simple gift of the gods.”
I would have to agree with the simplistic Diogenes, self-deception is responsible for much of the endless, ignorant outspokenness that we are witnessing; much of which stems from the subjectification of truth.
We are all aware– unless we happen to be huddled in a remote jungle somewhere– public opinion is largely controlled through “news” content, which is broadcast throughout mass media. Such media are able to manufacture the consent of the masses through repetitive messages intent on inciting one’s emotions. As Austrian-American Edward Bernays– referred to as “the father of public relations”–observed in 1928, “A consistent, enduring effort to create or shape events to influence the relations of the public.”
To further enable this, we’ve weaponized words for political purposes. Words have become the most lethal weapons used in the battle for hearts and minds. As British author Steven Poole disclosed in Upspeak. Words are Weapons (2006), “These precision engineered packages of language are launched by politicians and campaigners, and targeted at newspaper headlines and snazzy television graphics, where they land and dispense their payload of persuasion into the public consciousness.”
International bestselling American author Robert Greene, in his book The 33 Strategies of War (2007), expands on this, “People’s perceptions are filtered through their emotions; they tend to interpret the world according to what they want to see. Feed their expectations, manufacture a reality to match their desires, and they will fool themselves. The best deceptions are based on ambiguity, mixing facts and fiction so that the one cannot be disentangled from the other. Control people’s perceptions and you control them.”
The Psalmist David refers to those who would attempt to control his sense of reality as “those who are trying to kidnap my soul.”
In some instances it’s subtle attempts to coax, in others blatant attempts to outright hijack our intellect, our conscience, our beliefs, our thoughts, our feelings, our mind, our heart…our vitality…our life.
As Robert Greene describes it, “Communication is a kind of war, its field of battle the resistant and defensive minds of the people you want to influence. The goal is to advance, to penetrate their defenses and occupy their mind.”
To the extent this mental and emotional territory continues to be conquered in our lives, we will continue to surrender to false living.
I’ll gather up my philosopher’s cloak, and close with words from David’s 40th Psalm, as paraphrased by best-selling author of The Message, Eugene Peterson, who passed away Monday morning October 22nd at age 85, “Your love and truth are all that keeps me together. More and more people are seeing this: they enter the mystery, abandoning themselves to God. Blessed are you who give yourselves over to God, turn your backs on the world’s ‘sure thing’…ignore what the world worships.”
Former Cook County Commissioner Garry Gamble is writing this ongoing column about the various ways government works, as well as other topics.
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